the corner office

I wonder whether our technology is getting away from us. I know modern cars have onboard computers but things are getting out of hand.

I was driving to work this afternoon and I noticed the little engine-shaped warning light on my dashboard came on. Being the paranoid car-owner I am, I turned right around and drove straight to my local Volvo dealer for them to check it out.

They ran diagnostics (ie. plugged the car into a PC), which checked the hundreds of things (apparently) that can cause the engine-shaped warning light to report a problem, and soon thereafter the diagnostics system produced a nice report saying that there was a problem with a rear oxygen sensor; intermittent fault.

(My car has an oxygen sensor? And not just one, enough for there to be a rear one? And the system knew it was only intermittently faulty? But anway...)

My first reaction to the service chap was "ok, so do you need to replace the sensor?"

His response? "No, we downloaded a software update from Sweden that sorted it out."

They fixed my car by giving it a software upgrade.