Today's rant is brought to you by a combination of factors. Unseasonable rainy weather, getting ready for fire season, watching certain trends both overseas and at home, trade war with China, the list goes on and on and on ...
But instead of talking about all these things, I'm going to talk instead about resilience.
Resilience is basically the quality of a system subjected to an insult, and its ability to bounce back.
Your car has a flat tire.
You and your car are a system - a means of transportation, to get from Point A to Point B. Note that while the car is a system, it is interdependent with the driver. That would be you.
The flat tire is an insult. Not in the "your mother is a hamster" sense, but in the sense that the transportation system won't work for the moment. (You can drive on a flat tire, slowly, for a short distance, but driving at high speed for more than a minute will destroy the rim, then the wheel, then set your car on fire. Watch some police chase videos to see the process.)
Resilience is your ability to do something about the flat tire. (Note: there are cars that can do something themselves about it, but even if your civiilan armored car is equipped with auto inflation, you typically have to flip a switch or push a button, so the driver is still in the loop.)
For most people, you call a tow truck. This is an external dependency. You need a working cell phone, a working cell network, available tow trucks in the area, and either the money to pay or the foresight to sign up for a towing service such as AAA. Let's throw this out for a moment; I'll explain why later.
Relying solely on your own wits and what you have in your car, can you safely change a flat tire? Or repair the tire you have. Your options may include:
- A full service spare, letting you get the tire repaired or replaced at your convenience.
- A limited service spare, which can run at 50 MPH for 50 miles -- long enough to get to a tire shop or gas station.
- A can of "Fix A Flat" or a sealant cartridge with an inflator; which tire guys hate because it's a goopy mess to get off the rim and makes the tire unfixable (if it was fixable before), but might get you back on the road for the same short distances.
- An inflator and tire patch kit, the latter available at WalMart for under $10, with some rubber strips and a coring tool to fix your own hole in the tread. Requires some skill.
Now we get to an internal dependency. Only one of these options ("Fix A Flat") lets you do anything without having to use a jack to lift the vehicle, a tire iron to take off the lug nuts, and physically lift the old and new tires a couple times.
Not everyone can do this... and it's not just a matter of knowing how. It's a safety issue too. On the side of a freeway, you can get killed changing your own tire -- and having a tow truck driver come do it for $89.99 up to three times a year starts looking cheap by comparison.
Hopefully this conversation has prompted you to think about your car, your tires, what repair tools you carry in your car, etc. Go look at your owner's manual. Think about it. Many modern car drivers go look for the spare and discover that due to modern fuel economy regulations, there isn't one. Oops.
But back to the main subject. The resiliency of the car-driver system faced with a flat tire depends on:
- The provisions made by the manufacturer as part of the car's design and basic equipment.
- Any additions made by the car's owner / operator.
- The knowledge and as applicable, physical abilities of the driver.
- The relationships with third party services such as tow companies, repair shops, etc.
- The financial resources of the owner, operator and/or driver.
- The underlying options for tow trucks, AAA service, repairs, etc. in the geographic area. (LA is pretty good; the SF Bay Area is better; Death Valley is aptly named.)
Now I'm going to throw a monkey wrench in the works. (Or a box of screws into rush hour traffic... don't try this at home, kids, and if you do, say hi to the fusion center task force for me, you ******* terrorist.)
The tow trucks are a system. The tire repair shops, and their ability to get tires in various sizes from their vendors, are a system too. So is the dealer network. And a little further down the pike, the rental car companies and the highway patrol and the Freeway Service Patrol, etc. These systems have numerous interdependencies, ranging from the obvious one of the phone network, the less obvious one of the credit card processing network, the interstate trucking system, etc.
Individual preparedness contributes to system resiliency.
This is a fancy way of saying the more people fix their own flat tires, the less the system has to handle those who do not or cannot.
Now let's consider disaster preparedness.
In Paradise last year, if you had a flat tire, the thing to do was either 1) apply Fix A Flat, 2) roll on rims as long as you dare, and/or most likely 3) combat loss your vehicle and hitch a ride out or shelter in what the pros call a Temporary Refuge Area. No time to change a tire, no way to call a tow service, because they aren't coming, even if the cell network is up which it wasn't because the cell sites were being impacted by overrun and power loss.
There's a reason I am pushing individual preparedness so hard. I can't do anything about the larger systems on which so many human lives depend.
But if you, the person reading this, can handle your own business, you free up others to take care of those who can't or won't take care of themselves.
That may save others.
That WILL save YOU.
And spend a few minutes thinking about those tires, OK?
