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Missing the beep

Yesterday I rented a van for moving. The one I got came with manual transmission. I thought that would have been the weirdest part driving a different car now that I have used to drive automatic for so many years. But the decades of operating a car with a stick sift have imprinted that practice in my mind so it came pretty much naturally. I think I only forgot to press the clutch once or twice.

The weirdest thing wasn't the lack of all the advanced driving assistant features I have learned to enjoy, and also to rely on to a degree. Even though I like them I don't fully trust them so I still keep my awareness up and remain in control even while the car could do much of it.

The weirdest thing was missing all those beeping sounds. Even though some would say the car keeps quite a lot of noise with all those beeping sounds for different events (I was also a bit annoyed about those at first) they do provide a lot of useful information that can steer your attention to the right matters once you learn to regognize and understand all the various beeping sound and their meaning. Not having those to help me pay focus on important things I found myself needing to py a lot more attention to all the things at once.