Section 3.1. Death by Security

3.1. Death by Security

Lately, automakers have been bowing to insurance companies by adding special lug nuts to each wheel, keyed to a special socket that must be used to remove the wheel. Unfortunately, some of these special lug nuts have only about 2% or 3% of the surface in contact with the tool, compared to a standard lug nut. If the wheel is overtightened at the factory, as was done with our Lexus RX-300, the custom part of the lug nut will crack right off the car when you attempt to change a spare tire on a dark road late at night, as happened to us, rendering removal of the wheel impossible.

We have installed standard lug nuts all around on both our cars now, and to heck with our auto insurance company. We want to keep our life insurance company happy!

Even when the auto security people aren't setting us up for a mugging, they are raising our blood pressure to dangerous heights. We had a VW Rabbit several years ago that featured a theft-proof radio, rendered useless once it was removed from the vehicle. It could only be made to function again by performing an elaborate and secret ritual, involving pressing a whole bunch of buttons in sequence while holding your right foot with your left hand and crowing to the moon.

Of course, the radio didn't really "know" it had been stolen. It only "knew" that it had lost its connection to the car battery. Therefore, the first time the battery went dead, we no longer had a radio.

VW had given us a sheet with the magical incantations, but it had warned us not to leave the sheet in the car, the equivalent to leaving passwords on a yellow sticky stuck to the side of a monitor. Ever compliant, we put the sheet in "a safe place," where it probably rests today. (I can't say for sure, since we can't remember where the safe place is.)

So we contacted our dealer, and after waiting several weeks for VW to confirm our identity through DNA analysis, we received a copy of the magic sheet. This second copy remained in plain sight in the glove box for as long as we owned the car. Strangely, no one ever stole the radio, although the buttons finally gave out from our having to repeatedly key in the special code every time we left the lights on or the car was serviced.

We are not the only users who will find ways to evade security demands that are considered unreasonably burdensome. Such circumventions are all too common among today's computer users.