It was 11:47 PM on a Thursday night when my car decided to make me learn one of the most expensive lessons of my driver's life.
I was on a national highway, about ninety kilometres away from home, returning from a client meeting that ran three hours longer than it had been scheduled to run. The road was the kind that stretches one hundred times further in distance than any purpose, especially when no streetlights appear after the last toll plaza and the only illumination is the glow of distant truck headlights coming at you faster than you expect. My phone was at eleven percent. The AC was on low. The podcast playing through the car speakers was one I had heard twice before because the sound was necessary to keep me awake.
I felt the steering wheel give a slight leftward tug before I heard it. My car was pulling left on me -- always a bad sign, but a warning nonetheless. Then came the sound, rhythmic flapping that got louder with every revolution, followed by the tell-tale grinding vibration of a rim on asphalt. I pulled over to the shoulder, switched on the hazard lights, and got out of the car to examine the rear-left tire which had been dragging me toward the side of the road.
The tire was not flat, but it was low -- visibly sagging, losing air slowly from a puncture that must have happened on the road somewhere in the last fifty kilometres. I opened up the boot to reveal the spare tire which I had last seen on the back seat of my car when I bought it. I placed my thumb on it to test the firmness. It wasn't flat, but it wasn't firm either. I didn't have a pressure gauge to measure the exact PSI level, and I didn't have any means of pumping air into either tire if I discovered a puncture. I called for roadside assistance. The voice on the other end said the estimated response time was between ninety minutes and two hours. I called a mechanic I had previously hired, left a message on his voicemail, and then called a number I had seen on a highway billboard ten kilometres back that advertised mobile mechanic services in case that number was actually active. Nobody picked up their phones. I sat on the guardrail, my phone at eight percent, and waited for something to happen.
What Ninety Minutes On A Highway Shoulder Taught Me
There is a particular helplessness that comes from being stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night. It is not the fear but the quiet understanding that one hundred percent of the responsibility of solving the problem rests on somebody else's shoulders regardless of who that somebody is. Every truck that passed by shook the car with its wake and every pair of headlights sent a silent prayer to the heavens that the vehicle belonged to the roadside assistance and not some other driver who would pass by without slowing down to examine the broken-down car on the shoulder.
I didn't have my phone with me for the first fifty minutes because it had died at the fifty-minute mark. I had no means of calling anyone to ask them to stop or give them directions. I sat in the darkness, my hazard lights the only source of illumination, and counted the number of trucks that passed by in the hour and a half it took for the roadside assistance to arrive.
The van came at 1:22 AM, an hour and thirty-five minutes after I had called for help. The technician was competent, if not particularly friendly, and he changed the punctured tire, inflated it to a pressure level sufficient to reach the nearest petrol station, and charged me a tidy sum of ₹1,800 for the service call. I drove thirty kilometres to a twenty-four-hour petrol station where I had the tire patched for an additional ₹200 and arrived home at 3:15 AM. The entire episode had cost me ₹2,000 and three hours and twenty-eight minutes of my life.
But the tire was only half the problem.
The Second Problem I Did Not See Coming
I returned to the service station where I had the tire patched to return the car to the owner the next afternoon -- I had parked it there that night because I was too tired to drive the remaining sixty kilometres back home at 3 AM -- only to discover the second problem. The car had been sitting in direct sunlight all afternoon, and the heat had made the leather seat scald my thigh through the fabric of my shirt. The dashboard was on fire. The steering wheel was too hot to hold. The heat had turned the entire front part of the car into an oven, and the only way to cool it down was to turn on the AC. The engine didn't turn over when I tried to start the car.
The battery was dead.
Not from a mechanical failure, but from the confluence of several unrelated events. The battery had been running the hazard lights for ninety minutes the previous night, the car's interior lights had been accidentally left on when I exited the vehicle at 3 AM, and six hours of direct sunlight on a Tuesday afternoon had pushed the system beyond its limits. I stood in the parking lot of a petrol station thirty kilometres from home, dead battery in hand, wondering if it wasn't ironic that I had been stranded twice within eighteen hours.
I called a local mechanic -- not the same one, since he still hadn't responded to my initial request for service -- and he arrived within forty minutes to jump-start the engine with his portable battery pack and charge me a tidy sum of ₹800 for the service. I drove back home in silence, the AC blowing cold air over my defrosted rearview mirrors, and gripped the steering wheel which was still warm to the touch. The total bill for the services rendered during this twenty-four-hour period came to ₹2,800, not including the cost of the fuel I had to spend on the detour to and from the service stations. It was nearly ₹4,000 for a slow puncture and a dead battery.
What I Bought The Next Day
What I did the next morning before I did anything else was sit down at the kitchen table and compose a list. Not a grocery list, but a list of things that I needed to buy based on the events of the previous twenty-four hours. There were three things on that list, and every one of them addressed a specific weakness that manifested itself in a critical moment of vulnerability. If I had possessed any one of these tools at the time of the crisis, I would have been able to resolve the situation with minimal fuss and bother.
The first item on the list was the thing that had caused the crisis in the first place -- a slow puncture on the rear-left tire. If I had possessed a compact, rechargeable air inflator that I could have attached to the damaged tire, I would have been able to inflate it just enough to reach the nearest petrol station thirty kilometres away without the need for outside assistance. The entire ordeal would have taken ten minutes instead of three hours and cost me ₹200 for the repair instead of ₹2,000 for the service call.
The device I ordered that morning was smaller than I expected, about the size and weight of a large water bottle, and featured a digital display that showed the air pressure as it built up to the desired level. You press a button, attach the valve to the tire, and the device does the rest, stopping automatically when the desired pressure level has been reached. I've used it on all four tires when it arrived, and the first three were slightly underinflated, which means I've been driving around on underinflated tires for the past several months without realizing it. A quick search on the internet tells me that this reduces fuel economy, increases braking distance, and accelerates tire wear. The ability to check the pressure levels on all four tires in under eight minutes is a valuable addition to my driving toolkit, and the fact that it can be used on car and motorcycle tires, sporting goods, and inflatable toys is an added bonus.
The 120-psi inflation capacity means it can be used on any type of tire, including bicycles and motorcylcles, and it has found regular use in my life since I bought it. I've used it twice on my own car, once on a friend's motorcycle, and three times on miscellaneous items I found lying around the house. It's a convenient tool to have when you're on the road and need to adjust the air pressure on your tires or a basketball.
The midnight crisis that began it all would have been resolved in ten minutes instead of three hours if this device had been in my possession at the time.
The Battery Problem That Should Not Have Been A Problem
The second item on the list was the result of the first one, really. If the slow puncture on the rear-left tire hadn't occurred, I would have still been stranded on the side of the road with a dead battery. The car wasn't broken down, so nobody would have stopped to investigate, and I would have spent that additional hour and a half on the shoulder counting passing trucks. If I had possessed a portable battery booster that I could have attached to the battery terminals, I could have jump-started the engine and been on my way in under two minutes. I wouldn't have had to call for assistance or wait for the technician to arrive. The battery problem would have resolved itself in under two minutes with no expense and no fuss.
The device I ordered was a high-capacity portable battery pack that could jump-start a dead car battery as well as keep my cell phone charged while I was waiting for the roadside assistance to arrive. It had a built-in LED display that showed the battery level, and the clamps could be attached to the battery terminals with minimal fuss and no risk of electrical shock due to the built-in protection circuitry.
I tested it two weeks later by letting the car sit for three days without running the engine. When I went to start it on the morning of the third day, it sounded like the engine was trying to commit suicide. I turned it off, attached the clamps, and tried again. The engine turned over and caught, and the entire process took less than ninety seconds. The battery pack had enough power in its 20000mAh battery to do it again, and it would have had enough power to start the car one more time before needing a recharge.
The dual-purpose nature of the device is what makes it a fixture in my car rather than on my shelf at home. On a normal day, it serves as a portable battery pack for charging my cell phone or tablet. I've used it to charge my phone during long road trips and power my friend's tablet on a weekend outing. The 20000mAh battery capacity means I can keep my devices charged for weeks at a time, and the fact that it can jump-start a dead car battery on a moment's notice is an added bonus.
The service station ordeal would have cost me zero rupees and occupied only a fraction of the time if this device had been in my possession at the time. The man who jump-started my car used something very much like it, only he charged me ₹800 for the service.
The Damage I Did Not Notice Until It Was Too Late
The third item on my list was not something I needed to buy. It was something I needed to fix, and the cost of that repair was something I needed to consider. The service station attendant looked my car over when I returned it to the owner that afternoon after the battery had been jump-started. He mentioned a few things I didn't notice at first, but the one thing he said that made me pause was the fact that the dashboard had a network of fine cracks along the lower portion near the windshield. The leather on the top of the steering wheel had dried out and felt rough to the touch, and the centre console had faded in colour and developed patches of uneven texture. The rubber gasket around the windshield had also dried out and was coming loose on one side.
The damage was UV damage, and it had been coming for years. Every day my car was parked in direct sunlight -- at the office, at the market, at the client's place, and at the service station -- the sun's rays were damaging the dashboard, cracking the plastics and drying up the leather. The repairs would cost between ₹8,000 and ₹12,000 depending on the service centre, and the prevention for all of it was something that could have been purchased on the same day as the other two items.
A foldable windshield sunshade is a device that serves one very specific purpose and does it with ruthless efficiency. By attaching it to the windshield with the provided suction cups, it reflects the sun's rays and reduces the amount of UV light that enters the vehicle, effectively reducing the temperature of the cabin by fifteen to twenty degrees. I bought the one pictured above on the same day as the other two items and tested it the following week on a four-hour parking session at a petrol station on a hot Tuesday afternoon.
When I returned to the car, the dashboard wasn't hot enough to burn my fingers, the steering wheel wasn't on fire, the seat didn't scorch through my shirt, and the AC didn't take eight long minutes to cool the cabin down to an acceptable temperature. The collapsible panels and reinforced material hide the fact that it's a sunshade, and the fact that it can be tucked behind the sun visor or door panel when not in use has significantly increased the likelihood that I'll use it. Once it became a regular part of my driving routine, I stopped thinking about it at all.
The dashboard cracks and leather damage can't be repaired, but the sunshade has stopped the clock on any future damage, and the next time I park it in direct sunlight for an extended period, my dashboard and centre console will still be in their original condition.
The Glove Box That Changed Everything
All three of the items on my list are now fixtures on my person. The inflator is in the boot with the spare tire, the battery booster is in the glove compartment, and the sunshade hangs from the ceiling near the sun visors. They weigh less than two kilograms altogether, occupy less space than a shoebox, and cost less than the roadside assistance bill I received after my first breakdown.
I've used the inflator device six times, the battery booster three times (once on my car, twice on other people's cars in parking lots when I saw them struggling with their own battery problems), and the sunshade every single day since I bought it. None of the devices has failed, malfunctioned, or disappointed in any way.
And not once in the four months since this entire ordeal has happened have I been stranded on the side of the road, waited on the shoulder for an assistance vehicle, or been charged an inflated price for a service I could have done myself. Not once have I sat on a guardrail in the dark counting passing trucks or stood in a parking lot next to a car with a dead battery.
The lesson cost me ₹4,000, three hours of sleep, and a generous helping of humility. The solution cost a fraction of that, and it resides in my car right now, waiting for the next problem to present itself.
A Note To The Driver Who Thinks It Will Not Happen To Them
Every driver who has been stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night was certain it would never happen to them the day before it did. I know because I was one of them, and I had been driving for eight years with no roadside assistance calls to my name. I had been on the road for five hours that Thursday night before the slow puncture developed in the rear-left tire, and I had been driving for another two hours before I parked it in the parking lot of the petrol station with the dead battery.
I was certain it would never happen to me.
Then it did, and it did it twice within eighteen hours.
The cost of preparation is a one-time fee that sits invisibly in your vehicle and does nothing until the moment it does everything. The cost of unpreparedness is a phone call, a wait, a bill, and the lingering sense of shame that comes with the realization that you could have done it yourself for less money and with less hassle. Don't wait for your midnight highway. Stock your car with the right tools, and when the next crisis presents itself, you'll be ready.