ZipCar, fix your anti-theft tech before someone gets hurt.

I got off the phone with the tech support person about a half an hour ago, and wanted to write this down while it was still fresh.

I rented a ZipCar at its day rate yesterday, ending at noon today. And something happened this morning when I was driving it back to the gas station parking lot at 24th and Valencia where it lives.

The car had spent the night in my garage. My garage is typical of San Francisco apartment garage parking. I.e., it’s pretty tight inside. There’s room for 3 cars, and only the center spot has a direct approach in and out of the garage entrance. The other two spots require a confined 3-point turn inside the garage, whether you’re entering or exiting.

I was just completing the second point of my three-point turn, the rear of the car heading obliquely toward the side of the entrance, when I tapped the brake and nothing happened. Within a millisecond I realized that the brake pedal was mushy, and stomped on it until the car stopped, finally ending mere inches from the edge of the wall at the garage entrance.

I had to catch my breath. For me, driving a car in reverse while pressing on the brakes but the brakes don’t work is literally the stuff of nightmares. Some years ago I had exactly that as a recurring nightmare.

That’s when I realized that the motor had cut out. I tried to restart it with no luck. There was power, no warning lights, and the motor turned over. It just wouldn’t start.

Motors do break. They sometimes will stop suddenly. Years ago I had a red Nissan 300zx. One day as I was driving to work in Burlingame on 101, in traffic that was moving quickly but super-tightly packed, the engine quit. I was doing 80mph.

Nothing will test your skill as a driver like a complete loss of power at high speed in dense traffic. When the motor died, the dashboard came alive with warning lights and an audible alarm. I knew immediately that the motor was out because of the sudden deceleration of the car and the loss of steering authority. I.e., it was hard to turn the steering wheel because nothing was driving the power steering pump. And nothing was driving the power brake pump, either. I turned on the emergency blinkers. That was, after all, a bona fide emergency.

I was in the left-most lane of a 4-lane highway, and had to get to the right shoulder before the vehicle lost too much speed. This was further complicated on account of all the impatient, speeding drivers rapidly coming up from behind me, who likely didn’t realize that my vehicle was actually in trouble, or simply didn’t feel that they should have to slow down or make any accommodations for another driver. By the time I made it to the shoulder, I was going 15mph.

I tried to restart the car with no luck. It had power, it turned over, but wouldn’t catch. I had to have the car towed. Turned out that there was a recall on the Power Transistor Unit, because it had a tendency to fail while the vehicle was moving.

That’s how I know that engines sometimes just die. It was no stretch to assume something similar had happened to my ZipCar.

Although I was relieved that no damage had been done, I wasn’t happy at the prospect of waiting for a tow truck. I couldn’t even shut the garage door to wait in my apartment, because a bit of the car was in the way. And I could only hope my neighbors in the other spots didn’t need to get in or out until a tow truck arrived.

But what else can you do? I called ZipCar to request assistance. I informed the tech support person that the engine had just died while I was in the parking garage, and wouldn’t start again. He told me to make sure everything was turned off, re-swipe my card, put the car in park, step on the brake, and start the car. I did, and the motor came back to life.

I asked tech support why I needed to go through that sequence to get the car to start. They replied it was due to their anti-theft system. I said, that doesn’t make sense because the car was running when the motor died. They said, the only possibility was that I had never actually started the car in the first place. That’s when I started getting upset. I said, hold on right there, I’ve been driving 30 years, and I know when a motor is running and when it is not. As an aside, I was once part of a JDM import crew similar to The Fast And The Furious, except that we all had day jobs at companies like Apple and Electronic Arts. I’ve had more engine grease under my fingernails than most, save professional mechanics. But my own mechanical nerdiness aside, remember where I wrote that I was completing the second point of a three-point turn when the motor died? Yeah, you don’t get to the second point of a three-point turn without a running motor. It was about that time that it dawned on me that the motor had shut off because of some glitch on the part of ZipCar’s systems, and that’s when I got a lot more upset.

You see, I can accept that motors fail. But what is unconscionable to me is that the motor should fail as a result of an anti-theft device while the vehicle is in motion. The anti-theft device should NEVER EVER do that. It should prevent the car from being started. Killing the motor while the vehicle is in motion is basically attempted murder.

I did my best to explain to the tech support person that he needed to bring this to the attention of engineering. In my case, I was very lucky that there was no damage. But it could have been much worse. Dear reader, I won’t insult your intelligence by iterating the ways in which killing the motor of a vehicle while it’s moving can cause damage and death. It doesn’t take much imagination to see it.

I realized I was getting nowhere with the tech support person, so I wound up the conversation by saying, “I understand your position, I’ll get off the line, but I am going to write this up. Because it needs to be fixed.”

So ZipCar engineering, I have some information for you. This was not the first time I had an issue with your anti-theft system. On at least two other occasions I had a similar issue where the car would not start when it should have. Luckily, in those other cases, the car was not in motion. In all cases, there had been a change in the reservation after it was active. 2 out of 3 were extensions to the reservation. 1 out of 3, there was an issue with the original vehicle (I think it had never been returned by the previous renter), and you gave me an alternate vehicle. All 3 cases required me to phone ZipCar for assistance. Although the vehicle was not in motion in those other two cases, the failure of the ZipCar to start still posed a danger.

For example, the first time it happened, I was at a music audition in a very seedy part of San Francisco. I extended the original reservation because the audition went long. After it was over, I had just finished packing up all my gear (read: expensive and rare vintage guitars and amplifiers) from the studio in to the ZipCar. But the ZipCar wouldn’t start! Not only that, I was getting no cell service at the car’s location. So I had to abandon the vehicle, with all my expensive gear sitting in open view inside, in order to find a place with cell reception, so I could call you to fix the problem. Everything turned out okay, but once again I had a belly full of worry on account of your flaky system.

For all the years you’ve been running, ZipCar, I am surprised you still have gremlins like this in your system. And I do not believe it to be hyperbole when I say, fix your system before someone gets hurt.

Feel free to contact me if you would like more information on this incident.