Trained by a Honda Civic

If one thing about my behavior has changed since purchasing a new vehicle, it’s that I now wear my seatbelt everyday without complaint or discomfort. Like a well trained dog, I’ve been broken in by my own car. It wasn’t always like this. I used to drive an old Saturn SL2 that would nonchalantly remind you that you weren’t wearing your belt by displaying an inconspicuous little red icon on the dash. Does Saturn value my own sense of freedom over my safety? It’s like its saying, “You know, you should really put your belt on man, but if you don’t want to, that’s totally cool too”. After a few days of not wearing my seatbelt, I eventually stopped noticing the light at all and continued with this terribly unsafe habit. I got to the point where wearing a seatbelt was a nuisance and a discomfort, and my car did nothing about it.

That was until I bought a 2006 Civic Ex Coupe. This car is a damn seatbelt Nazi. Through the use of a “reminder” chime which beeps every 5 - 10 minutes, I have been conditioned to wear my seatbelt without resistance, every day. This isn’t your everyday reminder chime, this is a loud, irritating tone which makes you want to put your seatbelt on before you even start the car so you don’t have to hear it again.

To me this is a very interesting application of user interface design. An element of the user interface is designed to change its user’s behavior through an irritating conditioning mechanism. This would be completely unacceptable if it weren’t for the fact that this conditioning ultimately benefited the user, even if they were resistant to the idea of wearing a seatbelt in the first place. Eventually, the anger I felt that I couldn’t turn off this irritating reminder gave way to acceptance of the fact that I really need to be wearing my seatbelt at all times. In fact, I am now so used to wearing my seatbelt in my own car that I wear it in other peoples car’s as well.

The engineers at Honda have made a conscious decision to sacrifice the freedom of the driver in the name of safety. Once you get over it, its not so bad.

Now if only I could figure out a way to get rid of that nag screen on my navigation system that I have to “acknowledge” every time I turn on the car…