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Sun is up. Awnings are down. Summer is here.

They started about a month ago. On the morning of our drive to Paris, I asked Sneha to take the wheel first so I could continue dozing in the passenger seat. She agreed, so I buckled-up, stuffed her handbag in the already packed glove box before closing my eyelids. We had traveled not more than few tens of kilometers, I think, when we heard it first. Three long and distinct beeps, which sounded like they were either emitting out of the car’s dashboard or via the side-speakers.

They woke me up.¹ Unable to comprehend, Sneha was looking equally stunned. It was the last thing we wanted on a long drive, which we had just begun.

Now beeps aren’t entirely alien to us. In fact, we’re familiar with several types related to the following:

1. Fuel volume sliding to reserve.
2. Snow on tracks.
3. Key in ignition warning when the driver’s side door is open.
4. Open doors.
5. Presence of traffic cameras, together with speed-limit (audio-visual) warnings. (This one is emitted from our portable GPS navigator.)

And yet, the sounds we heard matched none of these. We kept an eye on the on-board console for visual warning signs. There were none. And that got us worried even more.

We stopped at a gas station near the Belgian border and called Honda in The Hague—hoping they’d give us clues to our problem. They sounded surprised and said – we were the first customers to report such a thing concerning a Honda Civic. They did, however, reassure us by saying, “all car warnings should and will be accompanied by visual indications on the console.” We were, nevertheless, concerned and presumed it was to do with something mechanical, which, we reasoned, might not be wired to the console.

The beeps never stopped. Sneha forced me back in the driver’s seat when she couldn’t take it anymore. Our other hunch – we thought our overstuffed glove box could possibly have upset the passenger-side airbag.

We varied our driving speed, changed radio settings to turn traffic announcements off, toggled the stereo, the auto-wiper system, the air-vent in the passenger glove box, et al, to see if we could determine the particular event that was triggering these beeps. Nothing seemed to connect, and each test failed our arithmetic. We even made an unscheduled stop at the Honda service station in Ghent to have it examined. The only guy behind desk on the weekend could not find anything unusual.

When the logic fails, they say, reasoning kicks in. And so we reasoned may be it wasn’t so bad, else the console would’ve shown something. And so we turned the radio a few decibels louder, and drove.

At Noyelles-Godault, our first stopover, we searched the internet from our hotel for three beeps + civic. But all we found were random reports from owners of various cars—including Honda. It made no sense.

The beeps were like an unwanted jingle. But thankfully, nothing broke, nothing stopped working. And we did return home without an incident. I took the car to the garage last week. Unsurprisingly, the Honda garage didn’t find any malfunction either.

Then, yesterday, when Sneha and I were returning in Aygo—the other car, we heard those beeps again! We looked around, and sure enough, it was our portable GPS navigator, which was the only other thing common besides us on that trip!

Turns out when I updated the device the night before our trip, the update added new features unknown to me. One of the many new features included a safety warning system—via beeps! And it kept going off, much to our dismay, throughout our trip. And all this time we thought there was something wrong with our car!²

So, as you can see, it does not take much to scare drivers these days. A single update to oft-used car devices like the GPS navigator³, and the practical joke is automatically turned on.

1. Conditioned by personal computer beeps for over a decade, I hate anything other than a single short beep, which means everything is okay. [←]
2. The other reason we didn’t suspect the GPS navigator was because its speed camera beep is very different. Also, Tomtom’s speaker is at back of the device—facing the windshield. The beeps, I suspect, were bouncing off the windshield, thus creating a stereo effect, as if to emit from the car’s side tweet speakers. [←]
3. With no notification, log of feature changes, fixes or updates to the user. [←]

Update: I must clarify this, because my 5 year old daughter thought, “while we were performing, all the parents were laughing .”

It looks like some children thought we were making fun of them—with all our smiles and laughs. So, this is a daddy clarification to all you children:

Dear children, while we were enjoying this wonderful performance of yours, we were also merrily laughing with joy at how each of you were performing in your own unique way. It was a fantastic performance (I cross my heart), and we whole-heartedly loved every minute of it. You all were simply superb, and we’re so proud of you.