Slide Rules

I read something someone posted on Facebook this morning.

That's not unusual - I often do that.

It asked me to share it to 15 other people.

Also unfortunately not unusual - I've posted about that sort of thing before.  It irritates me and makes me immediately suspicious of whatever it is that they want me to share - which in this case was a plausible warning about using cruise-control in the wet causing aqua-planing.

In this case it was an unnamed woman who had wrecked her car - of course there was no link to an actual story of it actually happening.

 

The article argued that a slipping wheel would cause cruise-control to think the car wasn't going as fast as it should be so it would accelerate to compensate.

 

Yes, I can see that - I'm still not sharing a Facebook article that tells me to share it though - there's still something fishy going on.

 

It's like those Posts that tell you to Copy-and-Paste their text onto your own Timeline - DON'T SHARE!  I eventually found out what that was about -  it has two benefits for the Scammer:

• It's harder for Facebook to delete 20000 copies of an article rather than one article with all its shares.
• It allows the Scammer to include an easily Google-Searchable phrase in order to identify 20000 gullible people.

Anyway, I did a bit of digging on this rainy aquaplaney thing.  I found this most excellent piece by Joe Kenwright on www.motoring.com.au which not only describes where cruise-control came from and how it works but also why you shouldn't use it in the wet and also why the Post I read this morning is complete and utter nonsense.

 

So, if you want to make wet motorways a safer place - share my article far and wide.