Crash prevention with Incontrol's Dan Strollo and a car gadget from https://ohsnap.com/

WATD presents John Paul, the car doctor, All Things Automotive.

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Now, here's John Paul, the car doctor.

And good Sunday morning everyone and welcome to the last car doctor radio program of 2025.

Next year will be 2026, hopefully we'll still be around for the 2026 model year, model year.

I guess so, I guess we can call it that.

But, you know, we had some snow.

Well, not where I am, but where you are.

And we had some snow and it kind of, people get all nervous and they need to be reminded about how to drive and how to prevent crashes.

And with us is Dan Strollow.

Dan Strollow is from in control crash prevention, drive in control, I believe is their website.

Dan, good morning and welcome back to the car doctor program.

Good morning, John.

Does this mean you're down south somewhere where it's warm?

That's really not fair.

Yeah, there's some rumors about that.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, for people who I, and Jesse mentioned that this morning when we were chatting on Christmas day, my wife and I and my nephews and his wife and their kids are here to visit.

We had lobster rolls on the beach on Christmas day.

Oh, wow.

Well, we can still do that up here, but it's just going to be frozen.

You might have to.

Yeah, frozen lobster rolls.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You know, as the year comes to an end here, I was thinking, how long have I known you?

How long has in control been around?

And you kind of took over, what, right after the first year or so?

Yeah, I was not at the beginning.

So it started in 2003.

I got involved in, I guess it was 2006.

And so, you know, we're over 20 years, over 50,000 grads of the Crash Prevention 101 program and doing a lot of other stuff on top of it.

But I think I want to start by touching on your how to drive in the snow reminder, you know, to the listeners out there.

The first thing I would want to make sure everybody thinks about is winter tires.

It still blows my mind to see so many people thinking, you know, all season tires is actually a thing.

And maybe it's all seasons in Texas, but around here, you can get a dramatically better performance out of your vehicle,

particularly with stopping and steering, if you just consider winter tires.

And I put them on every car in the family.

I got four kids.

We got way too many cars at this point.

And it makes a huge difference.

And you know, the real thing that I try to make sure everybody recognizes is four-wheel drive, you know, front-wheel drive.

It'll get you going oftentimes in slick conditions, but it doesn't help you stop and it doesn't help you steer.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we had somebody from Nokia tires on a month or so ago.

And we just got kind of casually talking about tires.

And the same all-season tire that you buy in Marshfield, for instance, is the same all-season tire you buy in Phoenix.

So how can it possibly be an all-season tire when the seasons vary so much from location to location?

And what's kind of nice now, we're starting to see all-weather tires, which aren't quite winter tires,

but they still have the three-mountain snowflake designations, so they're much better than the all-season tires.

And if you don't have room to store an extra set of tires, the all-weather tires will do much better.

And you brought up a great point.

All-wheel drive and front-wheel drive might get you up the hill, but coming down the hill, all those cars are the same.

And the tires are what's the important part.

And the tires are hopefully the only part of your car that touches the road, so you want to make sure they're in good shape.

Now, we talked to a lot of companies.

We'll get people talk about what should they invest in for their fleets.

And it's funny how often executives are given these four-wheel drive vehicles.

And my initial joke is these are the same people that are not driving into the office when it snows, so I don't know why you're bothering.

But secondarily, all those extra moving parts, all that extra weight,

if you had the same vehicle but with winter tires on it, it would outperform it all day long.

And that's unless you really need to go off-roading, invest in the tires.

And to your point about storage, there are starting to be some companies that crop up that will take store your tires for you.

But it's pretty cost-effective.

Unless you're somebody who just cycles out of cars super frequently, if you're keeping that car more than three years,

buy an extra set of wheels and they can be cheaper wheels, so they don't get as destroyed in the salt and everything else.

And long-term, you're going to do okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, let's talk about winter driving a little bit more because we did get some winter.

You know, you kind of brought it up.

Stay home. Stay home if the roads are bad.

Absolutely.

Well, and the other thing is if you do need to travel, get all the snow off your car.

I mean, obviously people know, don't just clear enough room to only see out like, you know, a small section of your front windshield.

But get the snow off the roof, get the snow off the rear window, get the snow off the hood and the trunk.

You don't want to be driving down the road and have some frozen piece of ice pick up and take out, you know, a section of people behind you because the window got smashed or something like that.

You know, not only can you get ticketed for it, you could really hurt somebody and it's worth the extra effort to get it all done at once before you leave your home.

Yeah, I mean, still to this day, you see the, you know, person driving through the porthole in their windshield and they're like, they just reached over with their arm and scooped off the, you know, snow off the windshield and it's like, what's wrong with them?

You know what?

No.

Why can't you, you know, there's, you know, there was a time where the best you could do was an ice scraper or a broom and now they have, you know, every place you go, you can buy a snow broom which is basically a chunk of styrofoam on a long handle and you push and pull all the snow off.

It takes literally minutes to clean your car off.

Every year I'm blown away by what they come up with.

I think there's one that's like part vacuum cleaner, it'll clean your windshield and it'll, you know, actually it's a microwave too.

I mean, they've got a lot of options now but absolutely there's no excuse for not getting it all off your car.

The one thing I won't recommend is and every once in a while somebody will send me something and they'll say, what do you think about this?

And it was some sort of ultrasonic thing you put in your dash and you turn it on and it's supposed to melt all the snow off your car and oddly I saw the same device that was an air freshener and I'm like, pretty sure that's not going to work.

I've been looking because we traded some text yesterday and I did have to do some plowing.

I try not to brag but I'm also the plow truck operator for our site and, you know, when I plow a lot of snow picks up on the window.

I'm doing this big airport runway and I'm going relatively fast trying to push the snow pretty far and I have yet to find a device that actually will get rid of that snow that starts to pile up while I'm plowing.

But again, you just pull over, you get out and you push it off and you get back in and it's kind of a nice break from the mountain so just deal with it, folks.

I think you're driving safely and you're driving a vehicle you can actually see as well with the extra effort.

Yeah.

And let's talk about speed.

You know, you hear the traffic reports still.

The speed on the mass pike is down to 40 miles an hour and that may be too fast in the snow.

Yeah.

What I think across the board is we, you know, when I got my license, the vehicle that I was driving, when I was doing 60 miles an hour, it felt like I was doing 160.

And now pretty much the cheapest brand new car you can buy, you do 60 and it feels like you're standing still.

And so I think that's part of it.

We all get into these cocoons and we can update our Facebook page from the dashboard and we feel super safe.

And we are safer than, you know, in 1970s, whatever that was my first car, but we're crashing at a rate higher and higher every year.

I mean, for young people, this has been one of the worst years on record.

And we were starting to move in a better direction for a little while, but people are just getting way too confident behind the wheel.

I think there's a speed is a huge factor in the snow.

People are driving faster than they need to, but on a daily basis, they're driving faster.

And then obviously we're seeing a lot of marijuana use out on the roads.

I think people have more anxiety post pandemic, maybe than they ever did before.

And these distractions, you know, whether it's the phone, the dashboard or whatever else they're doing, you know, shooting TikTok videos of themselves while they're driving.

It's not the time to be doing those things.

You have to stay engaged.

No, and it is so easy to get distracted when you're behind the wheel.

And whether it is, like you said, you know, doing these, you know, TikTok videos or Instagram reels while you're driving that, you know, that isn't where you should be doing them.

Even if you have somebody else, you know, holding your phone or holding a camera and you're narrating, you're still distracted.

Absolutely.

There is, you know, there's not a single research study that will show that even talking hands free while driving down the road is safe.

Actually, maybe there was one from AT&T back in the day, but you know, you need to be focused.

The part of your brain that's thinking about what the reactions are to whatever you're saying is the same part of your brain that helps you stay safe and pay attention.

And I, you know, I always like to think of that night writer, the old, what was it?

Trans Am that, you know, he's driving down the road and he's got the red light going back and forth and standing.

And we need to be doing the same thing.

We need situational awareness.

We do all these things to distract ourselves.

And frankly, you know, I've had young people occasionally ask me, what, what, do you not even listen to the radio?

I'm like, no, I do.

But when I was brand new, I probably shouldn't have been.

I need to recognize and that as we're learning, I want to be focused on the road.

And once we get a little overconfident, we, it doesn't mean we get to turn around and start playing chess while we're driving down the road.

We should maybe okay, listen to a podcast.

But again, I think everybody knows the time when they were, you know, too excited by the song that was playing or too into whatever was being said on the radio.

And they missed an exit or they, you know, got into a close call because they just weren't paying enough attention.

Yeah, I know.

I saw a study, I don't know, a month ago and you know, everybody does studies and I think half of them are just made up.

But apparently you should, apparently you should not listen to Taylor Swift while you're driving.

Oh, well, she's an American treasure.

I might have to go back and talk to those.

That would be pretty impressive.

Yeah, but, but I guess it is the type of music can actually cause a certain level of distraction.

Yeah, I believe it.

I've had an ex-girlfriend pretty much destroy an old car because some song came on while she was in a parking garage and next thing you know, the car was not the same.

So those things happen.

Yeah.

You know, following the same line of tips here, you know, anti lock brakes are phenomenal, but on the other hand, they're not completely trouble free.

And I like to think of ABS is allows you to break and steer at the same time, but it depends to some extent on road conditions.

You're still going to slip and slide if it's black ice or snow or slush or frozen frozen ice with water on top of it.

You know, anti lock brakes.

I got to be a whole lot of help common sense.

Yes, stay off the roads if it's if you're not going to be safe.

But, you know, I'll back up a little bit too is we still I give speeches to, you know, groups, whether it's drivers or parents or whatever the, you know, the company that asked me to come in and speak.

And very rarely does anybody even know what ABS stands for.

You know, you hear a lot of automatic braking system or different things and very even less rare, you know, even less often does anybody know what it does.

So that's the problem I run into is they don't recognize that ability to steer is is huge.

But we still have the majority of drivers out there, not a, you know, understanding what the concept is.

And so if you were taught to pump the brakes, if you got yourself into a situation where you were, you know, on slick roads or something, you've got people out there now who have great braking systems that will help them steer and keep them in control,

who suddenly start pumping the brakes and it takes significantly longer to stop.

And they're a lot less likely to be able to stay in control of the car just because they didn't know what it did.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And things like stability control, all those things help.

But none of those things really take the place of a fully engaged driver, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I'll tell you this, I can't wait.

I mean, it's a guy who runs a nonprofit who's trying to keep people safe on the roads.

I cannot wait for there to be a Google car that takes us where we want to go safely and keeps us from crashing it.

But none of these vehicles are ready for prime time just yet.

They're getting there.

I mean, I'm sure you know better than I, some of the improvements that are coming and have come.

But I really believe we need the cars to talk to the roads and the cars to talk to each other.

And then we've got a fighting chance of really keeping people safe behind the wheel or behind whatever that thing will be in the future when the wheels are necessary.

Yeah, and you're right.

You know, wouldn't it be, let me back up.

There are times I love to drive.

You know, if I have a sporty car to drive and it's a little twisty two lane thing and it's a beautiful fall day, can't get any better.

Driving in and out of Boston on a Monday morning when traffic's all backed up.

Yeah, you know, if I could, if I could tell it to bring me to where I want to go and I could, you know, do something else or sleep or whatever the case is, that would be fantastic.

But yeah, we are not there yet.

And recently, I think there was a couple of self driving cars that somehow ran into each other, which is, yeah, yeah.

I have faith that that's still that's going to happen.

But I do believe at some point we get to the point where it's better than us humans.

I'm still control freak.

I'm going to want to drive something.

I appreciate that.

And I don't see the world changing at least through the near future to be exclusively, you know, autonomous vehicles, but they're just they've got to be able to travel in safely before we can really, you know, figure that they're going to be able to take over.

And then the robots will have control of us in AI.

And I mean, you know, there's all sorts of doom and gloom coming.

Yeah, somebody somebody said the the modern version of hell is rather than 300 million cars on the road in the United States.

It doesn't change 300 million self driving cars.

There's still a whole bunch of cars that aren't going anywhere because there's too many cars.

And, and, you know, people have started to realize with COVID that not everybody needs to go into the office and go into work every single day.

And I think that's helped a lot.

Tell us about crash prevention, the school, who's, you know, you mentioned new drivers, but it's for everybody, right?

Yeah, it's interesting.

You mentioned COVID.

I mean, during COVID, I had the displeasure of having to fire myself and everybody else who was in the organization.

And we laid ourselves off while we figured out what was happening because we were not able to operate for a while.

And pre COVID, we probably trained one or two companies a month at best.

And now we're getting, you know, we kind of decided during COVID that we needed to figure out a way to stay around our passion is to work with young people,

but we don't want to go out of business just simply because, you know, something like that.

So we've started reaching out to companies and we do a lot of small businesses in the state of Massachusetts.

It's basically free if you've got 50 or fewer employees to train your entire staff.

And if you have 100 or fewer, they'll pay more than 50% of the cost.

You know, they pay for our training, plus some of the time that the people put in to get there.

So it's really cost effective for an organization.

And when you look at how expensive it is to pay for commercial insurance right now, it just keeps going up and up and up.

Because the crash rate has been so bad.

So as an organization, we're doing a lot more training.

We train a lot of ambulance companies here.

We train a lot of police departments.

But we're training your landscaper and your plumber and, you know, folks out there who, if they have just a couple of drivers or honestly,

even if your driving isn't the main thing, what do you do if your most important sales person is going to crash or the person who answers your phones and all of a sudden they're out and you don't know how to replace them?

Like, you know, it's worth keeping everybody safe.

So that's something I'd encourage anybody listening if they thought about, you know, driving safety and wanted to work on it for their organization,

contact us and we'll help you with grants.

But we do train drivers of all ages.

We are our oldest student to go through the course was 94.

We get a couple of people across the Midwest who are, you know, in their 14, 15 years old that are licensed in their states.

And our goal is to see new drivers while they still have their permit preferably in the month or two before the road test.

But just because you got that license certainly doesn't mean you're an expert.

So we try to work with everybody.

Yeah, no, it really makes, it really makes sense.

And the idea that, like you said, whether, you know, all different ages, getting back to the, you know, people that sort of drive for a living.

Is there any sort of deals for the gig drivers or people that, you know, drive for Uber and Lyft or, or DoorDash or any of those?

You know, it's interesting.

We've done some work with Uber at one point.

What was the, there was another organization we did some stuff with in the past.

Most of them are going to see the benefit in an insurance reduction.

So hopefully these folks have told their agents that they're doing this driving and therefore they've got the right kind of coverage.

So some of the insurers will help them out a little bit, especially on personal policies.

There's some insurance discounts.

And that's, again, for new drivers, it tends to be more, but for a lot of these companies, it's regardless of how many years you've been driving, they'll offer you a discount.

So that's kind of the first side.

And then we do try to help people out.

You know, again, it's a nonprofit.

We've got financial aid.

Right now we're running a special.

So there's tons of seats available still for this school vacation week.

So we've got a lot of families coming and training with us.

There's a class going on today that, you know, people are training.

I think there's a lot of families together, which has been great for us.

So by all means, if you visit the website and see our calendar, you can sign right up.

And if you're a Lyft driver or Uber driver, I'm sure you've had similar scary experiences between, you know, watching YouTube videos and trying to explain to me why their seatbelts is a dangerous thing in their vehicle.

I tend to be, you know, an Uber driver's worst nightmare when I get in and start trying to teach them how to drive while we're going.

Yeah, you know, my executive producer Jesse also owns a pizza shop and a lot of his pizza was delivered by by his delivery drivers.

So he would.

So under that state grant, his drivers could be eligible to take your course.

Absolutely.

If he's got 50 or fewer employees, he gets to train it pretty much everybody.

You know, and again, I try to tell everybody it's about it's a workforce training fund.

So there's there's also a Department of Industrial Accidents that a lot of the municipalities use for like, you know, the snow plow operators or the way it papers for the town, that sort of thing.

But the workforce training is really about getting people more skilled and the benefit the state has is not only are they becoming more skilled, but it's also reducing crashes.

So, you know, if we could get a lot fewer crashes in the state, we might actually get to work on time more consistently too.

Yeah, no, it makes sense.

It absolutely makes sense.

And what other kinds of you for a while you were offering a trailer backing up course.

So you still don't know.

We still we just had one a couple of weeks ago.

If people visit our website, you can sign up.

And what we do now is we send out a note like, Hey, we're looking at putting this on the calendar.

Tell us what days you think would work for you.

And then we try to find a day that works for the most people.

But we do that for commercial companies regularly.

I think we're doing a couple of months now.

And it's, it's really, I mean, Johnny, you get a kick out of it because we'll get these folks who get sent by their employer.

And they've been driving a trailer for these 4050 years and they look at us like, What are you going to teach me?

And every single time they learn something, every single time there's a vehicle that they show up with that doesn't have the right sized, you know, pitch.

It's rated for the wrong rating or the ball is rated for 5,000 pounds.

And it's a 10,000 pound trailer that there's just always something that someone missed.

And they're usually super appreciative that, you know, by the end of the day, they're like, I did not expect this to be a good experience.

And, and, you know, we've got them doing some backing up drills.

But it's a lot of fundamentals of, you know, how to load the trailer, how to have the wheat dispersed properly, things that people don't always think about.

They just kind of hook up and go and sometimes don't even walk behind it to say, Oh, the brake lights are out and these sort of things.

Yeah, I mean, I was talking to somebody just recently who towed a vehicle, flat towed a vehicle from up north somewhere down south and then they stopped a couple of times.

But at one point they said, I'm going to have to fix the safety chains because they seem awfully tight.

Take it a turn.

Well, what happened was the hitch pin had a fancy lock on it.

And apparently it wasn't locked in right and the pin fell out.

And, you know, yeah.

And fortunately, it only slid out as far as the chains and it stopped.

But that could have been a major catastrophe.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And that's the thing is just checking on things.

So that's one of the courses we offer.

We offer a close quarters maneuvering course as well on our public calendar.

And that's something that, you know, backing up in parallel parking and some people are really intimidated by it.

And it's a bit more science than art.

So if you get the chance to practice it and get some coaching on it, you can do pretty well.

And all of these things have come from the training is based on a European model as well as a lot of the police training that we've done for years.

And we never used to offer that to the general public.

And now I think we probably have, you know, 20 or 30 students a month signing up independently on top of the commercial classes that we offer.

And I should take a minute and mention just as people are thinking about this as, you know, hey, this is a great thing.

I'd love to see more of it go on in my community, whether you've got kids in the schools or something.

There's something called the municipal road safety grant that a lot of police departments have been taking advantage of.

And that grant enables us to either come to the school and do some presentations with vehicles to the students.

We have them go for ride alongs with us.

We have people come through the crash prevention 101 class.

We also have a partnership with, you probably know Emily Stein with safe roads.

Oh, yeah, they have a program for elementary school.

And so those three programs are offered through this municipal road safety grant.

And we've got probably, I know we're going to probably 35 or 40 communities this year as a result of that.

And so this has become much more popular.

And there's a lot of towns out there that don't take advantage of those funds.

They never put in for them.

So if you're interested in having us do some work in your community, talk to your local police department or call us and we'll fill you in.

Yeah.

And currently the courses are mostly held in Weymouth at the former air base, right?

Correct.

I'm still looking for us.

Amazon bought our space in North Andover and we thought we were going to go to another spot and then they ended up piling a bunch of material for a construction project there.

So we're trying to find a space that we can use that would be north of Boston.

But what I tell everybody is it's four and a half, five hours of your day.

It's worth the drive time.

We have people come from New York regularly from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont.

You know, if I gave you tickets to a Patriots game, you'd probably take a trek to Foxboro from wherever you live.

Or Taylor Swift concert.

Yeah.

Well, come on.

I don't know if I'm giving those away.

I've heard good things.

And if people want more information, tell us about websites and phone numbers and all that stuff.

Absolutely.

So visit drive in control, D-R-I-V-E-I-N-C-O-N-T-R-O-L dot org driving control dot org.

Our phone numbers there, all that you can contact us, all those things come to us.

It's the end of the year.

If you're interested in making a donation to us, we always, you know, we love the support there from a 501 C three gets the tax benefits as well.

But absolutely contact us through the website and we'd be more than happy to follow up with you.

I tend to respond to all the communications that come through there.

So if I can help educate somebody or even just help you with something that's going on personally with your vehicle, let us know.

And for somebody like Jesse and his delivery drivers, like you said, there's programs available.

My nephew has a 16 year old daughter who has her learners permit and is a nervous practicing driver.

She would be perfect, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, it's a really strange.

We do a couple of drills where those that are timid behind the wheel gain confidence and those that are under confident get knocked down a few notches.

It's really fun to see, but we have amazing feedback.

I mean, when you think about it, the vast majority of our students have been referred because they were in crash, frequently scared to drive again.

And, you know, and some of these crashes are horrific.

We'll have kids in the course who, you know, they were driving and their passenger died or they were the passenger and the driver died.

It's just, you know, it's our instructors have a lot of experience with that type of situation.

And, you know, at the end of the course, they're generally will have people tear up a little bit like they were scared to get behind the wheel and now they feel a lot better.

So we're really excited about what we do and we just hope to be able to work with more and more, you know, particularly young people, but drivers in general, we all could be better.

And none of the instructors intimidate any of the students.

It's all about trying to learn and grow together.

Exactly.

I mean, the vast majority of my instructors are current race car drivers.

We've got some excellent enforcement and some other experienced folks, but at the end of the day, we're not training anybody to race.

We're not trying to scare anybody.

It's really about this car is capable of certain things and not others.

And we want you to see where that line is and learn how to stay safe and hopefully chisel away at some of that invincibility that's part of being young and part of some of the older folks just being dumb and, you know,

how the vehicle is going to behave in certain situations.

No, it really, and I mean, in Massachusetts, we have a pretty good driver's ed program, but the driver's ed program really teaches you how to get your license.

No one ever really said it teaches you how to drive.

My youngest got her license two weeks ago and I'm as scared as everybody else.

I've told her day one, I go, you can think that you are the best 16 and a half year old driver out there on the road or maybe you are, but you're not nearly as good as somebody who's had their, you know, license for three months.

You don't have the experience.

You don't have, you know, I tried to drive 100 hours with her.

She's my youngest.

She probably got away with murder compared to the older kids.

She definitely didn't have to put the plow on the truck and drive into Boston like I made my other kids do, but that's another story.

But at the end of the day, I mean, driver's ed, I'm not taking anything away from it.

I agree with you.

We have one of the better drivers ed programs, but it's not what they do in German.

They're not preparing for a one hour road test.

My daughter's road test was the longest of all of my kids and it was barely five minutes.

Yeah.

No, I, I even remember years and years ago I got my motorcycle endorsement for my license and it was in March, I think.

And it was literally behind the R and V building and it started to spit a little bit of snow and the guy waves me over and I think it was due to figure eights in a circle and I passed.

You know, it was again, not much.

Not, you know, did what it did, but yeah.

Ultimately, this is going to take legislation and there's no state doing it right in the United States right now.

If you look at a lot of these, your Estonia is my favorite.

You have a one hour road test.

You're on city streets, highways, then you go to a, you know, private area to put the car into a skid regain control.

They give you a temporary license.

You have to come back and inclement weather and do everything all over.

Then they license.

That's fantastic.

And they get to enjoy far fewer crashes as a result.

That said, the U.S. just doesn't have the same attitude towards driving and we're consistently back in the 70s.

We were the safest place to drive and now we're pretty much 40th place on a regular basis.

Hmm.

Well, food for thought, I suppose.

Drive, drive in control.

Drive in control.org.

If you want to donate, if you want to take a course, if you want to learn something new, refresh, whatever the case is, drive in control.org.

Right at the former Waymouth Navy Base.

Easy to get to, especially from the South Shore, but anywhere when this program becomes a podcast, people can look into it.

And like you said, come from multiple states away for a five hour course.

Go and do it and find out more about it.

John, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Thank you and 20 years we've known each other now.

So scary.

A little bit.

All right, Dan.

Thanks and have a happy, healthy and safe 2026.

You as well.

All right.

Take care.

Bye bye.

We need to take a break.

Pay some bills.

My name is John Paul.

This is a car doctor program.

You're listening on 959WATD.

If you would like to join us and talk about whatever is on your mind on this last Sunday of 2025, give us a call at 781-837-4900.

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Welcome back to the Car Doctor Program on 959WATD.

I've mentioned periodically I get things in the mail to try out and test out.

And I have yet to actually review a new car while I've been here down south because I'm not sure if they don't have the cars available.

They haven't mailed you any cars?

They haven't emailed me any cars, they haven't mailed me any cars, the Amazon truck hasn't brought me any cars.

They won't even let you drive the Amazon truck?

I would like to drive the Amazon electric truck.

But I also tried to drive the Redline train once, but apparently that was just a hard no.

They said I could come up and look, but I couldn't drive the train, which I was a little disappointed about.

Although I have a little car doctor secret here, I've never been on the T.

It's probably for the best.

I have been on whatever they call it in the Washington, D.C. area, and I have been on whatever it is in Toronto.

And I guess I took the path bus or something in New Jersey, but I've never been on the T in Boston, which people are surprised about.

I said, well, I lived in Abington, and if I had to go to Boston, it was just as easy to drive there.

But anyway, so I got something in the mail and it's called Osnap.

And it is a cell phone holder device.

And what's kind of nice about it, instead of being one of those floppy things, you're sticking a vent on your car or something.

This one actually, first off, they made really well.

They made out of aluminum.

There's a magnetic holder that you stick it on the back of your phone and it's a strong magnet.

And then you attach it to the second part, which is the snap car mount, which is made out of aluminum as well with a sticky base.

So you can stick it on your car.

It has a nice little pivot on it.

The problem is, apparently I don't have a new enough phone.

The magnetic base part wouldn't stick to my phone.

So I glued it to the phone case and I'm using this for I've mentioned before that we have a little small boat and the little small boat, the little motor on the boat.

I bought a scan tool like device app thing that you wire into the motor of the boat and it tells you how fast you're going RPM, how many gallons of gas you've used engine temperature.

But also if you have fault codes, so it's kind of a scan tool type thing and it keeps track of maintenance.

And what's nice about this is I use the holder, the snap car holder, stuck it onto the dash, if you will, of the boat.

And then I have an old cell phone that I glued the magnetic piece to and then it holds nicely onto the little magnetic holder.

They also have something called a snap charge, which is a little round disc with a USB mini C connector.

And you just set your phone on top and it charges up your phone.

And again, the quality looks good. The cords look good.

And Jesse, you must buy a little bit of electronic stuff for your kids, right?

From time to time.

And for you, I would assume.

Have you noticed packaging has improved dramatically?

Yeah, I'm kind of like a hoarder when it comes to keeping the boxes for these things because they're really nice.

Yeah, I mean, it was there was a time where when you got your first Apple device, whether it was an iPod or an iPad or an iPhone,

you kind of took it out of the box and you went, Oh, the box is nice.

It's got this tissue paper thing in it and everything looks really nice about it.

And then you go by like somebody, somebody else's phone and, you know, came in a junkie bag and you're like, but in the, in the eye world, they were always,

but now I'm starting to see everything seems to be, like you said, the packaging is as good as a product.

Yeah, maybe I'm wrong.

But I feel like Apple did start that trend of really nice packaging.

I think so.

And it's, it's just like even, even this and they try to have a little bit of humor like the magnetic mount comes in boring black, it says.

So, you know, they tried to be a little bit fun and the other two boxes are these well constructed little boxes.

Everything was nice and neat inside of it.

It's just, I mean, they probably could have, you know, cut the cost out of they just throw in a bag, a bubble wrap bag, but it's, it looks, it looks good.

And I think there, there's a lot to be said about that.

I agree.

Yeah.

So that's all I have to say.

But again, it's a snap.

Oh, snap is the name of the company.

Snap car is the one of the products.

Then there's a oh snap the magnetic base part called Meg's Meg grip it.

But also it has the which my nephew and his wife and his three daughters are here.

Everybody has a phone with the little holder on the back of it so you can hold it and look at it and look at TikTok videos all day long.

It seems like.

But this one has a little grip it thing on the back of it.

And it's stuck to everybody's phone but mine, because mine doesn't have a big chunk of metal in the back of it, I guess.

So and the other thing was the snap charge, which fast wireless charging, it says QI to Meg safe compatible quality materials.

Yeah, they are really nice quality materials.

So you can check it out oh snap.

And again, the device I got was in boring black, which is just fine for me.

I like the quality quality seems really good way better than some of the plastic stuff and pretty good stuff, pretty good stuff.

So check it out.

It says the phone grip that doesn't suck is how they describe it because it doesn't use a section cup.

It actually uses a magnetic base that sticks to your phone, unless you have an old iPhone 10 or X or whatever I have.

So, which I'm perfectly happy with it does its job.

So there you go.

If you'd like to join us and talk about, I don't know what you got for Christmas.

What you wanted to get for Christmas.

Give us call at 7818374900.

Somebody wrote to me this week and said I've been reading your column.

So I'm not sure where they were reading it could have been in New York could have been in Providence could have been Boston could have been Quincy.

Oh, by the way, Bob Bosworth, the guy who runs the Quincy son put me on their mailing list.

And I get the Quincy son, which I share with my local neighbors here.

So I'm kind of bringing a little bit of South Shore to to Florida here.

And he puts usually puts a page page and a half two pages of my stuff into his paper once a month or so.

And I appreciate that.

So who knows maybe with somebody who read it there.

And he says I've been reading a column for many years.

Look forward to reading them on a weekly basis.

My question pertains to my vehicle.

I have a 2015 Toyota forerunner.

I recently brought my brought into my mechanic for inspection oil change tire rotation.

The forerunner has one locking lug nut on each rim.

The mechanic called me and said he was unable to locate the lug nut tool to remove the tires rims for the tire rotation.

So he wasn't able to perform the job.

My question you is there a universal lug nut to remove a locking lug nut?

Like that tool maybe if there isn't what happens if someone loses them.

I would think that a good garage would have these needed tools or perhaps there is no universal lug nut to remove these lug nuts.

By the way when I went to go pick up the vehicle the lug nut tool was exactly where I told the mechanic to go look for it.

Well I can't help with the second part or third part of that question.

But yeah it used to be that some there was all kinds of different varieties of wheel locks hubcap locks.

When cars had hubcaps there was steel cables that went through the hole where the valve stem would be and then you put that on the lug under the lug nut.

That way if someone just tried to take that they'd have to take the lug nuts off.

Then there was wheel locks that actually used a little key and if you tried to spin them they would just spin freely.

And if you had to take the key off and then you need a special socket to take that off with.

And then there's typically what I think Magard is probably the one that's been doing it for the longest.

It's a chrome lug nut with a special driver tool that fits in this odd shape on the top of it and it takes the wheel locks off.

And the old Volkswagen that we have has one of those right from the factory.

The Hyundai that I drive came with it as a dealer installed option.

The first thing I did was took them off because I never want to lose the tool.

So I took them off and I'm not really worried about someone stealing wheels off my Hyundai.

I'll probably look out the window and then my wheels will be gone but I haven't really worried about it.

What you can do if you have lost that tool you can try taking a 12 point socket that fits really close.

So maybe something metric bang it on with a big hammer.

Maybe that's going to be enough to grip the tool grip the nut and get it off.

If not this is universal removal tools which are basically sort of a left hand thread tool.

So when you bang it onto the socket as you try to loosen it it bites into the lug nut and takes it off.

A lot of shops will have those tools just in case they're not perfect though.

Some of them you actually put over the lug nut to spin it with the impact wrench until it gets warm and then you bang it on and then let it cool around it.

Others use little teeth to take them off either way.

And in the worst case you end up with an air hammer.

So you take an air hammer and you put a punch in the end of it and you put the punch in one of the grooves and you tap tap tap with the air hammer.

Usually breaks it free and you can spin it off.

That's a little bit more destructive because sometimes it's not going to work again afterwards.

But one of the best gifts you can give your mechanic is take the lug nut locked thing put in the cup holder where they can see it.

And that way they don't have to go searching for it.

And also clean your car.

Clean your car before you get before you bring it to the repair shop.

Especially if you're a commuter and you're somebody that you know you look you look at some people's cars is you know a bunch of fast food wrappers kids stuff all kinds of stuff.

You might be able to put up with that but you know if you clean up your car before you bring it to your repair shop they're going to think you care more about your car and are they going to be more.

Caring maybe but it's nice to get into a relatively clean car.

I remember years and years and years ago I was working on a car and I had to go in the trunk to replace the rear shock absorbers.

And in the trunk and I was somewhat shocked when I opened the trunk.

There was a I don't know how to describe it dehydrated freeze dried cat and I went why is there a freeze dried dehydrated shrink wrapped cat in the back of this car.

And the woman was a biology teacher and that was one of her biology things.

And I'm like you could have warned me because it was something I didn't expect to see.

So but I guess better than a pig or something that was going to take up more room.

But just the idea that I had to go move it might have been nice for a little bit of a warning anyway.

Person with a decided for the holidays that we're going to go get a remote car start put in and getting a couple questions about remote car starts and there was a time where we used to go over to Auto Toys and Randolph and do our program right before Christmas.

Because this was before WATD days and we used to go over there and it was always kind of fun but remote car starts were always a big gift for the holidays.

Well I guess somebody got one early for their 2025 Jeep and their father-in-law said I've always wanted one for my 2023 Toyota and they both went and had them put on together.

And I guess they were pretty reasonable $325 and I guess you hit the lock button three times and the car starts up with the Jeep starts up you get in it step on the brake put in gear drive it away you're good to go.

The Toyota you started up you go out to the car you get in it as soon as you open the door the car shuts off then you have to restart it.

What they said is sort of a pain and a nuisance.

And they want to know did they do something wrong the shop that installed it said no that's a Toyota safety feature we see it in Toyotas Mazdas and some others is it that they were doing something wrong or is there just doesn't work the way it's posted.

Now that's right out of the Toyota owners manual even with the factory remote car start it says that the as soon as you open the door it shuts the engine off for security purposes and probably some attorney that worked for Toyota said probably not a good idea to leave it running.

Somebody could get into it maybe who knows could they drive it away they wouldn't be able to drive it away because they most of those systems even when they work you can't put them in gear.

So you can't drive them away but still the idea was sitting out there running maybe someone could I don't get in it or something.

So the idea that you open the door shuts off safety purposes sort of like and Jesse and I were talking about this earlier what happened with your snowblower Jesse.

Starting it for yeah I made the mistake of trying to start it in a small little shed that it was sitting in and it's gas powered and I nearly died from the from the fumes.

So are you are you being are you being a little dramatic. Did you really nearly die.

It was either the fumes or the alcohol poisoning so fumes either way right. We have Jim and North Reading on the line.

Well let's let's talk to Jim and then we'll take a break. How's that Jim what's up.

Hi John how was your holiday. It was good. It was good. Like I said to Dan Stroll. This is the first year that we have been and we haven't been you know we've owned those little tin shack and.

Florida for a while but usually right around this time of year it gets a little cool but this year my nephew and his wife came to visit with their three girls and which was pretty crowded in this little tiny place.

But we took them to the we took them to the beach and we found a place that had New England lobster rolls so they had they had lobster rolls on the beach on Christmas Day.

Awesome. I think my daughter took his class about 14 years ago I think. Oh yeah. It was I was able to sit in the back seat and observe and it was a great class.

Yeah no it's a it's a good class. My wife and I both took it after my wife got into a car crash 10 years ago maybe and I you know I'm supposed to know what I'm doing and I found and I found it very good.

My wife found it a little bit intimidating but I said that's the whole point you need to get out of your comfort zone and get used to having to step on the brakes really hard and drive and you know stop and steer at the same time things like that.

So she's like yeah you know I can understand how this could help a lot of people and Dennis my old producer on one of the other radio stations I was at.

We called him crash for a while because he used to run into things once or twice a year and he took the class and it saved him saved him more than one time and I believe his son who got his license a couple years ago also took the class so it's you know it's a good thing so it helps it helps

prevent crashes and that's the whole point.

Sure his hands at three and nine o'clock and just turning 180 degrees after slamming on the brakes to then to get around from hitting a car that he was going to hit. I mean I can still picture it today.

Yeah oh yeah no it's good and you know that old ten and two hands on the wheel thing doesn't work the way it's supposed to so.

No not all the time.

Another thing was I ended up splurging and getting another scan tool.

I got in contact with Otel and asked them what scanner they would recommend for my daughter's 2014 ABS and they recommended an 808 BT model and I bought myself a present.

There you go.

I haven't had a chance to use it yet but hopefully I'll give you an update on it next week.

Yeah I'd like to hear about it because actually someone just someone just I was answering a question this morning everybody kind of had to leave the house so I could do this.

And I was answering a question this morning somebody wanted to know the difference between a code reader and a scan tool and then which kind of scan tool I would recommend and also what do some of them do and what do some of them not do.

So I'd like to hear about more about this Otel one and it's interesting that Otel.

Otel sort of stands on their own but there was also a very popular scan tool from a company called launch and it seems like all the employees of launch went out and opened their own scan tool companies and it seems like I know the.

The Harbor Freight scan tool that I have when I sent an email to the company it came back launch team.

There's a company called King Bolin which has become a pretty popular scan tool.

It seems to have 100% launch graphics and stuff in it.

So I think a lot of these scan tools are borrowing from each other as far as technology goes but but Otel is the one Otel is the one that all you know most of you shouldn't say all most of the professional mechanics that I know they will go to Otel before they'll go to any other scan tools.

Good to know I'll give you an update.

I did I did hear a couple of weeks ago I didn't get it back to I heard it on the podcast.

You would you made reference to my problem and I don't think you didn't have it correct.

It's only when you step on the break right when the car it went to the floor but if you shut the car off and you started again it would still go to the floor.

Oh OK when you started it after that it worked you could keep your foot on the pedal and it would stay solid.

It was a little on the lower side but it was still a firm pedal.

It was just the startup but anyways I'll give you an update when I all right I want to hear it.

I want to hear all about it when you get back when you get back on this side anytime you want to get together and you want to borrow one of the tools and try them out see what they can do you more than welcome to get in touch.

I appreciate it thank you very much and have a happy and healthy New Year.

Thanks John you take care.

Why don't we take that quick break and when we come back it'll be just about our time but we'll be able to go over a couple of couple things before we do that.

My name is John Paul this is the car doctor program you'll see on 959 WATD we'll be right back.

Combine that with great rates of insurance hotel gas and buying savings and discounts on eighty seven hundred brands and you're covered on and off the road.

Get a special membership offer today at a a dot com slash join that's a a a dot com slash join.

Talk radio with a South Shore point of view hi I'm Kevin Tachi join me tomorrow for Monday night talk where the South Shore comes to talk tomorrow night after the six o'clock news here on ninety five nine WATD.

Honored with a lifetime achievement award from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

He's John Paul the car doctor on ninety five nine WATD Jesse and I were talking about chat GPT and how it doesn't tell jokes.

Why do car repairs love why do car repair shops love bad jokes because they always crack up and then charge you for the labor.

Again that's why no I wish I had a cricket sound effect.

I know I know well New Year's New Year's is coming up New Year's Eve is coming up amateur night for a lot of people.

It is what we want to really remind people to do is be responsible when you're on the road don't drink and drive.

If you if you are we're not saying don't drink we're not saying don't imbibe just don't be out on the road after you've been drinking or whatever else you're doing.

It's just it's not safe for you.

It's not safe for anybody else.

You know certain areas of the country will actually come and tow your car for you if you've had too much to drink.

Even then what sometimes happens is people wait start to wait and then they wait five or ten minutes and they say no no I'll drive.

I'm fine.

No you're not.

You know sleep overnight.

Sleep at Jesse's house.

Yeah get an Uber to my house come sleep over.

Yeah exactly exactly that's just it until next year.

Make sure you wear your seat belt drive safely go to the driving control school and if you do see an emergency vehicle by the side of the road slow down or move over it saves lives talk to y'all well next year.

Happy New Year talk to you talk to you soon bye bye.

you

Crash prevention with Incontrol's Dan Strollo and a car gadget from https://ohsnap.com/

About this episode

winter tires

four-wheel drive

front-wheel drive

Nokia tires

all-season tire

all-weather tires

all-wheel drive

anti-lock brakes

ABS

stability control

trailer

safety chains

hitch pin

cell phone holder

magnetic holder

snap car mount

Toyota 4Runner

locking lug nut

wheel locks

Magard

12 point socket

impact wrench

air hammer

remote car start

Toyota

Mazda

Ford Bt Model

Porsche 959

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