Roadside assistance and the ANWB

That was quite a shock for the young roadside officer. A carburetor, the distributor cap with contact points underneath (Tjee! Contact points! How nice!), Just visible bars and a fault that he could not read. Fortunately, with his digital multimeter he found the wire break that had stopped my classic. And I thought that I had to buy such a thing with the Action for the on-board tools. Because with a multimeter, I had also found the internal wire break (a soldering tip had come loose under the insulation due to tin cancer).

Fortunately, the new generation ANWB Wegenwachters still consists of M / F professionals. And that 'my' Road Guard was completely endeared with the contact points of my car?

New failures are different

Apparently the lion's share of current car malfunctions is electrical / electronic in nature. Before that, WegenWachters M / V from the ANWB have gained a lot of electronic knowledge and have a variety of universally working hardware and software on board in their cars. My WegenWachter didn't really like that. His work was no less grateful, but he was actually more of the mechanical side. Today, however, a modern top model is equipped with between sixty and one hundred and twenty electric motors for all kinds of auxiliary functions. Electrical system and electronics together now make up twenty to thirty percent of the cost of a car. And so when one thing has become clear, it is that electronics can fail just as mechanical components can.

But then there is usually less chance of improvisation

And improvising, that was the power of the previous generations of WegenWachters. These were usually practitioners who, unhindered by management and protocols, went their own way with complete freedom. People who had the keys of garage companies with them so that they also had access to those companies outside of working hours. I have known one that always had a few meaty bones in a plastic bag for the night watchdogs at a local demolition. When, for a while, he hadn't brought an 'off-hours visit' to the demolition, he noticed that he didn't have a bag full of bones, but a bag full of maggots on board. And he noticed that when the maggots had gone to investigate in his company car.

A well-known Roadside Guard

The meanwhile well-retired local Road Watchman who I regularly met drinking coffee at the local Shell station was also such a free spirit. When I had to go to the RDW to integrate my Buick, a V-belt cracked. I reported to the nearest emergency phone, lit a cigar, and waited for the things to come. A pair of short legs, an impressive belly and a grinning head emerged from the WegenWacht car. “When I received the message, I was hoping it would be you. Because I have no cigars. ”Roadside Officer Peter heard my story.

"That sounds like you can do it all yourself"

He picked up a bundle with a piece of iron deed tied together used V strings from his stock. "If you give me your cigars now, then you will fine-tune which string fits and I will not charge you anything for that." They had purchased that for their own account. And the sale was therefore also for the own greenhouse. Of course, these kinds of activities are completely out of the question these days. But they were fun times.