Say for example that your car's just about to clock up 88,888 miles. How could you not want to see the display scroll or tick over to this most auspicious number? Well, you won't get to see it.

It might be that you don't get to see it because someone with access to your car and petty animus to your person has fitted to your car an OSPSD. Or it might be because some paternalistic figure with doubts about your ability to drive without being distracted by trvia has fitted to your car an OSPSD.

The OSPSD, which sits in your dashboard with its beady computer eye and its electronic brain, watches you watching the road. When your eyes flick down to the dash it freezes your odometer for the duration of your glance, resetting it to the correct figure when you look back up again.
-- calum, Jan 16 2013

a classic, which should have more positive votes Odometer_20Serendip...tification_20Device
in my opinion [calum, Jan 16 2013]

This was originally going to be a secret clock, that you never see tick or move, but which updates when you are not looking at it, such that eventually your notion of time is something that happens only when you are not considering it. Eventually you might resolve that by watching the clock you can stop time itself, but only in an area the size of, say, your kitchen and only for so long as you are on your own. Anyway, this would be an all too technologically challenging way to bugger with someone's reality, so I opted for the OSPSD.
-- calum, Jan 16 2013


What if I look at it in a mirror?
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 16 2013


True story

Local (Canadian) truck exporter hires a geek (Vince) to change over digital odometers to read in mph. not km so he can sell trucks to the US. Vince programs the odometer to read "America sucks.... Canada rocks!.(or something) every 100,000km and stay on screen for one full minute. The words then disappear until next time. His goal was that the owner would see this event and tell all his friends. They would think he was nuts, and there would be no way for him to prove it.
-- Brian the Painter, Jan 16 2013


I'm afraid that's happening to my wallet at a lot of gas pumps.
-- WcW, Jan 18 2013


I think this has already been installed on my car... I never get to see the serendipitous kilometrestones I expect, on the odometer.
-- UnaBubba, Jan 18 2013


Brian, that's awesome.

I think every so often, at random odometer tickmarks, it should simply read cryptic and ominous messages, perhaps
'we're coming,'
'help me...'
'don't turn around.'
'never forget this number'
'I hope that bolt was unnecessary'
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 18 2013



random, halfbakery