I heard it on the radio

I'm a technical person, you know. I can program with several programming languages and I can work my VCR. I can install more memory or a new hard drive into my computer. So why is the operation of my car radio so difficult?

My car radio came with my car, it only has few buttons and it looks relatively harmless. I figured out the news-functionality, where you can set it so that it will interrupt a CD and switch to radio so you can listen to the news. But I found a new functionality on Monday, when I accidentally pressed some button (or buttons). Now it will also interrupt radio to bring me the traffic news from other channels.

At first I was exited. Since I spend most of my mornings in a traffic jam, this seemed to be a great idea - I could listen to my favourite radio program that doesn't contain traffic news, and when traffic news were on in another channel, the radio switches over. Great. There is a catch though. My favourite station is BBC Radio 4, and this channel seems to link to the local BBC radio broadcasts for traffic. This still sounds like a good idea, the idea being that your local radio station has your local traffic.

However, it seems that the traffic news are picked from total of four stations on my route, of which only one - BBC Radio Solent - gives me traffic for my route. There seems to be no pattern on what station is picked up when, might be something to do with what direction the wind is blowing. Even if I'm just outside Portsmouth, I sometimes get BBC Radio Berkshire. Mid-way to work I sometimes get BBC Radio Wiltshire. When approaching Newbury I sometimes get BBC Radio Oxford. And I'd like to emphasise that all of the stations have quite strict areas on where they report, and there is absolutely now overlap. So far I haven't figured out if there is a way for me to lock the local radio broadcast in some way. Not surprising really, if you consider the fact that few days ago I didn't even know that my radio had this functionality.

And switching my radio station is out of the question. If you have ever listened to BBC's local radio stations, you'd know why. While still living in Nottingham, I used to listen to BBC Radio Nottingham quite a lot for the comedy value. You had the same presenters and same people calling in all the time, everyone knew each other and it was all jolly good fun. Whereas Radio Solent seems to be one of those very fashionable youthful stations with a million competitions and phone-ins and presenters shouting and trying to be funny. Exactly what I don't need on early mornings when it's still dark.

Since I've recently also found out how to set stations on my radio (yes, I read the manual and no, they didn't tell me how to do this there - so I did what all people do, I asked my dad), I could try to switch channels manually. Yes, I think I'll try to find a way to turn this traffic alert off.