Traffic Control on the Radio

You gotta hand it to the Germans, they have some fantastic ideas. I have no idea if this one is done in the states somewhere, but if it is... how cool.

In Germany all radio stations are digital. I think that American stations are slowly coming around for this. But digital is quite cool. The display on the radio can scroll, and show you the name of the station, the numbers, and even the tag line... "The hits of today".

Here when the traffic report comes on, the sound level raises automatically. I would assume that the station emits a tone that tells the car's radio to elevate the level throughout the report. When the report is done, the sound level goes back to normal. Our radio even has a blinking light that shows it is receiving a traffic report.

Well, of course anything associated with me can't quite be normal. As was pointed out to me yesterday, I can't even think straight. We are driving down the street and all of a sudden instead of the sound level going up... it goes down for the traffic report. This of course is the polar opposite of the way this cool device was designed... but once again... I'm usually in the polar opposite range anyway, you know?

So now we know when the traffic report is coming on because the sound goes down to a volume so low that you can barely hear it. If we are silly enough to turn it up to a manageable level to hear the report... soon we are being blasted out of the car as Christina Aguilera opens her pipes.