swish swish

Swoosh...swoosh, squeeeeeeeak. I have a weird obsession about the speed of the windshield wipers. I need to control the speed to perfectly coincide with the amount of rain coming down. It drives me crazy when the wipers are quickly moving across the windshield with only a drizzle of rain. I err on the side of having them move too slowly because I cringe when they make a squeak by going to quickly.

I've had this obsession since I started driving, but only recently has it become more of a problem. I live in Seattle and you may be aware of the city's reputation for rain. The rain here is often more like a drizzle or mist; not the hard rain that requires wipers to move at full speed. The needed wiper movement varies considerably depending on your driving speed; there is a lot of traffic here, too. I go through two tunnels on my way to and from work.

So I end up fiddling around with the wiper speed for my entire commute. Faster...too fast. Slower...can't see out the windshield. Sometimes I manually make it wipe whenever I want it to because I can't find the right speed. I wish that the car was smart enough to adjust the wiper speed according to how much rain was hitting it. Maybe technology will do this some day. Until then, I'll continue to battle with my windshield wipers. And I might ask you to adjust yours when I'm driving in the car with you...