Some things you can fix. Some parts of my battered Volvo seem like they’ll work until Christ comes back. Other stuff was so poorly engineered that you start having fantasies about pummeling the designers with your bare hands. But the one single greatest blessing of Volvo cars is the very narrow range of models and options, and the huge fan base of guys and gals with mechanical wisdom. So for just about everything that Volvo does poorly and requires fixing, there’s almost always a video explaining and showing how to do it. Sometimes they’ll show you exactly why the particular part fails.
Today I managed to find a video like that for the seat belt retraction spindle on the driver’s side. It was pretty simple to remove the plastic covers and discover that some fool had messed with it already and bungled it. But I knew how it was put together from the video and came up with a temporary fix to prevent the thing from jamming and refusing to pay out the belt so we can use it. And getting a replacement part from the salvage yard will now only take mere minutes, once I find one.
I wish there were videos with instructions for dealing with ambulance companies. If you are ever in any part of Oklahoma serviced by EMSA, you are better off crawling to the hospital.
Don’t get me wrong: The ambulance staff will give you some of the best attentive care you can get from paramedics. But the management of the company is a bunch of vampires. They will gladly save your life and turn you into a blood host for as long as you live. For a five mile non-emergency ride after I got hurt, they wanted $1348.00. If they can’t bill some insurance company for that outrageous amount, they simply turn it over to a collection agency before you can attempt to use credit laws to compel them to take small payments. They save you only to kill you. Yes, I know that you can pay their extortion fees for a membership that you may never use. I don’t live in their low-rate area. I told the Parks and Rec folks I was willing to ride in the back of a pickup to get the VA.
Unless you are wealthy, you might be better off dying. Don’t ride with EMSA. I certainly won’t do it again.
Addenda: By “extortionate fees” I mean the lowest you can pay is $45/month, and in some areas it’s $65/month. That’s food off my table.
In my opinion EMSA needs to provide membership coverage in ALL areas. We also live in Non-coverage area and try to avoid calling them. Just put me in a car.