13 Challenging Questions Kids Ask in the Car

Studies have shown that the majority of kids’ questions are asked on shopping trips or at meal times. So in association with ŠKODA, we’ve found smart answers to some of the trickiest, but surprisingly common, questions we’ve heard on car journeys from children of all ages. So if, as a parent, you’d like to be able to explain the world around you to your child, be sure to read on.

Why doesn’t the sky fall on our heads?

What we know as the sky, that beautiful blue dome, doesn’t really exist. The blue color you see is just the light reflecting off the band of air that surrounds the earth. So there is nothing to fall except air and light.

Can cars fly?

A flying car would need to be able to take off and land in very small spaces, like a supermarket car park or on a street. So far nobody has been able to invent a car that can take off and land vertically. There are some people who say they’ve made flying cars, but they still need a runway to take off and land like a plane. There are some that look more like drones and can go up and down vertically, but they can only fly for 20 or 30 minutes and still need a lot more space and can’t drive on a road. So it seems like a “real” flying car won’t appear until sometime in the future.

Can I get sunburnt through a window?

All glass stops at least some of the sun’s rays. Car windows, however, have a plastic layer sandwiched between two layers of glass, and this blocks nearly all of the harmful rays that cause sunburn. But the sun can still make you very hot through the window, so you should drink lots of water and use a sun shield.

Who taught the car how to drive?

At the moment a car can’t completely drive itself, but a car like a ŠKODA KAROQ can help us in a lot of ways. For example, it can stop itself to prevent a collision, speed up or slow down to keep us within the speed limit, or adjust the steering if we aren’t keeping to our lane. It does these through a number of different sensors which “see” objects and send what they detect back to the car’s computer. The computer then transmits signals to the car’s steering wheel or brakes to tell them what to do.

Do WiFi hotspots keep you warm?

No, but they can keep you smart! WiFi is short for Wireless Fidelity, and simply means the technology that allows us to connect to the internet without a wire. The ŠKODA KAROQ has a transmitter which gets WiFi using radio signals that come from mobile transmitters. This means you can stay in your car, connect to the internet, and find out anything you want. So the answer to the question is, while they don’t keep you warm, they can help to make you smart.

Do cars have feelings?

No, but some cars are very sensitive. They might not feel, but they can listen when you talk to them and respond to voice commands like answering the phone or turning on the music. Some cars can also feel when you’ve fallen asleep and stop the car safely.

Do cars have moms?

Hundreds! And lots of dads too. ŠKODAs, for example, are born in a factory in the Czech Republic, in a town called Mladá Boleslav, and lots of people have to be involved in a car’s “birth”. The people who design the outside of the car, the inside of the car and the engine, the moms and dads who put the car parts together, the people that design the connectivity systems, the people who design and test all of the safety features, the people who paint the car and many more.

Is our car a boy or a girl?

Whether a car is a girl or a boy may depend on where you live. If you lived in Spain the car would be “el automobile” and the “el” makes it masculine in their language. In France it would be “une voiture”, and the “une” tells us it’s feminine. But really a car is anything you want it to be. What do you feel your car is?

Is our car magic?

Not exactly, but it can certainly do some neat tricks. You can open the boot of a ŠKODA KAROQ by moving your foot near the sensor under the rear bumper, which is pretty handy when your hands are full. You can even scroll through the touch screen with a wave of the hand.

What is this for?

Most things around us have logos, like cars, toys, or clothes. They tell you who made it. The ŠKODA logo is very old and very special. It denotes a winged arrow and it first appeared in 1926. Some people say that it represents progress and movement into the future.

Are we nearly there yet?

We’ll let you parents into a little secret. The main reason that ŠKODA includes navigation systems in its cars is not to help you to get where you’re going, it’s to answer this often asked question. Just direct your little ones’ attention to the map on the SmartLink system and let them watch the number of kilometers go down.

Why is everything backwards in mirrors?

Everything isn’t backwards in mirrors, it just seems backwards from your perspective. Mirrors work when photons, particles of light, stream towards the glass and bounce off it. The image of everything in front of the mirror is reflected back along the path it came. If you wore a glove on your right hand, the glove would still be on your right hand in the mirror. However, if you wrote a word normally on a sheet of paper that you could read perfectly well in front of your face, you would have to turn it around to face the mirror. It then appears as if the writing is backwards, but it’s actually you that turned it around, not the mirror. If you wrote a word normally on a clear piece of plastic and turned the plastic around, the word would appear backwards too.

Why don’t planes flap their wings?

Birds and insects flap their wings, but planes and helicopters have propellers. Birds are light and the perfect shape for flying because they don’t have to carry people, so they can fly by flapping their wings. It takes a lot of energy even for a small bird to fly. Planes are really heavy and full of people and suitcases, so they need a different way to fly and use propellers to suck air into the front of the wings and force it out of the back. That, along with their special streamlined shape, allows them to get airborne. If a plane really moved like a bird, up and down, flapping its wings and swooping in every direction, passengers would get really sick and the planes would use more fuel than they could carry!