Kelly Ripa does her best to destroy the planet.

I used to drive an old junker, and one day the “Check Engine” light came on. Naturally I got nervous, thinking my car was breaking down. What worried me even more, though, was that I asked three different mechanics what the light meant and I got three different answers.

One said it was probably the exhaust system. Another said it was a timing problem. The third said flat out to ignore it, that it was basically a bright red light that meant nothing. The car ran great for years in this condition, so the latter turns out to have been true.

From what I've discovered since then, the light was designed to be confusing. An OnStar commercial I saw on television confirmed this. Kelly Ripa is alone in her Yukon Denali, looking Geico lizard-size in the enormous cab. She frowns and hits a button on her dashboard.

DISEMBODIED MALE VOICE: “OnStar. How may I help you, Ms. Ripa?”

KELLY RIPA: “I’m not having a great day, and now my ‘Check Engine’ light is on.”

DISEMBODIED MALE VOICE: “I’ll download the information from your Yukon Denali and check it out right away. (Pause.) Here it is. It says your gas cap is unlatched. Did you fill up recently?”

Kelly sighs and pokes her head out the window. Her gas cap is unlatched.

FIN

Now, there are several thousand reasons to hate this commercial. One is a little obscure. In all the OnStar commercials where someone gets in an accident, it’s a woman who answers the call. Because women are so reassuring and maternal, you know. When it comes to mechanical stuff, though, a man answers, because that's all men’s work. I don’t know how they do it, but evidently OnStar can predict what their customers are calling about and automatically select the right person to talk to them. Why, I’ll bet if a child summoned them, they'd put Mr. Rogers on the line.

My big problem, though, is this: In what universe does “CHECK ENGINE” mean “YOUR GAS CAP IS UNLATCHED”? What kind of idiot car designer decides they need to warn drivers that their gas cap is unlatched by telling them THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEIR ENGINE? It seems to me "Check Engine" is more likely to mean "YOUR CAR'S GOING TO EXPLODE!" than "Um, your gas cap is off!" And what if you’ve got a Yukon Denali that doesn’t have OnStar, like 99% of them? You’re going to drive around in a cold sweat until you find a mechanic to tell you it's okay.

As for Ms. Ripa driving a Denali, that takes the Stupid cake, considering a helium balloon could carry this stick figure around. According to cnet.com, the Denali is “as big as the great outdoors” and “gulps fuel like an F-16, barely managing 14 mpg in mixed city and urban-highway driving.” The Denali’s greenhouse gas emissions are 14 tons per year. That’s the equivalent of two-and-a-half Honda Civics, and just short of falling off the end of their scale.

Driving one of these things, then, it’s no wonder the gas cap is unlatched. In fact, Ms. Ripa could probably save half an hour a day just leaving the thing unlatched full-time. If the “Check Engine” light made her nervous, she could summon OnStar again.

I’ll bet Anna Nicole Smith’s doctor would automatically answer the phone.