Wiper Start

You've all seen it. A character, usually a new driver, is put on the wheel of a car, and told to drive. They try to start it, but instead of turning the key, they start up the windshield wipers. Shorthand for incompetent driver. Doesn't always have to be a car, or the windshield wipers, but they are the most common examples.

This is such a recognized trope point that someone with no idea how to drive will set off windscreen wipers in vehicles which have no justifiable reason for having them (such as spaceships or submarines).

An easy trope for a director to use to show incompetence starting a vehicle, because the camera is usually looking through the windshield at the driver already. The windshield wipers are more visual than the driver accidentally starting the radio or the A/C.

If there is some threat involved, this is also a case of My Car Hates Me. If it's the faulty wiring of the car that caused this to happen, rather than the incompetence of the driver, it's a DIY Disaster. For more comedic driver incompetence, see Had the Silly Thing In Reverse.

Advertising
"Sweet Tooth: (hits the hood of the truck) Pop the hood.
 * In a commercial for Twisted Metal 4, Sweet Tooth brings his souped-up ice-cream truck in for service. His midget clown sidekicks aren't all that familiar with the control scheme...

(A midget inside pauses, then flicks a button...causing the wipers to turn on)

Sweet Tooth: ...the hood?

(The midget turns off the wipers, and flicks another switch...firing a rocket and blowing up a car across the parking lot.)"

Anime & Manga

 * Azumanga Daioh: When Yukari arrives at Chiyo's house, her car has its windshield wipers running, on a perfectly sunny day. Needless to say, she's not a very good driver.

Comedy Album

 * The Sixties spoken word comedy show The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart includes a skit entitled The Driving Instructor. The female driving student turns on the windscreen wipers while attempting to start the car. Bob Newhart later said that he didn't intend to offend anyone with it, and if he had wanted to, he would have made the driver Chinese.
 * Bill Cosby also touched on this trope in an old routine, commenting how the sound and rhythm of the errantly engaged wipers seem to mock the driver (dumb guy...dumb guy...dumb guy...).

Film

 * In Top Secret Omar Sharif's character is in a car put into a car crusher. He survives, the car parts crushed into a cube around him. When Hillery tries to get the ballet tickets out of his glove compartment she activates the wipers, causing them to hit him in the nose and squirt washer fluid in his face.
 * The Film of the Book The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy had a Wiper Start on an escape pod for a space ship.
 * In The Film of the Book Jumanji, Robin Williams' character accidentally opens the sun roof of a car when trying to start it. Played for suspense rather comedy, as this almost lets giant poisonous mosquitoes into the vehicle.
 * My Fellow Americans does this to emphasize that neither of the two former presidents has driven themselves anywhere in years.
 * Sulu does a Wiper Start in a helicopter in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
 * Of course he then becomes such a skilled chopper pilot that he can accurately slot plexiglass slabs into the hatch of an invisible spaceship.
 * That and he's like 50 in the movie. Which means it's been several decades since he's flew one in his academy days, I'd like to see you drive a car you drove in high school. (That is if you're like 30 now.)
 * In Star Trek III the Search For Spock, Chekov and Scotty have a similar moment trying to pilot their captured Klingon ship: "Where's the damned anti-matter inducer?"
 * In Star Wars Episode I, Anakin does a literal Wiper Start.
 * Watchmen: The flamethrower on Nite Owl's ship is mistaken for a cigarette lighter by Laurie. According to Dan, The Comedian also almost made that mistake back in the day, and when Dan and Laurie save the tenants of a burning building, one of them almost uses the button to light his blunt.
 * In Independence Day, Russell Casse, now sobered-up, accidentally starts a missile launch sequence while preparing for takeoff. After frantically stopping it, he mutters to himself "I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking...".
 * In Diamonds Are Forever James Bond does this twice. First, when he jumps into the moon rover, he doesn't know how to start it. Second, when he hops into the crane lowering Bloefeld's escape sub, he doesn't know how to operate it and drops the sub into the water.

Live Action TV
"Richard: The handbrake release is a small black plastic lever down here, to my left. The bonnet release is a small black plastic lever down here, to my left, about an inch away. You can see what's coming? The routine is start engine... Into gear...
 * Bait Car: A car thief starts the wipers while trying to figure out how to put a vehicle in gear. The cops watching nearby comment that the wipers (and turn signals) are working properly.
 * On Canada's Worst Driver, a contestant accidentally popped the hood while trying to start his car.
 * A female designer does this on Restaurant Makeover when she tries to drive Igor's huge delivery truck. Igor has to get a member of the camera crew to drive it.
 * Marcia Brady does a this on her road test on The Brady Bunch. Slightly different, because she's actually a good driver, just extremely nervous. She also manages to cause the convertible top to go up and down before starting the car.
 * In one of the episodes of Eastenders in which Dot is learning to drive, she turns on the windscreen wipers by mistake while trying to use the indicator.
 * Hiro in Heroes does a literal Wiper Start when trying to start his and Ando's car in Las Vegas.
 * A Wiper Start happened to Clegg in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine when asked to drive strangers' cars in Foggy's attempt to set up American-style valet parking.
 * Red Dwarf used a literal Wiper Start several times on a spacecraft.
 * Invoked on Top Gear by Richard Hammond, while hypnotised into believing he didn't know how to operate a car.
 * And when he reviewed the Cadillac CTS:

Cut outside to show the hood of the car popping open."


 * Occurred on one episode of Scrapheap Challenge when a car's wiring loom had been cut. After the first attempt to reconnect the severed wires, the wipers ran whenever the ignition was on.

Tabletop Games
"Player: I push the button on the far right.
 * One Paranoia module features a vehicle with a couple dozen controls ("button", "switch", "slider") with no labels and no manual, forcing the PCs to figure them out by trial and error. Naturally, this trope ensues.

GM: Sounds like something big just fell off."

Video Games

 * One preview of the game Steel Battalion came with a specialized $200 controller to simulate driving a Humongous Mecha which mentioned that the previewer-- after being fired upon-- panicked and hit a bunch of buttons, ejecting the fuel tank and turning on the windshield wipers.

Web Original

 * Bree starts the wipers in the Lonelygirl15 episode "Learning To Drive".
 * There is a Metroid/Star Fox/Futurama crossover short called Metroid Confusion, in which Space Pirates stole an Arwing from Fox. Every button on the ship plays Whalers On The Moon from Futurama...and they are trying to Grandma's delicious cookies back from the jerk, Samus.

Western Animation
""You win again, gravity!""
 * Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
 * In one episode, Buzz is trying to take control of a derelict ship. The first button he presses deploys the cup holder. After pressing every other button and failing to accomplish anything (although he does make the wipers work), he finds the crew. Turns out the "cup holder" is actually the steering wheel.
 * In another episode, Buzz tries to find the controls of a spaceship and accidentally activates the turn signal. Of course he eventually starts the wipers too.
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: Shortly after meeting Chip and Dale and seeing Monty for the first time since she was a child, Gadget lights the fuse to the dynamite that will propel their airplane out of the human-sized craft... if she can remember which control operates that craft's skylight. She finds it, of course, with scant few seconds to spare, but not before activating the wipers.
 * In Futurama Fry turns on the coffee maker on the Planet Express ship when trying to start it up in "Space Pilot 3000".
 * When Zapp Brannigan tries to pilot an orbital restaurant he activates wipers, opens and closes windows, and turns on the turn signal. And then he manages to crash the restaurant into a planet.

"Batman: That's. Not. Helping."
 * In a memorable scene in Justice League, Batman, Martian Manhunter, and The Flash are trying to figure out the controls of an alien space ship on the front steps of Wayne Manor. J'onn admits that he doesn't know how to fly the device, and The Flash suggests pressing buttons. The first one activates the ship's weapons systems, blowing a large hole in the side of the mansion and irking Batman.


 * A Wiper Start is only the first of many things to go wrong with Mike's New Car on the Monsters, Inc. DVD.
 * The titular character of WALL-E does a Wiper Start as one of many things he tries in an attempt to shut off the self-destruct sequence of a spaceship lifepod.
 * In an episode of Wacky Races, Sergeant Blast ends up in the Compact Pussycat (Penelope Pitstop's car). Trying to stop it, he activates the controls that apply face powder and lipstick. Granted these are not standard controls in a car, but it does raise the question of why he thought the brakes would be activated by a button on the dashboard.
 * In Madagascar 2 when the penguins' first attempt in hotwiring a safari Jeep.
 * In the Phineas and Ferb episode "The Secret of Success", Candace tries to figure out how to steer Phineas and Ferb's all-terrain vehicle (while it's in motion). At first all she manages to do is stuff like turning the radio on and off and turning on the windshield wipers.

Real Life

 * Will happen if a car was last driven in the rain. If you don't turn the key all the way, only the electrical system comes on, including the wipers.
 * Some cars (particularly with automatic transmission), have column mounted shifters, generally to the right of the wheel (on a left-hand-drive car). Other cars have the shifter on the floor between the front seats, and place the wiper controls in the exact same location on a stick behind the right side of the wheel. When switching from the first type to the second, some drivers will start the car without incident, but then attempt to put the car into gear without looking and turn on the wipers.
 * The difference between cars designed for right-hand or left-hand drive from scratch and have the controls in the standard places verses those that were cheaply converted for local conditions by simply moving entire the steering column across. The light switches and the wiper controls end up the opposite ways round, much to a driver's annoyance.
 * Other cars, such as the seventh generation of Buick Skylarks, literally have the wiper controls right in front of the wheel-mounted shifter, and the wiper controls pivot up and down, much like the shifter, and the two can be confused sometimes.