Your first breakdown on the side of the road teaches you to check the oil. Some lessons only come with hazard lights on.

Certain things refuse to be learned in advance. You can be told about maintenance a dozen times and it stays abstract until the moment you are on a verge with a car that will not move and nowhere to be but there. That lesson is expensive, and it tends to be permanent.

You cannot prevent every one of these, though you can shrink a few: learn the two or three checks your car wants, keep a number you could actually call, know where the spare is. Do one of those this week. Then forgive yourself for the ones you only learn the hard way.