Re: "Driving Me Crazy"

 Re: "Driving Me Crazy"

Below is a "letter to the editor" I wrote to the author of a GRM article of the same title.

So I see I'm not alone...

I really thought I was; alone, I mean. You know, we're getting older, observing the world, not willing to take the chances we did before. Maybe, just maybe, the world's not changing, it's us - you and me - changing, slowly turning into that guy who drives the old Buick down the road, Fedora firmly attached, hands at 11:30 and 12:30 on the wheel driving at 20 mph slower than the prevailing speeds.

Maybe it's just us. Getting old. You know?

But the more I observe...the more I think it's not us that's changing, it's the world around us that's changing (stick with me here). And maybe that's the same perspective as the 11:30-12:30 o'clock Buick guy, watching the world changing around him, with his wife in the right seat screaming, "Harv, slow down, yer drivin' like a bat outta hell!"

But I'd like to think this time it's different. And, honestly, it probably is in a way.

Ever hear of the term "risk compensation"? It's one of those psychological terms, something they made up to explain something. For our scenario, it describes how when someone is placed in a situation with additional safety systems, such as helmets, seatbelts, air bags, better crash crumpling, better crash ratings and the like, it makes us feel more safe, and removes our inhibitions to take more risks. I never put a lot of thought on it - certainly never placed a proper name on it - but as I observe the commuting world around me I believe it goes a long way to explaining what I'm observing.

The thing is, today's cars are so capable - so good - that their capabilities far exceed that of the 95th-percentile driver. No matter what one does in a modern car today in morla driving circumstances - be it aggressive accelerating, braking, turning, jerking the wheels - the vehicle just...well, it just does it. It responds. It does whatever that driver commands it to do with the controls. So drivers find themselves growing in confidence to the point where they rarely, if ever, find themselves to the point where that confidence exceeds the capabilities of today's modern automobiles -- in these normal driving circumstances

I'll watch someone drive in a way that I find incredibly stupid and find myself amazed they got away with it and just drove off, completely not understanding to what damnations of physics they just nearly collided with. And then they get off at the next exit, pull into the Starbucks drive-through, oblivious as to what just happened. 

And then I think to myself: "if you had done that in a '72 Buick...you would probably be dead right now. Done. Not breathing. Spit into multitudinal pieces of raw bleeding person-meat."

And yet...iced Venti doubleshot espresso, please.

Incredible. Just absolutely amazing. Can you imagine if we had that capability 30 years ago?

This goes a long way to explaining how a rational society gets totally out of shape when things go wrong on the highway. Take weather, for example: a normal high-grip, high-visibility day degrades into an unusual low-grip, low-visibility and suddenly everyone gets the fear religion -- because the car is telling them they're about to die. Now they're worried about conditions. Now they're worried about death. No one is immortal any more because that vehicle capability level has come down closer to our mortality level.

They have never experienced what it was like to drive at the actual "edge" of their vehicle's capabilities. But they feel it now and it's new, it's unusual, and now we're going to turn on our 4-way flashers and crawl home (after stopping for that iced Venti doubleshot espresso)/ Put them back on the high-grip, high-visibility common day and they'll never feel close to the edge. Because they're not.

And through all this, you and I look around and go, "yeah, that's how this works. That's how this has always worked."

Maybe that does make us the 1130-1230 guy, because our Buick guy grew up in a era where he wasn't sure he'd make it home without a failure and you and I are scurrying around in more-capable 90hp Rabbit GTIs and 150hp Omnis driving like "BATS OUT OF HELL!!" Maybe he was the guy that was watching us do stupid things in cars, realizing that while we're driving within the capabilities of our cars at that moment it wouldn't take but one minor change in the current environment to make one hell of a mess of all these cars going down the highway, bumper to bumper, at 75mph.

So maybe it has less to do with "lower confidence" of older drivers such as you and me, but more to do with our mature realization that this kinda stuff just isn't worth the risk, that we'd rather let them all roll on, we'll spend a couple extra totally-irrelavant minutes in the right lane, and get home to our families with a lot less stress so that we can enjoy that beer in that new growler from the new brewery we just leanred about.

Because in the end, that extra 2-3 minutes is just not worth that risk. It's certainly not worth that stress.

I can't recommend a Fedora (unless you feel hipster-ish) and I'm more a fan of 9-3 hand positions than 1130-1230, but I do agree that life is too short to be "defending the marque" on the morning commute; instead I'll just enjoy the extra minutes with a good podcast and/or some extended versions of my fav classic/prog rock.

Let someone else defend the honor of the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, and Nissan Altima on the commute. We'll defend the marque's honor on the track next weekend.

Greg Amy
Middletown CT

(Original article)

STARTING LINE "Driving Me Crazy"

by tim suddard

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/digital-issue/dec_2018_grm.pdf

I’ve been doing a lot of driving this fall. You see, I’ve been introducing my new director of sales, Kevin Maffett, to as many of our customers as I can. He comes from a newspaper and NASCAR background, so my job is to teach him the joy that is our side of both the media and motorsports worlds.

To that end, I’ve been taking him everywhere. We started in September with a road trip from Boston to Philadelphia, with stops in pretty much every overcrowded place in the Northeast.

The next trip was up to the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, where we experienced the joy that is the traffic in and around this Athens of the South. We got back on the road the following week, dropping off an engine at Savannah Race Engineering before heading to Greenville and then Charlotte.

I think Charlotte has become the worst city, except perhaps London, for traffic–at least of the cities that I have visited. If you think L.A., New York and Chicago are bad, then you do not want to go to Charlotte. Take a quaint Southern city, triple the population, and don’t improve the infrastructure until it’s too late, and what you get is a total nightmare. Fine people of Charlotte, my heart goes out to you: What a freakin’ mess, and now (finally) every road in the city is seemingly being widened at the same time.

Another very real traffic problem: The disparity in speed between drivers seems to be increasing. As less confident, often older drivers get more intimidated, the more aggressive drivers ramp up the game even further, causing the slow drivers to go even slower. The result: way too many drivers who seem to think they can run bumper to bumper at 90 mph. Sorry, but these are not Jeff Gordons or David Pearsons. A psychologist, which I am not, might tell you that these unhappy people are using their vehicles as weapons. I think their big black SUVs and F-150s make them feel invincible and make up for a lack of power and happiness in their daily lives. I do know one thing for certain: They’re totally unaware of the mess that a vehicle can make at those speeds should something go wrong–and as any commuter can tell you, something always seems to go wrong.

Let’s talk about the condition of those cars operating at nearly triple-digit speeds. At least here in Florida, we no longer have state inspections. That’s awesome, right? It seems so until you notice bald, cheapo tires on the car in the next lane. Then you start to wonder how much control that driver really has.

One more issue: today’s modern distractions. I was stopped at a red light recently, and when it turned green, the car in front of me simply drove off the road. Meanwhile, I was nearly side-swiped by the car next to me. And this all happened at 10 miles per hour. From up in my truck I could see down into their interiors. In both cases, the drivers were playing with their phones.

I grew up in the ass-hat driving fest that is Boston and have 30 years of wheel-to-wheel racing experience, so I thought no one could intimidate me on the road. But I’m actually starting to get a bit scared out there.

Fortunately, there are ways to tip the odds in your favor. The Tire Rack Street Survival program is a godsend for teen drivers. In fact, I wouldn’t let either of my kids drive on the street until they’d gone through this program and also proved their car control skills at an autocross. (When I was recently asked to become a member of the SCCA Foundation, one of the groups that funds Street Survival, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.)

To some extent, I might be the pot calling the kettle black. I’m not perfect, either, and I’ve never been accused of being a slow and cautious driver. However, I’d like to think that at least I have some level of common sense, plenty of driver training, and the wherewithal to keep my vehicles in perfect condition.

I would love to have you, especially those in driver training and law enforcement, weigh in on this, because I think this problem is getting worse by the day.