DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour  

Because I have “run the board” and been to all 50 states thanks to my “storied” career, I have had the opportunity to drive on all types of road surfaces and experience them throughout a multitude of weather conditions. Sometimes I’ve driven through 115-degree heat, other times it’s been in minus 80-degree chill factors.

One common thread seems to stand out, however; the closer you come to concentrating on the Midwest the worse the road conditions you’ll experience.

For instance, last week I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, ironically driving new Mercedes-Benz vehicles to experience their 4MATIC all-wheel-drive system. Wyoming is not arid when it comes to snowfall; in 2011 they experienced over 700 inches of the white stuff. (Maybe that’s one reason it’s such a ski paradise.)

Snow plows are not orange trucks that comfortably sleep four. They work and do one hell of a job not only on Wyoming’s system of major highways but on secondary roads and by-ways as well. One would think that with all this perpetual plowing prom (or P≥) their roads would qualify as teeth-looseners. Wrong, Suki. Some of the roads that had already been plowed and had dried from the sun were among the smoothest chunks of concrete I’ve ever experienced. Not only did I not look for potholes, if I had I wouldn’t have found any.

After a few days in snowy Wyoming I returned to the “warmer” confines of Southeast Michigan. This year we have had the least amount of snowfall since I moved here in 1985 (from Chicago, of all places). You’d think that since there hasn’t been the necessity to use a lot of salt and whatever other bill of goods the state highway department has been sold, the roads would have had a chance to “heal.”

The operative word is “think.” On a clear day Michigan’s roads look like a massively-magnified close-up of Manuel Noriega’s face. Just like Richard Gere’s line in the hit movie An Officer and a Gentleman, when a driver notices a pothole colony on I-275, he’s “got no place to go.”

Granted, Michigan is a poor state, hit hard by the recent on-going recession. But it still tries to bring in tourism from near-by states because of all its natural attributes. Admirable, right? But let some poor family drive on some of Southeast Michigan’s freeway system and see if their car makes it home with little structural damage and tires intact from all the potholes and patchwork tar hills. This could add a new dimension to budgetary “cost overruns” they allotted for their vacation.

Why can one can drive practically anywhere in Alaska and other than tire noise from its porous/absorbent roads, there’s no indication their highways are anything other than relatively news? However, drive on a Michigan or some Illinois roads and it will mentally take you back to flying a B-17 over Berlin in 1944; flak’s the name, bucking’s the game.

Speaking of WWII, it would make perfect sense for Midwestern highway department trucks to sport nose art and have little logos of tires painted on the doors to signify how many cars have had flats because of being “shot down” by a pothole on their watch.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of over-the-road trucks. I love them, those big brutes! But they have to take the blame for at least some of the damage to our highways, don’t they? Of course. BUT…these same trucks pay a lot in extra charges for taxes, licenses and other hidden and open fees for this very reason.

Where does the extra money go? It sure as hell isn’t used to keep up the roads. It probably goes into the general fund and will eventually be used to build a monument to one of the state representatives who was responsible for bringing a Dairy Queen and an adult bookstore to his district, thus creating an economic boom of sorts. This is the same question of what has happened to the last few increases in our state gasoline tax that was supposed to be “earmarked” for road maintenance; where is it?!

I don’t think it would do any good to pine away for the day when highway gridlock is so extensive that walking — even from city-to-city — is the fastest means of transportation. It will only mean that sidewalks will be the new pothole planets (or P≤) and will quickly reach parity with road conditions. 

It seems that the only 100% guarantee of a place that will never see pock-marked roads are those traversed by Eskimos and their sleds. Sure, the ground will be covered by dark mounds of dog poo but outside of being squishy the chances of having a flat sled runner or broken husky harnesses (H≤) are infinitesimal.

And should any “potholes” in the snow occur look at the bright side of things; Mother Nature’s Road Surfacing and Tornado Service will have it fixed in a matter of hours…and it won’t cost you one extra ounce of whale blubber.