DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour   

As most of you know I usually go somewhere every week to test new vehicles. The majority of these tests take place in hilly and mountainous areas where there are the inevitable twisty, switchback roads. I hate them more than I hate life itself.

I have peripheral vision like a frog and can damn near see a 180-degree arc. Consequently, when the vehicle I’m in jerks back and forth because of constant steering changes I notice it big-time and more times than not I become nauseous — seldom to the point of chewing my cud like a cow but generally to the edge of discomfort.

It’s obviously less-noticeable when I’m driving because my eyes are concentrated on the road ahead as opposed to sitting in a passenger seat and looking around me like a bobble head.

I know the manufacturers want to give us journalists the opportunity to experience the handling of their vehicles first-hand. However, a good deal of us write for publications servicing the flatlands of America — the fly-over states as Eastern, effete snobs like to describe, but seldom do we get the opportunity to test-drive vehicles on I-65 going south through Indiana.

What does everything I’ve written thus far have to do with the topic of this rant? Nothing, but it did use up 237 words. Now it’s time to get to the meat of my discussion.

A blind man could tell you that there’s seldom the opportunity to pass slow-moving vehicles when ascending or descending a curvy mountain road replete with double-yellow lines. Occasionally there might be a passing zone but those are few and far between. However, there is one thing that sets mountain drivers apart from their flatland brethren: they’re considerate of those behind them.

Rarely am I stuck behind a slow mover for longer than it takes to find a roomy place for him or her to pull over and allow those wanting to drive faster the opportunity to advance. Equally rare is the recipient of such largesse who doesn’t beep their horn and wave their appreciation as they pass their benefactor. It’s common courtesy, after all, but once leaving the mountains it’s not that common.

I first noticed this phenomenon when I was a little Hoosier and my brother and I were in the backseat of my parents’ Oldsmobile headed south on Route 41 towards Florida to visit my grandparents. We were climbing the Tennessee mountains, finally approaching Rock City, a place I’d been reading about on bird houses, barns, signs, etc. for the previous 600 miles. I began to notice that people with Tennessee license plates would occasionally pull off to the side of the road and my father, along with dozens of his closest friends, would pass by and wave. I was surprised that my father knew so many people from Tennessee but then again he was a friendly type. It was on about our third drive through this area that I saw a pattern developing and on my own discovered the reasons for this all-too-common scenario.

Flash forward through a questionable career and when I took the plunge to be an automotive journalist I began traveling to “exotic locales” that generally had mountains in them and just like an acid flashback I started seeing the same behaviors in each new area we’d drive. Then I got to wondering why people can’t be as polite in other areas.

Granted, there aren’t nearly the number of two-lane roads in the Midwest that there used to be before the advent of interstates but manners are manners and they are in scarce supply the farther away one gets from the “real” people of this country.

As an aside, whenever the subject of career politicians arises I always harken back to my premise of, “Whatever happened to the days of Davy Crockett, where you go to Washington for one or two terms, help the folks back home, and then leave to let somebody else with new ideas take your place?” It’s the same with driving; if people can be courteous in Tennessee or New Mexico or West Virginia, why can’t they be equally as polite in Illinois or Iowa? I’ve often suspected that only an experienced proctologist could being to tackle such a simple question.

I propose the following: I think the final grade of a driver’s education class should involve driving on local thoroughfares through the backroads of America, preferably in hilly terrain. If the student hasn’t learned down-home driving manners from spending time with the honesty and integrity of our beloved farmers and hillbillies then they should not be allowed to have a driver’s license until the age of 85, when they’ll be too old to get one.

Having observed young people as deeply as I’ve done for decades if my plan is ever instituted I would strongly suggest people forget about investing in the Dow Industrials; run to your broker now and have him buy all of the Schwinn Bicycle stock available.