DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour   al@motorwayamerica.com

Most of the country has had a pretty severe winter (except Miami) and usually about this time several events occur. The first is a joyous one for tire shops who are swamped with business because of damaged or ruined tires caused by bad roads; and state legislators and governors crying crocodile tears over how poor their roads are and how much repairing it’s going to take to update the infrastructure.

Generally there’s a call for a “special tax” to be used for road repair only.” I’m surprised that Quincy Jones hasn’t gathered another group of his recording industry friends like he did for “We are the world” and do the same thing for highway taxes.

Put into song it would be something, “We are the roads, we are the highways, we are the pot-holed tire eating lanes you have to travel…” I can just see Diana Ross (I mean MISS Ross) swaying back and forth with a film clip of a Pirelli low-profile all-weather tire being blown up from hitting a pothole, the driver losing control and the Jaguar XJL careening into the on-coming lane where it’s hit by an 18-wheel Freightliner towing a 53-foot trailer, killing all aboard including the driver of the rig. But…I digress.

I don’t care whether you live in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota or wherever they have cold, winter weather (sorry, Miami, but low-70s doesn’t qualify). Whenever temperatures freeze, resulting in the necessity to salt or treat slippery roads, and then temperatures rise, fall, rise and fall again for several months at a time, it’s going to wreak havoc on roads. Especially those roads that have previously been sloppily repaired with asphalt shoveled into a hole, a repair that depends on the kindness of strangers — especially those that have tires — to tamp them down.

I’ve often referred to some of the rougher roads as “Air Combat Simulators.” Few of you have ever flown through flak but a mile drive down one of the “veteran roads” of most northern states is the equivalent of sitting in a B-17 on the way to bomb Schweinfurt and every anti-aircraft gun in the Third Reich has you in its sights.

Suddenly the idea of a special fund to repair those roads makes sense, doesn’t it? But wait…there’s more.

I know what you’re thinking…”Al, it seems to me we had a special tax added to gasoline a year or two back that was to be earmarked for road repair…or am I hallucinating?” The answer is, No, Cal, you aren’t hallucinating at all. You DID have a tax increase added to each gallon of gas that was to specifically used to make our roads as smooth as the Autobahn was in 1938.

But what happened to it, you might ask. I’ll tell you what happened to it. It was collected, alright, but the closest it got to road repair was the day the money went into the state’s general fund…and then on on to the "electronic highway." It’s like the “Social Security Lockbox.” It only exists in places like South Park or Al Gore’s mind.

NOTHING that is put in the general fund is ever used for the purposes it was intended after a specific tax was enacted. General Funds are the Enron stock of tax collection. This current administration is Czar-happy so why don’t states appoint “Road Repair Czars” to ensure the money reaches the funding salons that are used for that purpose?

Until such time as they’re found guilty of public corruption themselves they can keep an eye on dollars that are so vital to maintaining safe roads PROFESSIONALLY and EFFICIENTLY. Not the way I described it earlier, and certainly it should be conducted by trained crews and not those who are employed by the state’s transportation secretary’s brother-on-law, Sal.

Just like a Tommy Hilfiger shirt costs a LOT more than one bought at Marshall’s but will last three times as long because of better construction, so, too, should there be Tommy Hilfiger-like road materials that may cost more initially but if done right will last many times longer.

Furthermore, most of the hazardous road repairs seem to be completed at the end of the summer, prior to the weather turning bad again. I think the most telling things about the weather ready to turn bad again are a.) Geese flying south, b.) Squirrels running around the yard with nuts in their months, and c) An abnormal amount of road repair crews out and about. (By the way, what’s so fascinating about a pothole being filled in that requires the rapt attention of 3-4 workers?)

So there you have it. There may be 50 ways to leave your lover…but there are a LOT more ways than that to be hosed by earmarked tax dollars.