DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour   

As most of my readers know I have the opportunity to drive dozens of different vehicles a year. Some are practical sedans and crossovers and others are rich boy toys. But most of them have one thing in common — an analog speedometer.

I don’t care how long you’ve been a member of Mensa, it’s still going to take several milliseconds for your brain to process what your eyes are seeing. As you look at the speedometer dial you’re asking yourself if that needle’s on 75 or 76. Doesn’t sound like much of a difference, does it?

Well consider this. It’s common knowledge that most state police will “give” you five mph over the legal limit. There may be a discrepancy in the calibration of your dials; the traffic may not be all that heavy that a few miles over the legal limit is going to pose a danger; and it may be raining cats and dogs and the trooper understandably doesn’t want to exit his warm, dry vehicle and stand out in the rain lecturing an errant driver about his misdeeds. 

But let’s say you’re realistically doing 76 or 77 mph. But during a quick glance to the speedometer you thought it was 74. Next thing you know there’s Mr. Police Car headed towards your vehicle like Pepe Le Pew chasing a cat. As you’re sitting in your car with the trooper leaning in your window, and hundreds of drivers are passing thinking, “That poor bastard; glad it wasn’t me,” you’re wondering why you were stopped for doing a few miles over the speed limit.

When the officer tells you that you were doing seven miles over you’re flummoxed at how your eyesight/mind partnership could be that far off. There’s a solution to this nationwide problem and it’s easily remedied; it’s called digital speedometers.

Digital speedometers are nothing new; they’ve been around for around 40 years, plus or minus. It takes less time and provides more accuracy for a snap-glance at a digital speedometer than at an analog one. The information is provided instantaneously.

How many times have you been traveling at a steady speed and you come across one of those portable speed signs that tells you how fast you’re going. I would bet you dollars to some stale donuts that you seldom, if ever, match the sign with what your speedometer indicates. But your chances are greatly increased if you have a digital speedometer. More times than not it will match the digital readout of the mobile device exactly.

I like gadgets and vehicle technology as much as the next geek, even though I could probably still beat up the average grandmother in a fair fight. I’ve owned cars that had a full spate of digital instrumentation from the odometer to the fuel gauge, temperature gauge and mileage figures. But the most important gauge of all is understandably the speedometer so if the cost of a full digital dashboard would be that much more expensive a digital speedometer would be the dial of choice.

If I were a conspiracist I would say that because digital speedometers would improve accuracy to almost 100% there’d be a lot fewer speeding tickets that would be written on the nation’s highways. This would translate to less revenue for the state and all the municipalities whose jurisdiction would suffer the dip in finances. And if I were on Twitter, which I certainly am not, I would tweet, TFB.

As further enhancement to the wonders of digital speedometers I would also recommend all vehicles be equipped with even the most basic heads-up display. That way, a driver won’t have to remove his eyes from the road for even a millionth of a second; the speed is “posted” right on the windshield. The eyes will be doing all the work; the brain sits out this dance.

I believe that technology is only good if it’s used and the advantages of a digital speedometer to the drivers of this nation demand the employment that such a beneficial instrument would bring; thus, it should be the standard for speedometers installed in every vehicle sold in North America. (Screw those socialists and slackers in other countries.) This would be a wonderful opportunity to free-up law enforcement from the mundane practice of writing and handing out speeding tickets and let them do what’s more beneficial to our citizenry; beating, arresting and/or killing felons.

I would much rather witness an armed robber lying on the floor of a jewelry store with the back of his head blown off from the invasion of a hollow-point bullet that used to live inside a .357 Magnum than spend a couple of hours in traffic court listening to a bunch of people explain why they were speeding. It would be much more satisfying and the knowledge that the police officer who performed such a service for the community was able to do so because he wasn’t stopping people for driving 8 miles over the speed limit would be invaluable.

General Electric may think they “bring good things to life,” but a policeman with a loaded shotgun can do more for a community in two seconds than all the light bulbs GE can produce in 10 years.