DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour    

This week you folks are getting a double-header. I have two, but equally-related gripes that need addressing and I’m just the man to do it. Let’s begin, shall we?

Until last week I hadn’t really driven vast distances in any of our western states. However, I was given the opportunity to join in a driving event put on by Volvo Cars North America to experience what they called “The XC Lifestyle.”

Our group congregated in Los Angeles (as in California) and for the next two days we were on our own to stay and eat where we chose on the way to join up with our colleagues in Gateway, Colorado — the better part of a thousand miles to the east. All I can tell you is that now I am so damned spoiled by the freeway freedom we encountered that it increases my hatred of crowded conditions and mindless, miserable, rotten drivers we find in my Midwest. I’ll explain, lest you suspect me of dissing your family.

Los Angeles is known for its clogged freeways. What’s not as well known is that with the intricate, yet well-laid-out Los Angeles freeway system, if you catch it at the right time of day, there is no smoother-flowing traffic in any other big city in America.

We connected with three major freeways before leaving the Los Angeles metropolitan area and by the time we reached Baker, California — home of the world’s tallest thermometer (134 feet) we hadn’t opted out of cruise control set for 74 mph. (Hint: cruise control is the topic for Phase 2 of this column.)

My question is this: why is it that at times in Los Angeles you can zip along as my buddy and I did and you have 3-to-99 times more traffic than any other city in the country? Either the irritable bowel movement drivers had all taken the day off or people out West are better drivers.

Over the course of our drive we encountered realistic speed limits in isolated areas of 75 mph-80 mph and even setting the cruise control at about 3-to-4 mph over the limit you didn’t have to worry about any interference from the highway patrol – and we encountered a lot of them hiding in plain sight. Had this drive been in New Jersey, the speed limit still would have been 55 mph even though we sometimes went 50-to-100 miles without seeing another house or town.

The “Westerners” have lanes for slow trucks, safety lanes for runaway trucks, smooth concrete with nary a pothole and all this presented with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. There are no polluting factory smokestacks or even factories themselves to mar the ever-changing landscape of monument-like mountains and red rock vistas. Sounds like Horace Greeley knew what he was talking about when he urged young men to go west.

My second gripe du jour deals with one of the greatest technological achievements in the annals of the automobile, cruise control. When used while driving busy highways it can prove itself quite frustrating, what with the constant setting and resetting and resuming, etc.

However, on some of the lonely, desolate freeways of the West it can be a real friend to your legs. Over the 400-plus miles that constituted my driving half, I think only once did I have to brake for passing traffic that knocked me out of cruise control. I really fought the urge to pull out a trusty Colt .45 (no, not malt liquor) and put a few slugs in the passing idiot’s tires.

However, as great as cruise control really is there’s a “super” cruise control that so annoys me I’d like to find out who invented it and make him eat his own entrails. It’s called “Adaptive Cruise Control” and as safety-riddled as its objective is I still want that guy gagging on his own appendix. What adaptive cruise control does is send out a laser or radar beam to determine the distance of the vehicle in front of you and its speed and then automatically slow your vehicle down so you won’t collide with the damned tortoise you’re following.

Great idea? You bet! However, if there are many cars around you — even out West as we’ve been discussing – you can almost get motion sickness from the slowing and starting as distances increase between you and the vehicles you’re passing or are passing you. This is the downside of technology.

I can’t remember if was Al Einstein, Ike Newton or even Jeff Dahmer who said, “For every action there’s a re-action.” One of these egg-heads was obviously logistically attacked by adaptive cruise control. What I suggest to you automotive engineers is to get your asses back to the drawing board and make our dreams of a brakeless, steady speed of 78 mph between Los Angeles and Keokuk, Iowa becomes a reality.

Don’t make me force you to take Driver’s Ed from SEAL Team VI. Oh, the XC-90 Volvo was pretty nice too. My driving partner, well, not so much.