Best Driver In The World

SAFRNUSA

2012-02-05T14:00:00.002-05:00

I write.

So many others do so too, whereas a hundred years ago, this was a different realm. I sometimes allow myself to think that I have what it takes to be remembered, to be an immortal in this regard, to be looked back on from some future and be seen as valuable. I choose what to write carefully.

Some of this will be seen as choice of canvas. It used to be books, poems, plays, some journalism. Now, add Internet, shorter pieces, and advertising. Short phrases are more remembered now, albeit many being anonymous.

Bumperstickers may eventually match works like "War And Peace" in message-- no joke. I wear two on my car-- Pick Up One Piece Of Litter A Day and The Season For Charity. I couldn't estimate how many readers these have had in their years being there.

And although not vain, I am thinking of adding a "vanity plate," to take up this challenge of saying the most with the least. My choice is SAFRNUSA.

Safer than the USA.

I want a safety message on my car. I want a bit of flash, showing others that I have a higher standard than what is taught here in this nation. I want to make people think.

Quota

2011-12-21T20:03:00.004-05:00

I've been commenting lately on any news story mentioning driving; I mention this blog. Just now, I read of that FedEx employee throwing the flatscreen over the fence-- a lead Yahoo story read by God knows how many. Kind of funny in a way, it is not if the man loses his job and is embarrassed publicly. But what if he had a driving quota?

I once had a driving quota, with a truck, for tree spraying. I remember the pressure to get 18 houses done in one day. It's not something I would wish on anyone-- I had to be keenly aware of routes, turnarounds, super-efficiency, and yes, I did think of "cutting corners"-- when things can become unsafe.

What if this man, to play the angel's advocate, took a chance so he would not have to then drive as fast?

How to control cars that are too close

2011-12-19T18:47:00.001-05:00

First of all, this is more than perceptual-- it's true. I've seen just in the last year that, where I was being given three car lengths to merge or decide something, now more drivers give me two. That is to say, they believe they are giving me enough room, when in fact they are not.

This trend is not sustainable unless we automate cars to react to close, changing objects, as in another car 1 length ahead suddenly braking. The problem is, of course, that the car in back of you must have the same device. There are stories becoming more common of 10,20,30, 40 car accidents from this scenario. So what do I do? What should we do to maintain safe space, in case something happens?

I am developing some moves to keep space around me. One is to edge into a lane. I have a commute to get my son where I have to merge onto a parkway, me going 50, with other drivers going 80. From this slow lane, I need to get left two lanes because within a quarter mile, the parkway splits right and left—I want to go left. Other drivers want to go right. They can merge into the same lane, from the left, that I might from the right. So, seven times a week, the stage is set.

Of course, my desire is to avoid any close car, so I scan quite early, and most of the time no-one is near; I look for large openings. I use a lot of turn signal here. I get my wheels on the lane-change line. I look at how the drivers behind me are reacting; almost all the time, they slow down. I inch into the lane. As I merge, I leave my turn signals on; this invariably slows other drivers. I do not change lanes if there is any kind of multivariable situation close by, like two cars changing, one car overtaking (!?) (yes, people speed through this area), etc. And once, because of some oddity that happened, I simply missed the left parkway, had to take the right, had to go another route. A good driver uses this possibility.

Basically, for other drivers not giving you enough room, you use more turn signal, be willing to slightly block the lane you need, while glancing at the other car’s reaction, and make this all seem innocuous. They react to you as if you are a cautious, 80 year old slow driver at times, instead of the best driver in the world.

Spy Satellites

2011-11-13T12:15:00.001-05:00

I've been asked to post another link to a Big Brother idea-- the satellites are looking over our shoulder, and they know where you are (they know how you drive).

This choice is clear-- either we get to be better drivers, retaining control, as the Germans on their Autobahn, or it will be governed.

Here is the link--

http://www.internetproviders.net/blog/2011/10-ways-satellites-have-been-used-to-spy-on-you/

Racing Stripe

2011-10-30T00:49:00.003-04:00

I will not wear a racing stripe on my car,
though now my sight and reflex is well-honed,
lest children, only infants of the lanes
take the same form but with their simpler thoughts
my path of words they miss and only want
the rushing of the air and sound of gear,
I will not wear a racing stripe on me.

I have thought, over the years, of adding a racing stripe to my car, to proclaim, as other men, how much of a "racing" driver I am. The labels we wear say things about our selves: fast, cool, rich.

But I have drawn a line here, not to.

A teenager sees my car, with or without a stripe. With a stripe, he sees an enabling to go fast, without knowing all the other knowledges I have put together, in my mind, and in this blog.

No racing stripe for me, guys. A car is a public statement. Our kids are too precious to take this chance.

More tracking of cars

2011-09-04T08:17:00.000-04:00

I have mentioned, in the post "Black Box Me," how I would welcome an exact tracking device in my car so my insurance company, and anyone else interested, sees my decision-making, moment to moment. Here is another step to this welcoming--

http://www.internetservice.net/2011/10-companies-that-use-gps%E2%80%99s-to-track-employees/

(Courtesy of Ms. Kate Croston)

Flying

2011-08-21T13:15:00.000-04:00

Josh and I got out to the Bayport Aerodrome today to see some vintage planes, their owners, and talked with Jerry and Yogi-- thanks!

I am reminded that, for airplanes, as Yogi put it, you "fly one hour and check the plane for two."

This is a different level of safety, and awareness of vehicle, that I will further learn from with my cars.

Buying Radar

2011-07-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

A developing theme in this blog is a critique of solutions-by-tech for driver safety. I disagree in principle. Here is another reason why--

A Nissan commercial. Many different models, basic theme is Nissan going into the future. Lots of automation, doors opening by themselves, seats closing, motors whirring. Then, the emerging theme of a radar-type sensor, following a truck, sensing a box falling off, automatically braking the car.

In traffic? With the car in back of me not having the auto-braking? No way! I want the driver decision to keep speed and swerve, or to brake, or to feather the brake, or to rapid-flash the brake lights without really slowing down (effectively slowing the car in back of me more), or a number of other possibilities, for Me to decide in those tenths of a second. No engineer is going to be able to tell me I cannot react well to this, that their radar is better. (And anyway, a proper following distance, or not following a truck with an open tailgate, removes this question.)

Radar works with remote sensing. It's used in space, underwater, in warfare, for situations beyond our sight. It is not to be used where we can use vision.

Brooklyn Bicycles

2011-05-15T08:14:00.000-04:00

I saw a glimpse of Paradise yesterday.

Park Slope, Brooklyn... an outdoor bike show-swap-sale. It brought everyone and their grandmother out on bikes, cruising the city streets, stopping, parking, talking, grooving.

The bikes were fantastic-- I got so inspired by these individualistic roadies that, after we went back to Long Island, I took my 2000 Giant TCR2R and blasted around our roads for a couple of hours.

Think of a city cyclist, reacting to thousands of cars, millions of stimuli every hour. Bicycles can save cities. This is such an obvious reason to become a superior driver.

American Autobahn

2011-03-27T08:07:00.003-04:00

I want to live to see our speed limits raised and, at the same time, to see an extreme increase in safety. Enough said-- here is a link that will help get us there. Do you recognize greatness when you see it?

http://www.americanautobahn.com/

Who Wants To Be America's Next Top Car Blogger?

2011-03-27T07:52:00.000-04:00

I would like to, please. Unofficial entry here.

What a great contest-- I came across this when searching "American Autobahn" again, for some connection to this important idea. The contest closed for this year; I will seek its beginning next year.

Some new experience with being close to sleep-deprived driving

2011-02-13T17:23:00.001-05:00

Readers interested in learning ways to safely drive longer distances, here is a new experience to offer for your consideration.

1. Pushed my sleep limits 2 day before this drive, stayed up til 2AM, got up for work, had a coffee, normal Friday, took a nap later.
2. Had a normal Saturday.
3. Got up 3AM Sunday, picked up Troy, had a coffee while driving 200 miles to a bicycle show in MA, used Route 95. Good concentration, highway speeds around 80.
4. Had a nice day at the bike show.
5. Left for home around 1PM. Within 20 miles, began to have the thought that I could not complete the drive safely.

What happened?

My attention began to wander. I would say that, at the very beginning, the sensation was as much physical as mental. I would look left at the scenery for a split second, then find I was a fraction slow returning my sight to the road.

The idea that concentration was in fractions of a second is vital here. A biologist knows that we are allowed about 20 to 25 per second to take in information. A good driver uses these to advantage. What seemed to be happening when I was getting "tired"-- I was lacking a kind of neck balance to keep my eyes where they were needed-- on the fast lane, slow lane, upcoming traffic, cars being passed....

There was no danger at this point, no swerving, no touching the lane-dividing paint. Another car would not have had a clue. A driver has to have this early warning system while becoming tired.

The moment I decided to take the next exit and stop was when I realized my attention was to the left for the good part of a second. In this second, 20 or so things went through my mind, and most of them were not about the situation at hand. So I knew. Again, there was no swerving, nothing external.

We stopped and I got a cup of coffee, walked around a bit, stretched. Remember, this was at 130 PM or so.

There are experts at safe driving who would maintain that, at this point, the only way for me to recover and drive the rest of the 170 miles home would be to take a long sleep session. I was open to this possibility-- there was no need to get home sooner than later. But, after the coffee (especially), I was more than alert, and drove home without any more mental wandering. All the demands of I95, the New York City bridges, the Long Island Expressway, and the other drivers were met at my usual standards.

The point? Well, it's always about limits. I know mine, and it seems they can be beyond what some experts say regarding recovering to a safe driver status after being tired. Perhaps this would work for another person too.

I would ask an interested reader to refer to four other blog entries here on the same topic. They are

1. Pop Your Ears
2. Nursing A Car Back
3. Returning From NC
4. twelve hundred miles... there and back again

John

New Movie Title advertised Super Bowl time

2011-02-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

Someone else got to their 15 minutes of fame-- I guess a Hollywood writer, or perhaps a Madison Avenue ad executive.

The fame? A major movie title, to be revealed to the American consciousness, if only for a brief time.

The title of the movie, perhaps decided on in a board room? "Drive Angry."

New sign

2011-01-09T12:05:00.001-05:00

The sign mentioned in the previous entry to this blog has now changed, complete with unlit center line, to

STAY ALIVE

AND DRIVE

with same implied thinking....

DON'T-------------------------IT'S THE LAW

2010-12-20T17:25:00.000-05:00

I am driving home on the Southern State Parkway, and I see official signs ahead of me, with technology like a 1980s calculator--

DON'T

DRINK AND DRIVE

IT'S THE LAW

But one of these has its middle line out, so it reads

DON'T

IT'S THE LAW

I like this one better-- it makes a driver think. I know this as a teacher. When someone has a clear set of instructions and "dos and don'ts" to choose from, as a driver does, then a generalized command works on a number of levels. So a driver going under this sign is not just told a command, but asked to think.

As a science teacher, I know this is testable. Take two roads with known accident rates, place a DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE IT'S THE LAW sign above one, and a DON'T IT'S THE LAW above another, and measure the decrease.

Less is more.

...average Interstate speed, November 2010...

2010-12-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

Reporting from the Interstates of 287, 78, 81, 77, and 20... on a 1700 mile round trip from Long Island to Aiken GA and back... the common cruising speed is now-- regardless of posted speed limit being 55, 65, or 70--

about 80 miles per hour. This is not the fastlane drivers pushing. It's everyone. So I cruised along.

Readers of this blog will see the implications here, related to its other entries. What will be the average speed in year 2020? Will laws accommodate this ability, or will we drift further into scofflaw?

JW
1999.5 VW Jetta TDI

100 miles on a bicycle

2010-10-28T21:04:00.000-04:00

I went riding with a friend and her triathlete friends recently. It'd been a while since I rode 100 miles, but everything went smoothly. The roads were great-- first, a narrow two-lane country-suburban road, then the service road of the Long Island Expressway, which is a great training road for cyclists. We had a wonderful day and a wonderful time.

There is nothing like spending time on a bicycle to understand the need for ultimate safety on roads. I am still amazed how, only seven years or so ago, car manufacturers were able to sell large vehicles to the American public by reasoning out their greater safety. Now this has changed, largely because of gas prices-- people are buying smaller cars, with more on the horizon, even as the need for safety has stayed the same.

But a bicycle is the ultimate innocent-- there is no margin for error when in traffic, and a car always "wins" so to speak. A rider has to use ears, eyes, balance, knowledge, timing and anticipation. The reward is great-- not just a pleasant ride, but a greater understanding of the humility needed to drive a car.

New lines on the roads

2010-10-16T22:11:00.000-04:00

One of the strongest safety improvements I've seen around these Long Island roads recently is not red-light cameras, more police (I wish!), better cars... no, it's simply better line painting on various roads.

Everyone understands lines. If you drift over a line, you have an immediate feedback-- this is bicycle territory, or another lane, or, God Forbid-- the

oncoming lane. There is no language needed for this. As a long-time road cyclist, for example, I breath easier when there is a simple white line between me and the car lane. I know cars' behavior changes from seeing this.

So, I one day noticed that a very curvy section of the Southern State Parkway had solid lines painted between each lane-- "no lane changing" is what this means to me-- where before it had the dotted lines that allowed lane changing. And you know what? I travel this road enough to see that they work. This section is now safer-- very few people change lanes or drift across lanes here.

Then, another section of the Robert Moses Parkway-- its entrance ramp from the Southern State Parkway--was repainted down from two lanes, in a tight 270 degree uphill turn, to one lane with a wide "do not drive on" type of yellow diagonal striping. Again, this clearly works-- where before you had various drivers seeming to race around this turn, even cutting across lanes, there is now just a lead-and-follow. Since this section never gets much traffic, it is a very good idea.

There are people out there who are smart enough to get solutions right, without resorting to high-tech and lag times of years (automatic cars for example). The repainting of various roads to smooth traffic is a really, really good idea. Thanks to whoever in our Department Of Transportation thought of this.

Safety first, always my intent when writing in this blog.

"A World You Can't Predict"

2010-09-05T13:59:00.000-04:00

The title is a Mercedes advertisement quote, played during the high-profile, high-dollar later rounds of the US Open tennis tournament, 2010, in the New York market.

It is referring to the automaticity of the Mercedes to correct (not just inform) driver error such as

1. falling asleep

2. drifting out of the lane

3. rear-ending a vehicle

In these three above cases, the commercial leads in with ordinary people, like you and me, looking close at the camera and admitting that they were not paying attention while driving.

I am going to let this description stand, without comment, and ask the reader their gut reaction to this commercial.

Object Detected

2010-08-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

As we hurtle toward our electronic future, they have started-- the TV ads for remote detection of objects (children, toys, other). The car will tell you "Object Detected."

Would you trust this device and not look? Logically, this is the same question as "would you know it was working?" Whether the car is brand-new, or ten years old, would you be able to predict its electronic lifespan?

If the answer is No, and it is for me, then why have it?

I once drove a mini schoolbus that had a back-up warning sound system. We went through safety training twice a year-- a reminded mantra was BOB, By Own Bus. Children are killed most frequently by their own bus. It was emphasized that, whenever backing up, a driver should have an assistant visually inspect the backing area. Moreover, a driver should plan a route so that backing up is minimized.

This would relate to the new TV commercials thus-- a Mom, entering her driveway, backs in if there are obviously no children present. If kids are around, she keeps them in her visual field and backs out later. If when needing to back out, there are any children around, she tells them to go away from the area. Or you get help. It is all done personally.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here we are equating a child's life with a light bulb on a dashboard.

Top 50 blogs for...

2010-08-18T08:06:00.001-04:00

A Mr. Paul Atkinson was kind enough to add me to a list for...

http://mastersinpublicadministration.com/the-top-50-blogs-for-transportation-management-professionals

transportation professionals. Hope it helps!

Parking Signs

2010-08-12T15:01:00.000-04:00

I was sent an email a couple of weeks
ago from a website featuring parking
sign sales, asking to link to mine. They
were nice enough to write a brief
entry about this site-- thanks,
Rebecca!

It is crucial that drivers see and
understand signage as they slow to a
stop-- sometimes in traffic. And to
those who say there are too many
signs, well-- if this is true, perhaps in
the future there will be less in the way
of advertising, and more or cleaner
combination signs in the way of safety
and officialdom.

If you are a business owner, you must
provide correct signage around your
property so as to safely control any
moving vehicle.

Here is their link--

http://www.parkingsigncorner.com/

Drive on shoulder

2010-08-10T10:13:00.000-04:00

Cruising on the Interstate, everyone going 85. Needing to drive another 300 miles today. Very few exits, just open road. Suddenly, everyone stops, zero miles per hour. Something has happened ahead. The air temperature is 101 F.

The breakdown lane was open. There should be signs that pop up, every few miles, that allow us to use this lane in such circumstances. Yes, conventional wisdom might say that this is for emergency vehicles, but the flow of traffic would be less so that these vehicles could get to the site anyway.

I cringe and then say a prayer whenever I see good folks sitting in a miles-long traffic jam because of some mistake someone made. Let's design something to allow the breakdown lane use in these instances.

Go With The Flow or There's No Escape

2010-08-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

On our trip, we saw styles. I like to be the second or third fastest driver in my horizon, and of course I use all considerable safety. This might not seem like going with the flow to an uneducated-to-this-site reader, but it is. If everyone is going 55 MPH, and there is no safe way to go faster, I will wait. I enjoy the mental aspect of going with the flow.

And consequently I am amazed at the mental climate some drivers must go through to speed relative to the flow, to weave in and out when there is no apparent gap all the way to the horizon. In minutes of driving, they gain maybe ten, fifteen seconds on me. And they put all around them in danger. They create their aura of "there's no escape." I guess they drive like that much of their time.

No, thanks.

Seeing a safe 100 MPH

2010-08-10T09:48:00.000-04:00

Interstate, 70 MPH speed limit. Everyone cruising at 80-85, even the slow lane. Some drivers bridging gaps near 90 MPH. Still good spacing, no-one tailgating, just letting the tens of miles go by. These kind of situations, you can get good distances quickly. And I saw the potential for a safe 100 MPH.

Many of the cars can cruise near this Grail speed. I saw large gaps between groups that would allow this speed to cars that approach a group. Then, they would have to switch back to a speed that would sort out each drivers' comfort zone.

The beauty of this-- getting places. And the Germans do something like it.