Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

Jay Leno and the Toyota Camry

You know your company is in trouble when it becomes the butt of jokes in stand-up comedians' routines.

Especially if your company is a car company, and the stand-up comedian is Jay Leno.

Because he really knows a lot about cars.

Back when it was Audi's turn in the dunking seat, he said in his Tonight Show opening monologue that his automotive nightmare was to be in a toll booth line up behind a Ford Pinto and in front of a Audi.

Thursday night, now back on the Tonight Show, he referred to the "Let's Make a Deal" show, and showed a clip from that production purporting to show what their top prize was.

(This is not yet on - or has already been removed from - YouTube, so I'm going from memory here...)

"Don Pardo, tell our winner what she has won!"

"A brand new 2010 Toyota Camry! Featuring 16-inch steel wheels [why they'd mention that when those are the cheapest wheels you can get on that car, I don't know...], front-wheel drive..."

And as the winner went to embrace her new chariot, the doctored video showed the car rocketing away off stage, dragging the winner with it, you heard a huge crash, then the screen went to that old black-and-white test pattern with the Indian chief head on it...

Cruel.

And apparently on the Oscars telecast (I don't have that much time on my hands) someone (maybe Steve Martin?) said, "The winner gets a statue; the loser gets a Toyota."

Ouch.

Yet another Toyota headline

When I heard about the latest 'runaway' Toyota, this time a Prius, my first thought was: What's with San Diego?

That was also the scene of the first big crash that got everyone's attention, the one where improperly installed floor mats in a dealer's 'courtesy' car which were not even designed for that model apparently got caught up in the accelerator pedal, the driver, a California police officer, couldn't bring the car back under control, it hit an SUV and crashed off the road, killing the driver and three members of his family.

Really - it's pretty hard to blame Toyota for THAT one.

But, 'if it bleeds it leads' (or in this case, 'if it catches on fire, people die and we have pics it leads') has always been the mantra for the popular media, they jumped all over this one, and it got the ball rolling.

My second thought about the latest Prius incident concerned the report that a police car chased down the car, and started - somehow - communicating with the driver. (Maybe using the loudspeaker system most US cops have on the fronts of their cruisers?).

Apparently the driver had the presence of mind to call 911 while his car was running away with him down the highway.

Wow. Not bad for someone in a panic.

I gather the cruiser was in the vicinity and somehow caught up with the Prius.

According to published reports, the officer told the frightened man to hit the brake pedal as hard as he could, and to pull on the emergency brake.

That second thought was: where did this cop learn about cars? If you are already hammering on the brake pedal, pulling on the e-brake isn't going to do any good.

Why didn't the cop tell the driver to put the car into Neutral? As we pointed out in our video blog a few weeks ago, that should be your first move if you sense any problems with your car's acceleration.

Don't worry about your engine revving too fast - most modern cars have rev limiters. It might get noisy in there, but even if the engine does blow up, that's better than running into a school bus.

Just a few minutes ago, I heard another report that the police officer DID tell the guy to shift into Neutral, but he refused because he was afraid it might make the car 'flip'.

Geez; Where do people get ridiculous notions like that? What more proof do we need that getting a driver's licence is WAY too easy? OK, maybe you don't need an engineering degree to be a driver (wouldn't hurt...) but you have to know more about simple physics than that. I mean, this guy could work a cell phone while his car was running away with him at, as I understand it, over 160 km/h. He wasn't completely technically illiterate.

Now in 99.9 percent of all cases, the brakes should always be strong enough to overcome the power of an engine, especially in a Prius which isn't very powerful to begin with.

So this scenario must have involved full-throttle acceleration, SIMULTANEOUS with near-complete failure of the braking system.

I dunno. Something sounds fishy to me.

Maybe subsequent investigation will get to the bottom of this.

My main point is: IF it happens to you, DON'T call anybody on your cell phone! You have much more important things to do:

1. Shift into Neutral.

2. DO NOT switch off the engine; that will kill power assist to both brakes and steering, which will make it much more difficult for you to bring the car back under control. Not to mention the possibility that you'll turn the key back far enough to lock the steering completely. Not good.

3. Flick on your four-ways, get on the brakes hard (making sure traffic around you permits) and start looking for a safe place to pull off the road. Once you're stopped, THEN you can switch off the engine, and call someone.

A reader suggests that you should actually practice this in your own car. In an empty parking lot with the car stopped, the e-brake firmly set, and the car in Neutral, rev the engine hard, just to experience what it sounds like. Then drive relatively slowly and practice slipping the car from Drive into Neutral (or from a gear into Neutral, while simultaneously stepping on the clutch in a manual) until it becomes second-nature to you.

This of course is also what you should do if your car starts to go into a skid, so it'll be good practice even if you never suffer from unintended acceleration.

No matter whose fault these various incidents might be, there is no reason why they have to end so badly.

Driving isn't rocket surgery, but it does require a bit of common sense.

Too bad sense is so UN-common.

Is this me, 'tweeting'?

I haven't really figured out how to do it yet, but yes, I now have a Twitter account.

Geez; first blogging, now 'tweeting'.

Among the challenges - I can barely say 'good morning' within Twitter's 144 character limit.

Not to mention type with one finger.

Anyway, those who are so enabled and so inclined can start to 'follow' me as 'jim_kenzie'.

Not guaranteeing anything, but as Joni Mitchell wrote, "Life is for learning".

Why all-season tires do not suck - er, grip

A reader writes:

Always reading your rants and enjoying them. On the subject of tires again, you refer to so-called "All Season Tires" as No Season Tires. What is wrong with those tires in temperatures above 7C?

A writer (ahem - that's me) responds:

All tires are compromises, and with perhaps one exception that a reader mentioned and my tire guru has verified (Nokian WR, which I haven't personally tested) there really isn't any tire with a broad enough range of performance attributes to be truly useful in every weather condition.

All-seasons attempt to give acceptable levels of performance in dry, wet or snow, combined with low tread wear and high fuel economy. This latter point is critical for car makers because they get fined in the US if their cars don't meet fuel consumption standards (Corporate Average Fuel Economy - CAFE - regulations). You wouldn't believe how hard they work for a single mile per gallon, because CAFE is a sales-weighted calculation, and a small plus over hundreds of thousands of vehicles really adds up.

Unfortunately, the things that make a tire last a long time and give good fuel economy also reduce grip, especially in wet weather which is when you need it the most.

Because grip is the single most important characteristic your car can have (nothing else matters if the tires can't communicate what you or the car's other systems are trying to do), I believe you should have proper summer tires, preferably those biased towards wet weather grip if possible, from spring through fall, and proper winter tires in winter.

BTW, don't let the fabulous weather of the past few days fool you into taking those winter tires off too soon. Ol' Man Winter isn't done with us yet - remember this coming Tuesday who told you so.

Roll on coffee wagon

When the US customs officer at the Calgary airport asked what I did for a living I said was an automotive journalist. She asked if I wrote about Toyota. I said I had written quite a bit about Toyota recently. She said she thought it was interesting that Tim Horton's was giving away Toyota RAV4s in the "Roll Up the Rim to Win" contest.

I think I will just leave that one alone...