Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

OPP on the Lookout for Distracted Drivers

The Ontario Provincial Police are mounting one of their periodic blitzes on distracted drivers this week.

Already, I've seen more than the usual number of black-and-whites with 'customers' pulled off to the shoulder; whether they're just the Usual Suspect speeders or they've been caught applying make-up, shaving, texting, sorting vacation photographs AND eating their breakfast, I couldn't say.

Interesting tidbit came out of Manitoba recently though. It indicated that crashes due to DWT - Driving While Texting - actually INCREASED after the texting ban was imposed in that province, because drivers were 'lap-texting' rather than 'front-of-face' texting, trying to avoid detection.

This of course means that not only were their brains otherwise engaged, but their line of sight was compromised too.

Obviously, trying to work even a so-called 'smart' phone while driving is a dumb idea.

And as we all know by now, hand-held or hands-free makes no difference.

But I wonder if anyone's got any stats on how many crashes are due to drivers being distracted trying to figure out how to use the exact same touch-screen technology that comes in altogether too many new cars' dashboards?

It makes no more sense there...

 

Road Signs for my Present, Your Future

I don't wear these Coke-bottle-bottom lenses on my face for decoration.

Sure, my 'corrected' eyesight is easily good enough for a Driver's Licence.

Even for a Racing Licence.

But do I see as well as I'd like to be able to see?

No.

I'd love to be able to read a newspaper from across the room, as someone once (I think incorrectly) said English racing great Stirling Moss could do.

And I'm too chicken, too astigmatic (and too cheap) for LASER treatment.

I'm obviously not alone here either. As our population ages (beating the only available alternative), our vision is collectively going to get worse before it gets better.

Which makes me wonder why municipalities don't make it easier for drivers to find out where they are going.

One thing they could do is be a whole lot smarter about where they position road- and street-naming signs.

Let's say, for example, you're headed south on Erin Mills Parkway in Mississauga. You see a major intersection way up ahead.

Is that Eglinton Avenue?

Can YOU tell from this photo?

If you can then YOU'RE Stirling Moss - fifty years ago.

Because the sign indicating it IS Eglinton Avenue is located only on the far side of the intersection itself.

By the time you get close enough to realise this, and if you want to turn left, then (assuming of course you're in the right lane where logic, courtesy and the law require you to be) you've got three lanes plus (in this case) two left-turn lanes to negotiate, all in about a hundred meters of 60 km/h road.

Not good.

Why isn't there a sign a few hundred metres back up the road, indicating that this up-coming intersection is in fact Eglinton? You'd have plenty of time to react.

Not everybody can afford a car with SatNav, with Doris of the Dashboard telling you where you are at every moment.

Sure, you'd still want the sign at the intersection itself.

But more advance warning?

It would make a huge difference.

I'm not picking on Mississauga here. Every municipality in the GTA - frankly, almost everywhere in the world - is guilty of this to some degree.

What makes it particularly frustrating is that not half a klick away, just around that left-hand turn, they have done exactly that. If you're headed west on Eglinton approaching Credit Valley Road, here's what you see:

Could hardly be clearer.

Well, they could put a sign on a pole in the centre median too, as they do in some instances.

Here, they've even put the house number range on the sign, so if you know the exact address you're looking for, you know which way you have to turn.

It is clear then that somebody within the Mississauga transportation department (road sign division...) knows how this is supposed to be done.

My question: why aren't they consistently doing it correctly?

Of course, if they'd just eliminate these stupid, sprawling, horribly dangerous, traffic-light-controlled multi-lane intersections altogether and replace them with roundabouts, the problem (and dozens of others) would cease to exist.

But no municipality within the GTA is smart enough to figure that out; I admit, I'm aiming low here, hoping that a few more properly-positioned road signs can at least alleviate the danger.

It would be a start.

 

Carroll Shelby

As every car enthusiast knows by now, Carroll Shelby passed away last Thursday.

 

We're saddened if not entirely shocked; after all, Carroll was 89 years old - a good innings by any reckoning - and lived his entire life under the constant threat of a weak heart.

 

Biologically, at least - he was one of the longest-surviving heart transplants, and also had a donated kidney from his son.

 

But there was never anything lacking in his metaphorical heart.

 

His racing and car-building exploits are well-known; I'll just add a couple of personal anecdotes.

 

Two years ago, local vintage car guru Richard Pickering organized what we think was the largest collection of Shelby vehicles ever assembled under one roof. Shelby himself was flown up from his California home, and several of his long-standing colleagues and buddies, including racer/driving instructor Bob Bondurant and journalist David E. Davis Jr., also attended.

 

I don't know if anyone had ever seen Shelby in tears before, but he was at that event - it was an unforgettable evening.

 

Many more years ago than I can possibly remember but it must have been early- to mid-1980s, Chrysler brought Shelby to the Media Preview for their new model-year line-up, to give journalists rides around the Chelsea Michigan proving grounds in his Dodge Shelby Charger.

 

As I strapped myself in for my turn, I complimented Shelby on the fact that his version of the Charger was one of the first cars to have dual retractable cup holders.

 

“Shoot,” said Shelby approximately, “all a man needs in a car is a back seat for his [fuddle-duddling], a rack for his rifle, and a place to put his coffee and beer!”

 

That's product planning in a nutshell...

 

A bit later in our drive, we passed a Chrysler test driver whose job was simply to put development miles on a Plymouth TC3. Shelby glanced in the mirror and saw that the Plymouth driver had obviously seen who was driving the Charger, and had picked up his pace.

 

Shelby grinned at me. “Looks like he wants to play!” (Wish I could type in a Texas accent...).

 

Now, on the back half of the Chelsea circuit is a series of whoop-de-doos - three short sharp hills. If you wonder where Car and Driver magazine gets those cover shots with the car way up in the air, wonder no more.

 

Shelby gunned the car up the first one, flying off the crest, not touching the back side of the hill at all as it returned from near-orbit.

 

The car slammed into the pavement at the bottom of that first hill, then flew off the top of the second one.

 

WHAM - we landed again.

 

The third hill has a little right-hand kink, right at the crest. Shelby took to the gravel shoulder before launching, so that when we landed, we were still on the pavement.

 

As the car settled down, he looked in the mirror again, grinned again, and said to me, “Looks like he don't wanna play no more!”

 

The poor Plymouth guy had probably got out of his car and walked back to the pits, never to get behind a wheel again.

 

Rest in Peace, Carroll. We will never see your like again.

 

Winter Wonderland Redux

So, how have all you folks who didn't think you needed winter tires enjoyed driving the past few days?

I wasn't in The Big Smoke on Saturday, but from what I heard - well, who sez Ottawa has the world's largest skating rink?

By Sunday evening some suburban side-streets still looked like they'd been prepped by Zambonis instead of snowplows.

Today, another ten cm or so of 'global warming' is falling here at Kenzie World Headquarters; a trip into town to gather up better drugs (this damned cough is still killing me...) proved that a lot of people out here don't have them either.

Funny; after you've smoked them away from the light, proving you've got way better grip than they do (my Hot Rod du Jour, the cute little Fiat 500, does have winter tires) you wonder why the think once they do get up to speed they can cruise right on past you.

Or do they get better grip when braking than when accelerating?...

Of course, if they did think at all, they'd have winter tires on.

Oh yes, and to the driver of that dark blue Dodge Caravan pulling in to the Milton Mall at around 6:10 this evening - your vehicle has a rear window wiper; any chance maybe you might switch it on once in a while?

Thank you.

 

Too Tired to Make New Year's Resolutions? I Can Help!

I hope you all had a safe and joyful holiday season.

I always love making New Year's Resolutions.

For other people, that is.

In case you are too partied out to make you own, here are some suggestions:

1. Drive Sober. Despite gains made in anti-drunk driving campaigns (and no thanks to those incredible B.C. Supreme Court justices who overturned that province's very successful spot-check program), drunk driving remains - statistically, anyway - the single worst thing you can do. So, don't.

2. Drive Unimpaired. While alcohol is (as far as we know) still the most common impairment, other drugs - notably among young people, marijuana, other 'recreational pharmaceuticals', and also some prescription or even over-the-counter medications - are a significant problem too. Lacking road-side detection technology for these substances, this one is harder to get a handle on. But we know it's huge. Smoke away if you choose too - no skin off my fender. Just don't drive.

3. Drive Refreshed. A big part - again, we're not sure how big - of our traffic safety problem is driving when tired. After two hours behind the wheel, your eyes start to drop; when that happens, it gets more difficult to keep your car on a proper trajectory, which leads to shoulder drop-offs, and all too frequently, to roll-overs. Even a five-minute break at a road-side plaza can help give your eyes that needed respite.

4. Drive belted. Our traffic fatality statistics are still significantly better (proportionally, of course) than those in the United States. Virtually all of the difference can be attributed to better seat belt wearing rates in Canada (about 93 percent nationally, as of 2010) versus the United States (about 85 percent). So, what's keeping the other seven percent of you (15 percent of them) from slamming into the windshield or steering wheel in a minor fender-bender? I mean, if you're gonna die in a car crash, shouldn't it be SPECTACULAR? Shouldn't it make the front page? Not 50 km/h into a lamp post. And if you don't think that might kill you, figure that a world-class sprinter averages about 40 km/h in a 100 metre dash. You can probably run half that fast. Go run into a lamp post as fast as you can. Tell me how much fun that was. Understand that the kinetic energy increases as the square of the speed. At 50 km/h, you'd have to absorb over five times as much energy. Your air bag can only do so much. Rest in Pieces.

5. Learn how to drive. As Driver Trainer extraordinaire Gary Magwood puts it, "We can't drive when we're sober!" A couple of hours with a trained professional can improve your driving skills a hundred-fold. We are very fortunate in Canada to have several advanced driver training programs available at a very reasonable cost. How reasonable? WAY cheaper than a new fender. Or a burial.

6. Turn on your frickin' headlights. Daytime Running Lights (DRL) in most cars do not illuminate the taillights. Arguably, those are more important than front lights, because a large fraction (I'd dare say a majority, but I don't have the stats to back that up) of our driving is done on freeways, where cars seeing you from behind, especially in rain, in fog, or at dusk, is much more important than them seeing you from in front (the whole point of DRL is not to make YOU see better, but to make you BETTER SEEN). And for sure, you'll be going faster on the freeway than elsewhere, so the danger is geometrically greater. The problem stems from the tragically (nearly criminally) incomplete Transport Canada DRL regulation which does not mandate rear illumination. Now, I get it - that might be too expensive to impose upon the car makers. But it should at the VERY least require that IF DRL is active, the instrument lighting must NOT be on. So many people seem to think that if their dash lights are on, all their lights are on. That ain't necessarily - almost always is NOT - so. If you aren't sure what your car does w/r/t DRL, there's no need to even worry about it - just flick the lights on, all the time. No probs. I'm sure that anyone reading this blog probably knows this already; maybe your resolution should be to tell at least one person - a friend, a relative, a co-worker, the brain-dead driver beside you at the stoplight - about this every week.

7. Adjust your mirrors correctly. There is no such thing as a 'blind spot' in most cars. Except that all too many drivers - all too many driver trainers too, sad to say - have a 'blind spot' in their brains that doesn't let them understand that if you crank your side-view mirrors out MUCH further than you've probably been taught - you should be able to just see the left side of your own car if you lay your head against the side glass, and the right side if you lean over so you're half-way over the centre console - you have a 180-degree panorama of what's coming from behind (or beside) you. Why would you want to see the sides of your own car? You KNOW where they are - guaranteed, right where they were when you left home this morning - and there's no way the side of your own car is gonna hit you. It's what's BESIDE the sides of your own car that you have to keep track of. Need a 'reference point'? Easy - when an object appears to leave the field of view of one mirror, it enters into the field of view of the adjacent mirror, or into your peripheral vision (it may help to think of your car as having ONE mirror that's been broken up into three pieces). If you're seeing the same thing in TWO mirrors (apart from a very small overlap) then what is it that you're NOT seeing in ANY of your mirrors? Without turning your head so you're zipping down the highway for a third of a football field per second without looking where you're going? Yes, it may take some getting used to. But I have had drivers with 30, 40 years of experience tell me that this is the single most important driving tip they have ever learned. I used to be almost alone in the dark on this one, until the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) produced a paper proving this geometrically over a decade ago. No more excuses.

8. Don't text or talk when driving. The first one should be particularly obvious, but obviously is not. Many (most?) jurisdictions now ban texting, as well as hand-held cell phone use, even though several studies have shown that hand-held versus hands-free doesn't make much if any difference. It's the mental engagement, not the reduced manual dexterity, that affects our driving ability.

9. Back in to your parking spot. I admit I was a bit of a latecomer to this, only adopting it after Peter Christianson of Young Drivers of Canada pointed out some years ago how much safer it was to pull OUT of a parking space frontwards, so you can better see what sort of traffic you're about to enter when you leave that spot. A 'pull-through' spot, where you drive in frontwards but can also drive OUT frontwards, is best of all.

10. Drive polite. As if your name, photograph and home address were mounted on a huge placard on the roof of your car. We would never do the impolite, downright hostile things we do in a theatre line-up or a grocery store check-out line that we do in the anonymity of our cars. If we eliminated that anonymity, maybe we'd be more polite. When someone does something stupid on the road, just give him room to be stupid. At the very least, let him go have his crash with someone else. If YOU do something stupid, back off, and try to indicate that you're sorry. Don't make the situation worse by becoming aggressive.

There - that wasn't so hard, was it?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Is This the Ultimate Urban Driving Distraction?

There's been a lot of blather recently about distracted driving.

(Is anybody - ANYBODY - still obeying the 'no hand-held devices' law? Not so's you'd notice.)

But I saw THIS on Yonge Street the other day, and surely it takes the cake:

 

Now, don't get all excited - I was NOT shooting this video while I was driving. A passenger held the camera. I (very badly) edited the footage and uploaded it to YouTube - a first for me, which may be obvious...

It's not that easy to make out, as it happens, but it's a movie screen with nothing but ads on it, built into a cube van, driving around in Toronto.

How can something like this possibly be allowed?

I mean, talk about distracted driving. How could you NOT be distracted by something like this?

I'd mention the name of the company, but that would only give them more publicity than they deserve.

If there isn't a law, there oughta be.

Australians, telling it like it is...

Still having computer ‘issews’. The new desktop is slowly rounding into shape, but it still needs a few days work to get it fully functional.

Meanwhile, the right-arrow cursor control key on my old laptop has worn right through - yes, there’s a hole right through the key itself - and it has now stopped right-arrowing altogether.

My own personal Geek Squad has never seen anything like it, but when you type as badly as I do, you need to move that cursor around a lot to correct the misteaks...

I bought a replacement, a Hewlett-Packard DM1 - powerful, light, good screen.

But the touchpad and ‘mouse’ buttons are beyond hopeless; it’s going back to the store tomorrow.

So I figured I better get something new up on this blog so you’ll know I am still alive - haven’t been run down by a pack of irate cyclists or something…

***

Australians are famous for straight talk. Political correctness isn’t high on their national list of attributes.

I guess there are Australian diplomats. More likely, they’ll give you the undiluted goods.

This extends to road signs.

How about this one:

Or, one that's particularly relevant to our recent 'distracted driving' blitz:

Then again, I’ve seen some pretty good ones around here too. This flashing sign told a pretty straightforward three-part message right here in my home region of Halton:

And I saw an excellent sign in northern Toronto recently. Straight talk, even if it was, um, not officially sanctioned.

Bordering on graffiti.

And, it came perhaps a bit too late:

Finish that cereal BEFORE you get in the car...

...or the O. P. P. is gonna getcha.

Or so they say.

This week, they're starting one of their 'blitzes', this time aimed at 'distracted drivers'.

We all know about the 'hands-free' cell phone law which went into effect a while back.

We also all know:

(a) that this law is essentially pointless, because talking on the phone is not materially more distracting hand-held as it is hands-free;

and,

(b) that after a brief 'honeymoon' following this law's introduction, most people started ignoring it anyway.

With extra attention allegedly being paid to it now by the O.P.P., maybe compliance will increase.

From (a) above, though, we know that it won't make a whit of difference.

The only hope here is that if the perp is too distracted to notice a cop is watching him on the phone, he really IS distracted.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

The cell phone law is popular with the police because it's pretty much open-and-shut.

You're carrying a hand-held device, you're guilty.

Bang!! (That's the gavel, not a gun...). $155 or however many days.

But the O. P. P. is also looking for other distracted-driving behaviour, which they say can include eating, searching for something you've dropped under your seat, or the infamous applying make-up/shaving/changing clothes/sorting vacation photographs/reading a newspaper/watching a movie on a HandiCam/fill in your own favourite here.

These can result in a Careless Driving charge, which will hit you a lot harder, points- and cash-wise, although they might be a bit harder to make stick in court.

If this blitz does nothing else but direct scarce police resources away from their futile and pointless obsession with speed limit enforcement, I'm all for it.

If it actually catches some distracted drivers, well, bonus.

If only the police would direct their enforcement attention to what I believe is the biggest safety issue we face these days: Lane discipline.

As Lorraine Sommerfeld's recent feature with Ron Fellows noted (read it here), I'm not alone in believing this to be a huge issue.

The laws are there - failure to drive right and failure to yield to the right to overtaking cars are both contrary to Ontario's Highway Traffic Act.

And no, it does NOT matter if you're doing the speed limit or not. Obeying one law does not give you the right to break others: just because you're not murdering a guy doesn't mean you're allowed to rob him.

All we need is for the cops to enforce these provisions, and for the Justices of the Peace to convict when the charges come to court.

Oh yeah - if the Ministry of Transportation would quit making the Driving Lane disappear all the time it sure would help...

We also could benefit if the police would use their considerable political power to encourage legislation along the lines of New York State and other jurisdictions: if your wipers are on, your full lights have to be on too.

I see SO many cars - especially during the recent monsoon season - puttering along the highway in heavy rain with no lights showing to the rear at all.

What - are these people nuts?

Sadly, I think so...

The Provincial police forces can't do much about Transport Canada's abject failure to make Daytime Running Lights legislation meaningful - DRL should require ALL lights, front and rear, to be on ALL the time.

(You of course as an individual can make this happen, and I hope you all do...).

Or, at the very least, Transport Canada should make it illegal for instrument lighting to be on when DRL is active, so drivers won't be fooled at dusk into thinking that they do have their proper lights on.

What are the chances of meaningful improvements in our traffic law enforcement?

I'm not particularly sanguine.

This very morning, in the middle of this blitz, I saw an O. P. P. black-and-white sitting in the weeds on the 407. From where he was parked, there's no way he could have spotted a cereal bowl, let alone a cell phone.

His radar gun, however...

Oh, speaking of lane discipline - the 407 has to be the worst road in the WORLD for that. OK, maybe tied with the entire Shanghai Expressway system.

How stupid is Ontario's new cell-phone law?

Looks like we may have found a way around the entirely pointless hands-free cell phone law now in effect in Ontario. From my interpretation of the wording of the thing, all you have to do is to have your passenger hold the phone next to your ear so you can carry on your conversation. This therefore leaves your 'hands free' to drive - or, drink your coffee, eat your cereal or go through your vacation photographs, none of which appear to be proscribed by this inane legislation.

Oprah - and Traffic Safety?

Oprah Winfrey has organized a petition on a web site (copy the following into the URL line in your browser - I STILL can't make this hyperlink thing work, and apparently neither can anybody else: www.oprah.com/packages/no-phone-zone.html) teaming up with Progressive Insurance in the US, the same people who are sponsoring the X Prize 100 mile per gallon car project.

The web site gives visitors three options:

- I will not text while I am driving

- I will not text while driving and will use only handsfree calling if I need to speak on the phone while I am driving

- I will not text or use my phone while I am driving. If I need to use my phone, I will pull over to the side of the road

Visitors can pick one choice only, then enter an e-mail address to ‘sign the pledge’.

Option 2 of course ignores the proven reality that there is no safety difference between hands-free and hand-held calling, just as the Ontario government and our police forces do.

As I look at her site, 121,673 people have taken the pledge. That's up by 164 in about an hour.

Oprah has proven to be very influential when it comes to book sales. Will she have any effect on cell phone use and hence on traffic safety?

Not sure how we’d even measure it.

But I guess we’ll take anything we can get.