Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

Aren't we glad...

...we didn't switch to our summer tires?

Depending on where you live within the GTA, you may have encountered some snow yesterday.

Nowhere near the Doomsday scenario presented by the weather forecasters - are those people congenitally pessimistic, or do they just predict the worst so everybody's happy if it doesn't turn out that bad?

But I did encounter a few snow squalls near the airport on my drive home last evening, and there were still a few mm of frosting on the deck of Kenzie World Headquarters this morning.

All melting now.

But remember - 'winter' tires are not just 'snow' tires any more. They are designed with tread compounds which remain more pliable when cold, so the tire can conform to irregularities in the road surface (in the GTA? Yeah, I know, hard to imagine...)  and therefore retain their grip.

Generally speaking, if the temperature is going to be below seven degrees Celsius for any appreciable percentage of the time, you should still have your winters on.

True, driving on them especially at higher speeds when it IS warmer than that will reduce tread life; it is a bit of a balancing act.

But weigh the cost of a new set of winter tires versus the cost of even a minor fender-bender, let alone a serious crash - it's a no-brainer.

And if you're still living with all-season tires (more accurately, 'no-season' tires, because they're no good in summer AND no good in winter), then shame on you...

 

Random Notes from Southern California (4 of several) - YOU GOT MAIL!

Highway 74 running west out of Palm Springs is a terrific little stretch of highway - the 'two-lane twisties' of song and fable.

Yeah, too many motor homes, too many trailier-hauling pick-ups, too many gawking tourists in their Sebring convertibles.

And, according to my local host, too many cops!

But if you're lucky, and catch 'the moveable chicanes' at the occasional passing lane, it's an exhilarating if too-brief run, up or down.

At the top, there's an odd collection of what seems like about a hundred mail boxes, testimony to the fact that a LOT of people actually live up in them thar hills.

But the US Postal Service isn't gonna risk their staff running into rattlesnakes or other varmints while on their 'appointed rounds'

If 'You Got Mail', you're gonna have to come out here and pick it up.

 

Random Notes from Southern California (2 of several...)

I've always said that until gasoline in the United States stops being (essentially) free, nothing is really going to make Americans stop driving big, heavy, gas-guzzling cars.

Oh sure, the Feds can force car makers to BUILD small, fuel-efficient cars.

But they refuse to create any pressure on consumers to actually buy them.

Is there a sign that this might finally be changing?

Gasoline in the Los Angeles area this past weekend was over four bucks a US gallon.

Yes, I know - still 30 percent less than WE pay, and have been paying for years.

And about half what most of the rest of the civilized world pays.

But $2.50 used to be considered some sort of car-buying-behaviour-changing threshold down here.

What if gasoline DOES get to five bucks, as most experts are predicting?

It may not happen any time soon.

For starters, it was a holiday weekend here (Presidents' Day), and we all know what happens to gasoline prices on a long weekend, don't we?

There have been some refinery shut-downs in this region recently which may have affected supply.

But the ads in the daily newspapers (yes, they still do have them...) show Toyota Prius hybrids being offered for zero down, and zero percent interest.

Maybe the gas prices haven't be high enough for long enough to make the appropriate impact.

As with everything else, time will tell.

 

Walking in the Dark?

OK, this is not a driving issue per se - it's a pedestrian issue, and I'm not saying that in the 'boring' sense of that word.

 

But all of us drivers are walkers at some point. And when pedestrians are walking at night, particularly on the edge of a roadway or crossing a dark street, can they all please understand that NOBODY CAN SEE YOU!

 

Unless of course you're lucky enough to encounter one of these new-fangled cars that can 'see' pedestrians in the dark (a couple of companies have tried 'Night Vision' systems, and Nissan at least - perhaps among others - is working on a specific pedestrian-detecting system).

 

How many times have you drivers seen - at the very last minute - someone walking along or across a road at night, wearing a black jacket, black jeans, black boots, with a black hoodie pulled over their heads?

 

The latter item of course makes it more-or-less certain that the pedestrian won't see you either.

 

Of course, I understand that carrying a flashlight or wearing some sort of miner's lamp on your head is the ultimate in geekiness.

 

A fluorescent jacket hardly raises your hip quotient either.

 

But there isn't a whole lot of coolness involved in lying in a hospital bed hoping the surgeons can stitch enough of you together so that your friends and family will at least recognize you at your funeral.

 

Also - not that you'd care at that point - but whoever ran you over would carry the guilt around with them for the rest of their lives.

 

My own family went through this - not involving night-time, as it happened - and the repercussions never end.

 

So, at least maybe find a jacket with some light-reflecting stripes on the sleeves? Get a toque or earmuffs and keep the hoodie down?

 

At the very least, watch where the heck you're walking?

 

And if there's no sidewalk, walk on the side of the road so you're facing traffic, not walking with it. Gives you a far better chance of noticing on-coming danger.

 

Pedestrian casualties constitute a very large portion of our overall traffic safety problem - and interestingly, alcohol appears to play about as significant role there as it does in car crashes.

 

And of course, all of the above pertains equally to bicyclists, one of whom I damn-near ran over a few weeks ago.

 

A Car that Runs on Air?

If something sounds too good to be true, it is probably neither good nor true.

I can't tell you how many times I've received the e-mail about the micro-car from India's Tata Motors which runs on compressed air, will cost less than ten grand, and is supposed to be on sale some time this year in certain markets.

Never mind that it would probably have the crash resistance of a wet Kleenex box...

The interesting thing is that if you go to the Tata Motors web site, you won't find a word about this project, not even in their archives.

Apparently they were working on something along these lines three or four years ago, but eventually ran into something called 'reality'.

Like all electric car makers will eventually too...

 

Transport Canada, the EPA, and The Real World

Got an e-mail from the owner of a 2011 Ford F-Series pick-up today.

It has the base 3.7 litre V6 engine, which I have driven (shared by Mustang, incidentally) and reported on - great engine, good power, good fuel economy numbers.

But he complains that he gets nowhere near the advertised fuel economy, and feels he has been duped.

He also mentions that the US EPA numbers are quite a bit lower than Canada's, even after adjusting for the difference in our gallon. The US numbers are actually closer to what he is recording in the Real World.

He says he has always been a GM loyalist but was swayed by these numbers, and he and some of his other Ford-owning buddies feel they've been misled.

Thought I'd share my response to him with all of you - comments and any further info any of you can share always welcome.

*******

As you know, the mileage tests are conducted according to government-mandated protocols, which are conducted under very specific conditions - warm temperatures, etc. - and which are monitored pretty closely. The numbers the manufacturers report are what they got on those tests, and the purpose isn't necessarily to tell you exactly what YOU'LL get, but to provide a comparison for one vehicle versus another.

So the ads aren't 'misleading', technically anyway - the vehicle DID get those numbers on those tests. Of course, the lawyers always insist on lots of weasel clauses which say "Your mileage may differ", etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes, there are suspicions that engineers specifically tune the vehicles so they look good on these tests, as opposed to get the best mileage in the Real World, because these numbers are so important for marketing purposes - they swayed you, didn't they?

I don't know that anybody has ever proved that, but sometimes the gaps between the Transport Canada numbers and reality are greater for certain vehicles, which certainly raises some suspicion.

There was wide-spread complaining among consumers in the US a few years ago, especially w/r/t hybrids. It seems the EPA City numbers were WAY out of whack compared to what was achievable in normal driving. I'm not saying hybrid manufacturers 'cooked' the cars to beat the test, but for sure, the idle shut-off feature that hybrids have really generated great numbers.

The EPA modified the City test to reduce the impact of this effect, and I don't think Transport Canada has made a similar change to their protocol. This may be why the US numbers differ from Transport Canada. I don't know if the highway tests are different or not - might be worth looking into.

How long have you had the truck? As it gets a few thousand kilometres on it, the mileage should improve. Also, the way you drive, long trips versus short trips, etc., and cold weather - not that we've had a lot of it this winter - all affect mileage as well.

All of this may not change the way you feel about the truck, but maybe it helps explain the economy disparities a little.

 

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.

 

Not All Starbucks are Created Equal

Something new every day.

The Kia Rio Sedan preview was held in Scottsdale Arizona - more next week in Wheels.

We needed a caffeine fix. We were in the range-topping trim level with SatNav, so "Points of Interest / Restaurants / Coffee Shops / Starbucks", and there it was, just 570 metres away!

I had never seen one like this before though - a Drive Thru on one side, and a 'walk-thru' on the other side.

No 'store' as such, nowhere to sit (except outside, which on a warm-by-our-standards / near-Absolute-Zero by local standards morning, that meant nobody...).

Now, I hate Drive-Thrus for a multitude of reasons.

First, they are the ultimate in laziness. What - you can't get out of your car to walk twenty metres?

Second, they are an environmental nightmare. All those vehicles, usually only with ONE person in them, idling for ten-fifteen minutes? At this place there were about a dozen vehicles, mostly big SUVs. (This is Scottsdale; there was/is no recession in Scottsdale...).

Third, they are hopelessly inefficient. Unless they have two windows - an ordering window and a separate delivery window which most Starbucks I've been to do not - they can only serve one customer at a time. You order, you wait until your coffee is made, and the server can't even take anyone else's order until your transaction is complete.

(Also, isn't ironic that in Italian, 'espresso' means 'fast'?...)

Now, take this inefficiency and apply it to walk-up trade?

Spectacularly inefficient.

Especially if the guy in front of you has ordered a breakfast sandwich.

My mood wasn't made any better by the fact that when I brought the coffee my driving partner had asked for and set it on the roof of the car to open the door, it slid off the car, fell at my feet, exploded, and soaked my jeans.

Damn.

Can't blame that on the design of this Starbucks, but this is one store design model I hope never migrates to Canada.

 

Where do People Get their Traction?

Maybe I live in a parallel universe.

Maybe the laws of physics in my universe are different from those in the universe(s) occupied by other drivers.

This almost metaphysical thought crossed my mind as I was driving through a fairly heavy snowstorm the other day after visiting a friend in Owen Sound.

Highway 10 was passable, but snow-covered.

There was decent grip, but it was slippery.

I was driving my Porsche-du-Jour, a Panamera Turbo S, complete with one of the world's most sophisticated full-time four-wheel drive systems, and top-quality winter tires.

I was going at a 'normal' rate of knots - maybe a buck-ten (OK, OK, so it was an 80 km/h zone).

A previous-generation Hyundai Sonata went smoking past me like I was standing still.

It was too dark to see if the car had black steel wheels, which would suggest it also had winter tires on it.

And for sure Hyundai did not - does not - make a four-wheel drive Sonata.

It was also too dark to see who was driving - it was a smallish person, because his/her head barely projected above the head rest.

But seriously...

Maybe this person was a winter driving expert. I mean, I have taken - or taught - an average of one advanced driver training program per year for 30 years. I am reasonably aware of what it takes to handle a car in less-than-optimum conditions.

Did this person have similar training and expertise?

So I am wondering where this person thought (s)he was getting the traction to drive this fast?

Just wondering...

And then a FedEx truck went smoking past me too.

Hmm-mm...

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Happy Hannukah, Smashing Solstice, Festive Festivus, Quintessential Quonset Hut (that's Jil McIntosh's line) - whatever holiday you're celebrating, have a good one.

Even if you're not celebrating at all, just, well, BE HAPPY!

We're the fourth-round draft choice for Christmas dinner this year - three of the four sprogs are with their respective significant others' families on The Big Day this year, so we're not having our Christmas dinner until Tuesday.

Meanwhile, ignominy upon ignominy, look where Lady Leadfoot stores the turkey because our fridge isn't big enough:

Yep, in my beloved 1977 American Motors Hornet hatchback.

Let's hear it for American Motors' fine craftsmanship and attention to detail that the car is still tight enough that mice and other vermin can't get in to snack away - on the bird or on the car...