Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

Dude - Where's Your Car?

When did 'cold snap' become 'polar vortex'?

Did I miss another meeting?

And what the heck is a 'frost quake'?

Is that like a 'frost heave'?

Whatever, this has been among the worst winters in living memory.

And among other things, it has made a mess of our roads.

Road crews have already patched more than 4,000 potholes this year, compared to about 1,500 at this time last year.

There are stretches of the 401 where metre-long chunks of pavement have just disappeared.

And I'm not even talking about the sinkhole (pictured) that opened up on Bayview south of Finch last weekend. That was the result of a broken water main which caused the supporting soil to be washed away.

It isn't just Toronto, of course. Chicago had a massive weather-related sinkhole last year that swallowed up three cars.

And eight valuable vintage Corvettes were devoured when the floor of the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Kentucky caved in. That apparently was caused by a previously unknown cavern beneath the building - natural caverns are common in that area.

The 'normal' potholes we are experiencing are caused by moisture seeping into cracks in the pavement. When the water freezes, it expands, breaking up the pavement.

So it's really the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle that does the damage.

Great - there would be an advantage if it just stayed ridiculously freezing cold all winter...

But I wonder - we've been paving roads in this part of the world for, oh, over a hundred years. Haven't paving companies figured out a way to stop this from happening?

The cars that drive on those roads are warranted for up to five years. Do our governments - do we citizens - who pay for this work get any such warranty for our roads? Do we not have some recourse?

You often see fairly recently re-surfaced roads where the pavement starts to break up after only a few years. Often, it's very localized, so surely there has been a flaw in the paving process?

Are paving contractors not duty-bound to fix them at no extra cost to the taxpayer?

The other major weather-related issue which initiates grave doubts about our transportation infrastructure is the ice storm over the holidays which literally broke our electrical grid. The massive blackouts lasted for up to eight days in some parts of our city.

I remember seeing a quote a while back from a senior official at Toronto Hydro, saying that if any significant proportion of our vehicles were electrics that needed to be re-charged overnight, our system couldn't handle it.

As if we needed further proof of the fragility of that system.

Have we built our entire system on the cheap?

And failed to look after it?

I am reminded of the old Fram oil filter commercial, where the mechanic says, 'You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.''

Maybe Rob Ford's Gravy Train has just fallen into a huge pothole.

***

E-mail me ([email protected]) a photo of your best pothole, and I'll see if I can find some car company swag to send you.

 

Technology - Where Will it Lead Us?

 

A couple of years ago, a road-testing colleague from the US (wish I could remember who it was) told me of driving his eight-year old daughter in one of the rare 'entry-level' Hot Rods du Semaine road-test cars we sometimes drive.

“Hey Daddy,'' she asked innocently, “what are those?''

She was pointing to the window winder handles.

She had never driven in a car that did not have power windows.

Sort of like how teenagers don't know what 'clock-wise' means.

In a similar and perhaps more important vein, a friend of mine told me recently that the main body system computer on his car failed. (Neither the friend's name nor the car brand are really relevant to the story, so I'll save them all from any possible embarrassment.)

All of a sudden, the family bus had no ABS, no electronically-controlled four-wheel drive, no Electronic Stability Control system.

In the middle of the worst winter in decades, his wife was now driving a car with none of the safety systems that she had become accustomed to.

For example, she had never driven a car without ABS.

As we also found out during the power outages over the recent holidays, how do we cope when the technological advances we base our lives upon are suddenly taken from us?

Is anybody going to find out which fuse controls all these functions and go to snowy parking lot to see how the car reacts as if it were, say, a 1965 Chevy?

Probably not.

But if, as some believe, advances in technology encourage us to drive more recklessly to maintain the same level of perceived danger, giving this prospect a bit of forethought might lead you to plan ahead.

IF something like this should happen to you, be prepared to drive much more cautiously.

One of my Christmas presents this year was the book written by fellow Miltonite Chris Hadfield, “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.'' Among the major lessons he teaches is how much training astronauts go through in order to be prepared for unlikely but almost assuredly fatal occurrences.

Sure, there are way more drivers than there have been or ever will be astronauts.

But we kill way more people on our roads than have or ever will die in space.

Maybe if we were better prepared...

 

 

Is Advanced Driver Training Worse than Useless?

As the only engineer in history to graduate without taking a course in statistics, I may not be the right guy to apply the old joke about the three types of liars - liars, damned liars, and statisticians.

I mean, we should be basing policy on facts, not fiction.

Unless of course you are our federal government. To paraphrase Stephen Harper: "Yes, crime is down markedly in all areas, so let's build more prisons with the money we would otherwise give as pensions to wounded soldiers!"

The trick is sifting through all the 'statistics' to find the 'real' facts.

Sometimes, the obvious 'facts' are neither obvious nor factual at all. E.g., it is plainly obvious from looking out the window that the earth is flat. Only when you get Chris Hadfield's perspective is that 'fact' perceived to be incorrect.

Right now I'm dealing with a long-standing argument that has just been bolstered by another report supporting what I perceive as the 'opposition' - a US group says advanced driver training, including skid control schools, leads to MORE crashes, not fewer.

So we should not teach people how to get out of potentially dangerous situations, because such training gives people a false sense of confidence and encourages more risky behaviour.

That set of 'facts' does not conform to my personal experience, nor to my preconceived notions.

So either their 'facts' are wrong, or I am wrong.

Perish THAT thought...

To me, the extension of that idea would be: Let's not bother training surgeons to deal with blood vessels that might burst unexpectedly.

Or air line pilots on how to get their planes out of stall situations. It will just encourage them to fly closer to the edge of the envelope.

In fact, maybe we shouldn't bother training pilots at all. If they can pass the written test (in their language of choice; never mind that the aircraft instrumentation and verbal instructions from Air Traffic Control are not given in Swahili or Urdu or whatever) and can manoeuvre the plane out onto the runway from the gate and push the 'GO' button, that should be good enough.

And let's not bother re-training them every six months either. SO expensive!

Sure, once they're 80, we can bring them in for a wee interview (no re-testing; that would be discriminatory...). If it looks like they can still walk and chew gum simultaneously, we'll let them keep flying until they die.

Or we do.

Which brings up another point. A retired RCMP officer appears to be quite exercised these days over the possibility that seniors might actually be required to be re-tested before re-issuance of their driver's licences.

As, may I remind you, used to be the case, in Ontario anyway.

He claims it would discriminate against seniors who, he also claims, still have lower crash numbers than younger drivers.

I am dead-set against discrimination under any circumstances - except when it comes to ability.

When the car you crash into might be mine or that of any of my children, I say “Let's discriminate like hell!''

Let's make sure every driver on our roads is as well-trained and well-evaluated as (s)he can possibly be.

Whether they're 16 or 86.

I have always advocated mandatory re-testing for drivers of all ages, every five years or so.

That's for everybody.

No discrimination there.

What harm could that do? Unless you believe as some do that all training is not only pointless, but dangerous.

Neurosurgery residency? What a waste of human life...

But as I also always say, we have nearly the equivalent of 9/11 every year on our roads in this country.

That is a fact no-one can deny.

When is somebody going to try to do something about that?

*****

The Toronto Auto Show starts this week.

Officially, it's called the 'Canadian International Auto Show', although hardly anybody who doesn't work for the Show organizers calls it that.

It is the biggest show in Canada, in terms of attendance, number of vehicles, and, as far as I know, square meterage.

By 'International' standards, it doesn't rank with the Detroits, Frankfurts, Shanghais or Tokyos of the show circuit.

But it does give residents of the GTA a chance to see all the new cars, trucks, SUVs and Crossovers under one roof.

One roof now that they no longer use SkyDome...

Just the North and South buildings of the Metro Convention Centre, the only buildings I have ever been in where the floor numbers go UP as you go DOWN stairs.

Whether you use the show as a prelude to shopping for a new vehicle, ogle some exotic machinery you'll probably never be able to afford, eyeball hot rods old (Cruise Nationals and Muscle Car Alley) and new (Sport Compact Evolution), or visit the tribute to Ron Fellows, one of Canada's premier race car drivers (not to mention one of the nicest people to ever walk the face of this earth), there's no shortage of things to see and do.

Click on http://www.autoshow.ca for everything else you need to know.

 

 

Driving in Winter; Driving Luxury Car Sales

Another 25 cm of Global Warming fell on Kenzie World Headquarters over the weekend.

As I always say, it's been doing that in this part of the world for, oh, 15,000 years or so.

So, why does it come as such a shock to so many people?

My focus today is on the province of New Brunswick.

Not normally a focal point for those of us who live in TCotKU (The Centre of the Known Universe).

But they're fighting a battle down there which all Canadians should be following.

At the moment, it appears the Forces of Evil are prevailing - the provincial government seems to have decided not to follow the lead of its (and our) neighbours in Quebec, and will not make winter tires mandatory.

Regular readers surely know the advantages of winter tires.

In addition to better traction in snow and on ice provided by the 'blockier' tread pattern, winter tires have a softer tread compound which does not get as hard in the cold.

This means it can conform better to irregularities in the road surface, providing better grip even on clear, dry pavement.

This is why modern 'winter' tires are called just that - they're not just 'snow' tires any more.

Depending on tire and road conditions, winter tires can mean stopping distances up to forty pecent shorter. That could be three, four car lengths. In urban traffic, that is HUGE.

Rubber chemists who formulate these compounds say that 'all-season' tires have already lost a significant amount of their flexibility and grip when the temperature drops below 7 degrees C. That's still a pretty nice late fall/early spring day.

In other words, you don't need winters as severe as Quebec's to gain tremendous benefits from them.

'All-seasons' are a compromise for summer use too, which is why I call them 'no-seasons' - they're no good in summer, and they're no good in winter.

Heck, even Pirelli, exclusive tire supplier to the Formula One circus, announced today that they will be bringing 'winter' tires to the first test sessions in Jerez Spain, in case the ambient temperature gets too cold.

The New Brunswick government claims the local economy is poor, and requiring winter tires would be too much of a burden on the populace.

Try telling that to the families of the eight teen-aged basketball players who were killed in a crash on a snowy highway in 2009.

There's no proof that winter tires would have prevented that crash.

But they sure wouldn't have hurt.

And there are hundreds, thousands, of collisions every year that could be prevented by the adoption thereof.

Not to mention millions of dollars in lost productivity due to idiots who can't get up the slightest hill in a snowstorm.

There really isn't much of a cost penalty (if any) in running winter tires either, because your summer tires in effect last twice as long.

There can be an up-front cost if you do as recommended and put the winters on a set of 'sacrificial' steel rims. This reduces damage to the alloy wheels that so many new cars come with these days, due to kissing curbs and corrosion from road salt.

And when you compare that with the cost of even a minor fender-bender (and/or the increased insurance premium) - well, winter tires are just about the best automotive bargain out there.

I personally don't need legislation to make this happen; all of the 'Kenzie Fleet' run winter tires, and always have, including the cars my children drive.

It is downright irresponsible to let your kids drive cars without proper tires, in any season.

My third daughter noted the other day that people who don't run winter tires don't 'get' it until they drive a car that DOES have them - the difference is that significant.

Over this past weekend, we had our Jetta TDI wagon on brand-new Swedish Gislaveds, which Lady Leadfoot actually thinks may not be quite as good as the old Gislaveds that were on this car before.

Number One daughter had her gasoline-powered Jetta wagon on brand new Italian-made Marangoni winters, a brand I had never even heard of before but which VW dealers seem to be stocking and promoting.

The aforementioned third daughter was in our VW Passat TDI wagon on an older set of Goodyear winters.

We all navigated the deep, freshly-fallen snow with underlying ice with little drama.

The new Marangonis were particularly sensational. If the trees had enough snow on them, that car could climb them.

At one point, I had to 'rock' the Passat with the older Goodyears a little to get it rolling. Maybe the rubber was a bit worn, or maybe it is evidence of how much progress there has been in winter tire development in just a couple of years.

My hot rod du semaine is a 560 horsepower Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet. Its Pirelli SottoZero winters, combined with its four wheel drive, could have turned it into the world's fastest snowplow.

But that's me; if other people won't take proper precautions on their own, well, that's when government has to step in.

Because their un-equipped car might well run into mine, or that of one of my kids.

Incidentally, winter tires MUST be put on all four wheels.

At a Continental Tire test a couple of years ago in Montana, we were driving what might just be the worst possible winter car - a Ford Mustang GT.

High power, high torque, rear-wheel drive - a bad combination for snowy conditions.

We drove one on all-seasons through a slalom course, one with winters on the rear only, and one with winters all around.

Perhaps needless to say, the winters-all-around car handled it fine. Some wheelspin, sure - a Mustang GT can spin its wheels on dry pavement no problem, never mind on snow.

The all-season car could barely get going (nothing is safer than staying at home!) Could barely brake or steer either.

At least once it did get going, it was balanced and predictable.

The winters-rear-only car could accelerate decently. But once you had to brake or steer - disaster. The car just plowed straight ahead. Fortunately in that case, the only damage was to some orange plastic pylons.

So, it is MORE dangerous to put winters only on the driving wheels than leaving the 'no-seasons' on all around.

I wish New Brunswick's safety crusaders all the best in this fight, and wish other provincial governments would get on board too.

I doubt anything will happen, because it seems nobody in any Ministry of Transportation in this country really gives a damn about traffic safety.

Except in Quebec.

How's that for irony?

 

***

 

Infiniti announced today that Stephen McDonnell will become managing director for Infiniti Canada, starting February 15.

This appointment has a more personal connection than most car company executive appointments, because during his 18-year career with BMW/MINI Canada, he was among other things Chief Poobah of the MINI brand when that car was our mount in the Targa Newfoundland car rally.

Stephen, as usual for denizens of the British Isles, is a motorsport freak, and was a stalwart supporter of that project.

We managed three Divisional wins for MINI, two in the lovely Cooper S JCW that also protected me during a double-end-O when I threw it into the woods at a buck-sixty in 2008, and the third in the MINI Challenge race car that replaced the crushed JCW.

His motorsport enthusiasm should be a nice fit for Infiniti considering their sponsorship of the Red Bull Formula One team, headed by apparent World Champion for Life Sebastian Vettel.

McDonnell's challenge in making Infiniti a Top Tier brand in Canada won't be an easy one.

There has never been a lot wrong with the cars. From the start, the G35/G37/Q50 (despite the ridiculous new nomenclature...) was/is by far the best-driving, most BMW-like, of the Japanese 'near-lux' products.

But cars are just hardware, mere technology, engineering, science. You can either figure that out, or you can buy it.

Creating a brand image strong enough that people will essentially over-pay to be a part of it - well, that's the trick.

Few people know that business in Canada better than Stephen.

Should be an interesting fight.

 

The Christmas That Never Was

A somewhat belated Happy New Year to you all.

I trust you all had a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year.

I think Jerry Seinfeld might have been on to something when he simply called it “Festivus''.

Today's epistle may not have a lot to do with cars, but I deserve to be cut some slack due to what has happened over the past couple of weeks.

We 'won' Christmas last year. All our sprogs and their Significant Others were at Kenzie World Headquarters; we had a tree and everything.

This year, it was looking like Lady Leadfoot, me and some cats. Everyone else was somewhere else, ranging from Chesley to Whitehorse to Canberra Australia.

No point in roasting a turkey for two. We were thinking of splitting a 12-inch turkey club from Subway around a roaring fire.

Then the lights went out.

Saturday evening before Christmas.

Trying to sleep with shotgun blasts every few minutes as trees and branches crashed to the ground.

No heat, no light, only the water that was in our storage tank, plus some drinking water we always keep on hand for just such an emergency.

No clue as to when power would come back. Estimates that it would be as much as a week proved accurate - Friday evening after Christmas for us.

So much for Festivus.

We did enjoy the irony of living in our adult child's basement - our daughter Laura's townhouse in Guelph. Her roommates, fellow U of Guelph students, were all away for the holidays so there was lots of room.

To complete the trope, I did play some video games...


Here's a shot of the main damage chez Kenzie World Headquarters. The big branch fell off a tree to the right of the barn, bounced off the barn roof (you can just see a bit of damage to the fascia board on the upper part of this photo, with the 'scar' from the tree from which the branch fell). It pinned the Dodge Journey test car, and punched a hole in the Miata's roof.

Initially, it looked as if the Dodge broke the fall of the tree so the Miata was not more badly hit! But amazingly, the Journey did not appear to be damaged at all.

Through a clever bit of engineering (above) I got two floor jacks, managed to get the big branch off the Journey, and backed it out.

Further examination once the debris was cleared showed two holes in the Miata roof, and the hood lightly dinged.

Could have been a lot worse.

Don't worry - the Hornet was IN the barn.

The barn roof needs to be re-shingled anyway, and some of the roof sheathing replaced, so it won't be much more expensive for the roofer to fix the fascia board too.

We don't know what it would have cost for an arborist to clean up the fallen trees and branches. But Bill Gardiner, our Motoring TV mechanic, texted me out of the blue and asked if I needed someone with a chain saw. Well, yes...

He said he much preferred to do that than help his wife take down their Christmas decorations. So, come on over!

On New Year's Eve day we cut up all the trees and branches that were in the driveway, yard or over the pool.

Stuff that fell in the woods stayed in the woods.

There is one big birch branch still leaning against both our power line and phone line - we were afraid to touch that one for fear of causing more damage, but it will have to be dealt with eventually.

Our beautiful little Christmas tree lies on the deck, as undecorated as the day Lady Leadfoot bought it.

Beside it sits a face cord of firewood. Maybe we will have to buy that wood stove after all.

We were actually luckier than some of our 'better-prepared' neighbours. Some of them heat with wood - one even had a propane feed to his barbecue, so that's how their turkey dinner got cooked.

(Subway was closed Christmas Day by the time we got to it, so we nuked leftover pizza...).

But those who weren't clever enough to put perishables outside or in their garages lost much of the contents of their fridges and freezers.

Our house stayed cold enough that nothing was affected.

OK, so the cats were a bit cranky. We checked on them every day, but they were fine. We couldn't take them with us because Laura has four of her own.

Our neighbours two doors down had just installed a big generator so they were OK - except a fallen tree knocked out their power and phone lines, and Hydro/Bell don't fix that. He somehow managed to find an electrician - he knows people, but you know those guys got a bit of an extra Christmas present this year... - but he needed to get some parts so they weren't back on line until three days after us.

A Christmas we won't soon forget - unfortunately...

We've never had anything remotely like this in 40 years out here. Given that they KNEW an ice storm was coming you wonder why they weren't better prepared.

Some back-up service people we heard from who came in from places like London, Listowel and even Winnipeg said they weren't contacted until Tuesday, by which time the full extent of the damage was well-known.

Sure, the service people probably got triple time and a half.

We thank them for their tremendous service at a very awkward time of year.

But emergency planning obviously needs to be re-thought. Some areas of Toronto were power-free for even longer than us in the boonies.

Our roads out here are barely clear even now. There are still big trees leaning on poles and wires.

Another foot of 'global warming' sits in my driveway as I type; I can barely imagine the added loads on the remaining trees.

It was interesting to observe traffic during the blackout. For the most part, people seemed to understand that uncontrolled intersections were to be treated as four-way stops. Everyone stops; whoever gets there first goes first; tie goes to the car on the right (easy to remember - 'right' of way...).

But you had to be careful. All it would take is one guy not playing nice and you'd have a Big Time crash, with limited emergency services to help you out.

Another aspect of driving under these conditions - we just aren't used to seeing obstructions that have fallen across the road. It wasn't a matter of only looking well down the road, but also of looking up, to see if overhanging branches were going to bash into your windshield.

Road crews couldn't keep up; I must have cleared a dozen big branches off our sideroad myself.

Long after the ice had melted off the trees, they were still falling; I guess they had been weakened, and another stiff breeze was the camel-back-breaking straw.

We have had a couple of minor power outages since.

But the worst seems behind us now.

The joys of rural living!

Or urban living, for that matter...

***

Next week, what Astronaut Extraordinaire Chris Hadfield can teach us about driving, right here on Earth.

 

Lincoln MKC Unveiled

ROUND KNOBS FOR RADIO VOLUME AND TUNING!

I know; type face that big is usually reserved for "Cure for Cancer Found'', or "Maple Leafs Win the Stanley Cup''.

But in the car game, this is huge.

And to me, it is the biggest and best news coming from the reveal of the Lincoln MKC 'premium' compact crossover.

Finally, some sanity is returning to automotive interior design.

Sure, Lincoln Design Director Max Wolff can and does wax lyrical over what he calls "our best execution yet'' of Lincoln's controversial 'split-wing' grille, and the wrap-around tailgate with full-width LED taillights which allowed his team to make the car look wider and more substantial.

It requires a huge hydroformed stamped steel panel, produced in AMINO's plant in St. Thomas Ontario (Canadian content!)

And yes, like the Ford Escape with which MKC shares its basic architecture, if you kick under the rear bumper, the tailgate opens.

Also sure, the MKC débuts a new 2.3 litre EcoBoost turbocharged direct injection engine, producing 275 horsepower and delivering what Lincoln claims is fifteen percent better fuel economy than V6 engines with comparable power.

It is the one-up option to the 240-horse 2.0 litre EcoBoost four - yes, an all-turbo engine line-up for MKC.

All that pales compared to round knobs on a car radio; the Nobel Prize Nominating Committee will be notified.

Wolff admitted that the touch screen and slider controls used on recent Fords have had heaps of abuse dumped on them, by the media (and no, not just me), by Consumers Reports, and even by customers, through J. D. Power reports and other streams of invective.

Ford's Corporate response has been that the 'Take Rate' and Customer Satisfaction scores for MyFord and MyLincoln and the associated SYNC systems have been high, sales are up across the board, so what's the problem?

The problem is, round knobs are simply better ergonomically.

This is science, people, not opinion; I don't really have to go through this all again, do I?

MyLincoln and SYNC are still here, but at least this is progress.

While the MKC is close enough to Escape to be built on the same line in Ford's Louisville Kentucky plant, the underpinnings are quite different.

For starters, chief engineer Lisa Drake notes that MKC's track is wider for a better stance on the road, both visually and handling-wise.

MKC also gets a Continuously Controlled Damping system, allowing the driver to choose from three damper settings, sport, comfort or 'normal' - I guess that last one splits the difference.

The gamut of electronic driving aids is run - Lane Keeping assist, the irrelevant and redundant Blind Spot Warning system, and a collision warning system which flashes and beeps, then brakes the car automatically if you continue to ignore it.

The 'Park Assist' system which steers your car into tight parking spots and is typically shown to your friends once then never used again, adds 'Park Out Assist' - it helps steer your way OUT of a parking space.

Really people...

MKC will be available in front-wheel drive in the US, but full-time four-wheel drive - optional down there - will be standard in Canada when the vehicle débuts in mid-year 2014.

Lincoln will also be introducing an all-new dealership look in the soon-to-be-dominant luxury market of China.

There, Lincoln is known as a 'presidential' vehicle, according to global brand director Matt VanDyk, but the actual product is barely known at all.

The dealerships will feature a 'boutique hotel' look, with warm, welcoming customer reception areas and service bays visible from the showroom through glass walls so prospects can see, says VanDyk, "...that they are not getting counterfeit parts.''

A problem in China, you say?

US dealers will be encouraged to upgrade as well, although VanDyk admits they have to sell more cars before they can convince these hard-headed business people to make the necessary investments.

He allowed that Canadian Lincoln dealers are generally in better shape that American ones; whether Lincoln's relatively better success in Canada is the chicken or the egg is a discussable point.

Lincoln is attempting to do what Cadillac has done in the past decade - rebuild a once-famous 'American' brand.

Cadillac has done it partly on the backs of existing vehicle architectures (Escalade / GMC Yukon Denali; XTS / Chevrolet Impala), and partly on unique platforms (CTS, ATS).

Lincoln so far is adapting existing Ford hardware (MKZ mid-size sedan / Ford Fusion; MKC / Escape).

But do customers care where the oily bits come from?

Will this even be a factor in whether Lincoln prospers or not?

It's among the many things that make this business so fascinating.

The answers should start to become apparent next summer.

 

Have we Lost the 'Connected' Battle?

The saddest piece of news I have heard since learning that the BMW X6 sells better than the 5 Series Touring Station Wagon did in its best year ever - the X6 is ugly and goes downhill from there - is the list of vehicles chosen as finalists for the Car of the Year by something called 'Connected World Magazine.'

You'll get my point when you read the opening paragraph of the press release:

"Distraction-free driving, remote access to vehicles, gesture-controlled infotainment systems, blind-spot detection, and remote-sensing technologies, are just a few of the features that the editors of Connected World magazine looked at when selecting the finalists for the annual Connected Car of the Year awards."

Dear me; do these people know NOTHING AT ALL about cars?

Distraction is a mental issue, not a dexterity issue. That is a fact, not an opinon. Having our cars enable all this stuff makes us more vulnerable, not less.

And anyone reading this blog already knows there are no blind spots to detect.

Again, a fact, not an opinion.

The finalists include the Dodge Dart with the 'Uconnect' system (hint: get into any Chrysler product with Uconnect, and use the voice activation system to try and find 'Dundas Street'); Chevrolet Impala with MyLink (try to do anything with any MyLink-equipped GM car driving east on a sunny afternoon - the fingerprints make it totally unreadable); and several Ford products with the speclal-place-in-hell SYNC with MyFord Touch system (I spent three hours screaming at this thing in a Lincoln MKZ Hybrid on a drive down to Detroit a couple of days ago, trying to find a particular hotel. It said "No entries for that destination." OK, so Detroit is in trouble. But are there NO HOTELS in Detroit? Not according to SYNC wth MyFord Touch.)

Talk about a Hall of Shame.

Steven Jobs has a lot more to answer for than setting computing back 30 years (do you still need two hands to 'Forward-Delete' on a Mac? Come on... ) and making the dumbest Smart Phone ever (how they sold one of those things, let alone millions, remains a mystery; wish I had his Kool Aid. Then again, Celine Dion sells a lot of records - maybe you CAN fool almost all of the people almost all of the time.)

But Jobs made the touch screen a 'thing'. And while you can get used to a touch screen on a phone when sitting at a desk, it simply has no place in an automobile.

I know this makes me sound like a grumpy old man.

Yes, I am grumpy. About this, anyway.

Yes, I am old - older than I was, which of course beats the only available alternative.

But ergonomics is NOT opinion; it is science.

And these systems simply cannot be made safe to work when you're careening down a highway at 100-plus km/h.

Any control which requires you to look away from the road is a bad control, especially when that same function can be done using the shape and feel of a physical knob or lever which does not require visual confirmation.

Yes, we do have more functions in our cars these days. We probably shouldn't, but we do.

But there has to be a better way.

Voice activation is supposed to be that 'better way'. But after at least ten years of intense development, they still are pretty awful, witness my Uconnect-Dundas Street thing.

And again, the distraction involved is mental, not physical.

Collectively, we managed to beat back 'talking cars' in the '80s.

But have we lost the 'connected' battle?

Probably.

But there has recently been one glimmer of hope.

On that previously-mentioned trip to Detroit to see an at-this-point-I-am-embargoed-from-telling-you-about-it vehicle, the chief designer for this automoible division pointed to two lovely shiny round chrome knobs on the centre stack.

They are for radio volume and station tuning.

Nobel Prize Committee, come and see!

He said all future products from this brand will follow this path, in response to massive negative feedback from the media (er, that would be me among others, athough presumably not 'Connected World Magazine') and, more importantly,  customers.

What's next? A slot in the dash where you can put the 'key fob' so you don't lose it when it falls down between the seat and the centre console? Geez; maybe you could even twist it to activate the ignition so you wouldn't need that extra push button...

One of the hardest things for me to learn in this game has been that the customer is always right, even when (s)he's wrong.

That (s)he seems to be recognizing - even if only in this one tiny radio knob example - that maybe (s)e HAS been wrong and is starting to come around, reaffirms my faith in humanity.

It's either that or we go for the Google driver-less car.

And if THAT doesn't scare you, nothing will.

Speaking of Driving with your Headlights On All The Time...

...whichever Ontario Provincial Police officer was driving westbound on the 401 near McCowan Road at 4 p.m. last Friday afternoon, come on!

I know police cars have their Daytime Running Lights (DRL) disabled because they might have to sneak up on the Bad Guys during a stake-out or whatever.

But you weren't sneaking up on anybody. It was broad daylight, and you didn't have your roof lights or anything on, so obviously you were not in a hurry.

But NO lights at all?

Like I said, come on.

Flick the little switch on the dashboard.

Earlier last week, I was driving in Tennessee on a Nissan event. It always feels a bit odd to drive in the USA because few cars have DRL, and up here we get used to seeing cars coming towards us with lights on.

The former editor of Car and Driver magazine seemed to think DRL was some sort of communist plot, but I digress...

It was raining for much of the time I was there, and during those times I actually saw far more cars with full headlights on there than I typically see here.

Tennessee is one of 27 of those United States of America which has a 'wipers on, lights on' law - if rain or fog requires the wipers to be operating, this law requires you to also switch on your full headlights.

While headlights on all the time regardless of time of day or weather is still the only truly sensible way to do it, maybe 'wipers on, lights on' is a bit more sensible than Daytime Running Lights.

As I have said many times, with DRL you do see light on the road ahead of you, and your dash is lit up, so there's no obvious indication that you have no taillights - which, in the vast majority of cars, you do not with DRL.

Especially on freeways where we do so much of our driving, and at higher speeds, it might be argued that taillights are even more important than headlights.

Since our federal government won't do the right thing and make DRL also work the taillights - or at least not allow the dash to be lit up under DRL, which might give brain-dead drivers half a clue - and since most car companies won't do the right thing and stop letting their customers drive around in poor weather conditions as sitting ducks for other drivers who can't see them, maybe our provincial governments have to step up with amendments to the individual Highway Traffic Acts (those being a Provincial/Territorial responsibility) to make 'wipers on, lights on' mandatory.

No, wait - those are the same people who paint the road markings so the right lane keeps disappearing, and who keep building stoplight-controlled intersections instead of roundabouts.

Geez - does nobody give a damn about traffic safety?

Two thousand five hundred deaths a year? September 11, every single year?

That's acceptable?

Like I said, come on.

 

Blue is the New Green

Many car makers are adopting the colour 'blue' to indicate that their cars are 'green'. 

Don't ask me why; ask their marketing departments.

The new Honda Accord plug-in Hybrid is one such.

It even introduces itself to you by having much of the chrome trim around the grille coloured blue.

Unfortunately this looks exactly like the protective tape that comes on the door handles of your refrigerator when it is delivered to your home.

I wonder how many Accord Hybrid buyers will try to peel this off when they get their cars home?

Not that there are likely to be many of them, based on my experience in the car - but that's a tale for another day...

Physicians - and Auto Journalists - Heal Thyselves

Again, I apologize for being pretty much incommunicado during the past week. I was at the AJAC Test Fest, evaluating all the new cars and trucks to determine the Car and Utility Vehicle of the Year, and I just never seemed to find the time.

And yes, I recognize I used that photo before...

I must have driven about 50 cars during the week. All my colleagues were doing the same thing. And in all except one of the vehicles I got into, the side-view mirrors were adjusted incorrectly.

As regular readers know, there is no such thing as a 'blind spot' if your side-view mirrors are adjusted far enough outwards.

But only one of all of the previous drivers of these vehicles had done this right.

This 'crank your mirrors out' thing isn't just something I made up. Virtually every advanced driver training program in the world teaches this technique.

It isn't merely 'opinion' either. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) produced a paper several years ago, proving geometrically that this is the only way to do it.

Yes, it takes some getting used to.

But so does driving a car.

This is a fundamental issue. There is no room for argument here.

So, why aren't my colleagues doing it correctly?

I have no idea.

Unless the car itself doesn't allow the mirrors to be adjusted far enough out. Several Mercedes-Benz models at Test Fest suffered from this. For a company which prides itself on safety, this is inexcusable.

While I'm on my soap-box, very few of the test cars I saw driving in and out of the parking lot had their full headlights on - they were relying only on Daytime Running Lights which, in the vast majority of cases, do not illuminate the taillights.

It was cloudy, gloomy and raining for much of this week, exactly the type of weather where taillights are perhaps even more critical for being visible than headlights.

Come on, people. Full lights on, all the time.

Be safe.

Nothing else makes sense.

And finally, every single car under review at Test Fest was backed into its parking space by the event's organizers, because it is unquestionably the safest way to do it.

Unless it's a 'pull-through' spot - and there were none here - you either have to back in to the spot when you arrive, or you have to back out when you leave. It takes anyone with half a functioning brain cell only about half a second to figure that backing IN is the only way to do it.

When you drive past the spot, you can see it's clear, and you can back in safely.

More important, when you have to pull out, you have full visibility of what's coming towards you - backing out into unknown traffic is obviously more dangerous.

So the test cars were all parked correctly.

And with only one exception I spotted - a red Range Rover Sport on Wednesday; you must know who you are - every test car was backed in to its spot when the journalist returned it.

But in the parking area where the journos parked their own cars, I'd say over half of them were driven frontwards into their spots.

At the end of the day, they had to back out into traffic, which often included the golf carts which were ferrying us around the property.

Major danger.

Even with the examples right in front of them all day long, most were STILL doing it wrong.

Come on, people.

Mirrors Out.

Headlights On.

Back In.

We know many of our readers/viewers have not learned these techniques, largely because they have never been properly taught how to drive.

But we automotive journalists are supposed to be the experts.

Why aren't we setting the best examples in all aspects of driving?