Category: Automobiles

Driver’s Ed

I had to attend six hours of Driver Improvement School (DIS) in Albuquerque this week and wanted to share with the NewMexiKen readers a few facts I learned in case you don’t have the occasion to attend:

  • In Albuquerque it is illegal to make a U-turn at commercial intersections (defined as any intersection that has a commercial establishment on any of the four corners and/or has a green arrow left turn light).
  • The recently installed traffic light cameras and recently implemented van cameras result in fines between $100 and $400 but are not reported to the state. They are violations of a city ordinance and are producing an incredible amount of revenue to the city, but do not have the same consequences as state violations. (Seems to make you think that if you can afford the fines it is OK to speed and run lights.)
  • There is a spray that you can place on your license plate that prevents the cameras from reading the plate.
  • One way to stay awake while driving when you get tired is to “smoke a joint” (which the same participant that shared this with the class proceeded to do at the break in the parking lot).
  • I seemed to be in the minority of participants because I did not carry a gun in my vehicle.
  • Last and one of the more important items I learned was that if you don’t speed on airport ramps you don’t have to attend DIS.

I must admit, I did not learn all of the above items from the instructor and the class was certainly not boring. In all sincerity, the class was a reminder that we should all slow down, be courteous to other drivers and be more attentive while driving.

[Post by a NewMexiKen reader. Personally, I just pay the fine and stay ignorant.]

Cars and trucks

America’s most popular vehicles (based on new sales) July 2006:

Ford F Series…68,892
Chevrolet Silverado…66,583
Toyota Camry…41,892
Toyota Corolla…41,800
Honda Accord…38,043
Dodge Ram…32,793
Honda Civic…28,607
Chevrolet Impala…26,480
Chevrolet Cobalt…23,961
GMC Sierra…22,947
Honda Pilot…19,490
Honda Odyssey…18,322

New Mexico’s worst intersections

New Mexico’s ten worst intersections ranked by number of collisions. The first nine of these are in Albuquerque, the last is in Española.

Intersection Total 2004 2003 2002
Coors & Paseo del Norte 430 187 123 120
Montgomery & Wyoming 342 92 130 120
Montgomery & San Mateo 339 99 118 122
Jefferson & Paseo del Norte 321 129 105 87
Coors & Irving 294 104 93 97
Coors Bypass & Ellison 288 95 101 92
Coors Bypass & Seven-Bar Loop 262 82 80 100
Coors & Quail 254 103 80 71
Montgomery & Eubank 227 83 71 73
NM 584 & Riverside Dr. 224 74 71 79

Update: Here are Albuquerque’s 25 busiest intersections, ranked by daily volume in 2004. Those listed above are indicated with #.

  1. #MONTGOMERY/WYOMING 85,264
  2. #MONTGOMERY/SAN MATEO 84,999
  3. MENAUL/SAN MATEO 84,111
  4. #JEFFERSON/PASEO DEL NORTE 83,830
  5. COORS/OURAY 79,420
  6. PAN AMERICAN WEST/PASEO DEL NORTE 77,957
  7. MENAUL/WYOMING 77,856
  8. LOMAS/SAN MATEO 77,321
  9. #COORS/IRVING 77,170
  10. #COORS/QUAIL 74,201
  11. LOUISIANA/MENAUL 73,406
  12. COORS/MONTANO 72,195
  13. ACADEMY/WYOMING 71,609
  14. EUBANK/LOMAS 71,095
  15. #EUBANK/MONTGOMERY 70,443
  16. CENTRAL/SAN MATEO 69,124
  17. #COORS BYPASS/ELLISON 68,586
  18. COORS/COORS BYPASS 66,181
  19. EUBANK/MENAUL 65,679
  20. LOMAS/WYOMING 65,345
  21. PAN AMERICAN EAST/PASEO DEL NORTE 64,031
  22. JUAN TABO/LOMAS 63,574
  23. CANDELARIA/SAN MATEO 63,514
  24. MONTGOMERY/PAN AMERICAN EAST 63,222
  25. CARLISLE/MENAUL 62,935

Source: MRCOG

Paseo del Norte and Coors is not among the busiest, though it has had the most collisions. Beware! (And there is a traffic camera there to nab light runners.)

Stuff from reading the Times

Trash talking isn’t so bad in American sports, just gay-baiting.

McRae said that when he was playing, much of the trash talk he heard was about sexual orientation.

“There were probably more comments about that than anything else because of just the way it is in our society,” he said. “If you knew or suspected a guy was gay, you would try to get under his skin.”

A Mouth Shouldn’t Run Too Far

The IRS is firing the tax attorneys but cheating is out of control.

[Interesting that this article is by the same reporter as the one about firing half the tax attorneys, but no mention of it.]

So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes.
…

Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated.

Tax Cheats Called Out of Control

Japanese manufacturers now make more cars in the U.S. than they do in Asia.

Since then, Japanese production has expanded on every major continent. According to 2005 figures, the most recent breakdown from the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association has 4.08 million vehicles made in the United States, 3.96 million in Asia, 1.55 million in Europe, 645,000 in Latin America, 226,000 in Africa, 135,000 in Australia and 10,500 in the Middle East.

Japan Makes More Cars Elsewhere

[Update: Later Tuesday it was announced that Toyota had passed Ford in July to become the second largest carmaker in the U.S., after G.M. Honda could pass Daimler-Chrysler for fourth place soon.]

Henry Ford

One of the most remarkable Americans, Henry Ford, was born on this date in 1863. The following is and excerpt from Mr. Ford’s New York Times obituary in 1947:

Renting a one-story brick shed in Detroit, Mr. Ford spent the year 1902 experimenting with two- cylinder and four-cylinder motors. By that time the public had become interested in the speed possibilities of the automobile, which was no longer regarded as a freak. To capitalize on this interest, he built two racing cards, the “999” and the “Arrow,” each with a four-cylinder engine developing eighty horsepower. The “999,” with the celebrated Barney Oldfield at its wheel, won every race in which it was entered.

The resulting publicity helped Mr. Ford to organize the Ford Motor Company, which was capitalized at $100,000, although actually only $28,000 in stock was subscribed. From the beginning Mr. Ford held majority control of this company. In 1919 he and his son, Edsel, became its sole owners, when they bought out the minority stockholders for $70,000,000.

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company sold 1,708 two-cylinder, eight horsepower automobiles. Its operations were soon threatened, however, by a suit for patent infringement brought against it by the Licensed Association of Automobile Manufacturers, who held the rights to a patent obtained by George B. Selden of Rochester, N.Y., in 1895, covering the combination of a gasoline engine and a road locomotive. After protracted litigation, Mr. Ford won the suit when the Supreme Court held that the Selden patent was invalid.

From the beginning of his industrial career, Mr. Ford had in mind the mass production of a car which he could produce and sell at large quantity and low cost, but he was balked for several years by the lack of a steel sufficiently light and strong for his purpose. By chance one day, picking up the pieces of a French racing car that had been wrecked at Palm Beach, he discovered vanadium steel, which had not been manufactured in the United States up to that time.

With this material he began the new era of mass production. He concentrated on a single type of chassis, the celebrated Model T, and specified that “any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.” On Oct. 1, 1908, he began the production of Model T, which sold for $850. The next year he sold 10,600 cars of this model. Cheap and reliable, the car had a tremendous success. In seven years he built and sold 1,000,000 Fords; by 1925 he was producing them at the rate of almost 2,000,000 a year.

He established two cardinal economic policies during this tremendous expansion: the continued cutting of the cost of the product as improved methods of production made it possible, and the payment of higher wages to his employes. By 1926 the cost of the Model T had been cut to $310, although it was vastly superior to the 1908 model. In January, 1914, he established a minimum pay rate of $5 a day for an eight-hour day, thereby creating a national sensation. Up to that time the average wage throughout his works had been $2.40 a nine-hour day.

The entire obituary is really rather fascinating reading.

Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World (2003) is considered a good biography of Ford and the Ford Motor Company.

Why me?

For the third time in the life of NewMexiKen’s five-year-old Lexus it had to pass an emissions test to renew the registration. Each time, with me $25 or $30 poorer, it’s passed — of course it does, I’ve read that 95% of newer vehicles do.

So yesterday, I went to a local iffy lube type place where they weren’t busy, were very friendly and got me out in less than 10 minutes. I came home and detached the coupon from the test results, made out the check for $51 for one year’s registration, and mailed the envelope off. With tax, that’s nearly $80 for everything, but that’s a lot less than many states I know, so I was glad to have one more thing off my list.

Then this morning I get ready to put the rest of the emissions paperwork in with the registration and insurance forms in the glove compartment. I glance at it. There’s a typo in the license plate number.

Three letters, three numbers, how hard can it be to get it right? And why didn’t I have sense enough to check it over?

How much would you like to wager this will result in a trip to the dreaded MVD before it’s over?

Guilty pleasure

Dan Neil takes a Mercedes CLK 63 out for a spin on the Autobahn.

The early morning sky is gray, the traffic is light. I have the top down and it’s rather windy in the cockpit. Actually, at a buck-55, it’s like being inside God’s own novelty whistle.

No question about it. Fast feels good. No matter what else you may think about high-performance automobiles — that they are reprehensible gas guzzlers, that they are compensations for guys who shower with their shorts on — no one can reasonably dispute speed’s pure, gleeful joy. If movement is action, fast feels like you’re accomplishing something. Fast is the kinesthetic equivalent of beautiful.

More than one dynasty at work here

From an editorial, The MG Dynasty in today’s New York Times:

A Toyota assembled in Kentucky is now old news. Some of us can even live with the idea of a Jaguar sold by Ford. But it’s going to take a while to get used to the thought of an MG coupe built by a Chinese auto company in a factory halfway between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

Luckily, we will have a couple of years to think about it before the first vehicle — a newly designed MG TF Coupe — rolls out of the Nanjing Automobile Group’s new plant in Ardmore, Okla. When that day comes, it will be the first new version of the MG in the United States since 1980 — and from the first auto assembly plant built in this country by a Chinese carmaker.

The Times editorial, which continues, does not mention a most interesting aspect of the plan, however. The land on which the factory is to be built is former Indian land being re-acquired (and put into trust) by the Chickasaw Nation.

The interstate, a nearby railway, an abundance of cheap land and the tax advantages of partnering with a tribe make southern Oklahoma an attractive alternative to the Metroplex, McCaleb said.

This diversification is made possible by the Dawes Act of 1887, which eliminated Oklahoma’s reservations and carved up tribal land into individual allotments.

However, a tribe can buy land anywhere within its former reservation and ask the federal government to put it into trust for the tribe’s benefit.

That gives the tribe immense advantages for economic development.

NewsOK.com

Before the Rumble Seat

Dan Neil takes a replica of the world’s first automobile for a spin. A good report, with history, technology and appreciation. An excerpt:

Fettled in his modest workshop in Mannheim, Germany, Benz’s Patent Motorwagen didn’t look much like a car as we know it today. To the town’s mildly alarmed burghers, it didn’t even immediately suggest a horseless carriage, whatever that was. With its spoked rear wheels and tuck-and-roll upholstered seat, it looked rather more like a park bench gone walkabout. But it was, in all the ways that matter, the first proper automobile. This was the life-evoking lightning stroke in the primordial pond, the rudimentary sorting of nucleotides from which a new species would arise. It was only a matter of time before real estate agents driving three-ton Escalades would overrun the Westside.

Automotive history begins with the 1886 Benz Motorwagen. And here I am, driving it down the quiet streets of Pasadena.

Best line of the day, so far

“This is a lot of gear for a sub-$40,000 car. To name but a few items: stability control, six air bags, xenon headlights, tire-pressure monitoring, power moon roof, heated outside mirrors with reverse tilt-down, speed-sensitive wipers, leather heated seats, and enough bins, compartments and squirrel holes to carry Rush Limbaugh’s entire personal stash.”

Dan Neil in a rave review of the new Acura RDX.

“The car will monitor its position relative to the sun and compensate for solar heating on one side of the cabin.”

Don’t drink a fifth on the fourth

NewMexiKen read many years ago that traffic fatalities were not particularly more significant on holiday weekends than any other days. Safety advocates just had us all thinking they were with their public service advertising campaigns and police check points.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety confirms this. For the period 1986 through 2002 there were an average of 117 traffic fatalities a day in the United States. And, while July 4 was the worst day of the year with an average of 161 fatalities, 158 people were killed on any given Saturday. July 4 is the only date in the year less safe than any Saturday.

The worst dates:
July 4 — 161
July 3 — 149
December 23 — 145
August 3 — 142
January 1 — 142

Days of the week:
Sunday — 132
Monday — 96
Tuesday — 95
Wednesday — 98
Thursday — 105
Friday — 133
Saturday — 158

Of course, maybe the holidays remain relatively safe because of all the attention placed on them.

Source: The New York Times

Someone is a real ass

NewMexiKen discovered a three-foot long scratch along the left side of my Lexus yesterday. It’s light, but it won’t rub out and it had to have been done on purpose. “Keyed” is, I believe, the expression.

To which I can only quote the wisdom of Vincent Vega: “What’s more chickenshit than fucking with a man’s automobile? I mean, don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle.” (Pulp Fiction)

Red Light Cameras

Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano tells us about cameras and red light citations. It’s quite interesting. He begins:

One item that has come up in Santa Fe County recently is the use of Red Light Cameras at Santa Fe County intersections. The use of these cameras to issue official criminal traffic citations is illegal in the state of New Mexico. State Law requires citations to be given by a uniformed certified officer who must witness the infraction. The only exception is in the case of an accident when the officer can rely on evidence at the scene and witness statements to issue the citations. So how does Albuquerque use the Red Light cameras to issue citations? They do this through a civil action.

The Sheriff goes on to note: “In February of 2006 a traffic camera at Coors and Paseo del Norte caught 1,353 motorists driving through the intersection after the light turned red. Assuming that all citations were first time violators the city raised $338,250 in one month at one location.”

Taking their toll

It’s not drunken driving or speeding. It’s not unlatched seat belts or inexperienced teenage drivers. The greatest danger on the nation’s highways is at a place where people are expected to be slowing down: tollbooths.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said toll plazas are the most deadly areas on highways, and said their design standards have gone unregulated since they were introduced 50 years ago. …

Toll plazas account for 49 percent of all interstate accidents in Illinois and 38 percent in New Jersey, according to an NTSB report.

Examiner.com

Commute sentence

Auto repair shop chain Midas has declared Dave Givens to be the ultimate road warrior, with a daily round trip of 372 miles, earning him the America’s Longest Commute award. Every day, Givens drives from his 7.5-acre ranch in Mariposa, CA to his electrical engineering job at Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA (Google Local says that it’s “only” 159 miles one way, but maybe Givens takes a few trips around the block at either end because he likes to drive so much). The stated reason for this is the enjoyment he receives from living in a rural area, although we’re not sure how much time is left after his seven-hour commute. All that time is spent in a 2005 Honda Accord, which already has nearly 75,000 miles on the clock after nine months of ownership.

Autoblog

Worst analogy of the day, so far

“[A]bout as popular as hobo-flavored mouthwash.”

— Dan Neil, in a review of the Honda Fit subcompact. He goes on to add:

I spent a week with the Fit Sport and my one-word review is “charming.” Our test car was equipped with the optional five-speed automatic with paddle-shift switches on the steering wheel, which makes the car drive just like a Formula 1 car, give or take 900 horsepower.

We call ’em speed humps in New Mexico

Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano talks about speed humps:

One time in Eldorado I received numerous complaints over speeding in the area. The next day we had deputies giving tickets in the area and I drove up to see how it was going. I stopped to backup one of my deputies and after we approched the car I heard the ladies name and realized she had called me complaining the day before. She was furious as she recieved her citation.

The Sheriff goes on to explain why he dislikes the humps. Two excerpts:

The Sheriff’s office, Fire Department officials and others opposed the humps over the last year citing the problems they cause emergency response in the areas which have them. Officially I oppose humps for those reasons, personally I oppose humps for other reasons.

What makes speed humps effective ? The fact that they reduce the amount of traffic on a street in which they have been installed. People whether they commonly speed or not will avoid roads which have them. This causes side or nearby roads to have increased traffic usually causing the addition of traffic calming devices on these roads as well. It causes congestion on nearby roads by increasing the traffic on side roads and decreasing traffic on the roads with the humps.

And guess what? According to the Sheriff, speed humps decrease home values!

My other car is a plane

The always delightful, always on target Dan Neil:

Mercedes-Benz executives offer this wholly meritless defense: Many of its customers leave the brand because the company does not offer a full-size SUV that meets their needs, which is to say, a seven-passenger, 17-foot 4×4 with a 9,300-pound towing capacity. At this point in the presentation in Napa Valley last week, execs showed slides of the GL pulling a 30-foot boat. So there you have it: Mercedes’ audience of water-skiing polygamists is underserved.

Needs? Did the man say needs? OK, then. I propose needs testing for the purchase of such a vehicle. You must have a Chris-Craft and three or more school-age children in the yard to qualify. Your vehicle must do double-duty as, um, a bookmobile.

Need has very little to do with it. This segment is about want, naked and unquenchable, I-got-mine-you-get-bent appetite. It’s well established that the vast majority of these vehicles never touch gravel, never carry more than a couple of people, and never tow anything heavier than the weight of their owner’s childhood traumas.