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Government has been telling us that we need to improve fuel economy by our actions – inflate our tires, buy electric vehicles, etc.

You’ll notice that anytime the government discusses fuel economy, it is always in the context of what other people or groups need to do; the government is never responsible.

I was thinking about that the other day as I sat in my car, idling at a red light and watching the green light’s empty lanes. Why did I have to sit there and waste gas? Because the government wants other people, not the government, to have to act to improve fuel economy.

More prevalent than solid-red left arrows though are the 4-way stops. What contributes not only to poor fuel economy but also to higher maintenance costs for a vehicle? Stop-and-go driving.

I bet the government could improve my fuel economy if it upgraded a bunch of intersections from 4-way stops to roundabouts. Then I wouldn’t have to stop. Coasting through a right turn, rather than coming to a complete stop and then having to accelerate again, would reduce my dependency on foreign oil.

And then are some T intersections where the right turn traffic has to come to a complete stop because the light is red, even though their action would not interfere with the green-light traffic.

Why not put up a right-turn green arrow (that would be on when the cross street has a green light) so that we don’t need to burn more gas than we need to?

Come on, government, do your part too.

One of the basic things you learn during driver’s ed is how to make a 3-point turn.

I have a problem with the 3-point turn.

Not doing the turn – the problem is with the name.

First off, here is a little video is made showing how a 3-point turn works. I did an cursory internet search for an animated diagram of 3-point turn, but didn’t find any. So I made one myself. It is not a very polished animation, because I drew the frames individually and pieced them together. I bet the better-looking videos out there use animation-rendering software, which I don’t have because I’m not planning on doing much animation.

Now, having watched the video, you can see my problem with the name. Specifically, the number given to the maneuver.
Point #1 is obvious – it’s where the car stops and reverses direction.
Point #2 is also obvious – it’s where the car stops and reverses direction again.
Point #3 – I just made it up. I had to put a third point in there somewhere to make it a 3-point turn, but there is no place it fits.

Where is the third point in a 3-point turn?
(more…)

There’s a four-way stop on our way to church. Most of the time, the people who go through that intersection are familiar with it and know how to handle a 4-way stop – taking turns and all that.

But last week, there were some people who did not quite understand when they could go. In the interest of the public good, I am writing this blog post to educate drivers who may be wondering about when to drive through the intersection.

Everyone knows how the 4-way stop should work – a person goes in the order he arrived at the intersection. First one there has the right of way. If two people get there at the same time, the more aggressive driver gets to go first.

But aggressiveness was not the problem we had that night. People were not smart. They weren’t bad, just very inefficient.

Here’s a diagram of the set of cars just before it was my turn:

Car #1 was supposed to go first, which he did.
Car #2 was supposed to go second, which he did.
Car #3 was supposed to go third, which he did but that doesn’t matter for this.

The problem was that Car #2 waited until Car #1 had gone completely through the intersection. You’re both going straight through; your paths will not cross – start driving as soon as you can.

I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it, but then it was my turn. I’m Car #1:

We were turning left, and the guy to our left was turning right. We should be able to both go at the same time without any conflict. I was before him, so I went. He was next after me, but he waited until I had finished my turn before he started driving.

While that’s technically correct, it is also technically annoying. Sometimes there are 15-20 cars in line. If everyone waits until the other car has gone completely through the intersection, the guy at the end of the line could be idling for twice as long as he should be.

Take advantage of your blocking, people.

If I were Car #2, I would have made my turn as soon as Car #1 started turning. If I were Car #2 and the order was really 1-3-2, I still would have gone as soon as Car #1 started turning. Some people might think that is cutting, but he can’t go until Car #1 gets out of his way. Keep the pipeline full. Out-of-order execution makes microprocessors run more efficiently; the same concept can make intersections better.

Conclusion:
My wife and I agree that it should be made into a roundabout. That way, we wouldn’t have to stop much of the time.

I just had my second drive with rain-sensing wipers, and they are the greatest thing since intermittent wipers.

Before I bought my first car (at age 21 … my first motorcycle was at age 18, but that’s another story), I used to think that car ads were wasting their space by promoting intermittent wipers. Not only did all cars have them anyway, but even if they did have just off-low-high, the driver could just switch between off and low to handle inconsistent rain.

Then I got my first car. It was about 10 years old at the time, and I think the person who ordered the car forgot to hand in the page with the options checked. If it was optional or a convenience or a luxury, it was not on that car.

As you may have guessed, that car did not have intermittent wipers. After a winter and spring with snow and rain, I vowed never again to mock intermittent wipers (wiper no wiping, wiper no …). Okay, maybe I didn’t vow, but my appreciation of their usefulness greatly increased. Having to adjust the wiper switch every 15 seconds gets very annoying after a while.

Fast forward, umm, a few years to this year and now I’m in a vehicle (no, not mine, it’s for work) that has the rain-sensing wipers. I didn’t know the vehicle had the fancy-pants wipers (someone else was driving, otherwise I would have seen and used the wiper controls). All I noticed was that the driver wasn’t doing anything other than driving (both hands on the steering wheel) and the wipers were speeding up and slowing down based on how much water was on the windshield.

The intermittent wipers were a good improvement over the previous standard wipers, and the smart wipers are just as good a step after that. These days, I notice that I adjust the intermittent speed as the rain increases or decreases or stops. With the sensing wipers, you don’t even have to turn them on or off – just leave them on the automatic setting. When the rain starts, the wipers start going automatically, and when the rain stops, well, you get the picture.

Just do not, I repeat, do not, forget to turn them off when you go into a car wash.

Oh, if you’re looking at a vehicle, make sure that you can turn off the feature easily. If there’s one thing we learned from Wall-E, it’s that automatic features must have a manual override switch.

“When He set a limit for the rain And a course for the thunderbolt,”
– Job 28:26

Do not try to guess what the other driver expects you to do. Maintain your course and speed and let the other drivers work around you.

Last week, I was commuting home from work and I was about to enter the freeway portion of the trip. The service drive is somewhat above the freeway at that point, so I had a good view of the traffic that was already there. As I was coming down the ramp, I aimed for a spot just behind someone in the right lane. Unfortunately, they thought I was aiming for a spot in front of them. I think they were trying to be nice, so they slowed down to let me in.

But I wasn’t going fast enough to get in that spot. I couldn’t merge because the helpful car was right in my way, and I couldn’t slow down because there was someone just behind me, also wanted to enter the freeway. So I had to stomp on the accelerator and cut in front of the person before the short entrance lane ended. If I had some nice sporty car, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But I have a Buick. Not exactly suitable for quick maneuvers like that.

And that reminded me of a similar problem we had a number of years ago. Back at least a decade ago, my dad was driving the family back (eastbound) from a trip to visit my sister (who at the time was the only child of his who was married and out of the house). Part of the journey involved a rural two-lane road with a few long straightaways. The speed limit was 55 mph, and we were behind someone who was going slower. So dad pulled into the other lane (westbound) to pass the person.

The person was driving slowly, but not extremely slowly, so it took a few seconds to get next to the car. At that point, an oncoming car was approaching. Dad judged that there would not be time to get around the slow person before we crashed, so he slowed down to get back behind the slow person. Unfortunately, the slow person was trying to be nice and let dad in ahead of him (or was it a her? I don’t remember). So the oncoming car was even closer, but dad could not get back into the lane because the other car was trying to guess what dad wanted but was getting it wrong. After a cycle of slow down, speed up, slow down – matched exactly by the other car, we finally got back into the eastbound lane before the westbound car met us.

So if you ever see me driving and it seems like I’m not being courteous by slowing down or speeding up for other people, it’s not because I’m being mean. I’m just trying to avoid accidents.