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I will not rant about Pittsburgh drivers.
I will, however, speculate that technology has actually made things worse, not better. Consider: driving in challenging conditions has two components, keeping your car under control and interacting with other drivers (enabling them to keep their cars under control, or at least staying out of the way in case they don't). So, for example, if you're in 2mph stop-and-go traffic and climbing a hill, you don't want to stop on ice if you can avoid it. It's better to go 2mph than to alternate between 5mph and 0. If you do need to stop, it's generally easy to tell if you're about to stop on ice -- sight, sound, and feel all tell you this, if you know what to look for. So this means that it's dumb to tailgate, because you reduce the options for both of you. You don't need to leave huge gaps in traffic, but a few feet can do wonders. Stuff like that.
So where does technology fit in? In this age of automatic transmissions with anti-lock brakes and 4-wheel drive and all sorts of other innovations, we now seem to have a crop of drivers who think they can drive in anything, who have lost their own skills for those cases where they're wrong, and who have forgotten that there are other people on the roads who don't necessarily have the same gadgetry, and are just relying on skill.
I'm a decent driver. I am neither hyper-cautious nor reckless, and it has been 15 years since I had an accident due to slick roads. I know how to listen to my car and detect problems like patches of ice in time to do something about them, at least some of the time. And if this means that I stop, in stop-and-go traffic, 5 feet back from the next guy because of the patch of ice I'd be sitting on otherwise, or because I can tell that he's going to roll back when he moves, I should not have to be punished for this sin with a tailgater riding his horn.
I will, however, speculate that technology has actually made things worse, not better. Consider: driving in challenging conditions has two components, keeping your car under control and interacting with other drivers (enabling them to keep their cars under control, or at least staying out of the way in case they don't). So, for example, if you're in 2mph stop-and-go traffic and climbing a hill, you don't want to stop on ice if you can avoid it. It's better to go 2mph than to alternate between 5mph and 0. If you do need to stop, it's generally easy to tell if you're about to stop on ice -- sight, sound, and feel all tell you this, if you know what to look for. So this means that it's dumb to tailgate, because you reduce the options for both of you. You don't need to leave huge gaps in traffic, but a few feet can do wonders. Stuff like that.
So where does technology fit in? In this age of automatic transmissions with anti-lock brakes and 4-wheel drive and all sorts of other innovations, we now seem to have a crop of drivers who think they can drive in anything, who have lost their own skills for those cases where they're wrong, and who have forgotten that there are other people on the roads who don't necessarily have the same gadgetry, and are just relying on skill.
I'm a decent driver. I am neither hyper-cautious nor reckless, and it has been 15 years since I had an accident due to slick roads. I know how to listen to my car and detect problems like patches of ice in time to do something about them, at least some of the time. And if this means that I stop, in stop-and-go traffic, 5 feet back from the next guy because of the patch of ice I'd be sitting on otherwise, or because I can tell that he's going to roll back when he moves, I should not have to be punished for this sin with a tailgater riding his horn.