Radio Free Autobahn
June 9th, 2007
Every city has a distinct operative automotive culture, completely maddening in its own unique way.
Idiots, Start Your Engines
by Jaroslav Dampfstain
In the weeks immediately following September 11, something unexpectedly honorable happened on our nation’s roads: Presumably out of respect for the firefighters, paramedics and other emergency workers who perished and risked their lives during the collapse of the Twin Towers, American drivers actually pulled to the roadside for on-call fire trucks and ambulances. On more than one occasion, I even watched a driver salute at an emergency vehicle as it passed.
The flipside to this touching moment in our national driving record is that the worst attack in U.S. history was required to remind the population of the basic rules of the road. However, before the year was out—and possibly because drivers were tired of donating loose change to pedestrian firefighters, rubber boots in hand—citizens once again found themselves tailgating emergency vehicles, hoping to gain some infinitesimal edge over their fellow patriot motorists.
Every city has a distinct operative automotive culture, completely maddening in its own unique way. In friendly Charlottesville, Virginia, I have watched cars with the right of way screech to a halt on a busy street so that a patient pedestrian yielding properly to a red light can cross the street. In cities like Rome and Chicago, drivers see themselves as stampeding elephants in a Kenyan game preserve: If a herd of Thomson’s gazelles or field-tripping sixth graders gets in their way, the result is a well-deserved Darwinian street sweeping.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, drivers have the inexplicable behavior of randomly pausing at green lights, leading one to believe that a stagnant gene pool has left the entire population red-green colorblind. Similarly impossible to understand, drivers in Washington, D.C. abandon their automobiles in the middle of the road during inclement winter weather, forcing brave motorists to reenact icy versions of the Tom Cruise minivan mad dash in War of the Worlds.
Then there’s South Carolina. Isn’t there always the Palmetto State?
The GMAC Insurance Group recently ranked South Carolina the 17th dumbest state in the nation in terms of driving knowledge. Last year, South Carolina was merely the 20th most stupid state in the nation. The three-rung drop was primarily due to across-the-border ignorance by the state’s citizenry concerning the following basic driving facts: (a) drivers should not follow so close to the car in front of them so as to be able to stick a banana in the tailpipe; and (b) a yellow light is not an invitation to make one’s engine create a sonic boom.
Just how idiotic are Carolina cruisers? After searching recent governmental and industry statistical charts, I was rewarded with the following telling evidence: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, three years ago South Carolina was third highest in the nation in total number of motorcycle fatalities. Of those who perished in two-wheel vehicle accidents, only 18% were wearing helmets at the time—by far the lowest percentage of any state.
Yet fret not, ye mothers of the Confederacy! In South Carolina, motorcyclists under the age of 21 are under legal mandate to don at least a kitchen pot on their noggin. Once you hit 22, however, all that stands between you and a brain soufflé is your calcium coconut.
Here’s another interesting set of statistics brought to you by Uncle Sam and the NHTSA: In 2005, 1,093 human beings within the bounds of the Secession State bit the DMV dust thanks to motorized vehicles. Compare this to a mere 559 vehicular fatalities in Minnesota. South Carolina has a population of 4.3 million. Minnesota’s population is nearly 5.2 million.
Now, granted, there are more myopic motorists trucking along the I-95 Corridor of Carnage than, say, heading from Minneapolis to Duluth on a given day. But one has to wonder if it is mere coincidence that Minnesotans ranked 3rd in the above-mentioned GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test. Hmm. Is it just possible that citizens who know the rules of the road are likely by half to survive a motoring existence?
By the way, in 2002-2003, Minnesota had an 84.8% high school freshman graduation rate, 5th highest in the nation. South Carolina had a 59.7% high school freshman graduation rate, dead last in the nation. Repeat: D-E-A-D last.
I don’t mean to suggest that basic literacy and math skills, combined with the slightest training in mental mechanics, might just come in handy while operating a ton of mechanized steel on wheels. But here’s a slogan for some future state politician: READ A BOOK. DRIVE 65. STAY ALIVE!
Enough of statistics. Experience is king. Last week, during a 5-mile, automotive evening circuit of my neighborhood, I witnessed the following: three drivers flying through stop signs without so much as a momentary yield; one driver performing a stupendously moronic, five-lane illegal turn on Assembly Street; another driver, going 60 on a 30-mph, busy residential road, passing me and having the audacity to flip me off; and two clearly drunk drivers swerving into the lane of oncoming traffic. (If only they had timed it to swerve at each other.) Honestly, I’m not making these things up!
But nothing—NOTHING—compares to the complete monkey-nut, Boeotian ludicrousness of the ice storm several years back that blacked out much of Columbia. Unaware that a broken semaphore legally becomes a four-way stop sign, dozens of the capital city’s finest drivers zoomed through four-way intersections, oblivious to the fact that if drivers from the perpendicular direction were to use the same illogic, the icy streets would have been turned into a wintry meat grinder.
Were I to offer you a witty conclusion, I would be doing your life a disservice. You should be afraid to drive on South Carolina’s highways and byways. It is safer to hopscotch across the Korean DMZ than to hop in your jalopy and putter down to Five Points or the Vista for an evening of adult fun.
Simply put, in South Carolina, even if you are a driver who strictly abides by the rules of the road (in which case, clearly you were reared in the Midwest or Pacific Northwest), you are doomed. My advice: Move to Idaho or Wisconsin while you still can.
No wonder the rent here is so cheap.
Mr. Dampfstain is filling in for columnist Harry S. Iarch, who is on assignment this week in Darlington, smashing pedestrian crossing signs on Pearl Street with a 1974 Gremlin.
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