Drive

101 Pima Freeway, Scottsdale heading North

I enjoy writing and telling stories. 

Life is better than without fiction.

Facts or fallacies, my experiences are mine, they aren’t yours unless you have been a passenger in a car I was driving. I won’t name names here, live your life the way you do, I’ll live mine without hurting anyone while driving to my destination. My experiences reveal that I am a safe driver. What constitutes a safe driver? I believe that is for you to decide for yourself. You decide what skill is important, what skill you should practice to make you a safe driver.

Safe drivers avoid accidents and situations where accidents can happen.

They mitigate the possibility of an accident by controlling their car within their ability, reducing contact time with potential danger.

I personally do not drive outside of my ability. I understand my own physical limitations and the limitations of the car I’m driving, the conditions of the road. I realize that not everyone drives within their own limitations. Safe driving is relative, it is a culmination of collective experiences where the emphasis is on control of the vehicle you are driving. While accidents do happen, I believe that there is no room for dependency on luck to prevent accidents while driving. Safe driving is forward compatible, I draw from my experience and apply that knowledge each time I fasten my seatbelt. If I’m lucky to have never had an accident, it’s because I practiced being lucky.

Now that we are buckled in, here are a few stories of driving experiences.

I’ve been driving for nearly fifty years. I’ve owned seventeen cars. Now that I no longer fly, driving is the closest thing I do. On long trips I lower and recline the seat back, I hold the wheel with one hand at six o’clock and dream like I’m controlling the car like I’m flying a sailplane cross country. Driving uphill is like climbing in lift, I drive efficiently and carefully up hills. I coast down hills like I’m gliding after climbing in lift. I use the gas economy computer to maximize fuel efficiency switching to gliding mode (coasting) when I can.

I use the head unit in the car as my instruments, the embedded GPS display; I like remembering what time it says I will arrive when I start my trip, usually I make the time go backwards arriving ahead of my gps predicted time. For a three hour trip, I usually wind the GPS prediction back fifteen minutes.

The farthest I have driven is seven hundred miles in one day, Phoenix to Salt Lake City. I’ve done that several times in my life. I enjoy it less and less as I get older.

I once drove a twin turbo Porsche 911, 150+ mph in the early hours of Christmas morning. A friend of mine and I chose a desolate highway outside of town. We pre ran the stretch observing it for birds, animals and road conditions. It was a two lane divided hiway and I straddled the white line as I mashed the accelerator to its stop as long as I could. The digital speedometer climbing rapidly. The road seemed to narrow drastically after a hundred and thirty. 

Driving changes at that speed. 

The Porsche squats from the downforce and the steering becomes much stiff and sensitive. It was an amazing drive that was well thought out and executed between two friends. What I learned from that experience was driving at speeds beyond one hundred and thirty miles per hour, the physics are much different. Tires must be new, premium brakes must be inspected, your vision must be perfect, knowledge of the road conditions are an absolute. At that speed, small things can change the course of your life. The time spent at that speed is directly in competition to the challenge of your preparation. Driving that fast is a series of calculations in order to survive the event. 

At 150 miles per hour, you are traveling 220 feet per second. In one and a half seconds you have travelled the length of one football field. Although driving fast is fun, it can and will kill you at that speed on public roads. If I’m going to own a Porsche, I’ll be taking it to the track to do that. We got away with driving that fast by stacking the odds in our favor. If you are stacking odds, you are gambling and that’s no way to live a long life now is it?

My favorite car was a 1971 Volkswagen transporter or my current whip, a 2023 Subaru Forester. 

Let’s see…

I’ve taught my three sons to drive. Two of them by the same method. We drove to a parking lot on the Pima reservation and practiced adjusting the seating and mirrors, controlling the car with precision at slow walking speeds. We then moved to planning a drive and following the driving plan on the low to no traffic large grid of roads in the cotton farmland. If my son did not look like he would stop for a stop sign, I would let him make the mistake because I could see all directions above the cotton. I would point out the mistake when he made it and discuss the severity of their mistake back at the precision zone of the parking lot. Driving off the reservation to a highway was like graduating grade school, driving home at night on the freeway was graduating driving school. Each son was trained with respect for speed and all drove triple digits with me first on desolate sections of straight roads. We discussed how far you travel quickly at speed. I trained each son with the same methods of collision avoidance, “if you look at the obstacle, you will hit it.” 

Avoid accidents through spatial orientation.

Each of my sons are excellent drivers. Noah has been driving since he was eight. The youngest to drive in all of our family. 

I’ve driven up a mountain to 13,100’ in Silverton, Colorado to fly off in my hang glider. I have driven to the tops of many big mountains in the West, most of the time I flew down. I have raced my Volkswagen bus driving on the interstate at eighty and pulled ahead while flying in my hang glider. I radio controlled my wife driving below to meet me where I was going to land far ahead.

I have countless hours of driving Suburbans at night pulling a speed boat while zooming across the Navajo reservation, the car filled with sleeping physicians and surgeons.

Once a friend of mine told me of purchasing a Ferrari, we went to the parking lot to look at it. So beautiful, he actually threw the keys to me and as we pulled out of the parking lot, he told me, “do not mash the pedal as you pull out, you will break the rear end free.” I made the turn and straightened, he looked at me and said, “now mash it.”

One of the first things I did when I got my drivers license was to drive to California to go surfing. My first year driving also was also going skiing at our two ski areas. I learned to drive in the snow at sixteen living in Arizona.

My family had a condo in Colorado. My father also enjoyed owning several Porsche sports cars, my mother drove a new Corvette. He never let me drive any of them. It was funny, we would drive to Colorado in the winter and when the first snowflakes showed themselves on our trips, he would pull over telling me to drive. He never let me drive until it snowed.

I drove an amphibious six wheeled ambulance called a Gamma Goat in the Army and have driven it in Japan and Korea. I worked as an Uber driver for a few months in the evenings and I didn’t like it. The young rich people of my area are mostly rude and entitled. 

One time I had to drive home my head spinning like crazy, I got vertigo and was violently ill, everything spinning. I literally had to drive one hand over one eye to make myself focus on one spinning road instead of two. I made it home safe. Do not ask how I survived that experience. I ended up spending the night in the hospital. I was diagnosed as having a stuck crystal in the semicircular canal of my inner ear.

The one time someone demanded to drive because we were drinking, they barrel rolled my car (with me in the passenger seat) sliding upside down in a ditch, injuring me severely. I had to walk to a neighborhood after midnight to make a call for a family rescue. My driver friend unhurt and frozen because he couldn’t believe he did that. That’s the only accident I’ve been in, I was not driving. I’ve been hit three times while stopped in traffic, each time was by a female in an SUV on their cell phone. That was a hard earned lesson.

I once drove one hundred miles per hour for thirty minutes straight. Again on a highway nearly devoid of traffic early in the morning.

I am a calm driver, rarely do I get upset when someone pulls out in front of me, I just slow down. I go with the flow, I prefer to not make waves.

I’ve never had a DUI. I haven’t had a speeding ticket in twenty years.

I have good spatial awareness, when I’m on the road, I typically know who is near my car at all times and whether they are advancing or I’m moving away from. My Subaru has good side viewing radar with indicators on the side view mirrors, I don’t even think about them now, I’ve become adjusted to and trusting of the safety systems in my car. I feel like my Subaru Forester is the safest car that I’ve ever driven. 

I have two friends that drive much faster than I do. Both of them make me nervous when they drive. When I go on a trip with one of them, I take one of my prescription Valium that I saved from my the dentist and dermatologist. That solves that problem.

I’ve really slowed down the last few years. Rarely do I exceed the speed limit in town. On the highway, the flow of traffic is much faster now than it has ever been. I stay with the flow of traffic or slightly faster but rarely slower. It is dangerous to impede the flow of traffic.

I am still confident of my driving skills and will continue to drive safely and politely without cause for alarm or outrage. I no longer feel the need to prove anything to anyone with my driving skills. I only want to be able to enjoy the freedom that moving about our expressways allow. I know what it is to drive fast however within the skill and reaction timing of my experience and condition.

Needless to say, I’ve had some experiences driving cars.

I’ve always said, “If you want to know what someone will do in the future, look at their past.” In my case, my past is safe with no close calls. I’ve hurt no one and have caused no accidents. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? I’m not a wreck less driver, I’m a never wrecked driver. 

I have a history of safe driving that I am very proud of.

I see driving as a privilege that is supported by making good choices.

My wife helps me to slow down. But so does the note to myself that I wrote with my silver Sharpie.

“Slow the #@+% down” what’s the hurry?

Self Portrait at 80mph

Black & White Film!