QOTD: Taking the Short Way Home?

One of your author’s biggest pet peeves is the complete lack of confidence some drivers have in their own abilities — and that of their vehicle. It’s an odd thing, as these days the rolling stock on any street or highway consists mainly of car-based CUVs outfitted with increasingly capable all-wheel drive systems.

You’d think these drivers would show a little less trepidation when the weather turns bad — after all, they bought that particular vehicle for a reason — but no. After a recent, fairly heavy dump of the white stuff, the irksome observations began all over again. But an incident last night revealed the one thing that seems capable of motivating such drivers into taking action and using their vehicle to its full, confidence-inspiring potential: frustration.

Driving back from the store, traffic on the four-lane arterial came to a dead halt. One minute became two, then three. What gives?

The roadblock came in the form of a car carrier angled across the roadway; trailer blocking both lanes, tractor stuck on the wide, snowy median, nose protruding into opposing traffic. Traction wheels spun uselessly in the densely packed snow. Exactly what this driver was attempting to do when he got stuck, a hundred yards from the nearest intersection, is a mystery to me; the boys standing outside the adjacent GM dealership seemed similarly perplexed.

As the driver of a compact car, clearly, I was going nowhere. Not so with the drivers around me, many of whom sat behind the wheels of ubiquitous AWD crossovers. After politely staying put for a few more minutes, the situation soon became intolerable; getting a suitable tow rig to this locale was taking a long time, and the operation to extract the semi couldn’t take place without a cop to shut down the oncoming lanes. So, these drivers finally did the thing most CUVs avoid their entire lives: they went off-roading.

The first to mount curb and tackle the snow (which sat atop a nice layer of ice) was a Toyota Highlander. Kids clearly needed to be fed somewhere. Others drivers followed, giving their rear differentials a long-avoided workout. Maybe now they’ll be more confident in their daily driver, no longer creeping around corners at glacial speeds or undercutting speed limits by half just because two flakes fell from the sky.

On interstate medians and near interchanges, muddy tire tracks through the grass make it clear that nicely maintained blacktop isn’t the only way to get around in the city.

Have you ever had to call upon your own grit — and your vehicle’s brawn — to reach an urban destination in an avant-garde (and likely less than legal) manner? If not, have you seen someone else pull off a ballsy move that ended in success?

[Image: Chris Tonn/TTAC]