#Driving

Over the weekend I trekked out to my parent's house for Easter. It's an hour's drive, minimum, and the return trip took almost double that due to rain and, according to Apple Maps, an accident on the interstate.

I make the trip a fair amount, and I also visit friends or attend personal/professional appointment in the suburbs often. This, plus the airport runs for the travel this job requires, plus the occasional drive to Detroit for events, plus the fact that I can't adequately test a vehicle if it's just sitting in the garage -- this means I drive a lot.

There's been a lot of snow all over the country, including where I live, today. Which leads me to one of the most timeless of all QOTDs -- how do you handle the white stuff?

Over the holiday break I saw some sort of minor Twitter/X spat between automotive journalists -- apparently one posted a picture of themselves driving and another took issue with hand placement -- and I got to wondering: Where on the steering wheel do you put your hands?

If you see something, say something. That's what they say.

Well, I've seen something problematic lately, and now I feel like it's time to use this platform to put a PSA out into the world.

Years ago, teenage me was leafing through an issue of Car and Driver that was already a bit old when I happened upon one of those rare magazine/newspaper columns that changes your life, or at least how you see things.

Come Sunday, I am blowing this pop stand for an overseas vacation. I'm skipping across the pond with one of my parents on a family journey -- though thanks to the magic of advance scheduling, you may still see my byline here and there while I'm out.

I've seen the itinerary, and it looks like I won't be driving a car from the moment I return a press car today until I am back.

That's fine -- but it got me pondering something.

Many press programs allow us keyboard warriors to wheel whatever car we're testing on some twisty two-lane road that has almost nothing in the way of passing zones. Today's drive of the new Dodge Hornet was no exception.

These roads do, however, often have turnouts.

Yesterday, I had to haul a bathroom vanity from my folks' house to mine, a drive of about 50 miles. This vanity is a new one, still in the box, and that box partially blocked my view when looking in the rearview mirror of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV I am testing.

It’s a safe bet that most car enthusiasts are good drivers — or at least, generally speaking, better than the average member of the general public.

Even though we all occasionally run into trouble.

As a former co-worker once told me: “Podody’s nerfect.”

Like a lot of people, I’ve been driving less on average since the pandemic began. This presents a problem when part of your job requires testing cars.

Without getting into the thick, tangled weeds of various coronavirus-related controversies, let it be known that, in some states, the streets and highways have returned to traffic levels seen before “lockdown” became common verbiage.

Yes, a good many of you are really putting miles under your belt (and tires). It’s summer, it’s hot, and lockdown measures are mainly a thing of the past, despite the rising levels of COVID-19 reported in regions that initially escaped the worst of the initial wave. But just how much are you driving?

Barring low gas prices you couldn’t take advantage of and your author’s adventures in cooking with curry, the past two months didn’t bring much in the way of benefits. Millions are out of work, nerves are frayed, hospital ICUs remain crowded with COVID-19 patients, and bad takes still run rampant on Twitter. Daily!

Anyone who did venture outdoors this spring, however, may have noticed one specific change for the better, and science now backs it up.

Following two weeks of unseasonably cold weather that seemed to put spring on hold, Saturday was a gorgeous day in this writer’s city. Warm temps, endless sunshine, and a pandemic that compelled public health officials to tell everyone to stay indoors for the fifth weekend in a row. Or was it the sixth? Time feels more fluid than it once was.

Anyway, yours truly was on the road, seeking an escape from humanity. With too many potential walking or running spaces overrun with people or, oddly, closed off for public safety, I realized I needed to go further afield to distance myself from this constrained, antsy populace. And so I hopped on the highway… and found myself driving in a near-normal level of traffic for the first time since this all began.

Was everyone being an asshole? Was I?

At the risk of sounding like any number of insufferable site fully staffed with dough heads who spend way too much time extolling the virtues of kale (is kale still a thing?), our question today is about driving and car-related apps.

While backing up his phone this weekend (I can’t bear to lose those all important notes about used cars that have been long sold, don’tcha know), your author was struck by the amount of space on his phone being consumed by items relating to cars.

Driving schools in Japan are reporting an increase in attendance from individuals who already possess a driver’s license. According to The Japan Times, the new trend is epitomized by Paper Driver School Kitakanto in Maebashi. The school has seen influx of already licensed drivers this month in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Roughly 10 percent of new students are said to have signed up as a direct result of COVID-19. As Japan’s population has a lower percentage of drivers than in North America, many are dependent upon public transportation to move about — a mobility type that’s become problematic overnight, what with fears of contagion spreading as quickly as the virus itself. To avoid sharing space, some Japanese drivers are attempting to brush up on their skills in order to feel more comfortable behind the wheel.