So do you think it would be a good idea to have scrolling electric signs - Times Square-like - mounted in car windows so a driver could comment on another driver’s performance? Something like: “Thanks for moving over” or “You drive like my Aunt Nellie”? 

Well, I don’t either. (Who’s minding the wheel while you type in your busybody messages?)

So what about pellet guns that can splotch another car with color (different hues for different transgressions) thus announcing to the driving world what sort of road action to expect from the piebald car.

How about having a central site where you can report faults you noticed on other cars (such as a failed tail light) so that the word would be passed on to the owner?

Or how about a way to magnify inside your car the sounds of nearby sirens so you can turn down your CD and notice the ambulance on your flank. Or what about fines for traffic violations that reflect the wealth of the violator instead of one amount fits all?  (They do that now in some countries.)

Would you call these ideas totally off the wall or do some hold promise? Or in the terms used by an idea exchange on the Internet are they “half-baked” or “baked?”

The web site is halfbakery.com. It is a loose forum for folk who probably have spent too much time battered by tough traffic. They have bent their creativity (some more obviously bent than others) to dreaming up remedies for whatever nuisances they encounter in their driving environment or their vehicle.

Ideas are posted. Registered site visitors can vote for or against the ideas. Ideas that receive a balance of favorable votes earn the tiny icon of a croissant (or segment thereof.) Ideas that are viewed unfavorably get a fish skeleton.

Site visitors who just want to read the ideas — and follow the string of comments about them — can do that, too.
Some suggestions invent the already invented; some would be hideously expensive; some are illegal; some are simply silly, and a few — with development — might actually end up in a car parts catalog. (Maybe that box of tissues shaped to fit in a cup holder, for instance.)

The range of ideas posted shows what bothers drivers — and what they want done about it. The comments the ideas draw can be thoughtful, whimsical, nit-picky or rude.

Forum participants chime in from all over the English-speaking world lending a dimension to the discussions that are enlightening about traffic laws and driving customs elsewhere.

Check out Halfbakery. (Which, incidentally, includes more subjects than cars: i.e. Fashion, Food, Business, Health, Computers etc.)  Post your own ideas. You can use a pseudonym.

[Published on The Detroit Bureau] 

The General has done so many things with a ham-fist and a diverted eye that it’s easy to pick on anything America’s automotive giant does. But the Volt is not one of General Motor’s clumsy enterprises. Repeat; not.

PROBLEM: Winter’s short days mean that more people are driving when the sun is low on the horizon. The car’s sun visor is often inadequate to keep the dazzle out of your eyes.

SUGGESTION: Keep a baseball cap in the car and wear it while driving. Tilting and turning your head to keep the bill between you and the sun is a more flexible way than the rigid visor to keep from being dazzled by the glare.

SUGGESTION 2: Join the Racing Images of the Month Club and receive a MEMBER’S SUITE cap. Here’s how.

[Published on The Detroit Bureau] 

Odd though it may seem, I am smitten with the Ford Transit Connect.

[Published on The Detroit Bureau] 

When you next go out on the street that’s what you’re going to see. Blue. Bright blue cars and pick-up trucks. (I do like a blue truck.) You are going to see them because I started noticing more of that particular blue – not navy, not baby, but blue like mouthwash is blue; blue like my Alfa Giulietta that I tossed around Europe circa 1958 was blue.

Your car has a built-in disaster trap, but you’re so used to it you’re probably not even aware of its danger.

Think brake pedal and accelerator. If an engineer today came up with the idea that two controls governing opposite outcomes would be placed inches apart and be operated by the same foot performing the same pushing motion he would be forthwith stripped of his pocket protector and directed back to the drawing board. Nincompoop.

Think brake, accelerator and the driver’s right foot.

Almost since the horseless carriage was loosed on public thoroughfares it has been SOP that a pushing motion of the right foot directed a car to Go as well as to Stop. Exactly which is ordered — Go or Stop — is a matter of barely two inches either direction. Maybe the notoriously hard-headed Henry Ford was right in his reluctance to move the wheel-mounted hand control for the accelerator on his Model T to the floor where those of his competitors dwelt. Conveniently next to the accelerator pedal.

He yielded. And now universally Stop and Go pedals sit side by side in the darkened reaches of the floorboard to be down-pushed in the quest of opposite outcomes by an assortments of Air Jordans, Doc Martens, Fryes, Thom McCanns, Manolo Blahniks, Guccis, flip flops, Crocs or bare tootsies. Clearly this configuration triggers that familiar law: If something can go wrong it will.

And it has.

The automobile has been with us for more than a century. In that time countless drivers have yielded to Murphy’s Law. They have pushed the accelerator when they meant to push the brake, and probably vice versa. But unintended braking at worst raises ire and bruises a bumper. Accelerating without intending to has killed and maimed many: hand-holding kindergartners lined up by their school door; office workers waiting for a bus; Saturday shoppers browsing a street market.

Then there are the florist shops, store-front clinics, tobacconists and newsstands that have hosted the rude front quarters of invading cars and trucks. Their drivers thought that they were braking, right foot down. Right motion, wrong pedal. Errant vehicles with similarly certain but mistaken drivers have also invaded the kitchens, foyers and bedrooms of houses.

This wrong-pedal acceleration is worsened by what is an almost universal human tendency: if something doesn’t work, keep doing it - but harder. The right foot pressure isn’t stopping the car! So increase the effort. Wrecked cars have been found with the accelerator pedal bent or broken, witness to the power of effort renewed in the face of failure. If the “braking” you’re doing makes you go faster then push that same pedal with all you’ve got. Sound reasonable? Of course not, but reason has fled in the face of panic. Push!

The first thing out of the mouths of these drivers, stunned amidst the shattered glass and scattered roses, in the tangle of broken and crying children, is “my brakes failed.”

Later the police report might amplify those words: “I was pushing as hard as I could and the brakes wouldn’t work.” Closer scrutiny might find the broken accelerator pedal. The driver was indeed pushing hard but not on the pedal he assumed he was pushing. That was what was found in some of the cases of “unintended acceleration” that were epidemic in the late 80s and, after a biased report on “60 Minutes” (and a rerun) almost drove Audi off the stage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cleared the company of any responsibility but sales of “the killer car” fell precipitously and it took at least a decade to recover.

Audi wasn’t the only one with “unintended acceleration” problems back then but the public can deal with only one name at a time. It was Audi that became the poster child and suffered most.

Now history, like a brain-befuddled crone, has repeated itself. Now in the first decade of the 2000’s it is Toyota’s name leading the disaster parade. And something new has been added — electronic controls with Ford’s cruise control system also creating problems and drawing attention.

In 2004 the mystery of unattended accelerating began making news. Ill-fitting foot well carpets were blamed, then — shades of HAL and another 2000-based disaster — Toyota’s electronic accelerator attracted fingers of blame. Toyota was stunned, befuddled and late to respond leaving the schoolyard kids to nyah-nyah-nyah. Goodie-Two-Shoes is making mistakes.

Even before the ordered report by NASA for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration was completed the evidence was mounting that most of the crashes (some with fatalities) that were associated with Toyota’s unintended acceleration were — as with Audi’s — a result of driver error. A locking of the right foot to the wrong neighboring pedal. (The NASA report released February 8, 2011, said that no flaws were found in Toyota’s electronic throttle control system that could have caused the unintended acceleration problems. The causes had to be mechanical such as a sticky gas pedal or an intrusive floor mat or driver behavior. But the matter wasn’t ended: lawyers for several California plaintiffs immediately disputed the findings saying the investigation was not extensive enough.

Toyota, once at the zenith of the world’s respect for reliability, safety, and all the good things (at least those on the dull side) in motordom was severely damaged in the marketplace. Forced to offer un-Toyota-like incentives and rebates and deals that at least kept the turnstiles busy Toyota was the only car company not scoring sales increases as the recession looked as if it might recede.

Toyota lost market share and sales gains in both October and November while America’s bankruptcy twins – GM and Chrysler – were scoring double-digit upswings. Toyota correctly pointed out that some blame for the lack of sales was clearly because they rejected most fleet sales, an easy donor of high sales figures. Toyota, perhaps, was looking to the future and did not want a reputation as a rental fleet Nancy. The company has plenty of cash reserves and new product coming and apparently hopes to wait out the effects of the blow the unintended acceleration has dealt them

Given patience, and their past successes, Toyota can look over the seas to Audi, now arguably the healthiest of the European breeds with startling new cars meeting up with eager buyers.

In the meantime all you drivers should keep in mind that Go and Stop are inches apart on your floorboard. And above all keep this is mind: If what you’re doing doesn’t work STOP DOING IT.

“Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia.  Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.”
— Jean Baudrillard , French semiologist.

[Published on The Detroit Bureau] 

Thirteen Vermont winters and a class win in the Monte Carlo rally might lend me cred as a driver in snow. However, probably even more useful, and certainly more concentrated, are a number of sessions I had over the years at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs CO.

Learning to drive in conditions of limited traction is the most valuable experience for acquiring car control on any surface. Go take a day’s basic lesson on snow. Or if you’re already hot on the cold stuff stretch your skills with the session suitable for winter rally wannabes. Then treat yourself to a day on the welcoming slopes of Steamboat and make it a winter holiday for the books. Or Facebook.

I always have opinions, sometimes even insights. I find as the train picks up speed and the ties click by ever faster that more and more opinions keep elbowing their way into my ken. My once-a-month 500-600 word column in AutoWeek (a.k.a. A/W) isn’t space enough to express them. And thoughts, like a cutting bed of flowers, respond best to being clipped, bundled and shared.
 
Anyway I certainly hope so because my intention is to keep all the odd vases of this website filled with whatever I clip from that garden. End of metaphor. No wait – one more: likely some will be weeds but you are all capable of forgiving and coming back again armed with hope.
 
And some of my McBlogs I hope will contain some insights that will set heads nodding and replies clicking. That’s what keeps the word processor processing.
 
Mostly I’ll write about cars, those I like a lot and a few I can’t understand at all. (There’s a piece here about some cars I’ve driven lately – brief notes on brief encounters. Those quick takes will sometimes be followed up with more extended impressions. And impressions will be what they are. “New car reviews” with details of 0-60 and gear ratios and others technical matters are plentiful on the Internet. I have written some myself. And they’re easy to find. What you’ll find here is something not widely available—my personal take on what it’s like to drive these cars, which ones speak to me and which one’s put a question mark  in the balloon over my head. Not everyone gives a rodent’s posterior about “my take.” Nor do I expect them to put denisemccluggage.com on their favorites list. But you? I’d be right pleased if you did.   

I’ll also write about the old days, sometimes referred to as the Golden Years, but everyone thinks their old days were the golden ones. The difference is the ‘50s and ‘60s were really as gold as gold gets. So I’ll try to bring that era alive to those unlucky enough to have missed it. (Or those who didn’t notice the gleam when they were living through them.) But I won’t ignore what’s happening now. Hardly. Because, oh wow, is it happening in the car world. More variety. More choices. More or more.
 
I will continue to write my column for A/W since that publication and I go back to its founding as Competition Press more than fifty (50!) years ago. And I will do an occasional McBlog for the A/W website (one of the best of the automotive sites on the web, by the way). And also for The Detroit Bureau (because I’ve known Paul Eisenstein a long time and still like him.
 
Thanks to the power of click-click what I write there can be brought instantly to this very screen, but I hope you’ll hang out there a bit, too.
 
I’ll also do some pieces, as I have done in the past for Road and Travel Magazine. So I’ll be hard to miss.
 
Other subjects I’m apt to say something about: jazz, travel, food, design, skiing, epistemology, shoes, dance, racing, chairs, speaking voices, ice cream, basketball colors, words, books, misc.
 
Come back often. I’ll be aiming for insights several times a week. And then there’s all that stuff dredged up from some 60 years of writing from my days on the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Herald Tribune right up through Car and Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend all of ‘em.
 
Did you know I was in Cuba at the Grand Prix when Fangio was kidnapped? I broke that story. It was a front-page byline on the Trib. I’m going to find it and run it here….
 
Ciao.

[Published on The Detroit Bureau] 

Numbers have a specificity that is irresistible to our embattled minds. That’s why cops give you a ticket for 87 mph in a 75 mph zone and not to someone else for “unimaginably idiotic attempts to maneuver an automobile in the presence of others.” The mildly observant might well see more of the latter but a radar gun communicates in numbers and not judgments.

The absence of judgment when it comes to dealing in numbers is also commonly evident in the fascination with such statistics as 0-60 times and miles-per-gallon.