Power Steering: Technology Marches Forward

Having discovered that my Toyota Matrix has electric power steering, I decided to do some research into it. Back in February, apparently some people were trying to sue Toyota for defective electric power steering units causing fatal accidents.

I am going to assume it was just another mass hysteria, (although based on a reasonable question) similar to the "Unintended acceleration", except that apparently "sudden unintended steering" never really caught on with the US media. The main difference is that there is a real mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels. There was no similar connection between the accelerator pedal and the fuel system. That, and a lack of heart wrenching but gripping stories to drive the general panic.

So now I am just going to make some remarks about "Power Steering" and technological refinements of cars.

My first car was a 1956 Chevy, and one of the many clues to its age is the big 18" diameter steering wheel. Modern cars all have 15" steering wheels. Since the change in size approximately follows the introduction of power steering, there may be some connection. Maybe the big wheel helped make the steering easier? I'm not sure, because there was already a gear reduction in the steering system.

Steering feel is very important to the driver of a car, and the car makers work hard making it feel "right". The steering wheel is supposed to provide feedback to the driver about what the wheels are doing, but it should not provide too much feedback. The steering wheel should give some resistance to being turned, but not too much. The steering wheel has to feel right making a U turn in a parking lot, and the same steering system must make you feel confident at 150 kph, whether in a straight line or in a curve.

All power steering systems are "power assist". It is not safe to eliminate the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front tires, in case of failure of the power system. The first power steering systems were assisted hydraulically. The latest systems are using electric motors to assist in turning the wheels.

There is only one time that I have felt the effect of a power steering system cut out. I was driving a 1966 Dodge Coronet around a traffic circle when the motor stalled, and the power steering went dead. It's amazing how fast a car can get away from you in a situation like that, as the steering effort goes from very easy to needing both hands and most of your strength. While this was happening, I think I figured out that the power steering had stopped, and what was most scary was gradually applying more and more force to the steering wheel with nothing happening. I'm sure it was no more than 2 seconds before I finally pushed hard enough to move the steering wheel, but it felt like a long time, and I was not sure that it ever was going to turn.

Now I have a 2005 Toyota Matrix with Electric Power Steering. My previous 1992 Honda Civic had no power steering, and it did not need any. When I first bought the Matrix, I didn't know about the electric power steering, and during my test drive, the steering felt normal. Power steering systems are quite unobtrusive, but they do change the "feel" of the steering system.

For the first 8 months that I owned the Matrix, I began to gradually notice something unusual about the steering feel. But because it was the first car I had with low profile tires, I did not know whether the strangeness was due to the tires or the car's steering setup. On the freeway, the car did not seem to track straight, it felt like it was darting from one side to the other, and it took quite a bit of force to get it back on centre. Of course, this feel was subtle, and you would only notice it with thousands of kilometers of driving. And I suppose, there was also the inevitable comparison to my departed Honda Civic's light, sports car-ish steering.

It was only when I installed higher profile and narrower snow tires on the Matrix that I noticed the steering feel improve dramatically. So I concluded that the weirdness was with the low profile tires. The original size was 205/55R16, and the winter tires were 195/65R15. So the winter tires were narrower and with a higher sidewall. When the original all season (summer) tires wore out, I considered replacing them with the same size as the winter tires, but I eventually went with the original size, to get the same speed and load rating. Not only that, but there were reports that the original Goodyear RSA tires were crap anyway, and a good tire would have better steering feel. So I bought a set of Michelin Primacy MXV4 tires, which actually felt even better than the winter tires. At this point I started to think the problem was the type of tire, rather than the profile and width. With a bit more investigation, it seems that the Goodyear RSA tires are "performance tires" meaning that they have stiff sidewalls, and make the car ride rough, and also tend to be a little bit unstable in a straight line. So actually, it was a combination of the preprogrammed electric steering "feel" and the high performance tires that came with the car. Apparently, the boost and feedback can be finely tuned on an electric steering system. Some cars with EPS can change steering feel with the push of a button.

Maybe one day we will have power steering in motorcycles. Some snowmobiles are already there.

These days, new technologies sneak up on you. Back in the good old days, if a car maker introduced new technology, they would boast about it in full colour ads and it would be a feature that supposedly made all previous cars obsolete. Not any more. Many new car features either make the car safer or make them more reliable or cheaper to manufacture. And every time a new technology is put into production, some people will find a way to turn that into an accident where they can sue the car maker for millions of dollars. So the less we know about the technology, the better, as far as car makers are concerned.

This story of hidden technology reminds me of a GM car years ago that introduced a temperature gauge for radiator coolant. The needle of the gauge was proportional to temperature of the coolant, and provided some good feedback for the driver. It was a lot better feedback than the "idiot light" it replaced. (an idiot light comes on when the coolant is too hot, otherwise is off). Unfortunately, people can get obsessed with "too much information", and some drivers got worried sick about how slowly the needle rose to normal, (or how quickly), or exactly where the needle pointed at all times. Not only that, but they would compare their observations with owners of identical cars and note that their needle did not point to the exact same spot on the dial as the other car. Which to them was proof that their car needed a whole new engine. There was simply no reasoning with the obsessive owners. Finally the GM dealers got fed up and GM reverted to a gauge that was uncoupled from the coolant temperature. Unless the coolant boiled over, the new gauge was designed to rise from "cold" to "normal" in a uniform amount of time. Then it would remain pointing at Normal. If the coolant boiled over, it would point to "Hot". Pretty much an idiot light disguised as an instrument. The complaints stopped. Obviously, some car drivers could not handle the truth.

Sad to say, but advances in human intelligence have not been keeping pace with advances in technology.

Picture: '56 Chevy's 18" steering wheel. But did it actually help turn the wheels before power steering was common?

Were Eight-Track Tapes a Joke?

I am pretty sure that some time in my past, I have come into contact with an actual 8-track stereo system from back in the sixties. But I can't remember it. No, my generation remembers the 8-track tape as a joke, as a metaphor for for all obsolete technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape

The competing system, that eventually won out over 8-track tapes, was the compact cassette format.  They lasted into the 1990's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape

Now you may notice another theme here, as part of the 8-track saga. It is the American 8-Track vs. the European Compact Cassette technology. Often, we here in North America assume American stuff is better, more advanced than European stuff, but I am not convinced at all. In so many cases, Europeans have machines that are better. I'm sure somebody could explain why, but I have no idea. But I know for sure that the 8-Track tapes were so bad that I wonder how anyone would think they could push them on an unsuspecting American consumer. Those must have been the days when it was thought that marketing muscle was all you needed, and that the actual technology could be utter crap, people would still buy them. Those days are over (I think).

Anyway, I'm getting off "track". My generation thinks of the 8-track tape as the joke. But I'm not sure my kids get the joke, as they sometimes get mixed up: 8-track or cassette, which one is the joke again? Both are pretty much obsolete, so to the next generation, both are funny. The actual joke was that 8-Tracks did not really work from day one, and the entire concept seems ludicrous in hindsight, while the Cassettes were far more functional and reliable. (and smaller, another European thing!)

I was thinking about this last week when I took a ride in my son's 1990 Audi Quattro. This car has a definite eighties "vibe" to it. The one thing my son was worried about when buying that car was not the age, nor the mileage, but the obsolete stereo system, which he quickly replaced with a modern one so that he could stick his MP3 player in and get some music. The generation gap is large for me, because my current car, a 2005, does not have any of this modern techno-wizardry. I still have more vinyl albums than CD's, Although my turntable has been on the fritz for over five years. Oddly, my son has a functioning turntable and vinyl CD's at home, but he considers them not as a basic music source, but as an art form, or a historical collector's item. The generation gap is so bad, that I don't even understand how he uses the twin vinyl DJ turntables, let alone the MP3 player. Several years ago he gave me an MP3 player for Father's day, and I have to confess I never figured out how to use it for music, but was happily suprised when he informed me it would also work as an 8 gig memory stick.

Just getting back to the Audi, I want to remark on something about his purchase, which involved trading in a two passenger Smart car for a five seater Quattro. I have always thought of two-passenger cars as "sports" cars, and four or more passenger cars as being "regular" cars, regardless of its horsepower, no matter how good handling. But this Audi Quattro, I would say comes about as close as you can be to a sports car while having more than two seats, and the Smart Car is about as far from being a sports car you can get, while still being a 2 seater. Here is a discussion on Jalopnik, on the topic of the 4-seater sports car. (and American sports cars vs. European)

Picture: This is the picture I took of the 1990 Audi in front of our house

Wrong way on the On Ramp

Yesterday, while riding my motorcycle to Long Point, I witnessed the legendary "wrong way on the freeway ramp" scenario first hand.

The day started bright, dry and warm. It was already 11c by the time I started getting the bike out of the garage late in the morning. I was driving almost on autopilot to Paris, because I am so familiar with the route - maybe 20-30 times this year. In Paris I loaded up with a tank of gas, and soon was on Highway 24 crossing the 403, with a small car in front of me. Suddenly, and very unexpectedly the car slowed to almost a stop, and then tried to turn right, into the exit ramp coming off the 403. This was clearly marked with three "do not enter" traffic signs and an arrow one-way sign. Also, the wrong-way cars path was blocked by an SUV coming the other way on the ramp, at the stop sign. So the car hesitatingly nosed its way around the SUV, partly taking to the shoulder, while the lady SUV driver peered down, with a slightly amused look on her face. I did not think of honking my horn, which is pretty feeble anyway. The SUV driver apparently did not see anything horribly wrong with what was happening.

Seeing the car get on the wrong way ramp, then begin acceleration toward the freeway, I pulled over to the shoulder and wondered if I could do anything. For example, could I chase the car the wrong way down the ramp. Not legally, of course, but in reality, might it cause the car driver to speed up even more and possibly be the cause of a fatal accident? I just waited, and signalled my concern to the lady in the SUV, who was still sitting there. She gave me a smile in return, but I thought maybe she did not understand what was happening. Just then, I heard a long air horn blast from a truck that was near the car, but it was on the correct entrance ramp. The wrong way car then hesitated again and slowed, then stopped. A pickup driver, also on the correct ramp, stopped, jumped out and ran across the grass to talk to the puzzled wrong way driver. It looked like the situation was under control, so I resumed my ride to Long Point. (via Port Dover first).

Whenever I drive anywhere I automatically take an interest in other traffic situations. You might think of it as poking my nose in other people's business. But my interest in what other drivers are doing has saved me a few times over the years. When driving the car, I used to make comments on the other driver's mistakes, although I have cut down on this activity quite a bit, at Mary Ann's request. Mary Ann does not like it when I criticise other drivers aloud while we are in the car together. I suspect that might even be part of the reason she likes motorcycles. (We have no intercom system, nor does she want one.)

If I had been the SUV driver, I'm pretty sure I would have yelled, honked my horn, waved, or done something to get the attention of the wrong way driver. But being behind, I don't know how I could have got their attention without following and possibly trying to pass them.

It reminds me of a situation years ago, the only time I recall passing a car and flagging them down. I was on my motorcycle when I witnessed an accident take place. It was a getaway car being followed by an unmarked police car, which hit an oncoming pickup truck, and the lone police officer went over to pull the drug dealer out of the burning car and put the handcuffs on him. I decided to turn around and head home, as I had almost been hit during this incident, and I was a bit shaken up. Just then I saw a municipal police car with two officers in it, pull into the road in front of me, also heading away from the accident. I overtook them, waved them off the road, and told them there was an accident just down the street. I guess they didn't know because it was an RCMP officer and he probably didn't have a radio connection with the rest of the town police force. Anyway, I quickly decided that I needed to do something, and according to the police, pulling them over (even in a no-passing zone) was the right thing to do, as they immediately u-turned and sped off to the accident.

Picture: Apparently Nissan is trying to develop a wrong way warning Navigation system. I wonder if the wrong way driver I saw was blindly following a GPS navigation system? I don't have a GPS myself, but friends complain that there are glitches in them.

http://jalopnik.com/5142967/nissan-developing-wrong-way-pedestrian-collision-alert-technology

Now if we only had BMW's cruise control with "Stop 'n Go" feature, and their lane detection system, we can safely remove the requirement to have a driver's licence. I'm not sure what good it does anyway.

Ice Road Truckers TV Show Review

Here, finally may be a form of transportation where the drivers are more exposed to the weather and to accidents than motorcyclists are. I had a chance to watch one of these shows the other night at my mother's house (I don't get the History Channel, and I also don't get why this is on the History Channel). My first thought was that these were not actually "Ice Roads". In Canada, a paved or gravel road covered with ice is an "icy road". To be an ice road, there must be nothing but ice, with water underneath. But then I started thinking about the types of roads where we have a layer of gravel or pavement over permafrost, with a layer of ice over that. Kind of like an "Ice sandwich road". But none of this quibbling really matters. The real issue is the driving, and the fact that people understand that their lives depend on their ability and their attention to the job.

There are many good previews and short segments on Youtube, but also a few spoofs that should not be mistaken for the real show. In the episode I watched, the road was the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. There is a similar road in Canada I always get confused with, called the Dempster Highway.

During the show, an oversized load was being transported accompanied by two "pusher" trucks. Going up the steep hills, the two pusher trucks get behind the load and with nothing more than bumper to bumper contact, help the big load up the hill, at what appears to be a fairly high speed. I would guess about 80 kph. Typically in steep mountain areas, without pushers, trucks may slow down to first gear to get up steep hills, and crawl up the hill at walking speed. It was not explained in this episode why the two pusher trucks were being used, as it looked like they were not carrying a payload, and trucking companies are not used to wasting money like that. There was one other use for the pusher trucks, and it was coming down the hills. One pusher truck would get in front of the load carrying truck, and help it slow down coming down the hill. I'm not even sure it's legal on most public roads. But it certainly makes for great entertainment, for anyone who has an interest in roads and driving.

[Update Oct 28, 2010: I was speaking to a truck driver on this subject and apparently the pushers are needed because even with chains, the wheels will lose traction when you gear down to climb the grade, with an oversized load like that.]

At a few times during the show, the producers inserted animated clips to illustrate the dangers of these operations. For example, how a truck may tip over if the load shifts or what could happen when the load falls off. The animations were fairly realistic, and each time my mother saw a truck go off the road or crash, she gasped. I had to tell her "It's just an animation". She would reply,"But I'm surprised nobody got killed anyway." ""Mom, an animation is a cartoon drawing like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", but this is just more realistic."

I kind of suspect the dangers are somewhat dramatised. Because if you wanted to, you could certainly make a TV show of a normal commuter's drive to work in Toronto, and make it seem like death is just around every corner. But it is a fact that there is a much higher death rate among these truckers than among normal commuters. Probably about the same as the rate for motorcycles. And it is good to see people at least paying attention to their driving instead of sending text messages.

One of the clips on Youtube is about a truck driver hitting a moose. Just to help keep you car drivers more alert, note that although the driver was not injured, the truck had to be towed away. Those moose can get big.

Apparently, the first season was actually done on ice roads. But the trucking companies were not very impressed with the overall attitude of the show, and made so many new safety rules that the producers moved the show somewhere else, and that's when they started getting away from the "Ice Roads", but still kept the same name as most people don't know the difference between northern mountain roads and ice roads. The next season they will be going to the Himalaya Passes, which could make the Dalton Highway look as safe as the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Doris Wiedemann and Sjaak Lucassen, have recently done the Dalton Highway in winter, on two wheel motorcycles. (I need to specify two wheels because sidecars and trikes might have made the trip much less intense). They were Germans, if that helps explain anything.
http://www.bmwmoa.org/news/ride_stories/arctic_circle_beckons_for_doris_wiedemann

Picture: It's a picture I took myself, in February 2007 on the road to Labrador. It was an icy road, but not an "ice road"..

Driving Slow Needs a Different Skill Set

I was just reading a blog by "Miss Busa", by a lady who likes to ride fast. She previously owned a Suzuki Hayabusa, their fastest machine, and now rides a BMW S1000RR, which if I guess right is BMW's fastest bike. She also goes to a track for motorcycle drag races in her spare time. However, following her accident which wrecked the 'busa, and some safety discussions with her husband, who I guess is the guy she calls "Mr. Slow", she had a moment's hesitation while riding her new bike on the freeway. Her natural instinct would have been to nail the throttle and blast through any dodgy situation, instead she slowed down, and almost got trashed from behind by a fast moving SUV.

http://missbusa.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/if-i-had-a-cage/

Long ago I came to the conclusion that driving slow needs a different skill set from driving fast. Either one can be dangerous. And just in case you think there is some "sweet spot" in the middle where you can safely drive while text messaging, no there is not. When you drive at an average speed, you are statistically less likely to have an accident, but you have to sometimes use the fast driving skills, and sometimes also use the slow driving skills, depending on the traffic around you.

What skills are needed for driving fast? Fast reaction times, good eyesight, ability to remain focused on the road both far ahead and closer to you, ability to anticipate situations ahead, good braking and steering skills, and always having a plan B in mind. That's some of them, I'm sure there's more. And you can overlay that with constantly checking for police cars and radar traps.

What skills would you need for driving slow? Fast reaction times, good eyesight, ability to look in front and in the rear view mirror as well, and always having a plan B in mind. Steering and braking skills are required, of course, but it's only at higher speeds that it pays to develop these skills more than what the average granny could muster. So far the skills look almost the same, but there is huge difference when it comes to anticipating traffic situations. When you drive fast, most of your worrisome situations come from slow moving vehicles: slow trucks, slow cars in the fast lane, stopped traffic, etc. But when you drive slow, most of your worrisome situations arise from vehicles coming at you from behind. And so all your traffic strategy is different. For example, you need to know what to do about tailgaters, and yes, it takes some experience to handle that right. You need to know how and when to help other people get by you. How to deal with road rage. You need to know how to use the brake lights to send important information, instead of riding the brake lightly with the brake light on most of the time. With a motorcycle, hand signals help too. You need to monitor not only the rear mirror a lot more, but also the two blind spots just to the side of the rear view mirror, and you need to know how big these blind spots are. You also need to be very aware when you go slower than your usual slowness. Much like a speeder has to be aware of the difference between 20 over the limit, and 60 over the limit. A slow driver has to be aware that going 10 under the limit is radically different from 60 under the limit.

The motivation for driving slow may be simply that the driver thinks it will be safe. Or there may be a problem with the vehicle. Recently there has been a very small but increasing number of people who are going slow (hypermiling) trying to save gas.

Unfortunately, a lot of slow drivers are not good drivers at any speed. But you could say the same for a lot of fast drivers too. Just going slow is not a magic bullet to make you a safe driver. Yes it's easier, but for people who normally drive too fast, they must be aware that different skills need to be developed for going slow. And it is a very good idea to practice them once in a while.

For your homework, I have a couple of links on the dangers of slow driving.
http://sense.bc.ca/disc/disc-05.htm
http://www.roadandtravel.com/carcare/drivetooslow.htm

Picture: From life.com ...Is that motorcycle going faster or slower than the traffic? With that road position, it's not likely to be the same speed.

Baby Killer Toyotas?

I wish I had bookmarked this comment, but I didn't and I can't find it. However, I have decided it is an important enough issue, just on principle, for another Public Service Announcement"

The comment was made in response to the Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration problem. The issue is turning off the engine, where on a keyless ignition, at highway speed, you need to hold down the button for three seconds before the engine shuts off.

One commenter had something like this to say. My baby is sleeping in a room right in front of where I park my Toyota, and is protected only by a flimsy wall. The truck could easily reach and kill the baby before I can say "one-Mississippi two-Mississippi three-Mississippi" and shut the engine off.

This particular comment does not appear so extraordinary at first, but it popped back into my head later. Did this person convert his garage into a nursery for the baby? That would explain the flimsy structure, as the garage door might be flimsily boarded over to look like a wall. Anyway, lets look at all the problems with this scenario.

You should not put your babies in front of vehicles unless you have a reasonable barrier to protect the baby. This would go for all human beings, by the way. The most common way for an accident to happen here, is the driver gets in the car or truck, starts the engine, accidentally puts it in drive, instead of reverse, while forgetting to hold the brake. The truck lurches forward, and the driver is too shocked to respond, or worse yet, responds by mashing the accelerator in haste instead of the brake, compounding the problem. This is not a Toyota problem at all, and it is not entirely a stupid driver problem. It is a situational problem. You should not set up a situation where the vehicle could easily kill somebody if you make a simple mistake. Mistakes happen, so try to avoid setting up traps like this.

Now about the three second delay. This delay is only when the car is at highway speeds. When stopped or parked, the shutoff is instantaneous, just the way it works every other time the driver turns off the engine.

If you hold your foot on the brake, the car or truck will not move, even if you give it full gas. I have tried this with a sixties-era car, and brakes were not as good then, but the engines were pretty powerful before anyone started worrying about fuel shortages. And when the car is not actually moving, the brakes will hold the car as long as you can press your foot down, they will never burn up. On the highway, it is possible to burn out the brakes if you don't stop the car.

Another thought, is the truck parked uphill from the baby's flimsy chamber? Because in that case you may cause a lot of damage just by forgetting to put it in park or not applying the parking brake.

There are certainly two aspects to this story. I have had kids myself, and I know how hard it is to prevent them from getting run over by a car. They manage to escape in an instant, and head right for the nearest busy road to cross. It has happened to me. Drivers often speed through our quiet dead end street neighbourhood, until speed bumps were installed, and then they started taking short cuts over the lawns to avoid the speed bumps until a neighbour placed a rock ornament in the middle of the lawn. Now its a lot safer for kids. That's what it takes to protect kids. You baby would be taken away by a child protective service if you ever put your baby to sleep in a cardboard box in front of the wheels of a parked vehicle. The reason you do not have your baby taken away is only because your structure is stronger than a cardboard box. But how much stronger?

It's too bad that emotional situations like get dragged out just to add fuel to the Toyota hysteria. Many people get crazy when they just think of babies being hurt.

What is a Bland Vehicle?

Again, to correct a mistaken first impression, this car is an old Fiat 500, and I do not consider it bland. Now for the rest of the post.

Many months ago (it seems like years!), the Toyota acceleration problems reminded us of this topic: That the fun had gone out of driving. The segue goes like this. Toyota admittedly seems to build bland cars that your grandmother would want. Because Toyotas are bland, they are no fun, and drivers get disconnected from the act of driving to the point where they don't know what to do in an emergency. What's more, as it was later shown, most of the time the Toyota drivers cause the emergency, what with pushing on the accelerator instead of the brake, and not understanding how to turn off the engine or shift into neutral.

So now to deal with this topic, what exactly is a bland car or motorcycle? Once again, I fear that most people have misunderstood, and until it is properly thought through we will get nowhere with this.

A lot of people confuse "fun car" with high horsepower. Same in motorcycling, of course. Where actually, a fun car is much broader than merely horsepower. In fact, higher horsepower in many cases can work against the fun of driving.

I will admit that there is some fun in having a lot of horsepower. There is certainly a thrill in giving a powerful machine full throttle, and feel it pick up speed quickly. In a car, your back is pressed into the seat, and you feel your head tipping back. It may be accompanied by squealing rubber or black marks on the road. With a motorcycle, you may "pop a wheelie", and stretch your arms trying to hang on to the handlebars. And the satisfaction of leaving all the other traffic behind at the light as it turns green, having the road to yourself for a few seconds. Or passing a slow car in the blink of an eye.

But extra power is also something that dulls the driving experience. Many drivers feel they need the extra power because they don't like to shift gears, or so that they can accelerate without the engine making any loud scary noises. That's right, Grandma, engines make a lot of noise at full throttle at 10,000 rpm. In my opinion an awful lot of drivers want big powerful engines so that they don't have to think about how and why the engine makes power, or how to maximize that power. In many ways, a modestly powered engine is more fun precisely because of the power limitation. It forces you to think, not just about what gear to be in, but also when to begin accelerating for that big hill, when to give it full throttle before attempting a passing move. To drive a low power engine, you need to learn about powerbands, the sound of the engine, and transmission ratios. And possibly also about maintenance, like changing the oil once in a while before the engine blows up.

One thing is for sure, that the real fun of a high powered engine comes at full throttle. Yet the more powerful the engine, the fewer opportunities you have to use it to the max. And the less you learn about driving it.

What other things can make a car or motorcycle fun to drive? I would say steering precision, suspension compliance, cornering ability are all part of it. Also, the feel of the gearshift if it is a manual transmission. Of course, I'm talking strictly about street cars here, not off-road vehicles like 4 wheel drive jeeps, where the fun may also be in getting through a muddy puddle without burying the vehicle up to its' window sills.

I still believe motorcycles are more fun to drive than cars. They do not give that sense of invincibility that cars do, but that may be a good thing in the long run. But with a motorcyclist being out in the open, they are definitely more connected with the sound of the engine, the bumps on the road, the wind, rain, or or cold that they may encounter. And they are far more concerned about slipping on a patch of gravel, or balancing the vehicle at a stop. None of those sensations are helped much by a way-too-powerful engine.

Picture: A Fiat 500, which may not have quite enough power for north American highways (or even Italian for that matter). But although a few more ponies may be welcome (true of all cars by the way), still lots of fun to drive.

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24 Jun 2010 ... Ride your bike as being President Barack Obama. Pick up green money and avoid red ones as you attempt to balance as well as perform tricks.
www.onlineflashgames.org/games/.../obama-rider.htm

Obama Rider Game - Play
Obama Rider Game: Ride your bike as President Obama. Grab green money and avoid red as you balance and perform tricks.
www.playgamesnet.com/game/free/1656/obama-rider.html

How Sidewall Flex Works in Lower Profile Tires

Sidewall flex is an important part of the feel of a tire when driving. The newer low profile tires tend to have less flex than the old higher profile tires and that can be a good for steering precision, but some sidewall flex is good for a comfortable ride.

The picture at the left has been photoshopped to exaggerate sidewall flex to the left, but it can also go to the right, and all tires have sidewall flex to some extent.

I am not a big fan of the low profile tires that are becoming more popular every year. So when shopping for
my Toyota Matrix back in 2005, I was disappointed to find that they came with 55 series tires, which I consider fairly low profile. The extreme low tires would be about 35 or so, and no manufacturers I know of would sell a car with wheels that low. But custom tuners like to change the tires for extra low profiles mostly for the appearance, but also there a few benefits.

Low profile tires have very short sidewalls, which are not very flexible. Actually, the shorter the sidewall the less there is to flex and that's what makes it stiffer. If the sidewall is flexible, the car will wobble a bit while driving around corners at higher speeds.

When a car is at rest, the sidewall flex is centered. But when going around a corner at speed, the car will flex both sidewalls in the same direction. You can actually feel this effect of a car parked in the driveway, simply by pushing the car sideways on the fender above the front or rear tires. The car body will generally move when you push it, although the tire contact patch does not move, and if you look carefully, you might see the movement of tire's sidewalls flexing back and forth. On my mother's 1995 Chevy Cavalier with 65 series tires (taller sidewalls), when I lean on the back fender and try to move the car sideways, I can easily get it wobbling about an inch each way, and I can see the front of the car also wobbling, but in the opposite direction to the back. (This type of motion is called "yaw", where the car rotates back and forth about a vertical axis somewhere in the middle of the car. A car with shorter sidewalls will naturally have a much stiffer resistance to this pushing.

Doing the same thing to my Toyota Matrix, with 55 series tires will move it very little, and both ends of the car tend to move the same way. This is on Michelin Primacy MXV4 tires, which actually have quite soft sidewalls for their height. Some tire makers try to produce tires with more flexible sidewalls, not because they want to make the car wobble while driving, but to make the ride softer. These Michelin tires actually seem to be designed to feel as soft as a 65 series tire even though their actual height ratio is 55.

The tires that originally came with the car were Goodyear Eagle RSA's which have a fairly stiff sidewall. They are a more performance oriented tire with a slightly harsher ride and more road noise. The advantage of the Goodyear Eagle RSA's was that in driving around a curve, the car did not feel like it was loose or floating. Actually, it was so precise that I had to be careful if I hit a bump, because my hands would move the steering wheel a little and that alone was enough to alter my line through the corner.

With the Michelin Primacy MXV4's (whew, wish Michelin would go back to simple names like they used to have. When was younger, the only Michelin tire you would ask for was called the "Michelin X"), the Matrix does wobble a little more in the corners than the Goodyears, but I actually like that because it isn't dangerous at the speeds I drive, and it feels more normal to me. I may drive fast at times, but the car is still way more precise than any older car I've driven except maybe my Honda Civic.

Because of the softer sidewalls, the Primacy MXV4's have the advantages of the higher profile tires, such as a softer ride, a bit less noise, and less tramlining on the highway grooves. But for winter driving, I still change the wheels from 16" to a more old fashioned 15" with a 65 profile, and go with narrower, taller winter tires. They may not look as cool as the fashionably wide low profile tires, but they do the job when conditions are at their worst for traction. In the winter, I am just trying to survive for another year.

Another issue with the shorter, stiffer sidewalls, is that they are more prone to vibrate due to variations in stiffness of the sidewall. We didn't used to worry much about when the sidewalls were so tall and flexible that everything evened out, usually. But not so much today with the lower, and hence stiffer sidewalls. So now shops that deal with tires also may have a road pressure measurement tool, that can turn the tire as if it was rolling on an imaginary road, and measure the variations in force between the road and the axle. If there is too much variation, usually due to variability in sidewall stiffness, the tire cannot be balanced to make it ride smoothly.

Here is a summary of the advantages/disadvantages typical lower profile tires: More precise steering, harder ride, less protection from potholes.

Here is a summary of the advantages/disadvantages of wider tires, and typically lower profile tires are wider, but not necessarily: Bigger contact patch for more traction, can lose contact with the road in slush and water puddles (hydroplaning).

The Quiet Car

This is another entry that could fit into my series of fairy tales that start "Once upon I time, when I was young, cars/motorcycles were....."

Today one of the most common complaints with new cars is noise. I take that as a sign that car makers have really got their act together, because the most common complaint when I was young was cars falling apart. You would buy a brand new car, drive it off the Dealer's lot, then notice a long oil slick in the middle of the road right behind your brand new car. Then you would look ahead and see dry road. Then you would check the rear view mirror again, but it had fallen off. So you would do a U-turn, hopefully before the steering wheel came disconnected, and return to the dealer. His response would be a variation of "What did you expect? No car is perfect."

The one thing the dealer got right was "No car is perfect." No matter how good cars become, there will always be complaints, because people are basically idiots. (readers of this blog excepted). "My Hyundai Pony is not as smooth and powerful as my neighbour's Mercedes Benz, how come????". Which, translated into English, means "Chicks don't dig me because I drive a this piece of crap car, what are you going to do about it?"

I was doing a bit of research on the Internet about quiet cars, and found that about half the computer users who are interested in quiet, spelled it "quite". And that could have been even higher if I had actually Googled "quite cars".

There is a good reason to think that cars are actually getting noisier. I often walk beside busy roads, and one thing I notice about the noise levels is that it is not usually caused by engine exhaust noise, it is mostly tire noise. I remember once an almost completely silent car passed me, and I was surprised to find that it was a model T Ford. Those cars had extremely large diameter tires, that were also very narrow, almost like a motorcycle tire. Speaking of which, I never hear much noise from motorcycle tires either as they pass by me on the street. The tires are either very quiet, or the exhaust is just masking the noise.

If you are inside the car, you will hear something different to pedestrians. You will hear more wind noise, and the noise effects will all be amplified because you are basically inside a huge drum that is being pounded quite hard (notice not "quiet hard").

These days car tires are getting lower and wider, which means that noise is basically going to be increasing, unless the tire makers can find ways to stop it. That is very difficult, because customers are also demanding tread patterns that are dramatic, to enhance the performance image of their cars. So now you have diagonal slashes in the tread patterns, or you have big tread blocks for off-road traction. While the quietest design is actually the old fashioned circumferential grooves.

The tread design itself is not the only problem, as the road surface causes at least half the noise. The tire noise is generated by the tire coming into contact with the road at the leading edge of the contact patch. This is happening at very high speed, and the faster the tires spin, and the smaller the diameter, the harder the two surfaces come together. Any irregularities in the surfaces will generate noise or vibration. Actually, noise is just vibration transmitted through air, it's basically the same thing. Some road surfaces are especially noisy, usually the rougher surfaces. Some road surfaces are supposed to create noise inside the car, for example rumble strips. Take a look at the grooves on those rumble strips, and you will get an idea why no car tread has grooves running across the tire. By the way, rumble strips are barely audible if you are riding a motorcycle.

I recently put a new set of tires on my car that seemed to me to be very quiet. The were Michelin Primacy MXV4's. But a few days ago, when we were out for a ride in the car, I asked Mary Ann if she could hear a difference, all she said was "What???" So maybe it's all in my imagination.

Picture 1926 Ford Model T. Quietest car I ever heard, from the outside anyway. Look at the tires. And no, I was not born when that car was made.

Zen and the Art of Traffic Gridlock

Most people think they know what gridlock is, but I want to go over it again because it happens to highlight one of the most important principles in civilization, and if we could solve gridlock, we could solve any human problem.

Lets start with the basics. In a crowded city, such as New York which happens to be laid out in a grid, traffic will occasionally come to a complete halt in a feedback chain reaction. Imagine a city block which has an intersection at each corner, when traffic is very heavy. Now imagine what happens at one of those intersections when the light turns red, but some cars are stuck in the intersection and cannot move forward or back. Now the cars with a green light cannot move either, because of the cars in the middle of the intersection blocking their progress. Immediately, more cars become blocked behind them, and if the line stretches back to their previous intersection, then that one also becomes blocked the same way, and the chain reaction will now occur in all four corners of the block. And with one city block completely stuck, neighbouring blocks will also get stuck the same way. That is what we call gridlock.

In principal, gridlock can happen in places other than a grid, I have seen pictures of gridlock even in a traffic roundabout, where a line of buses in the circle may block and exit to the roundabout, when they get stopped by slow traffic, and the feedback loop quickly travels back around the entire roundabout to lock it down solidly. These traffic jams are apparently very hard to break up.

The root cause of gridlock comes down to human nature. Each independent driver is trying to get through the traffic as quickly as possible. So they may make a decision which superficially may help them get a head a little further. But their decision blocks another driver, and the feedback from that eventually blocks the entire traffic flow for the whole city. The psychology of this is very interesting, because even if you explain to each driver how to act in order to ensure the free movement of traffic, they will continue to behave in such a way as to move themselves ahead of the rest, which gridlocks the traffic, where they themselves will be stuck for hours.

So if I may define the gridlock mentality as one where a person will make some small action to serve themselves. seemingly at the expense of only a few others, but the the effect on the others multiplies around in such a way that it brings down the whole system, including the original perpetrator.

The solution for gridlock is for drivers to not move ahead if doing so will block the cross flow of traffic. After all, the cross flow is not really competing with you. Those divers are not trying to get ahead of you, they are just going their own way, but need to cross your path to get there. You must not enter an intersection even on a green light, if there is no place for you on the other side. But it is hard to get everyone to understand this is the problem. In other words, moving ahead is not always wise if you want to keep moving ahead.

Politics, economics, and war also suffer from gridlock mentality. This is the kind of "self interest" that gives a temporary advantage to one person while starting the chain reaction that brings down the whole system for everyone. Think of the big banks, that get spooked by bad economic news, and withdraw their loans to protect their own interests, which shuts down those borrowers' businesses, which in turn lay off employees, who in turn withdraw their money from the banks, thus driving the banks out of business anyway. The circular chain reaction always comes back to the starting and then spreads further.

This gridlock mentality applies to a military occupation, where soldiers are torturing and killing innocent civilians to get information, the negative effect of which multiplies to more civilians turning against the occupiers until they finally have to give up. A small advantage one minute, torturing and killing happily to "stay safe". But the advantage in temporary security turns millions of people against the occupiers, and the war is lost. Terrorists are always trying to find ways to enhance the "gridlock" effect against the occupying forces.

The temptation to gridlock mentality is the fatal flaw of pure free market capitalism, just as lack of incentive is the fatal flaw of communism.

Two thousand years ago, a man appeared on Earth with the solution to gridlock. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". "love your neighbour and your enemy" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Instead of listening to him, he was crucified by the very people who two thousand years later would invent gridlock and laissez faire capitalism.

One day, maybe all people will understand how their own innocent (but self serving) actions sometimes start a chain reaction that comes back to bite them in the rear end.

Pictures: A diagram of gridlock from Wikipedia, and a gridlocked traffic circle.

Trying Out the New Michelin Primacy MXV4 Tires

This is a "seat of the pants" review of the Michelin Primacy MXV4 tires on a 2005 Toyota Matrix. What is seat of the pants? It is a subjective and non-scientific evaluation of tires, based on my memory of my previous tires. Unlike the Tire Rack, which measures, times, and gives test results in bar graphs, as well as words. I go by feel and memory, which is nowhere near as accurate. For accuracy, go here: or Here

To understand why I went to the Toyota dealer for my tires, I will go over my first tire purchase in 1973. It was at the newly opened Canadian Tire Store, in Sept Iles Quebec. I just started a new job and finally had money to replace the bald tires on my '56 Chevy. So I got a set of four, which I don't remember the price, but as I recall it was roughly double the price of the car, so make it about $120. When I got home, two of the tires were almost flat, so I pumped them up and went back to get them remounted. Next I noticed that there was enough lead to make a small bust of Lenin attached as weights to each tire. So apparently these tires were not constructed on the "precision" factory moulds.

Now fast forward to 2010. I have never been back to Canadian Tire since 1973 for tires. I only go to Canadian Tire for things that I know will never need to be returned after testing at home. For example, not tires, not telephones, yes placemats, yes oven mitts, yes 10W-40 oil. Come to think of it I did return a set of defective placemats once, so I now check everything very carefully before leaving the store.

I went to the Toyota service department, which, at least at Heffner Toyota (I don't know about the rest), is a welcoming friendly place, from the automatic garage door openers, to the bright cheerful reception area where they get your information, and give you a card for a free coffee and cookie at the in-house cafe (which also has Internet hookup and computers). I got four tires, plus the official Clean Air inspection and a transmission oil change. It was nearly a thousand dollars all together, but the tires are still holding air, and the car got a perfect Clean Air report card (Zero PPM of everything listed, including Carbon Monoxide, so anyone contemplating suicide by sucking on a car exhaust should not buy a Toyota Matrix.) But with these tires being almost twenty times the price of my first car, I expect perfection plus a cup of coffee.

These are my impressions of the tires after a day or two. I can most easily compare them to my Michelin Pilot Alpin winter tires. These new tires definitely sound quieter. Surprisingly, my winter tires were no more noisy than the original equipment tires, which were Goodyear RSA.

With the MXV4 tires, and even the Alpin winter tires, the Matrix hardly wanders at all on a straight road and it takes very little steering input to get it back on course.  But when I first bought the Toyota five years ago, driving on the stock Goodyear RSA tires made me wonder if there was something wrong with the steering, as it took frequent forceful corrections to keep it going straight. I initially placed the blame on the car itself, as one person wrote "Don't expect to drive a Toyota with one hand". I also thought it may be just in comparison to my previous car, a 92 Honda Civic which had extremely light and direct steering, like a go-kart. But then another friend of mine bought a new Matrix the same year, and he told me the only thing he didn't like was the steering. He wanted to take the car back to the dealer to fix it. Coincidence?

About half of a car's driving feel depends on the quality of the tires. Maybe not so surprising given that all the feel of the road has to go through the tires to reach the car.

Some interesting things about the tire. It has two steel belts, not one.  I guess a lot of tires are starting to do this. And it has Michelin's "Green X" mark on the sidewall, meaning low rolling resistance. Most of the Primacy sizes do not have the Green X stamp.  The tire is available in H rated (210 kph) or V (240 kph). I chose H, as the V rated is stiffer and less comfortable (I'm told), and because the original tires were H rated.  Besides, I don't even know if the Matrix can do 240 kph. The tires took small weights to balance it (which is better than big honkin lead weights.) The MXV4's were just a few dollars more than the Michelin Hydroedge, my second choice, but the Hydroedge were not available in H or V ratings.  They were only available in a lower speed rating. 

The Primacy MXV4 is NOT a directional tire. My winter tires (Pilot Alpin) and my second choice Michelin Hydroedge are directional tires. Directional tires can not be mounted rotating in either direction. In other words they have to stay on the same side of the car when you decide to rotate the tires.

I am very happy get rid of the stock Goodyear RSA tires. But despite scathing reviews by owners in Tirerack.com, the RSA tires have held up well for at least 80,000 km, and I did get used to driving with them, and had no annoyances other than once fishtailing on a wet corner, and needing to buy a set of winter tires. When I got rid of them, they were still almost perfectly in balance, and they had worn quite evenly almost down to the wear bars.

Picture: Typical modern computer operated wheel balancing machine, I remember Heffners looks something like this from the shop tour I was given back in 2005. Heffners is almost 50 years old, and is now one of the largest Toyota Dealers in Canada. I guess one of the oldest too, because that's about when Toyota started selling in North America.

The Invisible Hand that Cleaned Up the Environment

I had not been made aware of the body of work by Pierre Desrochers, until I was sent this "Earth Day" article by a friend. According to the article, Pierre Desrochers is professor of geography at the University of Toronto and associate researcher at the Montreal Economic Institute.

I looked it up, just to be sure, and his own web page says he is "associate" professor of geography at the University of Toronto (in Mississauga), but on sabbatical leave this year. I will not get into a discussion of the difference between associate professor and professor, but I had a friend who went through this process, and it is quite a big difference. You can find Pierre's article here in the National Post.

This article has many "hot button" statements, so I am not surprised, from the tone of it, that Pierre is regularly attacked by scientists and "greenies". Not physically, or course, I mean like what I am doing here, which is to try to point out what is wrong with his statement. I'm just trying to do my bit in the cause of truth and fairness.

The statement I picked out for my own response is this one by Pierre Desrochers:

"It was not heavy regulation or green activism that was primarily responsible for improved environmental quality over the last few decades but rather a process inherent in the market economy, leading to ever more efficient innovations and an ever more economical use of resources. When will we see an Earth Day where it is finally recognized that the market’s “invisible hand” also has a green thumb?"

With that type of statement, it is not surprising to find that Pierre is getting a lot of his work published in the conservative Canadian newspaper "The National Post", or that he is working for the Montreal Economics Institute, which has been getting a reputation as a pro-free market think tank.

This statement directly contradicts self evident truth. So apparently it was not the environmentalists who pushed for a clean environment, it was "the invisible hand of the free market"?  This is, in my opinion, a bald faced lie. An attempt to not only revise, but actually "erase" the public perception of what went on in the last 40 or so years.

There were countless initiatives by grass roots activists, some of which led to big changes, for example Greenpeace fighting against nuclear testing, including the death of a Greenpeace activist and the bombing, and sinking of their ship "Rainbow Warrior" by the French Special Forces. But let me focus on something different, in one area only, one that I had personal involvement with, although not as an activist, but as a regular Joe car driver. Probably similar to everybody else who might read this blog. I am referring to the 40 year struggle to clean up automobile tailpipe emissions.

In the struggle to clean up tailpipe emissions, I don't need to look up anything in Wikipedia, because I practically lived it, as did anyone who ever lifted the hood of a car in anger since 1969. The result of the struggle is that today, car tailpipes are ten times cleaner than 40 years ago. I don't need an emissions test on my Matrix to tell me that. (although I do have to get an emissions test to renew my stickers). I can just wipe my finger inside the tailpipe and it comes out practically clean after over 100,000 km. of driving. On the other hand, I only need to ride my 1970 Honda CD175 around the city once to come home "smelling of motorcycle" as Mary Ann puts it.

The clean tailpipe movement started in California, as an answer to the smog which was choking the city and suburbs. It was not started by "The invisible hand of the Free market", but by grass roots activists and government legislation in California. It was fought every step of the way by the automobile manufacturers, and many regular car drivers like me, who objected to all these controls being placed on our cars and tried to defeat them. Did we ever blame the car companies for inventing these "clean tailpipe" technologies, as we regularly ripped them out of the cars? No, we blamed the extremists in the environmental movement. Everybody knew the car companies were against the controls. To be fair, some car companies were hard at work researching the problem to produce cleaner cars, but those were the Japanese companies, especially Honda and Toyota. GM, Ford and Chrysler, on the other hand tried every trick in the book to get around the controls, and one of the best was to get their cars classified as "trucks" to take advantage of a loophole in the laws. We all know where that went, as today more than half the "cars" stuck in traffic jams are SUVs and pickup trucks. Partly resulting from their over-emphasis on trucks and SUV's rather than research and development, both GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy last year, while Toyota became the world's biggest automaker. Now that result might have had something to do with the "invisible hand of the free market", if it ever existed.

For at least 40 years, friends, relatives, car magazine articles, were all telling me that those crazy environazis were "ramming pollution controls down our throats". Frankly, I believed it myself. So now, with clean exhaust pipes pretty much a reality, the corporate spin machine is rewriting history. The new "reality" is that it wasn't the environazis after all who forced us to clean up the tailpipes. Now we are to forget everything we knew, and blindly believe that it was the invisible hand of the free market that brought us clean cars. This kind of blatant propaganda could only work if the public at large had an exceedingly bad memory, or were actually sheep. I don't think it will work, because so many of us actually were poking around under the hoods of cars. But just to make sure, I will ask the car mechanic a question, the next time I go for my "Clean Air" emissions test. I'll ask "Who is responsible for us having to get our tailpipes checked every 2 years?". Unless he or she is a regular reader of the National Post, and just bought their first car this year, I'm pretty sure I know what the answer will be.

Buying New Car Tires

Last week I had to order a new set of tires for my car, which got me thinking about the history of car tires.

What I noticed first, when researching which tires to get, was that the selection process seems to be getting more complicated all the time. When I first started buying tires, you got to choose bias ply or radial. There was no Google to confuse the issue. No Tirerack.com with thousands of tests, graphs, owner surveys, or reviews.

Now a quick history. Most, if not all, car tires today are radial tires. The radial tire apparently was patented in 1915 by Arthur W. Savage, who was most famous for inventing and manufacturing the removable box magazine in firearms. Although apparently Savage also founded a tire company, I could not find any evidence that they successfully produced or sold a radial tire.

http://www.design-engine.com/feature.php?feature=84

The actual mass manufacturing and marketing of radial tires got started with Michelin in France after WW2. I never heard of radial tires until Michelin got into the business of exporting them to America and Canada in the mid 1960's. American companies were slow to adapt, as a radial tire requires a completely different manufacturing process. At first, the big American companies such as Goodyear and Firestone, tried a hybrid tire. Partly radial, partly biased ply, this tire was called the "Bias belted" tire. When the big auto companies started equipping their new cars with radials, Firestone did a rushed conversion which screwed up big time and resulted in the largest consumer recall in US history, as the belts separated inside the tires at speed.

Today we have winter, summer and all season tires to choose from. We also have extremely long life tires compared to the good old days. The tires I am replacing still have a little tread left at over 80,000 km. (I don't know exactly because I also have winter tires.) Tires come in different profiles. Years ago, the tires only profile was 100%, meaning the height was equal to the width. Now we have tires that are flatter and wider than before. My Matrix came with 55% profile, which is a surprisingly low, wide tire for a car that does not compete in Formula 1 races.

Low profile tires are possible with the technology of today, and are very popular on custom cars. The look of wide tires appeals to many men. Surprisingly few women care one way or another, according to informal surveys I have conducted. Another reason the low profile tires are popular is that they allow for a larger diameter wheel. Large diameter wheels can have a dramatic appearance when they are made of sculpted alloy.

Those of us who prefer skinny, tall tires are pretty much out of luck. I am also not too fond of the imprecise straight-line tracking of the low profile wide tires, or the way they tend to aquaplane more easily, especially on slushy roads. But they do grip well otherwise, and the car doesn't feel like you are riding on jelly filled doughnuts when rounding corners.

It took me quite a long time to come up with the tire I wanted to buy, finally picking the Michelin Primacy MXV4. But I didn't come to my decision based on research. I finally decided when I saw the MXV4 installed as original equipment on a friend's car, a Pontiac Pursuit. Then I found out that last year Consumer Reports rated the tire as the best H rated all-season tire.

Strangely, I bought all-season tires despite having specialized winter tires in the garage. That's because "all season" refers to Florida, not Canada. I could not find any reasonable summer tire other than ultra-high performance types that are stiff and wear out quickly.

The one thing that really bugs me about tires is not the handling or grip, it is how they can start to vibrate after a while. The vibration on the highway is not only annoying, but it stresses the various suspension parts and causes them to need replacement too. And apparently, vibration is not caused just by imbalance (which can be easily corrected), but by suspension wear, and by uneven construction of the tire, or even by belts slipping within the tire during use.

So in the end I decided against getting a cheap tire and worrying about vibration and balancing difficulties, and I just went with a top rated tire from a well known manufacturer. Although even among the bewildering variety of Michelin tires it was hard to pick which one was best for me.

Picture: Not my tire, although you can maybe tell by the US penny. Those penny tire testing gauges are much more affordable now in Canada with our money at par. Also, my old Goodyear RSA's are much more worn than the tire in the picture.

Media Coverage of Lexus Stability Control Recall

Here is a typical report in the press.

"The company, based in Toyota City, Japan, last week halted production and sales of the SUV after Consumer Reports issued a “don’t buy” recommendation, saying the GX 460 may be prone to rolling over in emergency driving conditions. The magazine, published by the non-profit Consumers Union in Yonkers, New York, issued its rating on April 13."

Here is a more complete story.

The fault I see with most reporting about the Lexus is this. There seems to be some kind of underlying assumption that "Stability Control Software" will stop a vehicle from rolling over, which is not true. It is designed to stop a vehicle from losing control going through a turn, by applying brakes on one side of the vehicle to straighten it out in case it begins to slide sideways.

But in no way does the software improve the resistance to rollover, which is a function of height of the centre of gravity and width of the wheel track. And in no way does it improve traction, which depends on the road surface and tire design.

Where stability control is useful is in preventing the car from beginning to slide sideways, which is more complicated than you might think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_control

"When ESC detects loss of steering control, ESC automatically applies the brakes to help "steer" the vehicle where the driver intends to go. Braking is automatically applied to individual wheels, such as the outer front wheel to counter oversteer, or the inner rear wheel to counter understeer. Some ESC systems also reduce engine power until control is regained. Electronic stability control does not improve a vehicle's cornering performance; rather it helps to minimize a loss of control."

So the car, when skidding is detected, will attempt to straighten it out and send it "where you intended it to go", and if you think about it for a second, how does the software know where you intended to go when skidding around a curve? ESC works reasoably well if you are rounding a curve and hit a smallish patch of ice, then end up back on pavement. In that case, the software will do a better job than the human in deciding where you wanted to go, as the loss of control is very sudden, so is the regaining of traction, and the ESC will simply try to get you back on course once traction is re-established. The recovery is very fast, and it is based on where were you going before the skid, and once the skid is recovered, the steering is back in the driver's hands.

Some stability control systems are more "controlling" than others. Some drivers prefer a less intrusive control, these would be the better drivers, with more experience and sharp reflexes. Some drivers would prefer to give more control to the computer, those would be typified by my mother.

When a driver is deliberately provoking a skid, I'm guessing that the ESC would have a harder time telling where the driver intends to go. In some cases, admittedly rare, it may send you straight into a dangerous situation.

Consumer Reports managed provoked a sideways skid in one of their tests. The obvious solution would be to ratchet up the control a bit in the software. I personally would like to see this under driver control rather than pre-set at the factory or the dealers' anyway. Put a knob on the dashboard and let me dial it in myself from 0 (no ESC) to 10 (Max ESC).

The connection between stability control and rollovers is simply this: If you manage to provoke a sideways skid, and the wheels hit a curb while sliding sideways, the car will possibly roll over. This will not be as likely to happen if you hit a curb head on. But the ESC does not actually improve the car's rollover resistance or the traction of the tires, it simply tries to keep the front of the car ahead of the back of the car while skidding. That may keep the car from rolling over, but may not prevent it from going somewhere that you didn't want to go.

Driving on the 401

Last night I was coming home on the 401 in the car, it was dark, and there was scattered fog. Recently there have been some changes in Ontario that have made the 401 a safer place to be. The ban on hand held digital devices has given me some confidence, as I rarely if ever see anyone holding a phone and driving any more. And the speed limiter on trucks keeps them all at about 110 kph, and makes for a more orderly traffic flow.

But there is still a problem when we get into patchy fog, because most drivers will slow down to 90 to 100 kph, while the limiters are still set at 110. A few truck drivers will continue to drive at 110, causing a much more confused traffic pattern just at the time you need order the most - i.e. in reduced visibility. First I saw a large truck weaving in and out across all three lanes of traffic, trying to get by the slower moving cars and trucks. Yes, it was only 110, but it was in fog, and the other traffic had slowed down, so 110 was a dangerous speed in that context.

My second observation was right in front of me. After Woodstock, the road crews were painting the road, and had closed the road down to one lane. This happened right where the road normally goes from 3 to 2 lanes even without the painting crew. I guess this situation, which occurred in fog, caught the truck driver in front of me by surprise, and he hit the brakes and clipped one cone, as he tried to merge at the last minute, with another big truck beside him. The other truck also hit the brakes and there was a tense moment before everyone got back down to one lane. Trucks need a lot more planning than a car to merge lanes, because of the length and the inability to change speed quickly. (i.e. the opposite of a motorcycle). At the place where we were confined to one lane, there was a row of cones on the right, but on the left was a concrete barrier with no room to spare. The lesson learned from this is that when a hazard slows things down, the benefit of the speed restrictors is nullified, and it's back to the law of the jungle.

The day before that (Monday) I also rode down the 401, but on my motorcycle. That time it was in sunshine and it was a really good ride. Normally I get a bit tired driving a distance of 120 kilometers on the 401, but on Monday the trip was a little shorter because the traffic was moving quickly. Ever since I traded in my BMW K1100 on a Vulcan 900, I have kept my speed down to about 120 to match the middle lane. With the BMW, I could easily match the fast lane, so most often that was where I went. Now I sometimes find myself keeping up with the fast lane with the Vulcan, and it was actually quite comfortable.

One of the things that kept my speed down on the Vulcan was because of the harshness I felt in the suspension. Since this harsh feeling disappeared when I had my bladder stone removed, I have sometimes driven a little faster than before, and I have found that the rear suspension on the Vulcan actually seems to work better at higher speeds than at lower speeds.

In general, the faster you go, the stiffer a spring you need. I don't have any physics formulas to account for this, I just take it as a given truth. Some motorcycles are made with very soft springs that feel nice when you are driving around a parking lot, but get them out on the highway at 140 kph, and you will be in for some bone rattling surprises. The forces are much greater at higher speeds, and there is less time for the bike to respond to the bumps. There is probably another issue of the shock absorber damping oil heating up and losing effectiveness. Whatever the reason, the Vulcan suspension is actually surprisingly good when speeds pick up and the road is a bit choppy, I would rate it almost as good as the BMW. But at very low speeds, it is stiffer. When parked, you can feel stiffness just by trying to bounce the rear up and down. If you try the same thing with another bike, (like the comparable Suzuki C50) you will feel more movement in the rear suspension.