I have a hypothetical scenario and would be interested in your thoughts.

Imagine that a company creates something that they call the Antcar. The Antcar is a self-driving car where you basically put a destination into a GPS device and it will drive you there. By and large, it is not meant to be driven. There may be controls (like a steering wheel and breaks) for an emergency, but it’s all pretty limited. The entire point is that it will take you where you want to go.

The first question is… would you want such a car? Would you trade the ability to drive for the ability to do other things while the car drives itself? Would you pay $12,000 more for the privilege? $8,000?

The second question, though, is the real question. Let’s say the Antcar (and its competitors) work very well. They’ve been on the market for a while and now the premium is down to $8,000 per car. The initial hopes that it would cut down on automobile accidents was premature. They don’t always play well with human drivers. The Antcar manufacturers, meanwhile, start a pilot program in an eastern European city and then a few cities where Drivercars are banned and only Antcars are allowed on their roads. The results are astonishing in terms of safety improvements. Traffic engineers in the United States start proposing that the US consider doing the same.

Below are some factors to consider. Feel free to point off if I am way off-base about something, but for the sake of this hypothetical accept what I say as true. I’m less interested in how you think Antcars would really work and more interested in how you would evaluate the tradeoffs.

Pro: Safety! Car-against-car accidents reduce by 90%. Cars running off the road reduce by 98%. Pedestrian accidents reduce by only about 10%, but the victims of remaining accidents are caused by pedestrian error. Accidents where pedestrians follow the correct traffic signals are reduced by 98% (the remaining 2% are Antcar malfunctions). No drive drivers, no exhausted drivers, no reckless drivers results in considerable safety improvements.

Neither: Operation costs are roughly the same. The taxes to account for increased costs of road maintenance are offset by much lower insurance premiums.

Con: The cars are more expensive. In today’s dollars, you can add about $8,000 to the cost of any given car. However, the increased safety means that driving smaller cars becomes more possible. So while a 4-door economy car might cost $20,000, you can get a 2-seat Smart-size car for $15,000 and a one-seat bucket car for about $12,000. Nobody would have to buy the Antcar right away because there would be a ten-year transition period, but you would have to factor these higher prices into future cars purchased.

Pro: A more productive populace. People can (sorta) work in their cars. I say “sorta” because they can’t lay papers out everywhere or anything cause the car would be turning and breaking and even if there were some signals to alert the driver, it could be kind of tough in a lot of circumstances. They can unwind during the drive rather than when they get home. Cell phone calls are now guilt-free.

Pro: The makers of the (capital-A) Antcar enjoy a market advantage but not an absolute one. They’re willing to submit to standards so that their cars can cooperate with cars made by other companies. They already do somewhat, but they understand that the standards are going to become much more rigid. In other words, they would not have a monopolistic advantage.

Con: The government would have to administer these standards. A cynical person would point out that they may not always necessarily do so with the public interest in mind.

Con: Everywhere an individual driver goes becomes a matter of record. Law enforcement and courts can subpoena it the same way that they can subpoena phone records. A drug dealer is arrested and theoretically they can look through the records and see everybody that’s visited that house or street in the last thirty days or longer or whatever the records say. Divorce proceedings could unmask precisely where the husband or wife has been. And so on. Definite loss of privacy.

Pro: The ability to investigate where people have been would help the police solve crimes. It could also help innocent people establish alibis.

Con: No more driving. No more getting a turbo-engine car that you can rev up. These cars would still be available, but you really couldn’t drive them anywhere. The engines in the Antcar (and its competitors) would be pretty standard in terms of capabilities. Having a muscle car would not be nearly as advantageous since the cars would be navigating in a more cooperative manner.

Pro: Reduced traffic times. No more accidents means no more accidents causing delays. No red lights at intersections where nobody is coming. Lane merges because much less painful. Eventually it will get to the point that traffic lanes themselves are no longer necessary, though the antcars are not yet ready for that.

Con: Driving in inclement weather can become difficult or impossible. These things are directed by satellite so things that disrupt a satellite signal would make the car not work. When signals are lost and are cutting in and out, the car can let you direct it (you tell it to turn right ahead and then you tell it when to turn left and so on), but it’s a real hassle.

So… what do you think? Here are some options, though I’d like you to elaborate if you have any further thoughts.

a) I would absolutely support banning drivercars. Safety is a premium consideration. Not just the lives saved, but the freedom from fear on being on the road after 2am would absolutely make it worth it.
b) I would probably support banning drivercars. I’m concerned about some aspect of it or another, though.
c) I couldn’t support banning drivercars on libertarian grounds. People should never lose the freedom to drive (and conceal where they’ve been) even if it results in the loss of life and a significant reduction of accidents.
d) I can’t support it because I don’t trust our government to play fair with standards and not play favorites.
e) It’s hard to answer your question because you didn’t explore what I would consider to be a significant factor and/or your prediction on some aspect or another is so far off-base I can’t suspend my disbelief that far.
f) What’s an Antcar? I’ve never heard of that. I don’t think this technology exists. I also don’t understand the meaning of the word “hypothetical.”

Update: New Pro and Con added.

Counterpoint, from Slate’s Tom Vanderbilt:

The consequences of not issuing tickets were shown in a recent study of traffic violations in New York City. From 2001 to 2006, the number of fatalities in which speeding was implicated rose 11 percent. During the same period, the number of speeding summons issued by the NYPD dropped 11 percent. Similarly, summonses for red-light-running violations dropped 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, even as the number of crashes increased. As an alternative approach, consider France, where the dangerous driver is as storied a cliché as a beret on the head and a baguette under the arm. As the ITE Journal notes, since 2000, France has reduced its road fatality rate by an incredible 43 percent. Instrumental in that reduction has been a roll-out of automated speed cameras and a toughening of penalties. For example, negligent driving resulting in a death, which often results in little punishment in the United States, carries a penalty of five years in prison and a 75,000-euro fine.

The “folk crime” belief helps thwart increased traffic enforcement: Why should the NYPD, whose resources and manpower are already stretched, bust people for dangerous driving when they could be going after murderers? Well, apart from the fact that more people are killed in traffic fatalities in New York City every year than they are in “stranger homicides,” there is the idea, related to the link between on-and-off-road criminality, that targeting traffic violators might be an effective way to combat other crimes. Which brings us to the third benefit of traffic tickets: increased public safety. Hence the new Department of Justice initiative called DDACTS, or Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety, which has found that there is often a geographic link between traffic crashes and crime. By putting “high-visibility enforcement” in hot spots of both crime and traffic crashes, cities like Baltimore have seen reductions in both.

Counterpoint:
Jericho, Arkansas. Even putting aside the violence (and let’s also put aside the demographics of the town, please), you still have a town doing what hundreds of little towns do across the country. Even to the extent that traffic stops do help save lives, there are clearly cases where that is not the primary reason for doing so. Further, the problem with the “Random Use Tax” idea posited above is that (a) the fact that most people won’t get a ticket any given year makes opposition to the tax relatively minimal and (b) it’s a tax primarily levied on outsiders. Further, as Web has pointed out in the past, when cops do start profiteering, invites mistrust between officers and the population they’re theoretically serving. People doing no harm should have nothing to fear from the cops. People doing no harm still feel that moment of terror when they see flashing blue lights come on behind them, even if they’re not breaking the law and the lights are meant for someone else.

Further, the notion of pulling people over for speeding leading to arrests in other crimes… well that’s certainly a benefit. Of course, you could also get the same results with random pull-overs, strict racial profiling, and a lot of other ways. Checkpoints have their uses, too. Of course, there are Constitutional questions if the person hasn’t done anything to warrant a pull-over. The solution to that, I would say, is to make so many rules that it becomes virtuously impossible to follow all the rules. My brother was pulled over once for “changing lanes too quickly”. An acquaintance was pulled over for “driving too close to the curb.” There are cases where you literally cannot change lanes without doing so within 100 feet of an Intersection. And so on, and so on. I’m not saying that these rules don’t have their function, but to the extent that they’re used to check people out for other crimes… I’m just not entirely comfortable with that.

I’m the first to say that I don’t actually know a whole lot about cars. And a good bulk of what I do know, particularly when it comes to makes and models, I’ve learned over the past couple of months as I’ve been abstractly car shopping. But while I don’t know much, I know that the Toyota Prius is one ugly car. Not even a little bit off, as a lot of cars are. Rather, it is the ugliest car on the road today. And, of course, one of the most popular.

So the question arises as to why they created a car that I find so unattractive. I can think of a handful of possible reasons for this.

• I’m wrong, it’s not ugly. Or rather, my tastes are unusual and I am one of the few people that do not like the car design. I don’t think that this is so because it is ugly in a very distinct sort of way. But maybe it’s not that unique (see below) or if it is unique, it’s just different. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.
• I’m wrong, it’s not unique. It’s not a design that other manufacturers are replicating (with one notable exception). Were it part of a larger trend, I’d be bemoaning the trend rather than the Prius itself. On the other hand, it’s not that distinct. And it does tie in a little bit with a recent trend of what I can extended-butt cars. Sometimes I think that this works, as with the PT Cruiser (one of the nicest looking cars, in my opinion), but mostly it’s not something I care much for. I guess the rationale for it is more trunk space and that I can appreciate. But the Prius seems relatively unique in that it doesn’t seem to be maximizing trunk (vertical) space the way that a lot of hatchbacks do. It’s sort of an in-between, unable to determine whether it’s a sedan or a hatchback in design.
• It’s aerodynamic and/or maximizes mileage for hybrid engines and/or safety with lighter materials. Again, the problem with this theory is that it’s relatively unique. Civic Hybrids don’t ape the design, for instance, nor do Camry Hybrids. Then again, the Civic is a Civic. It’s design is set by the regular model it’s attached to. Same for a Camry. Notably, the Prius gets better mileage than the other two despite appearing to be slightly larger than a Civic. The Camry Hybrid doesn’t get very good mileage except when compared to a regular Camry. So the idea could be that the Prius model should be designed to maximize the Hybrid technology and turning it into a more hatchbacky or sedany design would negate that somehow. Also possible is that the Prius model is built lighter and would get better mileage even if it looked like a lightly outsized Civic. The fact that the Honda Insight, another purely hybrid model, looks similar suggests that maybe there is something about the look that works uniquely well with hybrids.
• It has to be ugly to be conspicuous because the good designs were taken. This would be one of the main reasons to get a Prius rather than a Civic or Camry Hybrid. People see you in it and they know that you’re driving a Hybrid. The Civic and Camry they only know if they see the decal. Plus, if you’re asked what kind of car you drive, you can be all cool and say “Prius” whereas if you say “Civic” you could be losing that environmental cred unless you append “Hybrid”, in which case you may be being too conspicuously environmentally correct. Better to have a model that speaks for itself. While this may purely conspicuous in the same way that paying extra to drive an Acura to differentiate yourself from lowly Honda drivers, it is not necessarily so. There is a value in this conspicuousness if it promotes virtue. Driving an Acura says “I’m better than you” or “I’m as good as you”, driving a Prius could be seen as “I am driving an environmentally conscious car and you should, too.” Assuming that one believes that reducing carbon emissions is a lofty goal, this is a public good. And it’s a public good that driving a Civic or Camry Hybrid only provide privately. And it could be that Honda is going for the same thing with the Insight.
• It’s cheaper that way. The Prius and Insight are cheaper than the Civic and Camry Hybrids. They’re both actually surprisingly affordable cars. So rather than it being a marker of conspicuousness, maybe it’s a marker for thriftiness. That’s something I could get behind. I don’t exactly drive sexxy cars myself…

I’ve been looking at cars lately to replace Crayola before we move to The Great Next. I created a spreadsheet cataloging prices, years, and miles on used cars. I also created a formula to gauge cost-per-mile. The first assumes 100,000 miles because that’s how long it takes before more serious repairs start being required. The second assumes 150,000 because that’s the presumed life of the car. The third assumes 200,000 because that’s the farthest any car I’ve owned as driven. By and large, cars for sale that do well on one category do well on the remaining categories and vice-versa. So a deal is a deal regardless of what I assume the mileage to be.

The big exception to this are mid-range mileage cars, between 50-100k. The thought occurred to me that one possible solution would be to get an old car with low mileage for its age. For instance, an 8-year old car with only 70,000 miles on it. These do very poorly on the 100k check (as expected) and dominate the 200k check (not a surprise), but are also the leaders on the 150k (by a smaller margin). I recognize that the 150,000 is biased a bit because it doesn’t really take into account that miles 20-50k are cheaper than miles 120-150k. On the other hand, there is an added flexibility that this car can be replaced sooner. And the price difference is substantial (bringing a car price down from $18k to 7k.

• The sheer size of the price difference got me looking into bluebook values and I’ve noticed a definite trend. Old cars, regardless of mileage, are cheap even when you account for the mileage. This is one of those common-sense things, but I had been so fixated on mileage that it escaped my attention. The question I have is… are they cheap because:
• They look old. With the except of a few models, cars date relatively quickly. Looking at pictures of some of the old cars, the design looks old. Light trucks in particularly from 2000 or so have more in common aesthetically with Jeeps from the 80’s than anything coming out today (except, well, Jeeps).
• They lack features. They have a tape deck instead of a CD player, for instance. Certainly no bluetooth or navigation or anything like that. Or the cars had these features but maybe they’ve stopped working. I’m not considering any cars without AC, but that’s the only thing I’ve really looked closely at. I should look more closely at cruise control.
• They’re much more likely to break down. My obsession with mileage notwithstanding, a 2000 model with 50,000 miles is more likely to break down than a 2008 model with the same. And it could well be that a 2000 with 50,000 miles is more likely to break down than a 2005 with 100,000 miles. That would actually sort of match my own experience. Crayola has 120,000 miles and seems to be in a startlingly similar place than Rudat was last year when he had 200,000 miles. Wildly different mileage, but they are the same make, series, and year. And further, it’s unlikely that I took better care of Rudat than Dad did of Crayola. On the other hand, Rudat did a lot of freeway travel and Crayola was mostly 5-mile drives for work between 40k-95k miles (when my father had it).
• They’re more expensive to fix when they do break down. Having an older car has never remotely been a problem for me in this regard. But this may be an area where Fords and domestics have advantages over foreign cars. There may have been a problem when I was driving the Trawler, but that car was over 20 years old.
• Warranty, or lack thereof. This one is an issue that I’ve approached independently. For whatever reason, most of the cars I’m looking at newer or older don’t have a warranty. It’s possible that we’ll decide that a warranty is a must have and that would change our perspective considerably. And while warranty could factor heavily into the comparison of deals, I assume that bluebook values don’t really take that into account. Though maybe they do.

This will be the first car that my wife and I have ever purchased either together or individually. So there’s a lot we don’t know, which is why I am asking for your help. If it’s simply a matter of (1) then I really don’t care. In fact, I don’t like a lot of the newer designs so it would be a net benefit. For (2) I would just need to add the cost of a CD/MP3 player installation to the cost. And consider how much I really need that cruise control. But if it’s (3) and (4), I would need to add that into my formula somehow. But I’m not sure how much I would need to weigh that in.

The formula is not a strict method by which we will choose a car. There would be too many variables for that. However, every now and again I will run into some impressive outliers. Cars that outwardly seem like a really good deal. You have to be suspicious of that a little, at least, but when I’ve run across them there’s generally been a pretty good reason for it (it’s a theft recovery, it’s sold at a high-volume consignment lot, it was a trade-in at a lot with a different marquee, etc). It’s hard for a newbie like me to really “game the system”, and I don’t really expect to, but I do want to make sure that I have some basis with which to compare sales the same way I do with computers.

So… what is your experience? What do you know about used cars? Does age matter as much as mileage? Or is my non-desire for a new-looking car an opening for us to get a better deal than I otherwise might?

After I explained about how I broke the door handle on my wife’s car, Sheila said:

I have never, ever had a car door handle break or heard of someone to whom that happened. Until now, Banana-hands.

Neither had I.

However, I was talking to the autoshop guy and asked how much it would cost to replace a door handle on a 1997 Toyota Camry.

He knew the answer off the top of his head.

Why? Cause it happens with 90’s Camrys a lot.

So there, Sheila. 🙂

On the weekend before taking my car Crayola in to the shop, I decided to try to best Murphy’s Law by looking for a new car. I wasn’t sure that the damage to Crayola was catastrophic, but with that car even a repair bill of $2,000 made him not worth fixing. And the problems were severe enough that I couldn’t rely on him in the meantime. So I figured that I would look at getting a new (used) car. The more I looked, Murphy’s Law would dictate, the less necessary it would be.

It was a fun experience. I’ve never actually purchased a car before. I’ve always gotten hand-me-downs. Even when I got a car that was new to the family, it was usually some deal that my father arranged. The cheapest car available that met the criteria. What I wanted (justly) did not matter. So I took it and was always grateful. But here we were in a situation where I would actually be able to choose a car. Though we’d have to buy a relatively inexpensive used car, our definition of “inexpensive” wasn’t $2-6k and our definition of “used” was really “barely used”, 10-20k miles.

It’s sort of like when I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t buy me the nicest shows but I at least had the option of getting something in a style that I liked. I’ve always been partial to high-tops, for instance, so I could get cheap high-tops. As my feet got bigger, the selection got smaller. As I turned the corner passed 13 into 14 and later 15, it would become a matter not so much of choosing what I liked but asking, with pleading eyes, what if anything they had in my size. Then online shoe stores became all the rage and suddenly I was a kid again, being able to choose something that I actually wanted.

So here I was, actually looking at different makes and models that I could actually own. It was like being a kid at the shoe store again. Further, all of the models I’ve previously owned and liked (Dodge Colt, Chrysler Lebaron, and Ford Escort) are all long-since discontinued. So I had to leave my comfort zone. Exciting! Even further, I come from a Dodge-Ford family (Dodge up until 98 or so, Ford since, with one aberrant Chevy), but with Detroit in the shape it’s in, I would have to even look at foreign cars. A very {chuckle} foreign concept {sorry, couldn’t resist} to me. I figured that since I had married into a Toyota family that I would become a Toyota person by default (sorta like how a vaguely religious person who marries into a more strictly religious family tends to adopt that faith if they will have them), but a guy could dream, right?

I was mostly interested in a subcompact of some sort. I like cars that get good mileage. Having had round-trip commutes that range from 60 miles to 115 miles in my last three jobs, I’m particularly price-conscious. Beyond that, while I’m not much of an environmentalist, if I can get something more economically friendly that’s one of the things that I can actually do and I’d like to do so. Not enough to get a hybrid or anything (not until there is a solid used market in my price range and my driving habits would be able to take advatange), but something is better than nothing. Oh, and did I mention that mileage makes a pretty big difference on a 90-mile daily commute?

Beyond that, I actually like small cars. My favorite car has always been a Dodge Colt. My least favorite have been the vans I’ve driven and the Land Barge I drove for a while. Despite the fact that my body is not built for a small car, I like a small footprint for parking and maneuverability reasons. I have also become near-phobic of vans since a near accident several years ago. And though we have some money saved up, the less spent the better. All of this pointed to a subcompact.

The only concern about compacts I have is ceiling space. Crayola, my current 2D Ford Escort, is too short. I can deal with my knee inadvertently changing the volume on the radio, but I don’t like to have to slouch in my car. So I wanted something small but with more interior space. That lead me to the Nissan Versa, which has ads that specifically boast interior space. Sure enough, it’s 60″, 8″ taller than Crayola. Come to find out that the Escort is unusually short for a car (52-53″). Even though it’s not a subcompact, most of the subcompacts I looked at were significantly taller, the only big exception being the Hyundai Accent (55″), though even that was 3″ taller. The Toyota Yaris was 57.5″.

So most of my early looking around involved that Nissan Versa and all its glorious height. It had pretty solid reviews, though the gas mileage wasn’t as good as with most of the other subcompacts (it was comparable to the Escort’s mileage, in fact). I also found myself looking at the Kia Rio, which was notably less expensive than the Versa and with solid gas mileage. A little bit shorter (58″), but certainly closer to the Versa than the Escort. Plus, Rios were cheaper despite including features (MP3 player, bluetooth) that Nissan wants extra for. Unfortunately, a glance of the reviews scratch the Rio from consideration. Complaints of breakdowns and of having difficulty getting them serviced. Beyond that, the rental car that Enterprise gave me was a Rio and I was not very impressed by it

The car that I liked the most was the Dodge Caliber. The Caliber was the successor to the Neon which was the successor to my beloved Colt. It was as tall as the Versa, though classified as a compact rather than a subcompact. Besides its tie with the Colt, the biggest attraction to it was entirely superficial. I just love the way it looks. And it’s a Dodge, which pulls me back to its roots. Beyond superficiality, though, it was priced out of what I could justify paying. Besides which, Dodge is a Chrysler brand and there’s a lot going on in their household that I would prefer steer clear of.

The Yaris looked attractive, but it lost on cost points with a slightly higher price than the Versa. Ditto for the Honda Fit, which my ex-roommate Hubert drives and endorses. I kept it in mind, though, if I could get a good deal on it. That was another problem with the Yaris, though. While Nissan makes the Versa rather central to their line, the Yaris seems to be treated something like an ugly step-child within Toyota.

So I’d more-or-less decided on the Versa. I was going to look around to see good deals on the other cars, but the Versa was what I had in mind. But, of course, the purpose of all of this looking was that I wouldn’t have to buy a new car. And that was what happened. The cost of repairs ($1,100) was just outside of what I was comfortable paying, but I needed to make a choice quickly and the overall sense was that the problems were isolated and not indicative of larger problems that would cost more down the road. Beyond that, since we’re going to be moving again soon I figure that it would be better not to buy a car until we know where we’re moving to. The Versa is the perfect choice for the Zaulem Sound area, where parking, maneuverability, and mileage matter a great deal. It makes less sense in the rural place that we’re likely to end up and I should tailor my choice around that. So I got it fixed. I have to confess that a part of me was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting something novel and interesting. Further, given the givens about what happens next in terms of cars, it’s unlikely that I will ever own any of these neat cars that I was looking at. It was going to be the Crayola and after the Crayola it was going to be a different kind of car (something more family-friendly and maybe with AWD).

My sense turned out to be wrong, though. Problems with Crayola have already started creeping up again. It’s not throwing tantrums when going uphill, but it’s not happy about it. No problems with high speeds, though, and mileage is good. But since my employment at Mindstorm is coming to an end I have to look at different criteria. Criteria I frankly should have been looking towards when I was trying to tempt Murphy’s Law. Something with All-Wheel Drive and something family friendly. So I’ve since been making my acquaintance with the Subaru family of cars. Subaru apparently specializes in AWD and it’s available on all of their models and pretty standard with them as well. I would like for the Truman family to be a one-make family if at all possible. I found it helpful when all of our cars growing up were made by Dodge and later Ford. That Subarus are almost all built with AWD means that I can do so with the flexibility of AWD cars (Impreza and Legacy) to crossover (Outback and Forester) to {shudder} 3-row minivan (Tribeca) all with AWD. This assumes that we’re going to end up somewhere with snow and the like that AWD is important. If we end up in Estacado, I’ll look elsewhere.

Though so far it’s proven to be nothing but sunk time, I’ve enjoyed looking at all of these cars. It’s something I’ve never really been able to do before. Among other things, I’ve learned the appeal of new cars compared to used. Particularly in the current market when they’re doing everything they can in order to get you to buy new. The price difference is closing, but more than just that I’ve learned that getting a new car may be the only way to get the features that you want that if you decide to tack-on to the price of a used car closes the gap further still. Not completely, though, so I will probably end up with another used car. But I’ll do a lot more comparisons before making that choice official, though. I’ve also learned that I will probably never buy a German car.

The other benefit is that it’s made my commutes more enjoyable. I’ve had a great time looking at all the cars I’m stuck in traffic with. That was what turned me on to Subaru and the Dodge Caliber to begin with. It’s given me something to do when there isn’t much to do. I’m always grateful for that.

Crayola, my 1998 Ford Escort, starting giving me some grief when I pushed it a few months ago. By “pushed it” I mean going over 60mph or at an incline. Since the speed limits around here are rarely above 60mph, I could live with that. The problem was that there are two ways home, one of which is blocked off due to construction and the other involves a pretty steep incline. Plus, nobody likes driving a car that throws periodic temper tantrums in the course of daily use.

So for a little while I swapped cars with my wife since she works a mile away, walks most days, and avoids the inclines or interstate other days. I was actually somewhat excited by the prospect because I almost always drive the worse car in the family. As the youngest son, I was the last in the hand-me-down chain. Then I married Clancy and though her car is slightly older than mine, Toyotas seem to age better than do Escorts. So for once I was going to get to drive the nice car. The very first day I had the car, though, I opened it and the handle snapped off the door. As much as her car is nicer than mine, being able to get in the driver’s door negates all of the other advantages (sans temper tantrums). So while I was driving the better car at the time, my upgrade had in the first day become a downgrade over Crayola’s usual state of being.

This isn’t the first time that I have been unable to get into the driver’s side. Sandstorm, the gold 98 Escort I drove before swapping it out with my father for Crayola after Storm hit 200,000 miles. Sandstorm had a broken lock on the driver’s side, so you had to unlock it from the passenger’s side and reach across to unlock it. Once you were reaching across to unlock it, it was actually easier to just get in from the passenger’s side than to get back out and walk around. So I learned how to spin across and land in the passenger’s bucket. Kind of a hassle, but kind of cool. Unfortunately, I had a tougher time spinning in Clancy’s car despite it’s larger size. My foot kept bumping into the wheel. I later learned that the best thing to do was put the seat in recline and if I did that, I could spin around like in the old days with Sandstorm.

The cool has become less significant than the hassle.

I kept looking for an opening to take Crayola into the shop, but never quite found it. What I had forgotten was Clancy was about to start a new rotation about 20 miles away and she would not be able to use my car. So necessity required my taking Crayola in the first day of that month.

To be continued

The Station Wagon (1978 Chevy Malibu) – This was the vehicle of my childhood. It had what seemed like infinite space in the back seat but what would now probably look tiny. On road trips, we would get to sit back there and watch TV and horseplay around in ways that would be ten kinds of illegal today. But it was awesome. Until the accident. It was replaced by Quakemonster.

The Old Dodge Colt or The Yellow Dodge Colt (1974 Dodge Colt) – I don’t remember much about this car. Pretty much whenever I was taken somewhere, it was in the Station Wagon. However, the one thing I do remember about it was that the window on the driver’s side didn’t work. It was replaced by The Dodge Colt.

The Quakemonster (1987 Dodge Caravan) – The first and last new car my parents would ever buy. It wasn’t quite so bad as a lemon. But it was in the same vicinity. A lime, perhaps. The car shook it like a burlesque dancer. Non-stop. It was the only car I’d ever really driven, so I thought it was great. Besides that, it allowed me to drive lots of people around. Also, at one point, it provided a very special competition between me and this girl for the front seat during a church youth group trip. That’s something I’ll never forget. It was replaced by the Aerostar.

The Colt or The Dodge Colt (1984 Dodge Colt) – This one came into existence right about the time of The Station Wagon accident, so much so that I can’t remember which came first. It was the same basic model as its predecessor, with the exception that this was a hatchback. But I can’t remember what it was. Other than that the window worked. This was the first car that was “mine” and the car that I first learned to drive a stick shift on. To date, it is probably my favorite car, though I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it’d had air conditioning. At some point I ran over a giant pothole and it was never the same again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it all that long. It was replaced by K.C..

The Aerostar (1994 Ford Aerostar) – The family has this car to this day. It was bought used and never had the problems that Quakemonster did. It was particularly long with three rows and considerable storage space beyond. During long trips Dad would take out the middle seat and we had a lot of room for trips where two of us would take the seat and one of us would sprawl on the floor. So much room! That it was so tall helped see me through Hurricane Adrianne, for which I will always be grateful. That it was so narrow (and I was so stupid) once nearly got me into an accident where I came close to rolling over. I’ve been very anxious and even a little scared of losing control of it ever since. My fear of ever again driving a minivan stems from that event in this car.

The Convertible (1986 Chevrolet Convertible) – Mom always wanted a red convertible and when the time came, he got her a maroon one. Though it was Mom’s, I drove it as much as anybody else due to the car configuration. Driving a convertible always did unconscionable things to my hair and the Colosse heat prevented me enjoying it too much. What I did love to do with it was take late-night drives on the one local street that I could drive a whopping 55mph. I would just drive it up and down that street. I was quite the little rebel in that I would sometimes take my seatbelt off and breathe in the freedom for as long as five minutes in between stop signs and stop lights. This car had what I used to call a “slide and pop” problem. You hit the accelerator and instead of moving you would hear the engine rev and then it would pop and lerch. A couple times it did this it would pop and sit there and I would need to push it off the road. One time it caught on fire when I was going down the Interstate and that was how it died.

K.C. Craterface (1986 Chrysler Lebaron) – This was one of my favorite cars. We got it from my brother Mitch’s then-girlfriend for something like $2,000. In retrospect it was a bit larger than I like cars to be, but it was the first one that I got that hadn’t been handed down to me within the immediately family, so I loved it. And it is the first car I drove with air conditioning, though I was oddly conditioned to avoid using it even when I could (it wasn’t until the unbearable Trawler that I decided I would never go without AC again). The KC is short for Kansas City, a reference to its royal blue color, and Craterface was in reference to some hail damage it had received before I got it. Though it only seated four or maybe five, I managed to get eight people in there once. Ahhh, the memories. This one died when I was in an undesirable part of town. I managed to get it into a local high school football stadium parking lot and then either my brother or father picked me up. A couple days later it was pronounced dead.

Sport (1996 Ford Escort) – The first of our Ford Escorts, this little red car had the word Sport written on the side that enthused Dad to know end. I got Sport after K.C. died, though I think Dad had been driving it before then. Sport was involved in an accident when zoned out at the wheel. He was replaced by Rudat for less than insurance paid out on Sport. I was banished to the Trawler though.

The Trawler (1976 Chevrolet Caprice) – About the time that Sport was taken to the car park in the sky, my grandmother was no longer able to drive. So I got her car, which was older than I was. It was huge with a much wider footprint than any other car or van I’ve ever driven, which is why we named it after a boat. It only had AM radio and had no air conditioning, which was excruciating in the Colosse heat. The pleatherish seats meant that I had to take a change of clothes everywhere because my back would become a wall of sweat. The Trawler was a sort of punishment for wrecking two cars in as many months and it was frankly more than I deserved. Unfortunately, the lack of cruise control (and that it was the smoothest ride of any car I’d owned before or since) lead me to get more than a couple speeding tickets which did not help my safe driver cred any. Further complicating things was that there was no tripometer and the gas gauge didn’t work, so I ran out of fuel more than a few times. I can’t remember how it died, but it got sick enough that Dad felt uncomfortable with me driving it and so I got Rudat.

Rudat (1998 Ford Escort) – This was “my car” in a way that few others were. Dad had it for a little while before I got it, but once I got it I put 120,000 miles on it. It was the car I moved to Deseret in and it survived both Deseret and Estacado in style. It’s still around, actually, though Dad isn’t comfortable driving it far. Because I put so many miles on it, it is partially the standard by which I judge other cars. I consider Clancy’s car to be too wide even though it’s about the same size as K.C., which I loved. I consider Crayola to be too short because it’s an inch shorter than Rudat (both are too short, but I learned how to slouch in Rudat and had to learn how to slouch all over again in Crayola).

Crayola (1998 Ford Escort, 2-Door) – Though the same age as its golden sibling, the car doesn’t have nearly the miles on it. It’s a tad smaller than Rudat, which has caused me a little discomfort. If I pushed it, I could probably get many more miles out of it, but I’m not sure I have as much energy to devote to ushering along a dying car as I did with the everlasting Rudat.

It all started with my fifth viewing of The Watchmen. I heard it was playing in a hotel room in downtown Zaulem and decided that it would be worth the trip. Not exactly true, but true enough that I did end up watching the movie in a hotel room.

There’s never a good time to run out of gas. Never a good place.

Some times and some places, of course, are less bad than others.

Downtown Zaulem at one in the morning, for example, would be one of those times and places that are not less bad than many.

My friend Al Cavanaugh, a lawyer from Colosse, has a court case in Cascadia and flew up. I was running a little late picking him up at the airport, so even though I knew that I needed to refill the gas tank, I decided that I would do it immediately after we left the airport. With my gas tank running that low, there was no way that I would forget. Except, of course, that there is a lot that happens when picking someone up at the airport that pushes rather pertinent things, like a fuel gauge hanging on the other side of empty, out of one’s mind. By the time we got back in the car, we were already getting caught up on how things were going with one another that it completely escaped my mind until I glanced down when we parked at the lot adjacent to his hotel room. Then I did what I should have done at the airport. The one thing that makes me never forget to refill the gas tank.

Al and I went out to eat and had a couple martinis. The waiter got both of our main dishes wrong and I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how the bill came out to $40. But that didn’t matter nearly as much as the confirmation that the movie was indeed on the PPV in his room. We were rockin’. The movie ended at about fifteen after twelve and I needed to make a hasty exit. Partly because I was getting sleepy, partly because lots in Zaulem have this really irritating tendency to close at midnight. Seriously, why what use is a parking lot that you can’t leave your car parked at least until the bars close?

Fortunately, tired though I was, I did do that thing earlier that makes me never forget to refill the gas tank. Basically, whenever my gas tank is running feverishly low, I place a jacket, shirt, or rag on my steering wheel. Its the string on my finger for that particular issue. So when I got to the car, I knew what to do. I also knew that looking at the gas gauge, I didn’t have much time to do it. So I consulted my good friend Gippers where the nearest gas station was. I was in luck! There was a Shell station (my favorite!) a half-mile away. I forgot, however, that the half-mile was as the crow flies. The route it had me take had me going in all sorts of directions. I would have been suspicious, but Zaulem seems to be one of those cities where what seems like the quickest way to get somewhere isnt always. So in Gippers I trusted. Unfortunately, I was so distracted by the gas gauge that I missed a couple of turns, making my trip longer.

Then the stalling began. My car would stall any time I was parked at an incline. Fortunately, it restarted each time. But every time it did that it took a little piece of my sanity with it. It’s never good to run out of gas, but on an incline? In the middle of a startlingly dark and closed city? With no gas station nearly? It was all a good reminder as to why I don’t typically mess with the gas gauge. I have a long and unproud history of running out of gas, but I’ve been a lot better about it lately. Unfortunately, this was one of those times where my car mileage was doing unusually poorly and the near-outage caught me out-of-rhythm. The rhythm being the various Shell stations I can stop at between home and work, where I am prepared at just about any time to be running dangerously low on gas.

The car made it, fortunately. The gas station was in a rather lively part of town. There was a dude dressed as Elvira and all manner of people wearing all sorts of demarcations of individuality and hippitude. It made for some interesting people-watching as I filled up my gas tank, paying more than $3 a gallon for the first time in a long time but so very glad to have the opportunity to pay it.

My usual car has fallen a little ill recently. It doesn’t like the uphill climb in downtown Soundview on my drive home and falters a bit on the Interstate. So Clancy and I have decided to switch cars for a spell. As tragic as it is for my little green guy, I was actually looking forward to spending a little time driving Clancy’s nicer automobile. It’s almost certain that for most of our marriage she will be driving the nicer, bigger car. Mostly because I don’t care. But I figured it would be nice to drive the alpha car.

So it stands to reason that the first morning I go out to take over her car and open it, the hatch comes right off the car into my hand. So now I have to get in on the passenger’s side. I had to do this sort of thing on my old Escort because the driver’s side lock didn’t work. I managed to work out a way that I could kind of spin around into the driver’s side seat. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to do it in her car. I keep running into the gearshift. and my leg keeps kicking the faceplate off the radio.

This is not optimal.