Cars are losing their status as "status symbol"

[NorthernBoy]

I got pulled over for doing 102mph on the Tamiami Trail in Florida a few years back. I was on one of the utterly empty and straight sections, with no other cars heading in my direction, and with a big run-off on each side.

The other direction was well separated from mine, so I set the cruise control at 100, and just concentrated on keeping going straight.

What I had not realised was that in the US a police car coming the other way is able to check your speed (here in the UK, the are not allowed to do that), and so I was caught.

On the plus side, the female officer was absolutely stunning, and very kindly marked down the speed I'd been doing to let me continue on my way to catch my flight back to Europe.

Despite my having done this is a truly horrible car (Chrysler Sebring), I can't say that I'd accept that it was unsafe at any point. Illegal, yes, but that's a different question.

[LotusExcelle]

OK, so perhaps you were basing your observations on how it is in a country thousands of miles from me across the atlantic, but please don't imagine that what works well in the US also works well here.

I really don't understand why you want to ban me doing 100mph, when I'd be doing it legally, and while using less fuel than you. How can that be reasonable?

I was basing my statement on a system (the Autobahn) that successfully operates, in sections, at very high speed. It is a known factor. In other words there is a proof of concept and how they achieved it. One thing high speed requires is fanatical attention to road surface. We don't have that here and can't afford it.

I have several freshly paved roads where I am as well. In fact they just finished a major teardown of I-490 and it is smooth as silk for many sections now. But it won't be long before it starts degrading and even at that its too twisty to run at high speed.

Its similar throughout most of the roads I personally travel on. At night they are so pitch-black that going much past their often 65mph limit is a dangerous proposition just based on visual issues. During the day they are too crowded with commercial and regular traffic, few of which know to move to the right lane after passing. In fact on the drive home yesterday I was stuck behind a Chevy 2500 that was towing a horse trailer... in the passing/fast lane. It was a 65mph limit there and the truck could barely hit 65 on a downhill. Yet there he remained for 30+ *miles*. Due to traffic load I was unable to pass by going to the right lane.

Now I had I come up on that at 100mph around some of the bends I would likely have either hit the trailer or spun out (a lighter car may have made it without issues). And that is one of the additional problems here. People simply aren't equipped with the skills or know-how, in general, to hand high speeds.

I don't doubt that you are capable of hitting 100+mph and doing it safely for yourself. But add average to bad roads, poor night time lighting except around towns and cities (where traffic increases typically), and other drivers that don't obey some basic 'common courtesy' type of rules like moving to the right when a line of 100 cars builds up behind them...

Also doing 100mph you would not be using less fuel then me. Your fuel consumption at 100mph, no matter the car, is drastically more than your fuel consumption at 65mph. You are comparing apples to oranges because I travel so far each week. If you went 1000 miles at 100mph (which I contend is not sustainable anyway) you would use a heck of a lot more fuel than I do. I've averaged 25mpg over the last 10,000 miles. What do you think your average fuel economy would be if you ran at 100mph all the time?

[gzhpcu]

Cars are definitely a status symbol here in Lugano. I have never seen so many Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Porsches cruising around as along the Quai of Lugano, the place to cruise to be seen, in true Latin style. The Ferrari drivers always drive in low gear and high revs.

[LotusExcelle]

Also another confession: I am currently actively saving money to buy a Ferrari. A 308 to be exact.

[gzhpcu]

As long as we are confessing: I have a Porsche 993 C4S...

[crosscountry]

I ride motorcycles, 3 in fact, but that gets me no status. I do however have fantastic parking wherever I go and can sometimes get a date by asking a girl if she wants to ride. About 50% of the time they say they are too afraid or their dad told them never to get on one.

[jokergirl]

Good for the dads and the daughters who listen to them.
I would never get on a motorcycle with a person whose driving style I don't know and trust. Especially not when he's trying to impress me macho style.

[danscope]

Motorcycles. You are the roll cage. They are fun.... but.

[SolusLupus]

Some people don't want to live in a 100% personal safety bubble.

Motorcycles are cheap and conserve fuel. They're not as big a pollution outputter as a car. I think that if one is willing to accept the risks and wears the appropriate safety gear, go at it.

[Lianachan]

Cars for me have always been purely functional items - just a tool that enables me to get to wherever I want/have to go. Or, increasingly, the places my kids want/have to go. The almost total lack of public transport here makes them a basic requirement. There are definately petrol heads who assign some sort of status to them, but I think that around these parts my view is probably the most commonly held one.

[Drunk Vegan]

I got pulled over for doing 102mph on the Tamiami Trail in Florida a few years back. I was on one of the utterly empty and straight sections, with no other cars heading in my direction, and with a big run-off on each side.

The other direction was well separated from mine, so I set the cruise control at 100, and just concentrated on keeping going straight.

Despite my having done this is a truly horrible car (Chrysler Sebring), I can't say that I'd accept that it was unsafe at any point. Illegal, yes, but that's a different question.

Agreed - I once drove through Kansas on a crosscountry trip at like 2AM, not a car in sight. It was ideal for speeding - just hundreds of miles of flat, straight road.

I was driving an old Dodge Ram van, with a V6, and there was no problem at all doing 100 MPH.

[Delvo]

I was driving an old Dodge Ram van, with a V6, and there was no problem at all doing 100 MPH.

The safety issue at high speed is not about how easily it can get to that speed or how smoothly it cruises in a straight line under calm, controlled, predictable circumstances. It's about how safely and effectively it can execute sudden emergency maneuvers. The main cause of speeding, and speeding-related accidents (which is most accidents), seems to be people overestimating the latter based on the former.

[danscope]

A full grown aligator crossing the road, blocking your lane with a truck coming from the opposite diection might be a problem at 110mph.
"But.... it was just over the rise. How was I supposed to see that and get around it?" Yep. Tell it to the man at the pearly gates.

[SolusLupus]

I was going to say... I was wondering who was claiming that a vehicle is necessarily unstable at these speeds? That's not the issue with going such high speeds; although I wouldn't be surprised if wear and tear would increase (on both road and vehicle) when extended long enough, even outside of safety issue.

[danscope]

The problem is an unanticipated aberation in the driving conditions and the
anticipated path of travel for the vehicle. In other words,
" Everything turns to crud real fast. " A friend of mine spun a wheel bearing for no apparent reason while doing 115 , slightly wet. He spun it a few times,surprisingly he survived, the wet helped him. Dry..... he'd have crashed and burned.

[kleindoofy]

Thinking about it, I don’t really have anything I bought as a “status symbol”. ...

That's something I can relate to very well.

I've never been bitten by the bug that is status symbol materialism. I've never understood it.

When people brag to me about their possessions and tell me they have the newest this, the best that, the most expensive other thing, I usually automatically switch into a "that's nice" mode of response. More often than not, I end up feeling sorry for them because it's so easy to see that for all their possessions, they actually have little or nothing of any real value. At least nothing to which I would attach any value.

A car would certainly be that last thing in the world I would use as a status symbol.

< non-family-friendly text removed by Moderator Swift >

From what I understand, you can still drive ridiculous speeds in the Autobahn legally, but if you're in an accident over 75 kph (or so, I'm not sure on exact number), you're always at fault, period, and you get a harsher penalty.

Not quite right. At speeds over 130kmh (ca. 81mph) you can lose part of your insurance coverage and will be made at least partly responsible for an accident.

... I-25 south of Denver. They might not be autobahn quality, but they are smooth and comfortable at 80mph.

I think the point is that the Autobahn is usually comfortable at speeds of 140mph.

When the roads (Autobahn) are relatively empty and the weather is good, I'll normally cruise at about 115mph. And I only have a 1998 Ford Escort station wagen. Even at that speed, I'll be passed by cars going so fast that I can feel the air compression as they go by.

[crosscountry]

That's something I can relate to very well.

I've never been bitten by the bug that is status symbol materialism. I've never understood it.

When people brag to me about their possessions and tell me they have the newest this, the best that, the most expensive other thing, I usually automatically switch into a "that's nice" mode of response. More often than not, I end up feeling sorry for them because it's so easy to see that for all their possessions, they actually have little or nothing of any real value. At least nothing to which I would attach any value.

A car would certainly be that last thing in the world I would use as a status symbol.

A guy who often visits a business in the buildung where I have my company owns a flashy little sports car. He's in his mid 40's, overweight, bald, pale ... you get the picture. When I saw his car, I automatically thought "small penis." Then I saw that his sports car had an *automatic transmission*. I immediately thought "very small penis."

hey, bald is not something he has control of.

but a man driving an automatic transmission sports car should have to turn in the man-card to have a corner torn off.

[SolusLupus]

My Honda Accord's an automatic. :<

[crosscountry]

My Honda Accord's an automatic. :<

sports car? I've considered it for a truck but will stick with my manuals.

In Germany, where Kleindoofy is, automatics are about 10% of the total car population. Owning one is serious loss of man points.

[SolusLupus]

No, of course it's not a sports car. Like I can afford one.

I don't care about "man points". I'm not one of those testosterone-fueled people that need to beat their chest just to show how big a penis they have.

[HenrikOlsen]

I think it's a given that if it can beat his chest it's big.

[danscope]

A car is a tool. It serves you well. I bought a Subaru outback with 60,000
miles on it with a stick. My good wife had to learn stick in three weeks!Hmm...
I've got 140,000 miles on it now. It has good heat in winter, gets through snow and nasty weather and handles well, along with a usefull back trunk that holds something. They are all over the place. Nothing special.
Just a good,simple design. Cost: 10,000 . Never having to replace an
automatic transmission? To me.... priceless. And it has AC.
I plow my savings into golf and sailing.

Dan

[SolusLupus]

Yes, it's a tool. And it's just a tool. Trying to judge how much of a "man" I am because of some arbitrary trait of my tool is as ridiculous as trying to judge whether or not someone is of sufficient status because he has a sports car. Anyone that wants to talk about how many "man" points I have is obviously someone not worth talking to, because arbitrary judgments are not my kind of thing.

[Delvo]

What is the logic behind "manual transmission = manly, automatic = not" supposed to be? How did you ever dream up the idea that one had anything to do with the other in any way? I can see a metaphorical interpretation of "playing with the big stick with the knob on the end", but it seems to yield the opposite conclusion (I'd expect playing with the stick to be considered feminine or gay).

[Arneb]

What is the logic behind "manual transmission = manly, automatic = not" supposed to be? How did you ever dream up the idea that one had anything to do with the other in any way? I can see a metaphorical interpretation of "playing with the big stick with the knob on the end", but it seems to yield the opposite conclusion (I'd expect playing with the stick to be considered feminine or gay).

I am by no means an expert on man points, but I (a German) interpret it to mean automatic gear shift users are too lazy to use their left foot; too unskilled to pull of a decent max-q takeoff at the traffic light without the help of the automatic; and too soft for constantly working the gear stick, instead putting their right hand, horror of horrors on the steering wheel (as if two fingers of the left hand weren't enough for that). So, a triple loss of man points.

The loss is doubled when these men have the automatic gear shift in a sports car. You know, sports car, as in, requiring work, skill, and bravado... fail on all three counts...

If you find that less than convincing, well...

[blueshift]

As far as stick shifts go, I had a few because of the better mileage I was able to get with them. Automatics don't always shift at proper times and all manual transmissions here in the States are always listed with much better gas mileage. My son's Geo Metro go close to 60 mpg.

I drive a school bus here in right near O'Hare for a British company with a policy that all school buses must be kept 5 mph under the speed limit. Traffic is never an even flow and operates in pulses or small groups of cars in a pack that seldom spreads out in the city and suburbs. We like to time our stop lights right to the second and often make it a goal to never hit a red light in an effort to never use our brakes between pick up points. We can have contests to see who can use their brakes the least in a day. Further, by driving this slow many of us find that it opens up the passing lanes for us since all the other drivers want to bolt around us, leaving us openings for us to change lanes. Quite often we crawl up to a stop light just to see the car that flew past us several miles back. Higher speeds in the cities does not save one time, it just increases driver aggravation.

The number of people in a rush is now ridiculous and their impatience is shown in how many stop arm violations we school bus drivers are experiencing. My school bus is a wheel chair bus and I have at least two violations per week. 2 of the children on my bus are prone to seizures and I have to have a nurse ride with me each day. Other wheel chair buses have the same experiences with violations.

I drive my own pick up about 5 to 10 to even 20 mph under the limit but not for safety or to save on fuel. I just feel like it. I have Asperger's and for me the white sounds in the world are my music. The sound that a suspension system makes slowly creaking with a slight rock over the roads' slight imperfections are sounds that give me comfort and a peace of mind that someone else might have listening to Bach or Beethoven. Where I am going is not distinguished from the journey there. If I don't make it in short time, I don't care. I usually leave for work 1/2 hour before my shift starts. I live a 5 minute drive away.

Expressways? I avoid them as much as possible. Country roads are neater and the nice smells of green can come right into my lungs easier.

My daughter got rid of her car altogether. No car insurance and all her transportation costs are $30 per month. There are rich people in the inner city of Chicago who live in Marina Towers and don't own a car at all. They have no need for one and can always rent some Mercedes for a night if they want to impress someone or just like driving in it.

I'd get rid of mine but I happen to love astronomy and getting out to sites calls for a vehicle with a enough space to transport an XT-12, the round table platform and my solar scope.

[SolusLupus]

I'm a bad driver. I didn't start learning until I was about 20, because of the harsh requirements in learning to drive in Korea; and after that, I just took the bus. I started with an automatic, and I haven't learned to use a stick.

So the hell what?

[kleindoofy]

... The number of people in a rush is now ridiculous ...

They're all late for their group therapy sessions where they learn to relax and slow down their lives. Hey, those sessions are expensive; if you're late, you're losing time and money: hurry up!

... a suspension system ... creaking with a slight rock ... are sounds that give me comfort and a peace of mind that someone else might have listening to Bach or Beethoven. ...

Trust me, Bruckner's 8th sounds best full blast at about 100mph.

[danscope]

Hi, I suppose in consideration of the fascination with cars, we should perhaps give consideration to the genuine classic car, which is really in the
"Hobby" category.
I happen to have an ancient 1959 Austin-Healy Sprite,... yes the one that
has the 'frog eyes' . I tootle around in it for short trips to town ,pick up the mail and close errands. It has a respectable 45 HP. When you step on the gas
it just gets louder! The nice thing about some classics is that they were simple enough so that you can wrok on them yourself. The Sprite was a marvel of simplicity.
The only status with old cars is that you have rescued something nice from the crusher.
Best regards,
Dan

[jokergirl]

Hey, I have an automatic. I can drive a stick shift just fine, but I won't deny it's more comfortable in rush-hour traffic.

Most sports cars these days seem to come with a "flappy-paddle gearbox" as Top Gear calls them (semi-automatic transmission). It's not really much of a difference any more. Even Clarkson learned to like them!