My Maserati does 185...

[Van Canna]

'The front door' Smokey alert

You got a smokey on your front door, a smokey on your back door too
Lord, a mercy buddy, I wouldn't wanna be in your shoes
I can hear you talkin', I can hear you singin' the blues
You got a smokey on your front door, a smokey on your back door too

You got a woman on the east coast, one on the coast out west
One wants a baby, one wants a brand new dress
No way around it, you gotta spend some money, I guess
With a woman on the east coast, one on the coast out west

Diesel is up, the freight is down
And I believe they're jerkin' you boys around
Somebody oughta tell 'em if they don't know
Little wheels turnin' makes a big wheel roll

You got a smokey on your front door a smokey, on your back door too
Lord, a mercy buddy, I wouldn't wanna be in your shoes
I can hear you talkin', I can hear you singin' the blues
You got a smokey on your front door, a smokey on your back door too

I can hear you talkin', I can hear you singin' the blues
You got a smokey on your front door, a smokey on your back door too
Smokey on your front door, a smokey on your back door too.

CB radio days, where are you?

[Van Canna]

Check this out.

http://www.radartest.com/article.asp?articleid=100542

http://www.buyradardetectors.com/Produc ... ctors.aspx

[Bill Glasheen]

Back when I had a radar detector (the mid-1980s) it was the Escort Passport. I remember it now after reading these reviews. I had absolutely no complaints.

As I figured... the manufacturers are ahead of the police. Again. The best are immune to the radar detector detectors. Interesting that they have laser jamming devices. Oh yea... that would be illegal in Virginia, but then Henrico County will ticket you if ANY part of the exhaust system isn't stock - even if it's quieter. Nope... I don't care. Not a moving violation. My repair guy has my back here, so long as it passes state inspection. Don't be an asss, and you won't attract attention.

The The Escort 9500ci seems like the best bet - even though it's enormously expensive.

..... Escort 9500ci Concealed Radar Detector / Laser Shifter

Then again... so are increased insurance premiums. I learned long ago not to get cheap on this. False confidence is a very bad thing. I paid at least that much in inflation-adjusted dollars for my unit in the mid-1980s. This one can be mounted concealed (my preference), can have front and back antennas (to give directionality), can't be detected, and has lots of technology to tell you about stoplight cameras and fix false radar signals from city noise. Ain't GPS wonderful?

My gut tells me that's the one to get if you're going to get serious about it. And besides... I don't want my car messed up with junk. There isn't a wasted corner in my Subaru interior, and I hate stuff flying around when I turn the way I turn. That's the reason to have a boxer engine after all... I'm even picky about how I pack my groceries for that very reason. My dog has his own seat belt harness, and nobody rides with me w/o a seatbelt. You get the picture.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

Good stuff Bill...we know you are a speed aficionado

I have powerful, fast automobiles...a BMW 5 series and a VW GTI...but I am wary of speeding because of my very own 'operant conditioning' resulting from the long years of my investigations of countless fatal auto accidents attributed to speeding by State police accident reconstruction experts.

And many times the killed or paralyzed drivers/occupants of a vehicle were not at fault but victims of reckless drivers.

i have seen and smelled rotting blood in totaled vehicles when inspecting them and photographing them in salvage yards...I have seen police photos of people with their heads cut off...one woman had her head, left shoulder and left arm cut off when she rear ended a truck with no lights negligently parked on the right travel lane of a highway[the driver from Canada thinking it was the breakdown lane] and so on.

But the most heartbreaking cases were the ones where drivers/passengers ended up para/quads...hell on earth.

You never know.

[Bill Glasheen]

I have my own thoughts on this.

1) Never, ever drink and drive. I almost never drink at all now. Too many depend on me, and I'm always the driver. Not drinking just makes it easy for me. There's never a question I'm ready to drive. There's never a conversation with a police officer at a stop about HOW MUCH I've had to drink. Statistics bear this out. Most accidents involve one or both parties driving while impaired.

2) While I don't recommend it to everyone, driving a motorcycle as your only means of transportation for at least a year will change your attitude about driving. It will give you empathy for others on the road, and teach you a defensive driving mindset. Or... you will die in the first year trying to learn.

3) Keep your anger out of your driving. Don't tailgate. Let the maroons go. Stay back away from them or pass them. Never, ever flip the bird.

4) Use the cruise control when driving extended distances. It is a license saver.

I only start thinking radar detector when I get a very stupid ticket - like the one I just got. It was obviously a trap set up where it made sense to drive the speed I was driving (four lanes each way with no stoplights... nobody on the road... brand new paved road... a quarter mile from an interstate entrance...). I was doing 66 in a 45. The officer and I were nice to each other, and he wrote me up for 64 so Henrico gets maximum revenue and I keep my license. About 70 wouldn't have been out of the question. They knew it... and they generate a lot of money off of it. This is Henrico County; they do that cr@p. It's noxious taxation. I cannot afford to lose my license, and weird things like this happen. I now have points on my record, I have a chance of getting more (always... that's statistics), my auto insurance company runs their models and sets my rates... DMV and a judge will have something to say if I get more hiccups... So they have basically put me in a position where I have to break silly laws so I can keep driving so I can keep my job so I can keep paying taxes.

Get your brain around that craziness. There's a reason our Founding Fathers created the country they did. People like Jefferson just wanted to be left alone. It's why he made that nice mansion up on the top of a mountain, away from government and the yahoos.



- Bill

[Van Canna]

Good points Bill.

At times it is uncanny how we get trapped when we should have known better...or our mind becomes somehow distracted or condescending...just like in a self defense situation.

It must be the law of the averages...sooner or later Mr. Murphy makes an unannounced visit.

What was frightening for some of the hapless drivers in cases I investigated, was being charged with vehicular homicide if anyone in the other vehicle or in their own car [passengers] was killed in an accident...reason being that such a charge is triggered by 'ordinary negligence'... in most states.

The most awful cases where the ones where a family member [spouse-child] as passengers in the driver's car, were killed due to some alleged negligence of the driver resulting in a vehicular homicide charge...say- against the husband who had just lost his wife in the accident...as one example.

The worst one I handled was a mother with child unbelted[he had released the belt] in the front seat...whose car was broadsided killing the child.

Imagine losing a child and facing the prospect of going to jail, plus the money drain for a criminal defense attorney...losing the license and other consequences.

Fact is lightning can strike out of nowhere anytime.

http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/cr ... ughter.htm

[Bill Glasheen]

Fact is lightning can strike out of nowhere anytime.

They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

True story... A professor of mine in the biomedical engineering graduate school had his house struck by lightning. So the insurance company paid to have the partially damaged home repaired. Two years later lightning struck the home again, and burned in to the ground.

He *could* have chosen to get a lightning rod (or a few) put on his roof. He didn't. Lightning happened. Again.

As a trained predictive modeler, a maxim in my world is that the best predictor of the future is the immediate past. So for instance if I'm going to predict someone's next-year medical costs, the model I build will *always* have last year's medical costs as one of the input variables. When I train the model on a million people, I can bet my left nut that the variable for last year's costs will account for the highest proportion of the future cost variance. Only when I build really complex models which rely on sophisticated condition classification systems which separate out acute from chronic conditions will I get something that's not "stupid-simple". For us normal people, stupid-simple is a good place to start.

I'll probably have a Henrico County cop flashing radar at me again in the next few years. Just sayin...

Same goes for other bad things happening in life. We're crazy to ignore the simple life lesson. How we act on it is what separates one person from the next. Ideally we have triple-redundant systems which prevent the scenario from occurring again. And if someone is bullying us, well... Fair is fair.

I still haven't figured out how to prevent running into deer in heat on I-64 in eastern KY. Totalled my van on that love-sick doe, standing right in the middle of the highway on a rainy night. I do however pay more attention to the "deer crossing" signs these days. Oh... and I gave a call to the KY highway department and asked them to put a few up around Ashland, KY. Everyone in that rural town (where I was stuck for 2 days) seemed to know that the local bambis wanted some buck. Humina humina! The highway folks didn't. But they listened to my request, and obliged me.

- Bill

P.S. I started counting dead deer on the side of the highway on my Richmond to Louisville road trips. The average is about 5, and they're all dead. That's a lot of smashed cars!

[Stryke]

you need one of these Bill

been looking at the toyota 86

[Van Canna]

http://www.motorists.org/dui/traffic-stop

[Van Canna]

http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/wh ... ed-for-dui

[Van Canna]

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/ ... 30186.html

[Bill Glasheen]

That's a souped-up version of the BRZ, which itself is a joint venture between Subaru and Toyota. Yes... my son always draws my attention to that vehicle when we are at the Subaru dealer.

That's a RWD vehicle. I like my AWD. If I had a choice to go crazy, it would be a souped-up version of the WRX STI.

..... Subaru | Gymkhana WRX STI

See? That's such a practical vehicle, Van.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

Here you go Bill.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xb7b2u ... ubaru_auto

[Bill Glasheen]

Ken Block is the man! He however is using a vehicle that isn't quite street legal (the understatement of the year).

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

THis is why I own an AWD Subaru with the (low center-of-gravity) boxer engine. For the record, Porsche is the only other car company that uses a boxer engine design. If you know what you're doing, you're never really out of control.

..... Subaru Legacy Snow Drift

..... Subaru Impreza WRX STI snow drift winter 2014

I have been known to go to an empty parking lot when snow first hits just so I can get the feel of a vehicle and its limits on "bad" traction. With a Subie and knowledge, "bad" can be good!

- Bill