Abby's First Independent Drive

Her first drive as driver-in-command, with no parent or other controlling authority present, she chose to take her sister to Starbucks for some sister time sitting down with a couple hot chockys and enjoying her first trip.

While only a mile and a half from the house, both parental units were a bit nervous, especially as that area is right by a busy intersection and there's a lot of idiot drivers in that area.

She made it there and back with no problems (we knew that would be the case, but you worry anyways) and she enjoyed her independence in doing so.

A couple hours later she took her sister to her Volleyball team practice at school. Again a close trip but again without any parental guidance, and on the way back completely alone in the car.

As expected, she did it with aplomb and no issues.

The kid is sure growing up fast, heck they both are.

A Day That Will Live In Driving Test Infamy

Abby had her driving test today.

Wish I had some happy news to reportas she is a quite capable driver, but she didn't make it out of the parking lot.

As reported to me by her and Tash who was there, the testing arrangement stank to high heaven and was not a reflection of reality at all.

First, the examiner had lost her voice and was hard to hear.

So examiner is outside the car, has Abby first start the car and then drive forward, stop where she indicates and then has to back into a spot with small cones bordering it, followed immediately by pulling out and parallel parking at a very weird angle.

Not something you would ever do in real life, and Tash notes the angles were strange, you would not try to back into the spot indicated from that starting position in real life, the cone spots don't match up to the angles for the actual striped parking spots, and the cones very low and hard to see. You also wouldn't immediately try and parallel park from that angle either.

Oh, and you have to do both maneuvers with a total, of 6 wheel movements.

Not reflective of actual driving at all, kinda designed for failure.

I daresay even Murphy's Law or Keads would've had a bit of trouble pulling that off within those parameters, especially when not driving the samll driving test car for the test.

So the examiner fails her on that, but cheerfully notes that she should come back and take a lesson with them for the parking section so she can see how its done at those angles and then take the test right after and oh, she may want to rent their car for the test which is smaller and has a backup camera.

See where this is going?

In other words, administering the driving test is $60, failing her and then "suggesting" a lesson and then another test would net them another $120 so its kinda in their interest to fail them out with this BS setup and collect $180 plus more with the test car rental rather than pass her and only make $60.

Yep, this stinks on ice. She's not happy as she didn't get to demonstrate how well she actually drives nor how she can actually park but instead got hosed inn a made up cone land in a parking lot at an off angle.

We'll have to see if other testing centers are similarly setup or if we have to play the game and pay up in order for her to pass, though I daresay simply requesting a bribe form us of $180 to pass the parking portion of the test would have been both more economically efficient and far more above board than this baloney.

Driving By Miss Abby

The cardio health stress test continues apace, as Abby has decided she likes driving my car more than Tash's car, so I've been with her for the majority of her practices.

Today she drove to her high school, which is and will be the man reason for her getting a driver's license in the first place. We made it there no problem, not too much traffic on a Sunday aside from a bit of a jam near a church, and iut got her on some main roads and doing left turns in traffic and changing multiple lanes.

Thence we took an alternate route home so she could try merging onto a highway. Yes, my circulatory system is strong.

She did fine, traffic was light enough, and I was able to talk her through it ok. Lots of neck cranking on my part during the merge and lane changes. No permanent indentations in the armrests.

Then down to Best Buy to pickup an SD card that I had a rewards coupon for, so a 64GB SanDisk Pro card instead of costing $28 cost only $10, which is a nice bargain for a very nice and fast memory card for the camera.

She did good and parked reasonably well by the store.

Then back in the car and thence up and through a roundabout that is ranked the 2nd most dangerous intersection in the entire state, because roundabout plus traffic light - yes, really.

She did fine but did need some help on getting into the roundabout safely as it was kinda hair-raising. Again, I passed this stress test with flying colors and did not even try to curl into a ball and drop onto the floorboards, as tempting as that was.

It's interesting the things she doesn't know that she doesn't know.

For example, she was getting set in the car and I was still in the house with the keys. She got her seat adjusted, mirrors set and had the headlights full on without the car running.

I explained that wasn't a good habit to get into as it drains the battery when you leave the lights on with the car off. She didn't know that, but does now.

Other things included how far should you get over when the police have a car stopped on a road that is one lane in each direction, and traffic lights that are only flashing yellow.

I talked her through these and she did just fine. She's certainly coming along as a driver and getting smoother and more confident, which is a good thing. We spent over an hour on the road, and then to top it off, she drove herself to a friend's house in some heavy rain, which was good experience, so she definitely got her practice in today.

I figure the next driving mission will be to have her drive the gas station to teach her how to fill the car up.

If You're On Woodward Today, Watch Out, New Teenage Driver!

Yes, Abby is taking her first in-car driving lesson as we speak.

Michigan now has a graduated licensing system so for her to be allowed to learn to drive, she first needs to take this class and get her =Level 1 permit, then we can start taking her driving.

So far the classroom portion has been described as varying between deathly boring and hellishly boring.

In short the theory instructor is really lacking any effort, phoning it in and mainly playing AAA videos and repeating the info contained in them.

The workbook is pretty close to useless. For example the dashboard it has you identify gauges on depicts gauges that aren't on most cars these days including an ammeter gauge, a battery gauge, and a manifold pressure gauge for a turbo - seriously.

Why is the classroom portion of driving instruction so consistently deathly boring?

You'd think they'd have improved the delivery of the material and the material itself by now. After all driving is a rather important part of people's lives and learning to do so is important. The Level 1 segment requires 24 hours of in class instruction, so there's unfortunately a lot of time for boredom as they really seem to no be using the time effectively.

Since Monday they've learned about wearing seat belts and being sure to check all around your car for obstacles before getting in and adjusting the seat and mirrors. This should take 20 minutes, not the six hours so far.

They should be able to make an engaging and instructive curriculum but for whatever reason, they dnn't. She's learning more by self-studying the What Every Driver Must Know state handbook than anything in class.

Well, 6 hours of in-car instruction and 4 hours of in-car observation should prove to be instructive.

Snow Far The Roads Are Snow Good

With about 12 inches of snow falling from yesterday through this morning, schools are closed throughout the region.

This seems less due to the conditions of the roads, which really weren't all that bad this morning, but more of a strategic call to get as many people off the roads as possible after the first major snowfall.

This likely led to a decline in a ton of accidents and stupidity, avoiding a repeat of much of what we saw driving home last night.

It takes people awhile to realize that their necessary stopping distance just significantly increased from what they're used to, and that their happy zippy sports cars don't have the traction in this snow they need and they will get stuck nicely, typically in the middle of an intersection. They also don't realize that the laws of physics really apply when you make a turn at speed on a slippery surface.

Traffic was markedly diminished this morning from the usual Monday mess as I headed to court.

Here's the same scene last night now in the light of day as I cleared off the Driveway of Doom™ yet again for those of you who want to see some more snow:

Having made the driveway very clean I can happily report I had no issues navigating it down, and then making my way on the roads to court and then the office.

Come On Now

It was sunny yesterday and with clean dry roads along with a slight snow melt.  This brought with it hope that this constant drudgery of snow shovelling and messed-up roads might come to an end.

They were predicting rain today.

Instead we got:

This is not rain.

We got snow, and a lot of it.  Even better than just a snow storm alone with it reducing visibility, we also got a nice layer of ice under the snow to really make driving a pleasure.  Lots of cars in ditches and slow moving traffic today.

Really truly sick of winter at this point.

Silly Pedestrian, Frogger is a game, not a practical way to cross a Freeway

The Detroit Free Press: Man killed in Southfield while trying to run across the Lodge Freeway

An unidentified man was killed late Wednesday night while trying to run across the Lodge Freeway in Southfield, the Michigan State Police Metro North Post said this morning.

A semi-tractor-trailer slammed into him on the southbound side of the highway just north of Southfield Road around 11:10 p.m., according to investigators

So you're running across the highway when its pitch dark, dodging cars and trucks going at 70+ miles per hour? Its a life-shortening experience even the fastest sprinter is ill-advised to try. This guy, not an Olympic-class sprinter, didn't quite make it across the road, and there's no retries in real life. Game over dude.

Sault St Marie Locks Close for the Winter

While this typically wouldn't have been an item of interest to me last year, since i've been scuba diving and reading about Great Lakes Shipwrecks, the closure of the locks for the winter is interesting news.

Soo Locks close until March 25

And another year of shipping on the Great Lakes ends.

Cell Phones and Drivers

Traffic all messed up due to a massive bloom of
Michigan' s State Flower along the roads on the Lodge Freeway and Woodward, bringing traffic to an impressive halt.

Now to add to the fun, today I'm driving to work in all this mess and every driver -
to my front, rear, and both sides had cell phones growing out of their ears, and driving like their head is up their @**.

When you're in slow traffic I can understand - you're not going anywhere and you're presumably paying some attention to the car in front of you. However, during that brief shining moment in the commute where the road is clear and marked 45 mph and you're in front of me yaking on a cell phone and doing 35 on a one-lane road with no passing allowed, with occasional hitting of the brakes for no discernable reason, is an annoyance, and potentially dangerous.

I'm not against cell phone use in cars, provided the user pays attention and can handle the extra task loading without messing up for other drivers. I use a cell phone while driving, but with a hands-free device as I noticed there is a clear difference in situational awareness when you're holding the phone to your ear as compared to using theearbud. Too bad these other drivers seem so oblivious to their cluelessness while driving with a cell phone.