I’ve Been Thinking . . . About Radar Love

As I accelerated down the entrance ramp onto I-70, I looked at the highway to assess traffic and plan my merge.  There was one car – a highway patrolman.  Darn the luck.  I slowed my acceleration and merged onto the highway behind the state trooper.

He was driving at 55 mph, which meant I was driving 55 mph instead of the 70 or 80 mph I would normally have been cruising at.  Unfortunately, the speed limit at the time was 55 mph.

The OPEC nations quadrupled their prices and placed an embargo on oil sales to the US and western European countries in 1973, in response to the West’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.  I recall the dramatic change at the gas pump: the price shot up seemingly overnight, long lines formed to buy gas, and stations often ran out before all of those in line could fill up.  Some areas implemented emergency rationing, such as, cars with license plates ending in even numbers could buy gas on even days, and odd numbers on odd days.

The US Congress passed a law in late 1973 setting the speed limit on federal interstates at 55 mph to save gas.  The embargo pushed the country into a recession, and the intent was to reduce the impact of the rapid rise in gas prices.  (Count me among those who resisted the law, but I admit now that reducing your speed improves your gas mileage.)  The law was finally repealed about a decade-and-a-half later.

So, there I was, in the summer of 1976, stuck behind a state trooper driving at 55 mph!  I stayed behind him for several miles, expecting him to exit so he could turn around to patrol in the other direction.  He continued as he was.

I began to wonder how long this was going to last when I noticed he had uniforms hanging from the hook in the back of his patrol car.  Oh no!  He was on his way to Kansas City for the Republican National Convention.  That meant another hundred miles of this!

Cars began lining up behind me.  Drivers would begin to pass, see the patrol car in front of me, then fall into a line behind me.  I decided on a technique that had worked for me in the past.  I pulled into the left lane and increased my speed to about 56, maybe bumping against 57 occasionally (cruise control at the time was the steady pressure of my foot on the accelerator).  My intent was to pass him at a speed that would not warrant a ticket, and as I created some separation, I could gradually increase my speed.

An important part of the ploy included not looking at him, as if I simply were driving along at this comfortable ever-so-slightly-over-the-limit speed and he was just another car going down the highway.  After a couple miles I could tell from peripheral vision that he still was beside me and I was not gradually gaining separation.

I hazarded a glance to the side.  He was looking directly at me.  When he saw me look, he held his right arm across his body, hand to the window, opened it fully twice as a signal that the speed limit was 55.  I looked at my speedometer, feigned surprise, and pulled back in behind him.  Others tried their versions of my tactic to no avail.  Eventually I was a dozen or more cars back.  Drivers continued to approach from behind, then fall in line when they realized the reason for the “slow” traffic.

Occasionally I would check my rearview mirror to assess how long the line of cars was growing.  At one point, based on the distance between a couple of small hills, the line had grown to at least two miles.  Frustrated, I considered exiting just so I wouldn’t have to drive this slowly.  Before the next exit, however, a woman with Ohio tags on her car, probably heading to Kansas City for the convention, blew past the line of cars, including the state trooper. The trooper hit his lights and surged after her.

It was as if the green flag was dropped in a race, with this 2+ mile procession of cars using this distraction as the opportunity to move beyond the trooper.  As I was accelerating past him, I saw the cop jump out of his car, slam the door, and stomp toward the woman from Ohio.  He was pissed.  I said a quick thank you and considered that each of us should throw out a dollar to pay her fine as we passed.

There is a balance when traffic is moving this fast because of the variations in speed of the drivers – some would pass me at a pretty good clip, while I came upon others who wouldn’t or couldn’t keep up the pace.  I’m not one who likes to clog up the passing lane, so I generally wait until I’m positioned to smoothly merge to pass, then merge back once accomplished.

As I was coming up on a semi-truck, I was stymied by a cluster of cars in the passing lane.  I waited for an opening, checking my side-view mirror every second or two, looking for a gap I could safely merge into.  I suddenly realized a physical sensation of slowing down, compared with the inertia of my body in motion.  I was closing in on the semi, but not quite ready to quit my cruise setting.  I looked at my speedometer; my speed had dropped several miles per hour and was still dropping.  After my could’ve-had-a-V8 moment, I remembered that our van has a radar speed control that will override the cruise control setting as the van approaches another vehicle.  I had forgotten – as I almost always do – to reduce the distance setting.

(Initially, I had been frustrated by this feature, though not enough to read the manual to learn how to turn it off.  The more experience I have with it, the more tolerant I have become; I might even come to fully appreciate it someday!)

Once I was able to pass the truck and return to my set speed, I recalled the sign: “Speed Controlled by Radar.”  The joke was on me, as my speed actually was controlled by radar – the radar built into the van.

Hmm.  I looked at the map on the van’s display – a global positioning system (GPS) could identify where I was and portray my movement.  My Chevy truck had OnStar^® that similarly provided GPS locations; if one wanted to pay for premium service, an OnStar^® operator could report your vehicle as stolen, provide police with its location, and shut down the engine so the perpetrator could not proceed.

Double hmm.  What about that phone in my pocket?  It’s a veritable Swiss Army Knife in digital form!  Like the vehicle GPS, my phone knows where I am; and because my phone knows, so does my wife; the weather app knows; the camera knows; Fitbit knows; both Apple and Google Maps know; even Uber knows and I haven’t used Uber more than three or four times in my life.  Not only does my auto insurer know where I am and how fast I was driving to get there, it knows where I was, and the posted speed limit along the way!

Siri is always listening.  For example, I was explaining to my son one day the time value of money, in which two 25-year-olds invest at the same monthly rate, but one begins at 25 and stops at 35 whereas the other begins at 35 and continues until 65.  The next day, he received an ad that had that example in it!

I don’t know about you, but I’m keeping my house stupid for as long as I can.  No Alexa.  No wifi cameras.  No wifi thermostats.  Siri doesn’t need any help!

My wife and I refer to each other as Sugarmomma and Sugardaddy (the sobriquets date back to our first rescue dog). When I come in, it’s not uncommon for her to greet me, Hey, Sugardaddy.  Siri is not particularly responsive to my wife but would occasionally and spontaneously respond to my wife’s greeting to me by saying, “I don’t know who your father is.”  Eventually, Siri took it up a notch: “I don’t know who your father is, and for that matter, I don’t know who you are.”  Fortunately, we know the answers to both questions!