August 01st, 2017

Driving in America
Highways
Limited access, multilane dual-carriageway[1] roads are characteristically American.  The Germans might have invented the concept with their treasured Autobahn.  However, the USA took the highway to another level with the federal interstate highway system.  Think southern California, ten lanes wide, a stripe of asphalt laid down over the land to drive people to freedom. 

America wasn’t always this way.  The first dual-carriageway limited access highways were built by the States of New York and Connecticut as Parkways – basically similar to the federal interstate highways of the succeeding generation, but pokier in size and bordered by grassy leafy parkland on either side.  Commercial vehicles are not allowed on Parkways, and they have names instead of numbers. The Hutchinson River Parkway (known as the Hutch) and the Merritt Parkway are two well-know Parkways built to connect suburbs to New York City.  Because they were built in the 1920s and 1930s when cars were smaller and slower, grades and corners are often more extreme than found on a federal interstate highway, and speed limits are often lower – 50 mph instead of 65 mph. (The earlier period of construction, before suburbanization, also made acquisition of land for the bordering park a lot easier.)

Driving style

Driving on the highway in America is not the same as driving on the motorway in England or the Autobahn in Germany.  Americans drive as if they are sitting on their sofa in front of the television while cruising up the road at 70 miles per hour.  Passing on the right, although technically not allowed, is common.  Sitting in the middle lane, cruise control on, is the most typical way of driving long distances on the highway.  And some distances are enormous – many Americans, especially in sparser settled areas of the west, are known to drive four hours – 300 miles – just to go to a shopping mall.  This is why cars in America are big – cornering and road handling are subordinate to size and comfort -also to accommodate the averagely obese American ass.  Even Japanese automakers, whose fuel efficient, reliable compact cars decimated the US automakers during the oil crises of the 1970s, design bulky smooth driving models for the average American consumer.

Who drives what
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In Germany, there are luxury cars – Mercedes, BMW and Audi in that order – and everything else – Volkswagen and Opel basically, plus the odd European marque like Skoda or Renault.  Among the luxury car brands, all represent the pinnacle of Teutonic engineering and metallurgy in their own way.  However, Mercedes connotes establishment – a large Mercedes sedan is called a Herrenmobile ­– His Lordship’s Vehicle – whereas BMW is still apparently the scrappy upstart that edged its way upward in size and quality since the 1960s, favored by Bavarians and cool young people, and then there’s Audi, favored by the neurich, supposedly.  In America, the distinction is not so much between brands as type of car you drive: (1) pickup truck, (2) full SUV, (3) “crossover”, (4) minivan or (5) sedan. 

Pickup trucks are clearly definable.  It is built on a chassis and has real axles.  It has a bed for carrying stuff.  It typically is big and these days will have a rear passenger cab.  A crossover is basically a giant sneaker.  The Toyota RAV-4 was the first one, and the BMW X-3 was the first luxury one; now every marque has its offering of crossover. (They’re called crossover because they have a unibody construction like a car, but all-wheel-drive and higher suspension like an SUV.)  And what is an SUV – short for Sport Utility Vehicle? An SUV is basically a pickup truck that has been turned into a full-length passenger vehicle and (theoretically) designed to drive off-road.  The “utility” is the pickup part; the “sport” is the offroad-fun part.  Before this concept became common, the sole SUV on the market (which somehow is more of its own thing) was the Jeep wrangler, not much changed since its world-war 2 predecessor.  But the classic SUV was the Ford Bronco.


[1] “Dual-carriageway” is a British term.  Americans do not know this word. I use it because it is the most descriptive term I can find.  “Highway” is much too broad, although in the USA, “highway” in colloquial speech almost always means a limited access dual-carriageway road.