Motoring as we know it is dying....

[John Straub]

Right-on Jim!

John

[MalteseFalcon]

Last page of January 2017 "Panorama" photo and text by Jeff Zwart sums it up; his timeless 906 sitting parked outside of a Starbucks while oblivious passerbys don't even give it a glance. Not the car world that I've been brought up in .

[a911s]

Exactly Mikey....

BTW - As long as I'm/we're able...
I just hope autonomous aren't on the same roads we travel..........

I resemble that remark

Exiting the Pasadena Starbucks at 6am on the way to Treffen 2016:

[Chuck Miller]

I resemble that remark...

You should bud... it resembles you....


Here's some old dudes the autonomous should pull over for.........

We might be becoming the short end of the equation, but there's still enough of us to keep'm honest... for awhile...

[RSTarga]

Great shot, and I don't see a single car with sugar scoops.

[boxster03]

My carbon footprint continues to grow and I'm confident no one in my lifetime will limit my motoring freedom.

well at least not in fantasy land

[a911s]

Chuck... as always you have the perfect shot in your archive to explain everything. I can almost smell the oil.

[Kris Clewell]

Easy fix- move to Texas. Drive all year round, lots of Oil (gas) and cars aren't going anywhere for a long, long, time. It is 80 degrees here and I will be driving my Porsche home tonight with the top down.

Well, its 30 degrees here. I'm dying inside.

Oh yeah, and: LOVE the shot with that red decklid aglow. Just wonderful.

Thanks a lot.

Kris, I was debating commenting on your article on SW. I guess I'll comment on it here instead. Thanks for your article and, as always, I enjoyed reading.

What is motoring to you? To me, motoring seems to be the act of driving with purpose other than simply transportation.

Motoring in that sense has been dying for a while, at least around Southern California and the American Southwest. Small arteries between point A and point B are heavily pockmarked and almost impossible to cruise on at night. During the day, the gymkhana is dodging potholes- not dancing through corners. One of my favorite mountain roads is in a constant state of disrepair and the ridges created by semis get so high as to scrape my anti-roll bar in the (stock ride height) BMW. Trips that were previously windows-down, one-arm-out-the-window fun runs are now bumper-to-bumper crap filled with soccer moms paying more attention to their phones or kids than the road, clapped-out beaters weaving drunkenly down the road, and people of all ages disengaged from the act of driving.

It's due to the traffic and lack of care that autonomy comes into play, both good and bad. Autonomy removes the dangerous from the road- it replaces a barely-there person with a 100% focused machine with 360-degree vision and nearly instantaneous reflexes. Combine that with autonomous cars' ability to drive while the passengers are inebriated and you have a win-win for safety.

However, the changes to the road structure may play havoc with people who don't want autonomy nor electric vehicles in their lives. Old roads- the good ones with elevation changes, blind corners, dirt after rains and tar-snake-nastiness and off-camber exits, will start to disappear as they'd be marked as incompatible with current software limitations. They'll either be "repaired" or they'll simply be eliminated. Those are the roads where a drive is followed by a stop and a breather and a pat to the roof of the car.

Slightly off-topic: There's a series of roads, (in particular, I'm talking about Nipton Rd, Ivanpah Rd [which eventually takes you to Route 66], Morning Star Mine Rd, Kelso-Cima Rd and Kelbaker Rd) between just south of Primm and connecting with the I-40, that pass through the remnants of mining towns and little areas that sprang up around railroad tracks. Those roads are motoring roads- you don't take those roads if your sole purpose is transportation, you take I-15 and I-40. You take them for the enjoyment of taking them- the scenery, racing a train, some fast, flowing elevation changes... except for the potholes. Lordhavemercy, the potholes. Those potholes are dark spots of hatred and misery on an otherwise fantastic trip. I don't think those roads would survive the descent into autonomy, and that's an incredibly disturbing thought. I shudder to think of those roads crumbling away, the old houses falling into disrepair and folding in on themselves while people zoom past in their electric egg-mobiles on an optimized highway, sharing the road with unmanned semis and the very occasional (bored) person driving their gasoline car.

I wonder how automated cars will handle potholes...

Good article Kris but living in AZ I can't relate at all. My carbon footprint continues to grow and I'm confident no one in my lifetime will limit my motoring freedom.

As for the youth? They will get exactly what they deserve.

Well, I feel some sort of responsibility here to make sure other generations enjoy what I do... though, realistically I'm sure they will find their own things to enjoy and in the end I'm just being selfish.


Thanks for all the comments guys...

[keith]

Hogwash.

I initially took a dark view on this topic, too, but I think predictions of the end are premature.

^ I agree with this guy; much ado about nothing. I for one, welcome mass-transit and self-driving cars; more safety for everyone, more room for me.

Don't go chicken-little; there's no anti-car conspiracy - just a history of self-serving automotive manufacturers who buy up emerging technologies to shutter them while they maximizes sales based on outdated mechanisms, who have had the lobbyists to maintain this profit-maximizing strategy in the face of science as far as they could stretch it; and an increasing amount of youth whose current and evolving definition of American romanticism is based on the advertising efforts of industries other than the ones we were subject to.

When the roads are filled with self-driving Uber-styled, call-them-as-needed cars, THEN will be the golden age of the driver for the rest of us - like the equestrian example, in fact.

[Nine17]

I initially took a dark view on this topic, too, but I think predictions of the end are premature.

Up in Minnesota they suffer from a mental condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Everything looks bleak to those people this time of year.

Motoring isn't anywhere near dead yet. Autonomous cars can only work in a 100% autonomous environment, and likewise a complete phase-out of fossil-fuel burning cars is a long way off (although we should be lobbying to keep old cars on the road).

-- David