Where do you stand on mandatory, periodic safety inspections for vehicles registered to operate on public roadways? It’s yet another level of government involvement and increased regulation, but given the operating condition of certain automobiles, inspections might have merit. As for one concerned driver, reader...
For weeks, the winding, downhill dirt road between our house and the highway was an ice sheet. It was treacherous enough that leaving home invoked a three-step ritual: 1) engage the lowest gear available in whatever rig we were driving; 2) take a deep breath;…
Automobiles were barely invented when the death toll resulting from vehicle crashes was tallied for 1899. 26 individuals lost their life that year in a trend that would move markedly upward. For each successive year, U.S. fatalities increased to the point where nearly 100 motorists…
Periodically, the topic of left-lane louts arises. Those are drivers who perpetually occupy the left lane of multi-lane roadways without due cause. This time it came up when a young driver told me that he has a right to drive in that lane if he...
Consider the Dodge Durango, a rear-wheel outlier in a world of front-wheel crossovers. Like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, whose platform it shares, the Durango uses a crossover-style unibody rather than a truck’s heavier body-on-frame platform. Both rigs shun the crossover’s front-wheel-drive convention, employing rear-wheel-drive instead.…
Driver use of dashcams (dashboard cameras) is rising worldwide, including popularity gains in the United States. They were first widely employed in Russia as a defense against police corruption and insurance fraud. Mounted via suction cup, adhesive or Velcro to the dashboard or windshield, they…
Bad weather in the mountains forced a schedule change, bringing us a Mazda CX-9 for review and not the Genesis G90 we’d expected. The Seattle vendor that delivers our test vehicles thought better of driving a 420-horsepower, rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan over snow-hammered Snoqualmie Pass. It…