Today is a day for reflection and remembrance. It’s a day where we’re supposed to put aside differences to pay tribute to those who’ve sacrificed everything for a world where there can be barbecues, parades, and people enjoying the start of summer in happiness and peace.
I’m always fascinated by the threads of American culture which pull people together despite whatever surface differences which might get in the way. We are a pluralistic society, and not a single monolithic culture. We are an amalgam of many, many different cultures, whether in a melting pot or salad bowl, which form a diverse collective identity. It's a collective identity that is constantly changing, evolving, and growing. And while this has caused misunderstandings, prejudices, and resentments over the years, it's also a source of our strength.
All of this got me to thinking about something which defines the Memorial Day experience, and what came to mind is the idea of the cross-country family road trip. At this very moment, there are estimated to be more than 38 million Americans somewhere on a highway going to or from some destination, hopefully enjoying their vacation. Doing these sorts of trips have probably changed considerably since I was a kid with smartphones and tablets to keep people entertained, instead of trying to find some fun in looking at license plates and traffic signs. But moreover, I find it interesting how this kind of experience both informs and reflects American attitudes about the automobile being a symbol of personal freedom, and the idea roads and interstates are a gateway to adventure.
So this Memorial Day I’m gonna talk about bad cars, horrible drivers, and some of the bumpy roads many families have endured.
We're living in the 21st century. Aren't we supposed to have cities made of crystal spires, everyone wearing the same silver jumpsuit, and nuclear powered flying cars? You would think paving a road shouldn't be that damn hard, but it often is. There are stretches of highway and interstate in various parts of the country that have been under construction for decades. It sounds like a small issue, but if one thinks about it, whether a government can efficiently and quickly fix a road can be emblematic of how it might deal with larger issues.
According to a report by the National Safety Council, improvements in the economy mean more people will be traveling this weekend, and sadly more accidents. Using statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), these are the states with the worst drivers based on he likelihood of experiencing a fatality.
- Montana — 1st in fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled
- South Carolina — 3rd in drunk driving citations
- New Mexico — 5th in careless driving charges
- Texas — 6th in drunk driving citations
- Louisiana — 1st in failure to obey traffic control devices
- Arizona — 3rd in careless driving charges
- Hawaii — 4th in drunk driving citations
- North Dakota — 1st in drunk driving citations
- Delaware — 2nd in careless driving charges
- Mississippi — 3rd in fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled
Keep in mind that these stats are focused on fatal crashes. The NHTSA has been collecting this kind of data since 1975, and traffic fatalities have decreased 67% since then. Progress hasn’t been instantaneous, but that is an amazing improvement.
Each state is ranked according to the following categories:
- Fatalities Rate per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled
- Failure to Obey (Percentage of Fatal Crashes that involved Traffic Signals, Not Wearing Seat Belts, and Driving with an Invalid Driver’s License)
- Drunk Driving (Percentage of Fatal Crashes that Involved Alcohol)
- Speeding (Percentage of Driving Fatalities that were Speed-Related)
- Careless Driving (Pedestrian and Bicyclist Fatalities per 100,000 Population)
On its simplest level, the goal of a motorized conveyance is to reliably get you from Point A to Point B, and anywhere in-between, and then return you safely back to the point of origin. However, not all vehicles are made the same, and every now and again there are lemons. It can either be because of horrible build quality, glaring design flaws, or the wonderment of how groups of supposedly smart people spent time and resources developing such hideous aesthetically challenged products.
It's sometimes fun to walk back down memory lane and remember that rust colored piece of shit that you insanely spent thousands of your hard earned dollars on. And if there was more than one, which was that particularly shitty one? Like music, television, film, and almost everything else that's based on a subjective opinion, someone's worst can be someone else's favorite. However, there are those things where most people have come to a consensus as to its greatness or whether it was crap. For example, with the Hummer H2, it pretty much symbolizes everything wrong with late 1990’s and early 2000’s SUV thinking. The H2 was an expensive status symbol which just screamed insecurity. After the death of the Hummer brand was announced, Jalopnik had a piece asking blog members "What Will Men Desperate To Prove Their Masculinity Drive Now?" And to top it all off, it was an SUV that drank gas, but for all its heft, it actually had deficiencies going off-road.
While running back in 2008, President Obama let his pick for worst car be known.
"The car I learned to drive on was my grandfather's Ford Granada ... It may be the worst car that Detroit ever built," the Illinois senator said in an interview with Indianapolis radio station WFBQ. "This thing was a tin can. It was during the '70s when oil had just gone up, so they were trying to compete with the Japanese," Obama said. "They wanted to keep the cars big, so they made them out of tin foil. It would rattle and shake. You basically couldn't go over 80 (miles per hour) without the thing getting out of control."
Going through the various media lists for worst cars ever, there are a few models that get repeated over and over again.
- Triumph Stag: British Leyland vehicles weren’t exactly known for having the greatest of build quality (e.g., google search “Lucas Industries” and “Prince of Darkness”). Cooling problems, lubrication issues, problems with the ignition system and the quality of the rubber and metal were all liabilities for the Stag. These problems were the result of British Leyland deciding the Stag’s V8 engine would be two Triumph Slant-4 engines welded together.
- Ford Pinto: The car was a public relations disasters because of its very famous safety flaw, which was that it was prone to blowing up if rear-ended. Much hilarity and lawsuits followed.
To make matters worse, Ford decided-in its infamous cost-benefit analysis of the situation that became known as the Ford Pinto Memo-that paying off the cost of settlements for the victims ($50 million) was more financially beneficial than recalling and reinforcing the car's rear ends ($121 million).
- Trabant: The car was East Germany's most popular for nearly 30 years, and it could be seen tooling around the other Communist bloc countries. A 2-stroke engine gave it all of 18 horsepower. A dearth of basic features such as turn signals and brake lights didn't help. To fill the gas tank you had to lift the hood, add gasoline and oil, and shake. This would be your prize for enduring a 15-year waiting list before taking delivery of a small sub-compact.
- Chevrolet Corvair: The car which made Ralph Nader famous. Like the Pinto, the Corvair had safety problems. A part that reportedly cost $6 was the difference between a Corvair that maintained its decorum while cornering at high speeds and one which grossly oversteered.
- Yugo GV: Yugos, priced below $4,000 when first introduced, are now remembered as cheap jokes, which they literally were. The GV was plagued with engine problems, steering problems, problems with the stereo, problems with the floor, problems with everything. What worked in a Yugo worked as poorly and cheaply as possible.
“I once test drove a Yugo, during which the radio fell out, the gear shift knob came off in my hand, and I saw daylight through the strip around the windshield."
- Fiat Strada: Warnings were issued regarding service issues for the Strada —known internationally as the Ritmo— before it even hit the streets in 1978. It was riddled with rust on its floors, engine mounts and suspension, which were all susceptible to premature oxidization. Coupled with the fact that it only produced 75 horsepower, dissatisfaction with the car was high. Lawsuits regarding the rust pushed the Italian carmaker from the American market until the brands reintroduction which coincided with Fiat’s takeover of Chrysler. The Strada also managed to give robots a bad name: It was the first car built exclusively using robots.
- Chevrolet Vega: The first time General Motors tested this car on the track, its front end reportedly broke off from the rest of the vehicle. Starting at $2,090, the Vega offered little space with its 97-inch wheelbase —the distance from the center of the front wheel to the center of the rear— and had disturbingly little horsepower, 90, out of its four-cylinder aluminum block engine, which was prone to overheating issues.
- AMC Pacer: The car was ridiculed for its appearance, but it was a dud in terms of quality and execution as well. Make your own assessment about its bizarre proportions, but don't miss the one door that's bigger than the other.
- Ford Bronco II: Although many people loved them for being a small rugged SUV, in the 1980s Ford's Bronco II practicaly invented the phrase "prone to rollovers." How bad did things get? The vehicle's drivers realized they probably shouldn't drive a Bronco II up a steep hill. Ford's employees said as much in an inter-office memo that was circulated in 1986. Ford sent out 288 service bulletins on the 1985 Bronco II.
- Pontiac Aztec: The car was ridiculed for its exterior design, which is generally considered to be one of the ugliest of any vehicle in memory. However, its part in being the signature vehicle of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad has given the vehicle some renewed love.
Long the butt of many a joke in the auto industry, the Pontiac Aztek finally got its day to shine on Breaking Bad. This is such a great choice of a car for Walt on so many levels. When the series starts, Walt is kind of a pathetic, ineffectual man who struggles to get respect from anyone. His life never turned out the way he wanted to. He's reasonably happy, but he never lived up to his true potential. You know he bought that battered old Aztek used because he got a good price on it and hasn't really taken care of it. It's appropriate for his lame, suburban existence.
Then Walt gets cancer. And then he starts cooking meth and selling it to pay his medical bills and ensure his family's viability when he's done. And then he becomes a crime boss and a killer. Breaking Bad isn't really about drugs, it's about Walt's plummet into a moral abyss.
And that's why the Aztek is so fitting. The car was lambasted as a perfect example of groupthink and managerial bad decisions at General Motors. In many ways, it can be seen as a symbol of their downward spiral into near-death during the Carpocalypse. Deep down inside, it represents something ugly, not unlike the path Walt follows as the show goes on.
- Dodge Aspen / Plymouth Volare: The Aspen and its counterpart Volare, whose name means“I will fly away” in Spanish, were among some of Chrysler’s 1970’s attempts at compact cars. They were also prone to issues with vapor lock. The Mopar Slant-6 engine is considered one of the most durable vehicle power plants in existence. However, the engineers at Chrysler thought it would be a good idea to put the exhaust headers right next to the intake runners in the Aspen and Volare, making the intake air nice and warm before reaching the pistons. Moreover, the carburetor sits above the exhaust manifold, and that gives the owner of these vehicles vapor lock, which requires a small process to get the car started. Moreover, drivers also complained the Aspen and Volare were prone to stalling at inopportune times, like in the middle of traffic.
- Ford Mustang II: It was Motor Trend's Car of the Year in 1974 and was a financial success for Ford, who sold millions of Mustang IIs during the 1970’s. However, it is now regarded as the worst Mustang Ford ever produced. It was a pony car which lacked in horsepower. It sports Firestone 500 tires, which had problems with tread separation. And its design was based on the Pinto.
- Cadillac Cimarron: The 1980’s were a wondrous time of bright pastels and large mounds of cocaine. How else could one explain this car. Apparently, an executive at General Motors thought they could take a Chevy Cavalier, put in some leather seats, slap some Cadillac stuff on it, add an extra $5,000 to the sticker, and profit. And sadly enough, they pulled it off for a while.
Of course, all of these vehicles still need roads to be driven on. Which roads around this country are particularly horrible to drive on?
At last count, there are 3,980,817 miles of American highway. It is the legacy of President Eisenhower's Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which created the Interstate Highway System as well as other roads to support the expansion it caused. However, every mile of road is open to the same political vices as other programs that suffer from waste, fraud, and abuse. Politicians vie for transportation funds so they can build "Bridges to Nowhere." The specific placement of a new road or upgrading an old one, and the traffic that will pass through certain points within an area because of it, can have positive or negative effects on businesses & communities. There's bid rigging and kickbacks, which may or may not help someone in a high place get his brother-in-law's construction company the contract. And then, let's hope the brother-in-law's construction company doesn't use substandard materials to build the overpass.
The federal gas tax is supposed to be what funds fixing all of this. Except the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993, and highway funding has declined 23 percent, when adjusted for inflation, since 2002. Politicians of both parties view it as political suicide to support a gas tax increase, but it's "penny dumb, pound dumber," since whatever people might save in lower gas prices at the pump goes to fixing the damage caused by big-ass potholes. The alignment on most automobiles doesn't react well to shitty roads. Also, according to analysis by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), if an additional $1.1 trillion for surface transportation isn’t spent by 2040, it will cost America $3 trillion in unrealized gross domestic product. However, as Meteor Blades pointed out last week, there is a debate to be had over whether infrastructure funds should go to repairing and renewing roads for vehicles, or refocused on mass transit.
So what about specific roads, interstates, bridges, and intersections? When judging this, it can be more than just the physical condition of the road, but also traffic, scenery, and other intangibles.
Popular Mechanics once had an article on “5 Terrible U.S. Road and Highway Designs: Lessons Learned.”
In the immediate post-war years, massive highway projects reshaped vast sections of the urban landscape. In New York, whole neighborhoods disappeared, and more than 5000 families were forced to move when master builder Robert Moses ran the 8.3-mile Cross-Bronx Expressway, a vital link in his vision for a massive network of urban expressways, through a densely populated segment of the Bronx. In the years after 95 divided the Bronx, the neighborhoods to the south, cut off from normal street traffic flow and related commerce, quickly faded into the blighted, burned-out south Bronx of the 1960s.
Across America, similar projects floundered in the face of community protest. The so-called "highway revolts" of the 1960s and 1970s brought central urban expressway expansion to a halt. According to Steve Alpert, a highway engineer trainee with HNTB, who studied the lessons of the Cross-Bronx Expressway at MIT, "You still never see inner-city freeways being built anymore." What you do see, though, is cities grappling with the legacy of old urban expressways. Seattle, for example, is currently considering a proposal to replace its Alaskan Way Viaduct. Built in the 1950s, the elevated, double-decked highway runs 2.2 miles along central Seattle's waterfront. "This has been the center of a great debate; why put a viaduct on the waterfront?" says Ron Paananen, who is the project administrator for the proposed replacement of the Viaduct.
- Lesson No. 2 - If You Build It, They Will Come... So Plan for That:Interstate 25, The Valley Highway, Denver
Originally built between 1944 and 1948, the Valley Highway in Denver is one of the older segments of the Interstate Highway system. Freeways, though, tend not to age gracefully, and this particular stretch is no exception. When it was built Denver's population hovered around 600,000. Since then, it's quadrupled to 2.4 million. Now, 200,000 vehicles use the Valley Highway each day, and according to Steve Hersey, a traffic engineer with the Colorado Department of Transportation, certain sections of the road are "almost always backed up." One major contributor to the congestion is the spacing, or lack thereof, between I-25's interchanges.
"When you look at these older roads, typically what happens is you start out and you have decent spacing," Hersey says. "But as roadside areas develop, which they tend do when you build a freeway past them, and you start adding interchanges, that's when you get into trouble."
Every year, Overdrive magazine, a trade publication for long-haul truckers, polls its readers to determine the state with the worst roads in the country. For a number of reasons, Louisiana is a fixture at the top of the list. As one driver told the magazine in 2008, Interstate 10, which runs east-west across the entire state, is "rougher than a corncob." The truckers aren't the only ones who have noticed.
"You know you're here from the bumps," says Richard Levinson, a travelling jazz musician who works out of New Orleans in the winter. "As soon as you hit Louisiana, even if it's dark and you can't see the signs, you can tell." One explanation for the rough and rumbling roads of Louisiana is the soft turf on which they are built. Speaking to Overdrive in 2008, Mark Lambert, then communications director for the Louisiana DOT, said "Over time, you get waves in the concrete as the loose soil shifts or sinks, and if you're in a long wheelbase vehicle, that gets pretty bumpy. You'll get a bump about every 50 feet."
The New York Times' Freakonomics blog once had a "Worst Roads in America" competition, in which readers of the blog submitted their suggestions. Top transportation scholars at the University of Southern California whittled through the submissions and picked ten, of which New York's Cross-Bronx Expressway was picked as the worst.
The list leans East Coast, but from what I hear Massachusetts deserves it.
The Cross-Bronx Expressway. An oxymoron if ever there was one. It is a symphony of delay, dereliction, and despair. You get your first introduction by sitting in a cacophony of traffic at the George Washington Bridge toll plaza. The number of roads that funnel their cars to "the Bridge" look like a half-eaten bowl of linguine. Then the true nightmare begins as you hit New York City and begin the slow, desperate crawl through the Bronx. You can only wonder what Robert Moses was thinking when, like a kid with a shovel at the beach, he just dug a 100+ foot trench through the borough, displacing thousands of families so that hundreds of thousands of cars can crab their way at speeds upwards of 4 m.p.h. while being whipsawed by 48-foot tractor trailers arriving from points south and east after many hours of caffeine/Red Bull/?-aided driving alertness. Oh, and that is on a good day!
- Route-18 through New Brunswick, New Jersey.
- Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, New York between 70th and 30th Streets.
- Trying to get on "The Capital Beltway" (aka I-495).
The on-ramp to the Beltway near the Woodrow Wilson bridge headed out of Alexandria, Va., into Maryland made me meditative. This scenic two-mile stretch of the on-ramp to I-495 has been a favorite place to while away an hour or two in my car pondering Buddhist philosophy as I watch a caterpillar crawling past me and 300 other cars stuck at the same intersection. Green light, red light. A fleeting chance to pass through three intersections. Another light change. Now the ethereal cacophony of honking drivers hoping to enter the on-ramp into I-495 rush-hour traffic at a rate of 5 miles per hour. Life is random and beautiful. Construction workers on this stretch of road also lean to zen Buddhism as they examine the weather, the car dealership across the street, and each other, slowing the rhythm of their months of work.
- The stretch of I-80 that runs through Nebraska. I thought this was an interesting selection for this list, because according to the person who submitted it, the road wasn't bad because of potholes or an overall shitty condition. It was selected for the list because they thought the road was boring. The submitter claimed it was like driving through "desolation" for six hours.
- The cluster "truck" that is the tangled morass of merges leading to the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City, New Jersey.
- The "Big Dig" in Boston, Massachusetts.
The "Big Dig" — the megaproject to reroute Interstate 93, the chief highway through the city of Boston, into a 3.5-mile tunnel under the city — has amassed an infamous reputation. As the most expensive highway project in the U.S. ... it gave cause for longtime Congressman Barney Frank to quip, "Rather than lower the expressway, wouldn’t it be cheaper to raise the city?"
What truly makes this among the worst stretches of highway in the U.S. is for all the project’s lofty aspirations of alleviating the chronic congestion on I-93 that was predicted to have 16-hour traffic jams by 2010, the project has incurred criminal arrests, escalating costs, death, leaks, poor execution, use of substandard materials, and has had negligible impact of traffic. As my mother would testify to, trips at rush hours are longer and more congested, rather than less.
- MA-2 in Massachusetts.
- Gano Street on-ramp for I-195 in Providence, Rhode Island.
- The Tobin Bridge (a.k.a. the Mystic River Bridge) in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Tobin
I take the road most traveled, With pot-holes galore and water dripping, The pavement shattered, The workers lost and mingling.
I take the road most traveled, With the two levels crumbling, A two-hour commute with drivers enraged, And the fast-pass gate shuttering after every car.
I take the road most traveled, The tourists lost and clueless, Backing out of the fast-pass lane confused, With the road trembling all the while.
MSN has created their own list of "the most treacherous, traffic-clogged roads in America." There's a bit more West Coast flavor with this one.
- Colorado, U.S. Route 550, aka Million Dollar Highway, from Ouray to Silverton.
- Atlanta's I-285 at I-85 Interchange, a.k.a. Spaghetti Junction.
The hip-hop duo Outkast, Atlanta natives, named a song after this gnarly web of highway. The lyrics are foreboding: "Be careful where you roam cause you might not make it home. Don't you dare ever get lost cause you get caught up in that sauce." The junction is a five-level interchange (think clover leaf above clover leaf above clover leaf) with multiple ramps and smaller roads feeding into it. The American Highway Users Alliance gave Spaghetti Junction a grade of F, indicating that stop-and-go traffic prevails here most of the time, causing 133,000 hours of traffic delays each year. The time to avoid Spaghetti Junction at all costs: in winter, when a combination of rain and freezing nighttime temps can turn the many ramps and overpasses into a labyrinthine ice skating rink, causing dozens of accidents and epic delays.
All-you-can-drink specials at Tijuana bars attract hordes of SoCal residents each weekend — many of them San Diego college students and other minors who are lured the 15 miles across the border by Mexico's lower drinking age (18). Hence, the stretch of Interstate 5 leading north from Tijuana becomes a swerving, high-speed DUI minefield on weekend nights, and each year 10,000 to 15,000 people are arrested for driving while intoxicated in San Diego County. Occasionally, all-night binges combine tragically with one of the most traffic-clogged early morning commuting routes in the country — both in San Diego and leading north through Orange County.
- Nevada, I-15.
- Providence, Rhode Island, I-95 at the I-195 Interchange.
- Louisiana, I-10.
- Los Angeles, U.S. Route 101 to I-405 Interchange.
Nowhere in the nation (except parking lots) do cars spend so much time bumper-to-bumper than at the juncture of the 101 and 405 freeways in Los Angeles, which link the east side of the city with the downtown area. The statistics alone are enough to provoke road rage: 318,000 drivers per day use this juncture, and they spend 72 hours of their lives stuck in traffic annually. The rush hour window here is a staggering five to eight hours per day, and during that time, you'll spend twice as long on the road as when it's traffic-free — which makes for the highest travel time index rating in the nation. If you must drive it, make sure your Bluetooth is fully charged and your iPod is locked and loaded.