Driving competence

…in Germany. Eric Peters has a thoughtful piece in the AmSpec Online today. Having just completed my thrice-yearly 1200-mile round-trip from Indy to the East and back, I can vouch for the fact that a goodly percentage of the people on the road today don’t belong there — including many of the truckers, “professionals” that they may claim to be.
However, I think there is another aspect that Peters misses. German roads may also be safer because there is possibly less traffic on them. I don’t know this for a fact, but given that Germany (and Europe in general) has better mass transit than we do, in particular regional rail which we don’t have at all in most of the U.S., it suggests to me that comparing the two road systems is pretty much apples and oranges. Or at least comparing Red Delicious apples with Fuji apples.
While passing through Columbus on the way out, I noted to Sally that the biggest mistake made when the Interstate system was developed was pointing the roads right at the centers of large urban areas so that the shortest trip necessarily took you through town. It would have made a lot more sense, given that the system was intended to be limited access, to design the system so it missed those urban areas and simply had sufficient spurs going into them for local traffic. Half the trouble with the interstates today is too many exits and too much local traffic in areas that are heavily-travelled by people who are just passing through. I give you Columbus, Ohio, as a prime example; if you’ve ever been on I-70 going through there, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I’ve advocated the revival of regional and national rail in this blog before. Every time I travel I am more convinced that if it was available and efficient, people would use it. Why not have auto-trains all over the country, instead of just from Virginia to Florida? I’d take one to Florida from Indianapolis if one existed. But don’t even think about trying to go from here to Florida on the train; you can’t.
And damnit, I’ll say it again: you can’t drive a train into the side of a building.
Sell Amtrak to Southwest Airlines and step back. I’ll bet it would be profitable in less than 10 years.