TOM: So, what alerted you to the fact that the guys in the truck were unhappy with you, Jake?
RAY: Clearly, they’re jerks. Case closed on them. But I think you might be a jerk, too, Jake. A jerk of a different type. You’re what we call a vigilante.
TOM: You’ve taken the law into your own hands, and have decided to pin a homemade badge on your chest. And since you have no legal authority to do that, you put yourself at risk of flying Mountain Dew bottles.
RAY: While obnoxious, it’s also not clear that what these impatient drivers are doing is necessarily illegal. I’m guessing that the reason for the additional (right) lane is to make sure there’s plenty of capacity on the ramp so that exiting cars don’t back up onto the highway.
TOM: Right. Since it’s a left exit, if the ramp filled up with cars, you’d have stopped cars in the left lane of the highway. Not good. So they effectively widened the ramp to two lanes to make sure it could hold plenty of cars.
RAY: So these other drivers are perfectly within their rights to move into a legal right lane and use it. In fact, they’re doing what the traffic engineers want them to do, which is spread out the traffic into both lanes.
TOM: Now, if they’re exceeding the speed limit or passing on the right where it’s not permitted, well, that’s an issue for the police, Jake. You might not realize this, but they have those blue and red lights on top of their cruisers specifically to deflect Mountain Dew bottles.
RAY: So as much as it annoys you — and we’re sympathetic; aggressive drivers are annoying — we suggest that you take a deep breath and relax, and let karma take its course. History has proven that every aggressive driver eventually gets several expensive speeding tickets.
Smug husband thinks ‘towed miles’ don’t count
Dear Tom and Ray: My husband just bought a 2004 Chevy Tracker with a smidge over 60,000 miles on the odometer. We think the prior owner might have hauled the Tracker behind a recreational vehicle; there is a tow-hitch bracket under the Tracker’s front bumper and a bunch of rock chips in the hood’s paint. So our question is this: When a vehicle is towed with four wheels on the ground like that, does the towed vehicle’s odometer register all of those miles? My husband thinks most of these miles are “towed miles” and therefore he got a low-mileage vehicle with a high-mileage odometer. Is my husband’s smugness justified? — Di
RAY: A husband’s smugness is never justified, Di. Because even if he’s right about something, it’s only a matter of time before he’s wrong about something else. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife!
TOM: But you don’t even have to wait for your husband to be wrong, Di. He’s wrong right now. In the old days, odometers were mechanical. They were run by a cable that came up from the output shaft of the transmission. So, when the drive wheels turned, that shaft turned and the odometer turned, racking up the miles.
RAY: But on modern cars, speedometers and odometers are electronic. So unless the key is on, they’re not getting powered and won’t register any miles.
TOM: And no one would tow a car any kind of distance with the key on.
RAY: If the car had a stick shift, the person doing the towing would just shift it into neutral and tow it with the key off. Or, if it was an automatic, you would use the shift-lock override to put it in neutral.
TOM: And if you needed the key to be turned — to unlock the steering wheel, for example — you’d probably disconnect the battery to keep it from dying. Otherwise, when you got to the KOA in Winnemucca and tried to go out for some post-14-hour-drive hemorrhoid cream, your Tracker wouldn’t start.
RAY: So your husband’s new Tracker has 60,000 actual, honest-to-goodness driven miles on it. Plus maybe another 150,000 or 200,000 spent bouncing behind a Winnebago.
Send your comments or questions for Tom and Ray to: Car Talk Plaza, P.O. Box 3500 Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA 02238. Listen to them Saturdays at 10 a.m. on 91.3 FM or 88.5 FM. Visit them on the Internet at www.cartalk.com.
About the Author