Unintended Benefits

Aaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd… (wait for adrenaline rush to subside)

As proof that decisions can have unintended benefits as well as unintended consequences, I give you the Great Tire Decision of 2013.

When last we left our plucky hero he was going ever so slightly looney tuney waiting for the Long Suffering Wife’s fancy Volvo convertible to get serviced. Then the service guy came out with “that look” and wanted to talk about brakes & tires.

Seems that the brake pads were fairly worn and probably should be replaced. The good news was that they are covered under warrantee; the bad news is that replacing them might mean pushing our time deadline to get out of there.

The tires were more problematic. They were wearing unevenly and had worn down nearly all the way to the threads on the insides, even though they only had 30,000 miles on them. Not a warrantee item, nearly $1,000 to replace, and it would really make the deadline a challenge. However, if I wanted it done but had to leave for my late afternoon appointment before they were finished, they would give me a loaner car.

I really didn’t want to spend $1,000 today. Could it slide a bit longer? Only 30,000 miles on some pretty fancy, big-brand name original equipment tires? Really?!

If we were only going to be driving around town, we might be OK for another 3,000 or 5,000 miles. Maybe. He really couldn’t recommend letting it go if we were planning a long trip over the holiday (we’re not) or driving a lot a high speeds (we do). In the end, the fact that it’s Ronnie’s car and I didn’t want her to get stuck someplace with a busted car persuaded me to get the new tires and brake pads.

They did a great job and got it all done on time. They even got it done early enough that I could grab an unhealthy lunch and go over to the Van Nuys Airport observation area and watch student pilots practice touch & go landings while I ate.

Five minutes later I’m on the 405 Freeway heading south. Between Victory Boulevard and Burbank Boulevard I had moved over to the far right lane to take the transition to the 101 northbound. Traffic was light, we were all doing about 65, and I was following maybe fifty or sixty feet behind a (presumed) dingbat who was on her cell phone (illegally) and who had had her right turn signal on for the last mile. (“What’s that clickin’ noise?”)

I could see that up ahead there was something partially blocking the lane. It was a big neon orange traffic cone, about three feet tall. It had fallen off of some truck, I guess, and was sitting upright nearly on the lane divider between our lane and the lane on our left, but maybe two feet into our lane. Everyone else in our lane was just shuffling over a foot or so to the right in the lane and shooting past it.

Not Little Miss (Presumed) Dingbat.

She apparently never saw it until the last second, presumably because she was holding the phone up to her ear. (Did I mention that that’s illegal in this state? And stupid? And dangerous?) Caught by surprise and not focused on driving to begin with, she then didn’t bother to do the smart thing and just hit the cone, which at most might have dented her grille or busted a headlight. At 65 MPH, she cut hard to the right onto the shoulder and hit the brakes hard…

…and then cut back hard left into our lane. But now she was on the debris on the shoulder and hitting the brakes had started a skid. As she overreacted back to the left (steer INTO a skid – bad move) she fishtailed, started to spin, got almost completely sideways, went into the lane on our left (at least no one was there to hit her or be hit by her), came back to the right across our lane back onto the shoulder. At this point I think she may or may not have hit the small curb there – something bounced her back into our lane, still almost sideways, tires smoking like crazy. I was sure at this point that she was going to roll and I had time to wonder if she was stupid enough to be not wearing her seatbelt, which would cause her to be ejected through a window and crushed to death if she rolled. But somehow her car started to come back around to face about 3/4 forward and she finally stopped, about 90% in our lane, 10% in the lane to our left.

Meanwhile, behind her, I had moved over about a foot to miss the cone and then stood on the brakes. FULL STOP, MR. SULU! ALL ENGINES BACK, FULL!! BRACE FOR COLLISION! MR. SCOTT, I NEED FULL REVERSE AT WARP NINE IN HALF A SECOND OR WE’RE ALL DEAD!! BRAKES! BRAKES!! BRAKES!!!

I would like to take this opportunity to say that the Volvo C70 handles very, VERY well under those circumstances. Very solid, no pull, it tracks straight, it brakes well. But does it brake well enough?

Little Miss (Presumed) Dingbat had stopped very fast with with all of the friction from her locked up wheels skidding sideways and being converted to smoke. I came to a stop with my anti-lock brakes less than a foot, maybe only six inches from her driver’s door. She was still holding her phone with her right turn signal blinking.

She started to shake, but pulled it together to pull over toward the shoulder. I wouldn’t doubt that her car has flat spots on all four tires, and if she bounced off of the low curb by the shoulder she may have messed up the alignment of her front end, but she didn’t get any body damage or flat tires, so she should have been good to go, except for possibly her nerves and the need for clean pants.

I do wonder if she’ll make the link between driving while distracted by the phone and how close she came to being the latest fatality statistic. If she makes that link, will she change her behavior?

Once I got past her and back on my way, my first thought was about the $1,000 I had just spent on new tires and brake pads. How much stopping distance and safety margin did I gain, if any, with that repair. Six inches? Twelve? Twenty-four? More?