Hybrid Fever
As a Prius owner and fiercely competitive gas-mileage miser (600 miles at 57.1 mpg -- beat that, biotches!) I yet can sympathize with the correspondent who wrote recently to Glenn Reynolds with a note to hybrid drivers:
Ah, I've known the temptation. I've heard the little cartoon devil whisper in my ear. But I've resisted, and with tears in my eyes, pressed down on the gas.
Having a hybrid changes the way you drive. I used to be your average competitive driver: I was going to get there as fast as I could and if you put yourself in front of me, you better drive faster than I did.
When we got the hybrid, the game changed. Now the other drivers weren't my competitors. It was that little set of green bars on the dashboard gauge that shows me how good I'm doing on mileage. It's between me and my old record.
Nowadays, you wanna pass me? Go right ahead, pal. I'll catch up to you at the next light anyhow. And while I'm sitting there next to you with my engine silent, waiting for green, I'll be listening to your pickup's rumbling idle, and I'll be chuckling and thinking how you're burning more gas sitting at this traffic light than I'm going to use in this entire trip. Served.
I'm not saying I drive safer. Just different. I start braking well before the lights and accelerate more slowly after them. I tend to drive so as to avoid having to either hit the break or the gas pedals. But on Saturday mornings, when I get on the down-slope of Nickle Mine Ridge on May Post Office Road, and I know I can coast for about three miles, I'll let it go, even when inertia winds me up to 65 or so on a road that was meant for 40. Gangway, you Amish!
But I've seen the projections: Within a decade, it's estimated, a high percentage of the cars on the U.S. roads will be hybrids. There will come a point when the hybrid driver is not an occasional nuisance for people like Glenn's correspondent, but 20 percent of what he shares the asphalt with. We'll be a divided nation; two style of driving. The highways will be bilingual. One wonders what sort of social tensions will erupt. Will there be a demand for "gas-engine-only" lanes or roads? Will there be "no hybrids need apply" signs on the merge ramps?
It is NOT OK, in a 55 MPH no-passing zone on a rural highway, with cars behind you, to drive at a slow enough speed to avoid engaging the gasoline engine.
Ah, I've known the temptation. I've heard the little cartoon devil whisper in my ear. But I've resisted, and with tears in my eyes, pressed down on the gas.
Having a hybrid changes the way you drive. I used to be your average competitive driver: I was going to get there as fast as I could and if you put yourself in front of me, you better drive faster than I did.
When we got the hybrid, the game changed. Now the other drivers weren't my competitors. It was that little set of green bars on the dashboard gauge that shows me how good I'm doing on mileage. It's between me and my old record.
Nowadays, you wanna pass me? Go right ahead, pal. I'll catch up to you at the next light anyhow. And while I'm sitting there next to you with my engine silent, waiting for green, I'll be listening to your pickup's rumbling idle, and I'll be chuckling and thinking how you're burning more gas sitting at this traffic light than I'm going to use in this entire trip. Served.
I'm not saying I drive safer. Just different. I start braking well before the lights and accelerate more slowly after them. I tend to drive so as to avoid having to either hit the break or the gas pedals. But on Saturday mornings, when I get on the down-slope of Nickle Mine Ridge on May Post Office Road, and I know I can coast for about three miles, I'll let it go, even when inertia winds me up to 65 or so on a road that was meant for 40. Gangway, you Amish!
But I've seen the projections: Within a decade, it's estimated, a high percentage of the cars on the U.S. roads will be hybrids. There will come a point when the hybrid driver is not an occasional nuisance for people like Glenn's correspondent, but 20 percent of what he shares the asphalt with. We'll be a divided nation; two style of driving. The highways will be bilingual. One wonders what sort of social tensions will erupt. Will there be a demand for "gas-engine-only" lanes or roads? Will there be "no hybrids need apply" signs on the merge ramps?
