A Commute

While those of you in the Pacific Northwest understand how poor drivers are, I know some of you don't believe me when I say that drivers here are the worst I have come across in the United States. Sure, folks complain a lot about drivers in New York or Los Angeles, but those are aggressive drivers, and their behavior is pretty predictable-leave enough space for a car to merge into your lane, and it'll happen.

When I do drive to work, it's a 4.3-mile commute each way. With no traffic it takes about 10 minutes to get to work, but when there is traffic, the same route takes about 45 minutes, which can be shortened to 30 by taking an alternate route. I wait until after most of the traffic has died down, but by no means does that mean there aren't poor drivers on the road. For example, my drive home last night (yes I'm a grad student so I work weekends):

Mile 0.4: The driver in front of me stops at a green light for no reason, and stays stopped while the light goes from green to yellow to red 5 seconds later.
Mile 0.9: A driver with a green light waves a pedestrian to cross the intersection in front of the car (Seattle drivers are notorious for screwing up right of way at the expense of safety). There are two left turn lanes at the intersection. I'm in the left one, and the person in the right turn lane always cuts in front of my lane in the turn itself and after the turn starts driving in the lane where the left left turn lane turns into instead of the lane the right left turn lane turns into (2 lanes per direction on that 4-lane road).
Mile 1.6: There's a bus stopped at the bus stop in the right lane, and I'm driving on the left lane. All of a sudden the car in front of me slams on the brakes and allows everyone in the right lane behind the bus to merge into the left lane until the bus moves again. (Seattle drivers are notorious for screwing up right of way at the expense of safety, again)
Mile 2.4: I'm behind a car going 25 in a 35 zone so I move into the other lane to pass, but as soon as I pull alongside the car, the other driver all of a sudden starts going 35.
Mile 3.4: Same as mile 2.4, except someone going 25 in a 40 zone.
Mile 3.8: At this intersection, the road I'm on has a left turn lane in both directions. However, most drivers use this as an opportunity to expand their own lane into the left turn lane while going straight through the intersection and to continue using the opposite direction's left turn lane as part of their own lane.
Mile 4.3: At the turn into the complex I'm living in, the middle turning lane has a clear demarcation for when each direction has a left turn (instead of fair use for both directions). However, this doesn't stop the car opposite me to use my left turn lane to get into their left turn lane while I'm approaching the turn with my indicator on.

While Seattle driving is bad, not everything else is-like these pictures I took when I went to Grand Teton national park earlier this month:

(Click to Enlarge)

(Click to Enlarge)

Edit: and now, for the second time in the last 4 months, someone has managed to hit my parked car...

Nissan Rogue and Marketing

I recently returned from a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and while there rented a Nissan Rogue (which was an upgrade over the booked Nissan Sentra courtesy of my National Executive status). Over the 5+ days of the trip, I ended up driving the car 1,349 miles and ended up getting a pretty good feel for the car to the point I had to take a second to figure out how to drive my own car when I got back home from the trip.

The Rogue, in my opinion, is straight up awful, and essentially felt like a crossover SUV based on the Versa or Sentra. If you've driven either of those cars, you know that both of those cars are incredibly weak. A Versa starts at 109 horsepower, and a Rogue starts at 170 horsepower, which is not necessarily ideal for going through the mountains of a national park. Even National straight-up told me that the Pathfinder at 284 horsepower was a much better option.

Through those 1,349 miles there was many challenging points for the car. At its weak power it particularly struggled on hills. At about 6 degree incline the car maxed out at around 50 mph, and at a 10 degree incline the car would not travel above 38 mph (my car, with 228 horsepower on the base model, has no issues getting past 35 on a 24 degree incline near my place). Additionally, the car really struggled on turns, and in general the balance did not feel stable. The center of gravity felt way too high for a crossover, especially since I had previously driven a 2005/6-ish Honda Pilot when I had my permit (and when I initially had my license) and that felt incredibly stable compared to the Rogue. It also didn't help that any time a car passed in the opposite direction on those rural highways the hood would shake profusely as if it would become detached in the front and obscure the windshield.

Now, I understand that not everyone is looking to take this car through a mountain pass in the snow or drive it over uneven gravel to get to a river. However, these cars are marketed as such to the general public, when most of them will never need these cars for those purposes. Of course that's marketing at work.

Nissan Rogue Pitch (Click to Enlarge)

I believe that this kind of marketing is used to make people feel like their car can do anything; that it's some status symbol of some point (look at me, I'm outdoorsy!) that's easy to display. Obviously this seems to work, as the Rogue is still around and selling. However, the vehicle itself is next to useless in any challenging condition requiring anything beyond basic all-wheel drive functions. I'm not even sure the car would make it up my parent's driveway, which might be 25 degrees, during a snowstorm. While I think the Rogue is much better suited for city driving, advertising it as such isn't going to drive sales as much as advertising it an an outdoors car, which is too bad for consumers who don't look at all the specifications before buying a car.