Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Road Trip, USA

This is the final, rather belated instalment in my account of my trip to the USA earlier this year. If you missed the originals, the archive is at your disposal.

American road travel is a difficult thing to sum up concisely. It's so ingrained into the national psyche that thinking about it leads off into all sorts of other areas of American life. As is such a recurring theme when dealing with this image-conscious country, some of the things which are held as gospel truth outside the US just aren't true.

Take the state of the roads, for instance. A lot of American roads are maintained to standards which would here be described as "poor" - even Interstates have potholes in places, and many other roads are patched and bumpy and don't make for a pleasant ride. A lot of freeway sliproads are unswept and strewn with rubbish. The image of the wide-open, perfect road that people in the UK have about the US is - when we look at the harsh reality of it - about as accurate as the myth that railways in Continental Europe are always on time and the trains are never grubby. For such a car-obsessed country this is surprising, but ultimately, I guess, it's all about money.

The cars people drive on those roads, though, do generally stick to the stereotype. They're big, they're often absolutely butt-ugly (I got the impression that America's car designers design the way they do because That's What We've Always Done), and they guzzle fuel at one hell of a rate. This is because even with the recent rises the price of petrol in the US is utterly laughable compared to what most of the rest of the world pays. This, in turn, is because the rest of the world appreciates the need to put a brake on unbridled consumption of fossil fuels in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level where Americans can continue driving SUVs without the planet instantly overheating. Things are starting to change - I noticed quite a number of smaller cars with, presumably, correspondingly smaller engines around - but in the end, my hired Mustang had a 3.6 litre engine which produced about as much torque as a European 1.8 or 2 litre unit. This attitude is likely to persist for some time, or at least until oil gets really, really expensive. Some vox pops I heard on the BBC while in the USA reminded me that regardless of what liberal Californians might say, for large parts of America the right to own a sports utility vehicle that does 11 miles to the gallon, and to buy fuel for it at no more than $2 a gallon, is so fundamental and so central to American society that you might be forgiven for thinking it's actually enshrined in the Constitution. (I checked just in case, but apparently it isn't.)

And there's another thing. What seems to be a lack of any consistent standards on light placement means that such safety-critical things as turn indicators are pretty arbitrary in both location and colouring. They're often yellow, but they're also often red and involve flashing one of the tail lights to convey the signal - very hard to see in bright sunlight. Or maybe the front indicators, while almost always yellow, are placed so far towards the centre of the front end that it's hard to tell if they're turning left or right. Or maybe the car behind you has, for no apparent reason, a pair of bright yellow marker lights lit at the front in broad daylight. All very inconsistent, and all very confusing for the foreigner.

And one more thing! Some of the driving is just plain scary - not in cities, where it's generally impossible to drive more than 50 metres without being stopped at a set of lights anyway, but out on the crowded freeways. Some people weave in and out of lanes without indicating, pulling out to overtake one car, pulling back in to undertake another, back out to the outside lane for another one, and so on before diving across three lanes without signalling to disappear into an off-ramp. When this is all happening at 80mph on a freeway with constant streams of entering and exiting traffic on both sides it can get pretty hairy. One memorable incident for me was when an aging BMW zipped past me on the inside during one of these weaving-in-and-out manouvres, and when I made a slightly exasperated gesture (no, not the one-finger gesture) the driver, who could hardly see over the steering wheel, flipped me off while pulling out to overtake another car. Eek.

Still - what roads may lack in maintenance, sensible vehicles or courteous driving, they make up for in driving experience. There can't be many places in the world where it's so easy to drive - parking spaces are large, road signs are comprehensive (to say the least) and routefinding's a doddle. Even in cities it's easy, because of the convenient (yet strangely monotonous) grid system. Some drivers can be pretty rude, but that's usually limited to stressed-out city folk (although the urban drivers of San Francisco were a pretty laid-back lot, man) and commuters on the Interstates. Oh, and anyone you meet on the road in Las Vegas, but let's not go there.

My advice to anyone who wants to go on a road trip around the States is simple - get off the Interstates. They're full of thundering trucks and people in too much of a hurry for their own good. Check out the US highways and, for even more fun, state highways. They're generally more relaxed, the drivers are friendlier, and you'll see more and have more opportunity to stop and look around. If you want the True American Road Experience - wide-open, ruler-straight roads with nobody else in sight - the state highways of rural Nevada will provide that in spades. Just make sure you've filled up with petrol - that gas-guzzler will go through fuel at a rate of knots, so if you're heading off into the wide blue yonder check where you'll be able to fill up. Driving on the Interstates is just like driving on motorways anywhere else - a million trucks grinding along, bumper-to-bumper traffic at high speed, and few chances to take a break.

Another good policy is not to be overly ambitious. Driving more than a couple of hundred miles a day will soon get tedious, and if you overreach yourself (easy for us Europeans who tend to forget just how damn big the USA is) you'll be so exhausted after a couple of days that you'll just want to go home. Make sure to leave adequate time to get back to where you're flying out from too, as it's not unknown for people to completely lose track of the fact that they've travelled so far they'll have to do 1200 miles in two days if they're not going to miss their flight home.

Anyway, despite all the moaning at the top of this (and come on, some of those cars, pickups and gigantic SUVs really are butt ugly), I really enjoyed my time spent on the road in the US - quite an achievement for someone who's a train geek with militant views on public transport and unnecessary car use. How about next time I take a car and drive across the continent, then take the train all the way back again?

This completes the account of my trip to the States in March-April 2004. Before finishing, I'd like to thank all the folks who supplied me with untold amounts of help and advice. Virtually all of them are on The Well, and they know who they are. Particular thanks to the denizens of the sanfran conference for help, advice, recommendations and meeting me for beer to make me feel like I actually knew someone in the country. Oh, and for the introduction to the burrito ritual. I apologise if I failed to convey adequate expressions of religious bliss while consuming it - blame the jetlag.

So, where to go next?

Posted by mpk at May 12, 2004 11:01 PM | TrackBack