La (tragicomica) rassegna stampa di Autopareri

[Yakamoz]

4 ore fa, pennellotref dice:

Non c'è bisogno.....Per i miasmi abbiamo già i cassonetti dell'immondizia che bastano ed avanzano   

 Io invece sono fiducioso!

[ISO-8707]

 

[pennellotref]

A prima vista non sembrerebbe un articolo tragicomico ma, se si tiene conto delle abitudini degli americani alla guida, un po' lo è :

 

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a13858420/europe-is-the-real-home-of-driving-freedom/

 

Cita

I’ve been brainwashed.

That was the realization I kept coming to sitting next to my wife on the flight home to Denver. I was watching The Man Who Could See Infinity, but found my mind continuously meandering back to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, or the Fluela Pass, or cruising along in conversation at 230kph on the autobahn to Munich at dusk. I had finally seen, smelled, and touched the grass on the other side of the hill taking a two week roadtrip through Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland, and not only was it both literally and figuratively greener, but more perfectly manicured and gloriously liberating to roam that I could have imagined. Like Neo in The Matrix, there had always been something in the back of my mind that told me our US driving system was hiding something, but not until I saw it, felt it, did I really begin to understand what I had been suspicious of. On that flight home my mind was still coming to grips with it.

Most of you probably know me as an IndyCar driver, maybe you’ve also seen that I occasionally work at Stanford. For the purposes of what I’m about to talk about neither of those specific elements of my background are more important than the more general fact that I have always simply enjoyed driving. From my earliest memories in cars, I have been enamored with both the freedom and control they grant to their occupants. My love affair began with the evocative like most, but deepened as I began to value the tangible physicality of it and the release it can provide. 

While the modern age of technology and information might allow us all to virtually transport ourselves to new places in the palms of our hands, the automobile still represents a uniquely tactile and direct relationship between man and machine that requires being actively engaged. To be what we call a good driver, to be an attentive driver, you must take in your surroundings and focus on the task at hand. At a time when distraction from the outside world often comes at the hand of technology, there is some beauty in a machine that requires you to feel and pay attention to what’s going on around you.

 

 

As I looked at the route we were preparing to take through Europe before our trip, I was fully anticipating writing an article about how different roadtripping in Europe is from roadtripping in the United States. The distance we were to cover over the course of two weeks through four countries was less than the distance to drive between Denver and Indianapolis, a trip I’ve done in one day. It struck me looking at the map just how indirect almost every section of our drive seemed, even considering the regions we were in. Without altering our route we were mapped over the switchbacks of historic mountain passes and through any number of quaint small towns.

I’ve driven up and down the coasts and through the mountains of the United States, never to see such a seemingly strange but apparently necessary way of getting from place to place. I thought I would be writing to you reveling in the freedom we have on the roads in the US. I thought I would be emphasizing the greatness of the American roadtrip. I thought that right up until I got there and started driving. I ultimately realized that while we may be able to get places by car more directly, our day-to-day driving experience as people who are passionate about the simple act of driving is in fact shackled by incredible and unnecessary constraints.

 

 

We are conditioned from well before we are able to drive that the design, rules, regulations, and enforcement strategy for our roads and highways are as they are for one reason: safety. To be safe, highways must have such and such amount of space for the shoulder. To be safe, there must be a permanent guardrail lining every corner on a curvy road. To be safe, the speed limit must be reasonable, and everyone must abide by it. That police car hiding around the corner to catch people going eight over is there in the best interest and service of all drivers. This complete system of parts, we are meant to feel, is in place to save us from ourselves–not me from me or you from you, but us all from each other. Anytime we see otherwise, we are to be instantly alarmed.

The first time I got on the autobahn leaving Munich, the edge of the far left lane was only marked by a six-inch-wide white stripe before pavement turns into a foot of grass then a concrete wall. When you hit the unrestricted sign you can drive as fast as you please within a foot or so of dropping a wheel and getting dragged into the barrier. 

 

 

I paid 35 Euro to drive on the Grossglockner High Alpine road, to find that there was absolutely no shoulder except for turn-outs, and instead of guardrails there were these ominous two-and-a-half-foot tall stone posts in the ground every 10-15 feet that were intended to keep you from tumbling down the mountain.

The posted speed limit was not for the corners but for the straights; if I’d have tested whether I could maintain it in some areas I might also have been testing how much of our M3’s undercarriage those posts would rip off while we augured off the side of a cliff. At almost no point did I drive on a road throughout all of Germany, Austria, Italy, or Switzerland that had any more protection from a catastrophic accident than that; most roads had much less or none whatsoever. Many of the Italian mountain roads literally had no markings to delineate where traffic was meant to operate, some of them had sections that were suddenly not wide enough for two cars even if you tried, without any warning or signage. So, totally “safe.” We covered over 1,000 miles outside of urban areas, and saw no more than five police cars. By our standards, as the kids say, it does not compute.

I could not help but think this was a recipe for disaster given how completely different almost everything about it was. Where are all of our trusted safety measures? It seemed like the possibility of a huge shunt was constantly imminent. But then you drive on the roads and notice how smooth they are. And how clean they are. And how tacky the surface is. And how they’re gradually cambered in the right direction. And how there’s preventative maintenance being done all over – not adding guardrail or shoulder space, but making the roads even flatter, smoother, cleaner and tackier. It was as if a pothole or bump in the road was a cancerous tumor than had to be immediately treated; and 99 percent of even the most isolated roadways were cancer-free. Speed limits in many places actively changed based on either traffic or weather conditions to best suit flow and risk for a given time and place, rather than assuming one-speed-fits-all.If you manage to keep it on the road, the road itself was something to behold.

 

 

And then you notice how other people are driving. No left-lane campers, no dawdlers weaving around in the lane while texting along country roads. They're an altogether aware and assertive collection of drivers. If a faster car approached, people quickly and decisively moved out of the way with no fanfare. A flash of the brights did not invoke a brake-check, spit-laced tirade, and double one-finger-salutes, but a timely maneuver to the right or into a turn-out with a wave of apology. People weren’t tailgating, because they didn’t need to, and because you shouldn’t need to, that’s a reasonable driving offense. Through Germany and Austria, the unrestricted nature of the autobahn (when allowed) and the relatively high limits on winding roads allows drivers the ability to seriously get after it, but was juxtaposed and tempered by frequent arrays of traffic cameras and extreme obedience when there was a posted speed limit.

Driving through all these places, each with their own slightly different versions of the above, my first response was continuously both, “Man, nice… this road just looks mint,” and “I’ve got to make sure I’m fully paying attention here to not put us all in a bad spot.” And then it hits you like a ton of bricks; that’s kind of the fucking point.

 

 

If you are an untrained, physically uneducated driver that doesn’t understand the abilities and limitations of your car, then yes, the under-no-circumstances-will-you-crash speed limit and extra guardrail might be necessary; the converse is similarly true, if the speed limit is such that under-no-circumstances-will-you-crash and there’s extra guardrail, you probably CAN BE an untrained, unknowledgeable driver. If you are texting or emailing or eating a hot cup of soup, you will likely require an extra half a lane at some point where there aren’t cars traveling 40mph faster than you; if there’s an extra half a lane of road and everyone’s going the same speed, maybe you can get away with texting or emailing or eating your soup. If you crossed a double yellow line to pass eight cars while driving through blind corners down a canyon road, you deserve a ticket from that cop camped out around the bend; everyone puts up with law enforcement propagating the use of scare tactics and BS tickets because there was that idiot that passed them around the blind corner.

Each of those people is a shitty driver in my book. But what if there weren’t so many shitty drivers? What if the roads, rules, and regulations forced you to be a competent, attentive driver? In each of the countries I drove through, the wholistic driving system, from the infrastructure and design of the roads, to the rules of use, to the training and etiquette of drivers, to the enforcement of regulations requires that you are a responsible and self-accountable driver. The system allows you no choice.

For the first time in my life I truly felt free to just drive on public roads. I accepted and understood the responsibility that came with that, and embraced the necessity of having personal accountability in order to operate fairly and safely within the system. I felt enlightened that that feeling was even possible after so many years driving all over the US, realizing how paranoid I am on a mile-to-mile basis normally. It was liberating and exceptionally gratifying all at once.

 

 

With my wife comfortably in the passenger seat looking up hotels, we averaged210kph over about an hour and a half getting back to Munich while night fell. The cars and delivery vans next to us in the middle lane were going 160-170kph just cruising along. While crossing all the various passes we traversed, for the first time ever in a street car on public roads, I felt like I actually understood why one might have an aggressive street tire. I felt like I understood the M3.

I’ve developed a high degree of trepidation toward getting excited about any modern cars, but from the moment I slid down into the minimalist but form-fitting driver’s seat to find that every adjustor was fully manual I considered that I might not be giving this M3 enough credit. I came to thoroughly understand why this car is what it is upon driving it on its home turf. It is not designed for us; it isn’t made for suburban Denver or Los Angeles. It’s made to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing ready to stretch its legs at the press of a button. From 30 yards away it’s an inconspicuous midsize German four-door, but from the driver’s seat it’s a finely tuned hunting machine that can be instantly activated with a firm press and confirm of the M button on the steering wheel or a tailored adjustment of engine, suspension, steering and electronic tuning.

 

 

It was capable of everything I asked of it, a function of the quality of the machine but also the environment we were in; we were in the playground it was built for. We easily disposed of those giving chase on mountain roads without even a squeak of tire noise, and capably played the game of pursuit with a well-endowed, bright red Ferrari 458 along a twisty stretch of Northern Italian highway (to steal some phrasing from the great Dan Gurney and Brock Yates, we never exceeded 290kph…). My wife was actually enjoying all this, which should tell you at least as much about how relatively sensible it all seemed as it should about how amazing a wife she is (and she’s pretty great). The car is made for the drivers and system it lives in, with its decades-long development into what it is today a product of that same system.

In the US we think that we have driving freedom because it’s such an easy privilege to enjoy. We think we have driving freedom because we can cover the vast expanse of the nation by car. Maybe, like many things, it’s just because we expect to without questioning it. What I realized in a rude awakening was that these perceptions of our driving culture are entirely superficial in the broader view of things, and we are in fact trapped in a system that treats everyone as if they’re incapable of being responsible for themselves.

Se cliccate sul link, ci sono belle fotazze da vedere.

Modificato 2 Dicembre 2017 da pennellotref

[ISO-8707]

 

[Sandro]

Aggiungo questa perla da ANSA, con tanto di screenshot perché possa restare impresso a imperitura memoria.

 

BRASILE. LA MOGLIE DI BOLSONARO PARLA AI NON UDENTI

http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/americalatina/2019/01/01/moglie-bolsonaro-parla-a-non-udenti_280697a4-9bff-440f-9f77-36ad1c11caff.html

 

 

Il "titolista" dell'ANSA si merita proprio il premio "p(irl)enna del momento"  

[AleMcGir]

 

 

https://iltirreno.gelocal.it/grosseto/cronaca/2019/12/20/news/mio-padre-avrebbe-riso-di-questo-scambio-1.38237056

[Wilhem275]

Spettacolare

[AleMcGir]

Compito:

Riassumi in 5 parole l'intervista...

 

 

 

 

 

[nucarote]

Intanto il cambiamento della linea editoriale di Repubblica impressa dalla GEDI a piena trazione Exxor è sempre più evidente, considerando anche le defezioni di Bottura e della fine della pubblicazione di MicroMega per fine anno.

[AleMcGir]