Practicality of daily driving a z (and safety)

[psdenno]

I tend to drive as if everybody is trying to kill me if that makes sense...

That makes perfect sense. Years ago, my wife gifted me with a few days at the Bob Bondurant Driving School. My "in car" instructor was Johnny O'Connell of Indy 500, LeMans, and 24 Hours of Daytona fame. While a big part of the course was "go fast" driving on a track, handling and evasive/defensive driving techniques were also instilled.

A couple months after taking the course, I was driving my pregnant wife to an appointment in her Porsche when an inattentive driver blew through the red light at an intersection I was entering. The Bondurant lessons kicked in and we avoided being T-Boned. I'm a strong believer in driving skill/training and awareness of others - especially in this age of texting while driving, which I see on an almost daily basis.

Dennis

[Jetaway]

Count me in with 5thhorsemann, Palmer, and others who have wrote that words to the effect that the most important nut for safety is the one behind the wheel. That said, and based on 13 years of 150 mile round-trip hammer & tong commuting, a Z is not a great choice for heavy-duty commuting. My other car, Stella, is a 2001 Pontiac Aztek. My Z can accelerate faster, corner harder, and brake a bit better and yet, spanning conditions from bumper-to-bumper crawling to high-speed (i.e., the #1 flow in the mid-70s) pre-peak commuting, Stella will get to the destination no later and usually sooner than my Z. It comes down to visibility, and, though I don't consciously use it, bulk (well, once in while, but only when someone has really managed to irritate me). In the Aztek I can easily see eight to ten cars ahead of me, judge traffic flows and plot out a strategy (which usually is simply staying in the #1 lane). In the Z, I'm pretty much stuck with what the car immediately in front of me is doing, and if he/she stands on the brakes, that's my first indication that something is amiss. In a similar scenario in the Aztek, I've already backed off and, if warranted, knocked a few mph off my speed with the brakes and know whether or not I'm clear to dive down into another lane before the car in front of me even lifts his foot off the gas. It's nothing specific to a Z, any low-slung car is going to be at a tremendous disadvantage during the serious commute hours. I actually felt sorry for some poor bastard who had a new Lotus (don't know the model, but it was one of the very newest) who got by me four times during a pissy commute. He had to work his arse off to get in front of me and time and time again, I serenely floated by at 35 or 40 or 25 mph as his lane slowed or ground to a halt. I could tell it really was getting to him that this ... this ... blob of a car was faster than his, but, it was. I'm guessing he was a weekender.

Two-lane country highways? Z all the way. I can safely get around a slug in the Z in places that I don't even bother thinking of passing in the Aztek.

Chris