Highway IQ

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

I stare into every car, truck, van, or SUV that shares the roadway with me. Women probably think I'm checking them out. Sometimes there might be an element of that. I'm human. I stare at guys just as often, though. No matter what they think, I'm not checking them out. I am stereotyping them, though. I know that's politically incorrect, but there it is. Like the marketing gurus say, "impressions are everything." Or "image," something like that. I don't have time to get to know these people. I'm not even interested in doing so. I just want to know, as quickly as possible, what kind of hazard they present to me. Cops call this "profiling." Lawyers get really upset at this practice. So sue me.

The average person has an IQ of 100 points. I grant that and start from there. My built-in point system adds or subtracts from that number almost as quickly as I can make out the interior of the vehicle. From there, I either disregard the driver, more or less, as a threat or apply evasive tactics to get as much distance between me and the hazard. The dumber the driver, by my IQ accounting system, the quicker I want to escape their sphere of disaster influence. You probably do the same thing, either more or less aggressively than me.

• Driver is in a 4(or more)-wheel vehicle: -5 points (How smart do you have to be to drive a cage?)

• Driver is a cop. This class of government official has an inflated sense of driving skill, not reflected in performance. They are prone to make sudden, irrational moves when their radio distracts them. They regularly ignore stop signs and stop lights. They scare the crap out of other drivers, making everyone in their vicinity a little less skilled and attentive: -10 points.

• Coffee, hairbrush, and/or cigarette in hand: -15 points for each item

• Driver is tipped at 45 degrees, so that his (always a guy) head is right under the rear view mirror: -20 points (This appears to be a Minnesota thing, because I've never seen it anywhere else, but it always means the driver is drunk, stupid, physically incapable of holding himself upright, or all three. I treat this driving posture as a flashing "beware of idiot!" sign.)

• Backwards baseball cap, blue hair, cowboy hat, or ski mask on driver's head: -25 points

• Coffee in face or driver is most often looking in any direction other than the vehicle's path of travel: -30 points

• Driver looking at self in rearview mirror with hairbrush, coffee, or cigarette in hand: -40 points

• Cell phone in use or beer in hand: -50 points

• "Start Seeing Motorcycles" or other pro-biking sticker on the vehicle: +2 points

• I catch the driver's eyes in the rear view mirror: +10 points

• After seeing me once, the driver looks again every few moments to see if I'm still there: +10 more points

• Both hands on wheel, head and eyes in motion: +25 points

• The driver is towing a trailer full of dirt bikes: +50 points

After I've made the above calculations and classifications, I use a modified version of the David Roth (ex-Van Halen frontman, current-EMT-has-been) crowd intelligence rule. I roughly count the number of vehicles in a 100' distance, front to back and both sides, of the vehicle and divide the driver's IQ by that number. In heavy traffic, everyone is a menace to my safety, almost by logical default. I'm the least likely vehicle on the road to harm the passengers of another vehicle, so I'm in the logical space for an escape route for other vehicles.

Just to calibrate your appreciation of my scoring system, an article in Scientific American Magazine once stated, ""Adults in the bottom 5% of the IQ distribution (below 75) are very difficult to train and are not competitive for any occupation on the basis of ability. . . " and "Persons of average IQ (between 90 and 100) are not competitive for most professional and executive-level work but are easily trained for the bulk of jobs in the American economy. . . " That's pretty cold, isn't it? Nature and the highway are cold as the floor of an icehouse. As far as my own survivability is concerned, a web article on IQ gave me the following information about the brainpower behind the numbers and I've added my own "Estimated Driving Skills" column to assess my own risk based on the driver's IQ:

IQ Range	Estimated Driving Skills (Alert Level Color Code)
Below 30	Flashing Red: This driver is clearly an unpredictable moron, an outrageous hazard at any speed, expect any damn idiot move from this rolling example of chaos theory. Ultimate alert.
30 to 50	Red: Mostly unpredictable, slow-witted, prone to panic and irrational lane changes. High alert.
50 to 60	Orange: Unless a slight change in traffic, road condition, or the moon's position relative to the sun occurs, you can probably count on this driver to remain stable. Check for distracted behavior every second or two.
60 to 74	Yellow: Loud noises, bright colors, anything sparkly or in motion will distract this driver, but he/she will probably do something mildly predictable when panic occurs. Moderate alert.
74 to 89	Blue: Mostly, this driver is stable. Pay special attention to this driver at intersections, on curves, and near fast food entrances. Fairly low alert.
89 to 100	Green: Probably not a risk, if anyone else in the above categories is sharing the road, this driver warrants minimal attention. I'd still avoid spending any time in an adjacent lane with this driver.
Above 100	Invisible: The chances are slim that this driver provides much risk. Based on past experience, one of these guys will probably be who kills me.

I realize these generalization are culturally "unfair," "biased," and even irrational. They are based on my nearly half-million miles of motorcycling and they are habitual. I constantly and automatically balance my belief that most people are decent and well-intentioned and that most drivers are nuts and "out to get me." My riding state boarders on paranoia, I'll admit. My confidence in my ability to deal with these contradictions varies with the road conditions and my concentration. You'd think that this would take the fun out of riding a motorcycle and it does put a damper on outright highway euphoria, but I'm disinclined to that mental state as you might have noticed. Riding a motorcycle is risky and that's part of the attraction. However, there is a definite line between assuming risk and committing suicide and evaluating the folks I share the road with is part of my risk assessment.

What are Honda Engineers doing with Their Spare Time?

Now that Honda has abandoned the Honda Hoot, the V-10 NSX supercar, clean diesels, and the AMA Superbike and Formula 1 racing programs, what are Honda engineers going to do with all that spare time?

Chasing New Technology

A friend sent me a link to this picture as a comment on something I'd said a while back. If you look closely, you'll see that the carbon fibre front wheel disintegrated and the tire stuffed itself between the front fender and the forks and what was left of the wheel. I have no idea where this happened and under what conditions, but it's a pretty interesting look at what pushing the edges of available technology can produce.

A lot of racers have sacrificed their bodies to provide giant steps in technology over the years. Sometimes, the failure of one technology produces a completely different modification in the state-of-the-art, as when Roger DeCoster's Suzuki semi-experimental forks let loose during a 1975 Trans-AMA motocross and DeCoster suffered serious injury from the resulting face-plant. When he came back from reconstruction surgery, he was wearing a full face helmet and started a revolution in personal protection for motocrossers.

One of the good reasons some riders are so hung up on vintage bikes is that the technology is "proven." A bad reason for the same decision is that the proven technology is so far behind the state of the art that the proven stuff is dangerous; drum brakes, for example. Ignition points might be another example of deeply flawed historic technology, based on modern ignition systems and their reliability.

This last week, my wife drug me to the state championship high school rodeo at the Minnesota State Fair. Having grown up on rodeos, I was surprised to see all of the protective gear some kids were wearing. I like the change, but it's a long way from the "traditional" cowboy look. Helmets, armor, high tech shoes, and ropes that hold a loop even when they are dangling from the saddle horn, all stuff my older rodeo-riding cousins would probably spit on.

Everything changes. Some changes are painful. Some are easy. Some make sense, some ideas that look spectacular on blueprints turn out to be freakin' idiotic in application. As for motorcycle wheels, I still like aluminum wheels with spokes. Ideally, the wheels would support tubeless tires, but I can live with tubes. Someday, I suppose, I'll end up on a bike with plastic wheels and I'll like it.

My Top Ten Bike List #8: Honda EXP-2

My #8 favorite is so similar to my #7 that some of you probably think I'm slipping past senile into retarded. Could be, however, to me the two are radically different. For one, the Honda EXP-2 is made of unobtainium.

Back in 2003, Honda was set to storm the off-road world with a 2-stroke that did everything 2-strokes supposedly can't do. Sure, the 400cc single made big power, 54hp with 58 ft/pounds of torque, but it did it with scarce emissions and terrific fuel economy; two characteristics unknown to 2-strokes. The links at the bottom of this article take you to places where a lot more information is held. These guys even got to ride the EXP-2, something I'll never do.

You can find the specs on Motorcycle.com's Quick Take: Honda EXP-2 and Honda EXP-2: The Return of Two Strokes? Their stories only makes me jealous that I don't have serious connections to the world of motorcycle development. This was one cool motorcycle that could have meant a radical change in motorcycle technology. In 2002, Honda won the under-500cc class and the Experimental class and came in 5th overall at Granda-Dakar. The bike made the same torque and nearly the same horsepower as the 780cc 4-stroke twin Honda had been racing, but was 118 pounds lighter.

In 1998, Honda anticipated this would be a production bike by 2000. In 2003, it was on its last legs even while Honda was promoting the technology to magazines and events. Then . . . poof! It was gone. Mostly, I love the bike because the leading-edge technolgy Honda was working on. Too much of motorcycle engineering is about yesterday's styles and technology that's long been applied to cages and lawn tractors (fuel injection , electronic ignitions, electric motors for example). The EXP-2 was an attempt to do something first in a motorcycle motor. I can't remember the last time that happened.

Here's the rest of the list, so far:

1. 1988 Honda NT650 Hawk
2. All versions of the Montesa Cota trials bike
3. All models of the Honda Transalp XL600V
4. Yamaha's SRX Series (250, 400, & 600cc)
5. 1992 Yamaha 850 TDM
6. 1977 Yamaha IT175D
7. BMW R 80GS Paris-Dakar Special