On Cruising

From the days of my 1984 Pontiac Sunbird, nearly all of my cars have come with cruise control.

It's not a feature that I chose: until I bought my 2012 Ford Focus, and ever since, all of my cars had come used, and all of them came equipped with the speed-regulating device. It makes me wonder if there are any vehicles, today, that are not fitted with it as a standard feature.

When I drive on a highway, I almost always activate my cruise control. Along the Ottawa River Parkway, I also dial in a speed, so as to not inadvertently reach or break 80 kph, risking the attention of the RCMP who patrol this roadway. In Gatineau, on my commute to and from work, I set my speed at 111 kph when I'm on Hwy 5, and I'm golden.

On longer treks, between cities, cruise control is my best friend. When the posted speed is 100 kph, I set my speed at 118. Posted fines start at 120, and an OPP cop once told me that on Ontario highways, no cop will bother you if you stay under that speed. On our recent trip to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where the posted speed limit was 110 kph, I set my speed at about 124, and I found that I passed as many vehicles as those who passed me, and felt I was safe from radar.

I was never pulled over for speeding, even though I saw lots of cops on the highways.

I usually figure that if you have cruise control—and I figure that most of us have it—you use it when you're on the highways. So it always leaves me scratching my head—and wishing that my car was also equipped with laser canons—when someone catches, then falls back, around me.

For example: at 118 kph, I approach a car that is travelling in the right-hand lane on a divided highway. I signal to move into the passing lane, overtake said car, and signal to move back into the right-hand lane when I have safely passed the slower car.

A few, short minutes later, the slower car overtakes me in much the same fashion.

Even fewer minutes later, I leap-frog that car. And so the process repeats.

If my speed is locked in, and my speedometer confirms that my velocity has remained unchanged, I should never see that car in front of me again, assuming that the driver of that car has also engaged his or her cruise control (I assume this is the case, because the vehicle is a luxury sedan which must have the feature).

Worse, when I approach and move into the passing lane to overtake the car, it speeds up, and it either takes me much longer to pass it, or it accelerates away, and I move back into the right lane.

Only to catch up with it again, and have to attempt a pass again.

Never do I curse a streak more blue than when I encounter these morons on the road.

Obviously, people who drive like this either don't have cruise control or they do, but don't use it. But what is clear to me, when a driver speeds up, then slows down, then speeds up, is that they are unaware of the traffic patterns and they don't realize that they aren't maintaining a steady speed.

To me, these clueless people shouldn't be on the road.

On my family's latest road trip, we encountered several people who drove this way, and it drove me crazy. But what really irked me was when I was approaching another car to pass, and I could see in my mirrors, one of these hapless drivers approaching me to overtake me.

In these instances, I would find myself pulling out into the passing lane, long before I needed to, to force these witless drivers to slow down and wait until I had cleared the first car, before pulling over to let them pass me. Unless, of course, their speed changed and they became the problem for the person I just passed.

Some day, all cars will have cruise control. I just hope that when that day comes, we'll also have the technology for a car to know when to kick it in when the driver doesn't think to do it.

Cruise on, folks.