Where Miatas drive, SUVs fear to tread

I recall once when I was trying to get into the right turn lane of a three lane road. There was a driveway right next to me, and the curb was pretty low (maybe

2-3 inches high). I drove the right side of my car into the driveway so the right wheels were on the sidewalk, squeezed by the SUV in front of me and dropped back down onto the street.

I looked in my mirror and the SUV that was in front of me waiting to do the same thing was gingerly trying to replicate my feat.

Yup, gotta have that four-wheelin', high-clearance, off-roadin' vehicle, 'cause it's necessary to go get groceries.

Of course one doesn't *need* an SUV to get groceries, but people tend to only one or two vehicles, so they buy what they think they *might* need.

When I decided to replace my old Nissan Sentra commute car, I had several friends offer advice. Typically, truck owners said "get a truck!" and my off-road enthusiast friend said "get 4WD!". My wife said "get a car that holds our entire family of five on road trips". Now, suppose for a moment, I could only afford to own one car, and I wanted a car that would satisfy all of these things... I'd end up with someone like an SUV.

Dana

Alternative strategy: the one time a year you need a truck, RENT ONE.

The one time a year you take the whole family on vacation, RENT A MINIVAN. You'll save wear and tear on your own car, while enhancing the "adventure" value of the trip. Plus, if it breaks down, phone the rental agency for a replacement and let them worry about the broken vehicle.

Very good points. These are exactly the things I told my friends. I replaced the Nissan Sentra with a comfortable Chevy Monte Carlo.

When we *did* buy a Trailblazer as a mini-van replacement, I opted for 2WD rather than 4WD. I got the same "get the 4WD!" pitches. My response was something along the lines of "you're telling me to get the car you want, I'll get my wife the car she wants". Most of the time the Trailblazer is driven, it has at least 3 people in it and often more.

Of course, when I run to the grocery store, most of the time I'm in my MX-5...

;-) Dana

Well, whatever, but in as much as I live in Tampa, where, at the North end of the bay they're expect at least a ten-foot flood surge within the next 36 hours, I'm taking my big 4WD Ford F-150 work truck home tonight and leaving my Miata in a nice safe garage (at 30 feet floor elevation, NAVD83).

See ya, I'll be talkin' at y'all Saturday! I hope.

Yours WDK - snipped-for-privacy@ij.net

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I would be very careful crossing 'puddles'. They might be deeper than you think they are.

----------------- Alex

This actually has nothing to do with SUVs in particular. I lived in the Antelope Valley, an area of the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, where it basically didn't rain most of the time, but would storm with vengeance a few times a year and many areas would flood.

This led to a *lot* trouble. Given the relative flatness of the desert, it was easy to misjudge the depth of flooded areas and a what appeared to be an inch or two was sometimes over 6 inches. Worse yet, the flash flooding often led to rapid erosion, so a puddle could be over a foot deep even though it was OK earlier in the day.

So, it is generally a bad idea to drive into any standing water there. I got in the habit of pulling over and watching brave/naive/stupid drivers drive into water. Once or twice, I saw people spin out doing this, several times I saw people pull over to inspect their tire/wheel/body and many times I saw cars stall in deep water.

Dana

When I'm in the miata I get cut off by idiots in 4x4's or they run right up on my back bumper. When I drive my 4x4 then I get idiots that pull in front of me in their little econo boxes and drive 10mph below the speed limit. I say who cares what someone else drives. If you can afford it and you like it then more power to you. The roads are big enough for all of us. Can't we all just get along

Best one of those I saw was in Phoenix, near the corner of Scottsdale and Jomax roads.

Normally, that area is nothing but flat sand and cactus, broken by dry washes. After a dowmpour that had most of the washes running full-force, some guy in a little Jeep CJ (probably a 5, since it wa a soft-top) apparently figured he was big, bad, and brave, and decided to drive through the 60 or 80 foot wide "puddle" that was flowing across the road, completely covering it. Can't *REALLY* say I blame him too much - looking at it from a driver's seat view, it didn't appear to be much more than a couple of inches, maybe even less.

He found out about a third of the way across it that it was a bit deeper than expected... By having his Jeep literally vanish out from under him.

He got out safe, but his Jeep didn't. When the waters receeded far enough to make it possible to see what the situation was, it turned out there was a 30 foot wide, roughly 18 foot deep channel cut across the road. And his Jeep had become a semi-permanent feature of the new riverbed.

The moral of the story: Water on the road is nothing to think "No big deal" about. Especially in desert country.

On the other hand, Bonnie was a big nonwash-out. At 11 am or so, when *current* Yahoo predictions were saying 25 to 35 mph winds at

2 pm driving heavy rain, and while driving to a post office to post an overnight letter, I noticed peak gale winds at surely no more than 5 mph and a light drizzle. This was when satellite pictures showed the center of the complex right over Tallahassee. I have heard of silence before the storm, but this was ridiculous. So I went to work, though closed by the government, since my connection there is much faster. I drove back top-down at 7 pm under blue skies..

No, I will not comment on republicans in this group.

Anyway, the last I heard in the store at 7 pm, Charlie is coming to Tallahassee too. ;) I hope it will not be like 1985, when every major road in Tallahassee was blocked by a tree or major branch, and I had to miss an important party with a prospective new faculty member because the road was blocked and I was getting scared of getting the next tree on top of my car. (Even though it was only a Honda, not a Miata).

Leon ;)

I did that once myself in Florida, when I did not yet know to keep moving. :) But Tallahassee is not desert. Anything here that cannot stand up to some water lasts about two days, and does not have time to build up to anything. I have been here 20 years, of which about 20% of the days have had torrential rains, and cave-ins are very rare.

Those puddles I talked about were simply water running over the road, (asphalt road, like all in Tallahassee,) at a convenient point, and you could easily see that they were about an inch deep.

And it does have to do with SUVs. Miatas do not do it. Normal cars do not do it. SUVs do it. SUVs also come to a complete stop for every temporary break in the asphalt when work is being done. An SUV driving on *!?*!!SAND*!?!!! You got to be *kidding*!

Of course, they would probably topple.

Leon ;)

I'm sure minivans do it. It's not the car, it's the driver. Many SUV drivers today used to be minivan drivers.

Heh.

Dana, I think Lanny covered that, RENT A BOAT :-)

Bruce RED '91

No, I meant NAVD88 (North American Vertical Datum), I just spaced out on the year. Did you know that FEMA changed the flood zone maps for Pinellas County last September? The old maps used NGVD29, the new ones use NAVD88. In Pinellas County the difference is approximately 0.88 feet, for example, here's the NGS datasheet for a benchmark off U.S. 19 in Clearwater:

AG0620 *CURRENT SURVEY CONTROL AG0620 AG0620* NAVD 88 - 4.503 (meters) 14.77 (feet) ... AG0620 SUPERSEDED SURVEY CONTROL AG0620 AG0620 NGVD 29 (??/??/92) 4.766 (m) 15.64 (f)

So imagine you started building a house last August in an area where the flood elevation is 12.0 feet above sea level. In order to get a permit to continue with construction, you had us measure the elevation of your floor slab and we measured it as 12.25. So you're three inches above the minimum, no problem, right? Now your house is finished and you want a flood elevation certificate so you can get insurance (no insurance no mortgage!). Well, today we base our flood zone certificates on the latest FEMA maps, which refer to the NAVD88 datum; your floor elevation is now 11.37.

Now with the new September 2003 maps, the flood zones have been redrawn completely, to take new research data into account. The lines which demarcate the various flood zones have moved all over the place. If you're lucky, the base flood elevation shown on the map where your new house is located has been revised to 11.0 feet. Some of our clients haven't been so lucky though! You can just imagine how some of our clients react when we tell them that the flood zone certificates we issued them a year or two ago are no longer valid.

All this Pinellas County flood zone science is about to get a real workout. That son of a bitch Hurricane Charley is projected to run right up the throat of Tampa Bay about sixteen hours from now, and I'm sweating bullets. I'm not too worried about flooding, since my house happens to be on a bit of a hill, but I've got a yard full of oak trees and they're predicting winds of over 100 MPH right here. I've driven

110 MPH in my Miata with the top down, but I had a windscreen and I was wearing my seatbelt.

Wish us luck! Actually, save your lucky wishes for all those wealthy people with their million-dollar waterfront houses on the barrier islands. I almost feel sorry for the rich so-and-sos. Tampa Bay hasn't faced such a whomping for more than half a century. I bet they have to relocate the Coastal Construction Control Line after this one.

Yours WDK - snipped-for-privacy@ij.net

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Charley does seem to have become a major potential problem. Good luck.

Leon

You need (Gasp! Horror!) a MINIVAN. They weigh 500 lb or so less than an SUV with similar seat space (although I admit none of them are "mini" anything these days). Realize you need three rows of seats- children MUST be separated ("Mom, he's touching me!"), so no more than two of them per row.

At the end of the model year, the rebate on a Chrysler, Ford or GM minivan will cover most of the cost of a good used Miata for days when the family isn't with you.

Joe Silver '99

Eh, not to turn this into a minivan thread, but Chrysler, Ford, and GM seem to know *nothing* about minivans these days. Once again, they've managed to invent a segment and lose it to the Japanese. The Toyota Sienna, Nissan Quest, and even the aging Honda Odyssey have managed to outdo the latest domestic models.

Nissan's also managed to absolutely *smoke* the Americans in the full-size pickup market with the Titan. It's almost like the import manufacturers are toying with the domestics--they take a year to redo something the Americans have done for decades and make it better. Makes me laugh.

The Toyota Sienna, Nissan

Hey, tooloud- the Japanese minivans don't count in my answer because they don't sell for $4000 under sticker! By the way, I had several Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler minivans when the kids lived at home, and except for unreliable A/C they served well; the last of them even handled fairly well. Finally replace with a Mazda 6s.

The new Nissan minivan is CHEAP inside- very disappointing.

Joe Silver '99