‘Slow down!’ I could see the old Explorer-driving lady’s lips form the words. No surprise, really, considering we had just zipped through an S-bend in the wonderful BMW 335i convertible on a beautiful summer evening, passing her lumbering SUV in the process. Never mind that I used my indicator, had passed on the correct side of a divided four-lane, and probably never exceed half a gee in the process.

What did take me back—and then cause me to rocket forward—was her increasing large, angry visage, as she decided to chase me down. To do what? Chastise me for enjoying myself in a safe manner from behind the wheel of something other than a rolling throwback to the Flintstone’s era? We’ll never know, as I didn’t stick around to find out. Exploiting that superb powermill’s prodigious midrange torque, I make a quick getaway.

The encounter did cause me to ponder why other road users take such umbrage at the safe implementation of automotive enthusiasm. There weren’t any squealing tires, sideways action, or other dead-giveaways to antisocial action. All self-justification aside (I know when I’m really up to big dirty fun), why does America have such a love-hate relationship with car enjoyment?

I mean, like Middle Eastern residents, most of what we buy has comparatively big horsepower, in contrast to the Asian market with their 660cc microcars (which account for the majority of vehicle sales) and Europe, whose monster fuel taxes render such bread-and-butter American staples as the Camry V6 (268hp) and Chevy Suburban (315-362hp) non-starters. Sales figures indicate most of my countrymen like a little action when stepping on the go-peddle. And we seem to enjoy motorsports as well: NASCAR is the second most watched sport here.

It cant all be a gender or age thing (though they undoubtedly are contributing factors); when I was in Florida for a family reunion a couple of years back, my press car was a 420hp Charger SRT8. As one of my relatives lives on ‘Alligator Alley’, a wide-open stretch of arrow-strait tarmac laid across the state through the Everglades, it fell to me to be chaperone (and unofficial race official) between my aunt and my mother, as they challenged each other to higher and higher top speed runs. I’ll never forget the image of my lil’ mom—all four-foot nine of her—with the seat cranked right up against the overlarge wheel, as she bagged 143mph to silence Aunt Billie Jo’s boasts, all the while recollecting late-sixties stories of the fun and glory she and my dad reaped from behind the wheel of several over-endowed musclecars.

I have to conclude that two factors are responsible for the negative reactions of many normal folk to motoring enjoyment: partial success of the government’s ‘speed kills’ campaigns (as we discussed in detail last month) and a driver training and licensing system that is so out of touch with 21st century reality that it’s a wonder any of it ever makes it home alive.

More of the negativity appears fostered by a fundamental misunderstanding of the link between driver skill and the accident rate. The National Highway Traffic Administration and like groups cant seem to wrap their pointy little socialist heads around anything other than that we all need more airbags and acronyms like EBD, ABS, and ESP to save us from ourselves.

I remember being totally indignant when I became head instructor for the Denver office of MasterDrive, an amazing company that (privately) trains Americans in car control skills such as vehicle dynamics, emergency braking, accident avoidance, and skid correction, and saw that, despite considerable accumulated evidence on the reductions in accident rate by the firm’s graduates as compared to the general driving populace, the insurance companies and relevant government agencies wouldn’t acknowledge the truth. Or worse, would call it spurious and try to tell us that teaching teenagers how to handle a vehicle at (or beyond) its limits was only an invitation for them to drive more recklessly.

Now, the UAE is starting to wrestle with some of these issues, instituting a minimum of forty driving lessons and classroom work for many expats, and running out undercover cops to catch—via chase or cellphone—unlicensed drivers. The United States is far behind; MasterDrive’s is one of only a handful of programs affordable to the average citizen at a few hundred dollars (thus proving the government could teach everyone some skills for a reasonable sum), and their thousands of grads are swallowed up by the millions of new drivers every year whose classroom-type ‘drivers ed’ courses were cut from school budgets, and have no idea how a vehicle really behaves. I bet its many of these same undercooked girls and boys who grow up to be the bitter hypocrites who, never having learned much about the art of velocity themselves, berate others for its practice.

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