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"  As I was driving down the freeway recently, I watched an SUV in front of me drift out of its lane, off the road and down an embankment. I stopped, ran to it and saw two young women inside, apparently okay. There was music blaring and something was on the navigation screen. This happened on a straight road, on a sunny day, without much traffic. And I thought how much safer I was, driving in my 50-year-old Jaguar XK120--with no side windows, no radio, no distractions--than these women were in their new truck with its ABS, airbags and other modern tech. Why? Because I was paying attention. I read a study once that said the more potholes there are in a stretch of road, the fewer accidents people have on it. Drivers pay attention when they hit that piece of road. They drive more slowly. So the highway departments deliberately don&amp;#039;t fix them. I think there&amp;#039;s something to that. Recently, I drove a new car with satellite radio. And it kept me informed of very important facts: I&amp;#039;m 1.3 minutes into the song. Now I&amp;#039;m 1.4 minutes, now I&amp;#039;m 1.5 minutes ... Why do I need to know that? And why do I need to know what year Lloyd Price recorded it? These subtle things are distracting. Yes, I know you can turn the thing off. But it becomes addictive. I don&amp;#039;t want to turn it off. Another time, one of my old cars broke down on the freeway. Here in California, there&amp;#039;s hardly any shoulder on the road anymore. So I&amp;#039;m standing at the back of the car, waving people out of the lane. And I see people on cellphones, heading right at me. At the last minute, I see them go &amp;quot;aaarrrggghhh!&amp;quot; Then they swerve. I grew up in an era when people took pride in their driving. You focused on what you were doing. Women were impressed by skillful driving. &amp;quot;Wow,&amp;quot; a girl might say, &amp;quot;this guy is such a good driver. I didn&amp;#039;t even realize he was shifting.&amp;quot; Nowadays, you&amp;#039;re just operating a machine. A machine that happens to be a car that&amp;#039;s probably been designed to do most of the driving for you. It kind of reminds me of a television commercial: The family&amp;#039;s at the airport and the father is eating his third chili dog. He&amp;#039;s getting sick. And his family is worried. Even you&amp;#039;re screaming, &amp;quot;Stop! I can&amp;#039;t take any more of these chili dogs.&amp;quot; So what is his cure? It&amp;#039;s not to stop eating. He takes an antacid. And then he eats two more chili dogs. Rather than teach people how to drive well, we override their need for skills. How far are we from cars that drive themselves? I don&amp;#039;t know about you, but I don&amp;#039;t want that car. Shouldn&amp;#039;t we be responsible for doing some things ourselves? And not only are so many new cars full of distractions, their controls are confusing. The other day, I got into a car that was loaned to me by one of the manufacturers. The clock was wrong. To reset it, I had to get the manual out. I ended up having to turn on the radio and hold down the digit 4 on the radio while also pressing the digit 3. How are you supposed to figure that out by yourself? In some cars with those little joystick controllers on the console, like BMWs with iDrive, it&amp;#039;s even worse. I don&amp;#039;t know why I should have to go through the entire air-conditioning system to turn on the radio. I just wanted FM, and now it&amp;#039;s blowing cold air. Wha? Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong--not all this new stuff is bad. Navigation systems are pretty good tools. They work well, and you don&amp;#039;t have to turn them on if you don&amp;#039;t want to. Some cars have systems where you can set the speed you want to cruise and select the distance you want to keep from the car in front. One car length, two car lengths, etc. Then if the system senses a problem in front of you, it applies the brakes, which can be handy. Of course, you could just pay attention and drive. But it seems as though a lot of this technology serves no real purpose. Take keyless ignition. You don&amp;#039;t have to use the key to get into the car or to lock it--or to start it. My Z06 has keyless entry. One of the guys from my shop drove off in it, and I had the keys in my pocket. I thought he&amp;#039;d get stuck, but he didn&amp;#039;t. Of course, if he&amp;#039;d turned the car off, he couldn&amp;#039;t have restarted it. There was probably a warning light flashing, but he didn&amp;#039;t notice. Me, I&amp;#039;d rather just use a key. Then there&amp;#039;s GM&amp;#039;s OnStar. It can come in handy when you lock the keys inside. The OnStar crew can remotely unlock the car for you. But I don&amp;#039;t like OnStar. I don&amp;#039;t want my car to make dinner reservations for me. And I certainly don&amp;#039;t like the idea that if I have an accident, all of a sudden a voice in my car is going to start saying, &amp;quot;Jay hit a tree! Jay hit a tree! We&amp;#039;re calling the cops right now!&amp;quot; The few times I&amp;#039;ve had an accident, I dragged my car home and I fixed it. &amp;quot;Jay hit a tree! Jay hit a tree!&amp;quot; Shadddup. Reading in-dash maps, answering phone calls, trying to program the radio: all critical skills for the modern driver. PHOTOGRAPH BY DONNA ALBERICO "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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