New Year, New Rules

We recently spent a few days in the Healdsburg, California wine area exploring Dry Creek and Alexander Valley wineries. If it weren’t so far away this would be a great extended wine tour destination. On the way back we decided to drive 101 along the coast to Crescent City and then cut over to Medford through the Redwood Empire. It was a stormy day with rain, wind, and sunshine intertwined. Shortly before Eureka, the GPS app notified us that the road ahead was closed and re-directed us onto a small mountain road that required chains. We have winter tires on our Macan and snow tires in the trunk, but I didn’t trust the GPS. The minor mountain road it was sending us to is the road where several years ago a Portland couple got stranded in their Subaru and did not survive. I stopped and checked the California and Oregon DOT websites for road closures. None were reported on our original route. So, we decided to ignore the GPS and kept going, and indeed, no road closures, no issues. While GPS apps are great, they are not perfect. Another shortcoming of these GPS apps is, while they offer features for no highways or the shortest or fastest route, they don’t offer an option for the safest route. A few years back in New Orleans on the way to a restaurant for dinner, the GPS app guided us through a neighborhood we should not have been in at that time of the day. While you can avoid such mistakes in your hometown and cities you are familiar with, it’s a different matter in unfamiliar cities. Makes me wonder how safe autonomous driving is regarding route selection.

On a different matter, new year/ new rules. PCA has refined its driving standards, including those for SUV/ Offroad driving (see link to the left) Here is a short summary: There are five categories of off-road drives from Cat 1 to Cat 5. PCA only supports CAT 1-3. CAT 1 is essentially drives on unpaved but maintained and named roads, CAT 2 drives on unpaved roads that have rocks and ruts of less than 6 inches, CAT 3 are single lane, not maintained, unnamed trails.

Our ORPCA SUV drives are mostly on paved roads, with some having a higher ratio of unpaved, maintained and named roads, making those a CAT 1 drive. The only requirement for CAT 1 drives is that the participant needs to review a Self-Inspection Safety Check List(see link to left) prior to the drive that makes sure the vehicle is in good driving condition. To help you decide if a SUV drive is the right one for you, the event website will now show the total length of the drive, the miles on paved and the miles on unpaved roads. It will also show if the drive is a standard drive or a CAT 1 drive.

Let’s Drive! You can reach me at vicepresident@oregonpca.org. n