Where's the Gas Door Part II

When I made my original post, I had no idea how deep of a rabbit hole I was going down.  I have seen arguments from the economy of fuel pump availability to it being easier for American's to get next to the pump if it is on the driver's side.  I decided to go to the source for at least one manufacturer, and I sent the following tweet to VW:

@VW excluding the built by Chrysler Routon, is there a reason all VWs have the gas door on passenger side?

Well, VW was kind enough to get back to me with their response:

@crutchmc The main reason is that if you run out of gas and have to refill on the side of the road, you are not standing in traffic.

Another +Volkswagen USA enthusiast on twitter (@HumbleMechanic) agreed with one of my thoughts in my original blog post:

@crutchmc @vw and no worries about opening your door into the gas pump if you pull up too close :) #vwlove

So, while this doesn't explain the reasoning for all car manufacturers, at least one has a reason to choose which side it does, which is a good one. I may explore the reasons for other manufacturers in the future. I also like the background image on VW's twitter feed, so here is a nice screen shot.

Where's The Gas Door?

Ever wonder why your gas door is on the side of the car it is on?  I have.  Why?  Because I think about all sorts of random shit and I love cars, that's why.  I am going to write down my own thoughts and observations and then go do some research to prove/disprove my ideas in a later blog post.  I am only going to address "cars" in detail in this post, not trucks/suvs/crossovers.  I have noticed it is more common then not that those types of vehicles, especially the full size variety, are more likely to have the tank on the drivers-side.

Domestic Market Passenger's Side:

All 5 European cars I have owned have had the gas door on the "domestic market" passenger-side.  That appears to be the case across the board too. BMW, VW/Audi, Mercedes, and Volvo are on the driver's right, and Mini is on the driver's left (since it is "British").  The same appears to be true for Japanese car brands.  Toyota/Lexus and Honda/Acura place their tanks on the driver's left.  Ford tends to adhere to this train of thought as well on it's "world" models but the Crown Vic/Town Car/Grand Marque were on the opposite side.  (I think that is so the older and professional drivers that drive them don't have to walk around the car to fill up).

I have a couple theories on this, but the most likely is so that when you pull into a gas station, you stay to the same side of the lanes of pumps that you would while driving on the road.  It has the added benefit of allowing you to pull closer to the pump and not worry about banging your door into the pump when you get out to fuel up.

Copy Cats:

Hyundai and Kia aimed for their near-by neighbors from Japan as a target for success.  They have developed loftier goals now (Aiming for Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus) but seem to still follow the Japanese brands on gas tank door location opting for the Driver's left even though Korea is a Left-Hand-Drive nation.

Cluster Fuck:

GM is a cluster fuck.  Some on one side, some on the other.  It isn't even a clean break between the imported from overseas models vs built in North America.  I think GM did it to cater to the fat lazy American's so we wouldn't have to walk around the car to fill up.  Just a guess.  As for the ones on the passenger-side, they might be more world-car type models geared to be sold outside the US.

I don't have any idea about Dodge because I don't pay enough attention.

So, in a future blog post, I will look into how wrong I was at least about the convention of which side the gas door is on.

Christmas vacation recap

As I write this, we are still making our way up I95 from Florida. I didn't sleep well last night so after about 3 1/2 hours on the road this morning I have relinquished the keys to Chrissy somewhere in North Carolina. We are both working tomorrow but should be home by around 3 or 4pm today so all is good.

This trip has certainly been a busy one with visits to multiple theme parks, an Aquarium, and lots of good food.  On the way down we spent a night in Richmond with one of Chrissy's friends, then a night at dad's before hitting up Disney World for the day.  We mostly went to see the magic kingdom expansion but while there I made a great discovery; I can ride (at least some) roller coasters now.

We rode Splash Mountain twice, Big Thunder Railroad once, and much to my surprise, I even fit on Space Mountain for two runs! I forgot how much I enjoyed roller coasters. We ate dinner at Epcot and headed down to Mom's.

The dogs are just as plentiful (7) and crazy as ever. Somehow Mack manages to still get around despite being as large as a horse and 10 1/2 years old.  Mom & George are doing well also.

We managed to meat up with my stepbrother Sean before he headed off to NC and get in some mini golf too. Once Heather and Stacey were in town, we had dinner with everyone (Mom, George, Heather, Stacey, Pop Pop, Chrissy and I) at Stonewood grill and it was amazing.

Heather, Stacey, Chrissy and I all went to Busch Gardens Tampa on Sunday (with my renewed love and fitting in coasters) for another day of fun. While I did need a little assistance getting the harnesses fully strapped on most of the rides, I was able to ride all of the coasters I had planned on. I'll wait until I have had the plastic surgery to hit any more amusement parks though.

Christmas Eve we had the gift exchange followed by a  nice family dinner at Mom's. Chrissy had a few too many cosmos (followed by wine at dinner) so she didn't even make it to desert that night.

Christmas morning we drove up to dad's for our gift exchange and dinner there before Chrissy and I had to hit the road for Maryland. We made it up to Santee, SC last night and left the hotel early this morning before the weather got worse down there.  So, now we are still somewhere in North Carolina and the rain has picked up. I am going to shut my eyes for a few so I can be ready to take back over behind the wheel.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Office Holiday Party

I attended my office "Holiday party" today and one of my interns ended up sitting at the same table as me.  At one point they started handing out door prizes by drawing names out of a hat. The person to my right won one, I won the next one, and the person to my left won either the next one or the one after that (someone at another table may have won a prize in there).  They guy who won the first door prize said to my intern "Hey, you are next."  I jokingly said "He's an intern, only 'real people' can win prizes" and we all had a good laugh. Right after I said that, the person to the left of my intern won a door prize.  That's right, it literally skipped JUST my intern.  One other person at our table ended up winning a door prize as well.  After the last person at our table won, the intern would have been next again in the trip around the table, and I said "What do you expect, you have two strikes against you.  You are an intern, and you don't have a soul" (he is a ginger).  He wasn't too happy with me for having not won a door prize.  He swears I cursed him.  Granted, the door prizes were only $5.00 gift cards, but the timing of my original comment was just incredible.

Speed doesn't kill, Δv does

People always like to say "Speed Kills" but really, it isn't the speed that kills, it is the acceleration when you hit something.  If speed killed, we would probably all be dead.  The earth's rotational speed at the equator is over 1,000 mph.  Our rotation around the sun is at 67,000 mph.  Our galaxy is moving at a blistering 600 km/s relative to the universe (600 km/s is about 1.3 MILLION miles per hour)[1].  Going 85 mph is not going to suddenly kill me.  Hitting a wall at 85 mph might do it though, but that is caused by acceleration.

This is why crumple zones exist.  The idea of crumple zones is to make a crash last as long as possible.  That may sound counter intuitive, but velocity = acceleration x time.  If you are going from 85 mph -> 0 mph, the idea is to extend the time to reduce the amount of acceleration and thus reduce the amount of force exerted on your body (because force = mass x acceleration). These are the things you learn in physics class.  I could do more math to prove the point, but why bother?

I will say there is some point where speed can kill when that speed is sufficiently different than the surrounding particles (such as air).  For instance, having something travel at 9/10s of the speed of light at ground level is bad!  For comparison, that is 604 MILLION miles per hour.  I don't know where that threshold is where things go from ok, to painful, to deadly, but people aren't reffering to such extreme speeds when they say "Speed Kills".

The point is, next time someone tells you speed kills, let them know they are wrong in the practical sense.  Well, unless it is a police officer who pulled you over, they might not find it amusing.

While having this discussion with a co-worker, she posed an interesting question which I have told her to submit to what-if.xkcd.com, so I won't spoil that by posting it here, but I hope it is picked because I would love to read the response to that one.

[1]: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971028e.html

Exclusive Rights - And Why They Tend to Screw Consumers

A recent bit of good news actually came out about Netflix streaming and their new exclusive license with Disney.  Now, that is actually somewhat good for me, since I am a Netflix subscriber.  At the same time, I am reminded how much exclusive licenses piss me off and screw consumers.  Let's rewind.

Not that long ago, there were two different licensed NFL Football Video Games available on XBox.  Madden and NFL2K5.  Madden was $49, NFL2K5 was $19.  I bought NFL2K5 despite the fact that I had been a Madden fan-boy for years.  I was amazed by how good of a product NFL2K5 was and was glad I bought that one.  Shortly after that, Electronics Arts inked an exclusive deal with the NFL and the NFLPA, eliminating their competition in both price and innovation.  EA made tons of money, the NFL made tons of money, gamers got screwed!

2K Sports responded by inking a similar deal with MLB.  Surprise, surprise, same result.  MLB and 2K sports - Happy.  Gamers - Screwed!

As different studios sign exclusive deals with different streaming services, that means people who want to stream all of the movies they may want they have to subscribe to multiple streaming services.  Want to get all of the NFL games every week?  You'll be forking over money to DirectTV, even if you are streaming them ONLINE.

So, as a Netflix subscriber I am happy they inked their deal with Disney, but I feel bad for anyone who uses any other online streaming service.  Exclusive licenses mostly suck for consumers, but since they seem to be good for studios*, don't expect them to change.  *Except for the exclusive contract between MLB and 2K Sports, that apparently didn't work out well for 2K Sports.

Memories as a Car Guy

In case you didn't catch the hint already, I'm a car guy. If you hadn't gotten the hint already....wow....you must be dense.  Read the top banner again!

Being a car guy, cars are very tied to my memories.  Any time I think of a car that has any type of connection to me, I am also flooded with memories of people, events, and funny stories.  I'll run through a few of the cars that bring up the strongest memories really quick so you can see what I mean.

1993 Dodge Ram Conversion Van - This was the first vehicle that was my "daily driver" with it's V8 and 40 Gallon tank.  At the time, gasoline was around $.89-$.99 per gallon, so it was bearable, although I was in high school at the time.  Thinking of this behemoth makes me think of Mike Bounds hitting his head on the upper part of the raised roof (the rest of that story will not be put in writing, but let's just say he wasn't exactly thinking at the time).  You know what...that is the only detail I will go into with the van in this venue, but many of you know stories or have personal experiences in the van.

1994 Ford Explorer XLT - I think of driving to a play rehearsal in high school, again with Mike Bounds, thinking the Explorer was in 4WD.  Well, it wasn't.  I made the right hand turn into the school and the back end broke loose and I rotated an additional 90 degrees clockwise.  I steered in the direction I wanted to go, but ended up over-correcting and rotating the other direction over 180 degrees.  This lined me up perfectly to pull into part of the parking lot, so much so, that Mike's sister and her friend (who were in the lane leaving the school) apparently thought I did it on purpose to show off.  I also think of Physics AP when we had to make water-powered bottle rockets because the hand-powered pump we were using failed.  We had an air compressor in the Explorer so I pulled it around behind the school so we could use the electric pump to pressurize the rockets.

1986 Cutlass Supreme Coupe - That car makes me think of the graduation gift I received from Kirk Petri - 1 gallon of Anti-freeze.  Why?  I regularly picked Kirk & Chad up on my way to school. Shortly after I got the cutlass, the heater coil failed.  It took a week to figure out what the smell was and why the windshield kept fogging up, but we eventually found coolant on the passenger-side carpet under the floor mat.  Whooops! I also think of an ill-fated date to the Riverside in Old Ellicott City.

1983 Caprice - Thinking of that car reminds me of trips up to Westminster with my grandparents at Christmas to visit my Aunts and Cousins.  Why?  On our way home from one of those, due to snow, rear wheel drive, and a hill, we almost ended up in a road-side ditch.   I also remember other times in the back of that car when I would be impressing my grandmother by figuring out what cars were coming up behind us at night by looking at their headlights.

2000 Nissan Frontier - When I think of my old truck, I think of my Uncle Frank, and by extension my Aunt Mill.  Aunt Mill had passed away a few years prior, and when Uncle Frank passed away, the money we inherited plus some money from our grandparents my sister and I were both able to get new cars (Heather's Celebrity and my Olds were both having serious issues).  I got the Frontier, my sister a 2000 Rav 4.  I also think of all the great times Matt & I had driving the unpaved back roads of Fredrick, driving on the beach in Wildwood, NJ with Chrissy, and getting stuck in "the sandbox" with Chrissy freaking out.

This list just includes SOME of the cars that either I have owned or have been in my family.  There are many more memories tied to each of these vehicles, plus many other vehicles that aren't on this list.  Sometimes I don't even know why I make a connection.  What prompted this post?  This morning I passed a 70's Chevy Camaro headed in the other direction.  That was what my mom said she had for her first car.  It is also very similar to the car her cousin, my late Uncle Bud, had as his first car. A Firebird.   So, whenever I see one of those generation Camaro/Firebirds, I think of my mother and Uncle Bud who coached me in little league one season.

So, if you mention a car to me, and I drift off into some nostalgic trip down memory lane, it's because I am a car guy.