The best possible solution is to infect your spouse
with the addiction. I hear they have a shot for it but
know of noone who's taken it yet. It may mean you have
to drive a pink car, but if she is the one deciding
when to buy the tires ahead of you, life is good! You
can learn to see through the brown paper bag over your
head just fine!
Seriously, there are rationalizations to support the
game that should be meaningful to the unbelievers.
Most significantly, the skills learned in autocross
are real world safety skills. We all believe this,
They all disbelieve this. It is also safer than
backroad blasting with the family in the car.
Fortunately we have a new guy in the area that has
done a statistical analysis of driving records vs
school participation for ten years. He was the track
medic and a driving instructor at Willow Springs for
ten years. Has compiled a whole bunch of data and has
presented it to both government safety agencies and
insurance companies. Even got a magazine article in
C&D last year. They found a whopping 75% decrease in
accidents AND citations more or less without regard to
student age! Far more successful than expected.
It seems those most fearful of things that go vroom
are the very ones who ought to avail themselves of the
survival enhancing skill set developed in this game.
Seems that way to me anyway. Lots more effective than
those awful movies they always show at developing
safer drivers scools too. I never understood what that
was about anyway, scare a 16 year old away from
driving? Huh? A 16 year old is immortal! Killer Pintos
live!
So it appears that there are more socially responsible
reasons for enjoying the sport than socially
irresponsible ones. Nice huh? Maybe total addiction is
too much, but all we are hoping for is enough
acceptance to preserve the family, right?
Personally, we didn't take up the game until our 4
kids were in college. By then we were at least both
interested in sharing the family recreation time and
budget rather than splitting it in half. Balance
indeed is the goal, as is a common purpose. Time and
money and the typical misperception of risk to the
family station wagon kept us back for so long I
suppose. Peggy was never an anticar activist, in fact
she was the best darn balancing act on the back of a
Kawasaki triple you ever saw! As if those backroad
jaunts were less risky.... I knew of autocross, worked
on buddies' cars and watched from the mid 60's, but
like so many others waited almost too long. Trying
hard to make up for it now!
=====
Dennis Hale
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