by James Brooks

Instruction

It's always nice to find a friend in unexpected places, and for whatever I may have said in the past about George W.'s intellect and other qualifications for the job, I have to admit he has his priorities right in this regard.

While I've admired Bill Clinton's prowess in just about everything from the Oval Office to the bedroom, his notion of tacking user fees onto civil aviation is dead wrong. The way the air traffic business and the FAA are financed right now is by the highest gasoline tax in the nation, a minimum of $2.21 a gallon for 100 octane low lead aviation fuel, and Jet A, which is about the same thing as kerosene, costs even more. Those that burn the most fuel and fly highest and farthest require the biggest airports and the most services, and they pay for them, while those who fly Cessna 152s and pay less can't even find available hanger space to rent at many airports and have to leave their expensive toys exposed to weather and tied down to the tarmac.

What user fees would do is give us the same system as they have in Europe. Every time you hit the Ident button on your Mode C Transponder to identify yourself to Air Traffic Control, you get an automatic debit to your Visa card. Same thing happens when you land or take off or buy gasoline. A Boeing 747 with 500 paying souls aboard pays the same amount to access ATC as the Cessna 152 pilot. Since we are moving to the day when all air space is controlled air space, pilots will eventually have to Ident even when taking off from supposedly uncontrolled airports, with the usual credit card debits. This is dead wrong, and it has killed civilian aviation in Europe, making flying more expensive for everyone. Air lines have to pay to train pilots from day one, even the wash outs, because there is no way to learn at your own expense over there. Clinton didn't appreciate the plight of the civil pilot because he spent too much time on Air Force One, creating a flying wedge of restricted air space wherever he went, and he went a lot of places during his lame duckancy, and all these little guys can do is get in his way.

George W. had to pay his own way to fly and there is a special clause in the FAA regs allowing private pilots to fly politicians for hire when taking them about their turf. It gives an opportunity for a lot of pilots to talk with the decision makers, and donate a flight to the campaign fund every now and then to make the point. Now that he's aboard Air Force One I have no hope George W will remember this promise to private pilots any better than any other politician kept their promises, and you can read my lips to see whom I am referring to. The point of all this to those of us who never fly and never plan to fly the plane ourselves is that regulation for the point of safety is a good thing if not carried too far. The FAA brought flying from the point of the barnstormer dare-devil era to the safest form of transportation known. Aircraft insurance for something costing $100,000 is about on a par with autos costing a fifth as much, and it largely is based on the experience of the pilot because there is a paper trail demonstrating time aloft: the pilot's log book.

We could make auto insurance and auto driving just as cheap with the same sort of regulation, but insofar as auto driving is concerned, we are still in the dare devil era. The Great Waldo Pepper today commutes to work, using lane weaving instead of wing walking.

Since George W. comes from the wild west, I don't expect him to put auto driving on a safety par with airplane flying by forming a federal CDA - Car Driving Authority, but it would be great if he did.

Here's how it would work: a federal driver's license with annual auto inspection and mandatory training in each type of vehicle driven. Division of the highways into car space, so professionals would have their own areas, but would be under the greatest amount of control. All of this financed by gasoline taxes. Do we have any idea where the 43 cents or more per gallon of gasoline tax is going today?

O.K., before you can solo in a car you are required to have at least 10 hours of instruction, and pass a medical exam to get a learner's permit. Each car would have an hour meter so you could log your hours from the minute the ignition is turned on, until it is turned off. In fact, with computer terminology, the driver-in-command would not be able to remove the key until he puts his Ident code into the car computer, so his hours and miles are automatically logged. Accident investigators would also know who was supposedly in control.

Training automobiles would be limited to nimble economy cars of not over 1.8 liters, standard transmission, such as the Mitsubishi Mirage. Instruction would began with a predrive inspection, or walk around, in which corners are depressed to check for suspension, tires are checked, oil, brake fluid, coolant and windshield washer are all checked, vision obstructions such is snow removed, the radiatior is looked at for obstructions, and anything else the instructor might wish to require. A predrive checklist is provided by the manufacturer and must be kept in the car, along with the manufacturer's handbook, which lists the car's operating limitations.

The checklist would be followed through engine startup, during which the driver shouts, "Clear" and opens the door to look below and behind the car before backing out, for pets and children. Of course the shoulder harness would have to be fastened before starting the engine, and at least a one minute warmup, during which heat and ventilation and other function instruments would be checked before leaving for instruction. Hands off braking would be checked before pulling out on the road. Instruction would include right and left turns, clearing for other drivers before manuevers, stopping and starting, downshifting and upshifting, signaling and lane changing, merging, parallel parking (a lost art), reversing, and also emergency procedures done in a large parking lot with a skid pad.

After a written test and at least 10 hours of dual instruction, the student would be given the solo test, and a successful solo would be entered into the log book. There would follow at least 40 additional hours of instruction, which would include interstate and high speed driving, awareness of other driver's intent, emergency procedures, awareness of other driver's rights of way, signal instruction, night driving, bad weather driving, driving to destination within 25 miles, then over 50 miles, city traffic manuevering, and of course maintenance intervals. Each leg would include dual and solo parts.

The student would then take a 500 question exam at Sylvan Prometric and be given a check ride by a CDA inspector before being issued a Private Driver's License, which would only qualify for driving a small economy car under reasonable visual conditions.

An additional 120 hours would be required with rain, snow and fog especially sought out, combining dual and solo driving before the all-weather driver's license is issued. Along the way the driver could be given whatever hours of experience in driving high performance vehicles, complex vehicles, SUVs, articulated vehicles, and other vehicle types as the insurance companies might require.

A minimum of 250 hours in such vehicles would be required to gain a commerical license, which could apply to any for hire diriving - truck, taxicab, or whatever. Motor homes and semi-trucks would require special extra instruction. The cream of licenses would be the mass transit operator's license, which would allow one to drive buses with paying passengers.

The CDA would also require an accident report be filed with its office, and investigators would be sent to the scene of fatal crashes to determine cause and recommend prevention actions to be taken. This could result in suspension or invalidation of a license, especially if it is a second accident, or require manufacturers to make changes and issue recalls.

Of course this would have the effect of removing many drivers from the road, or restricting them to types and conditions, although golf courses and golf carts would continue to be considered unrestricted driving space, as would farmer's fields - although taking agricultural implements on the highway would require a commercial license and appropriate instruction.

By removing the worst drivers, and restricting the rest, the result would be drivers who are safe and who have the abilities to do the dangerous things they do, while developing our mass transit system of rail and bus to complement the existing air passenger system we already have. It would reduce lane frenzy - the tendency to license everyone and then build more lanes to provide for them. It would reduce pollution and make the world a better place.

All of which means that such a program would have a snowball's chance under W or any other candidate the Democrats or Republicans might field, although I assure you that with W as President, the price of gasoline will be whatever he and his friends in the oil industry think they can get us to pay short of armed revolt. We just won't get the benefit of these prices, because instead of the money going toward auto safety, it will go toward oil producers profits.

Under Ralph Nader, whose sole interest in the Green Party is making himself some sort of an ineffective icon and gaining federal campaign financing, the outlook for meaningful action is equally bleak. However, if anyone in the Green Party is listening, I would consider a draft.

The Watauga Chapter of the League of Women Voters collected around tables and lunch in the small conference room of Johnson City’s new Public Library last Friday to greet visitors and members. The general topic for January centered on controversies of our Electoral College system in determining presidential elections. Dr. Andrew Battista, assistant professor of Political Science at the local university, East Tennessee State, presented a current assessment, rather than an historical overview, of the method by which citizens discover their national leader every four years. He noted that the discrepancy between the popular and Electoral College votes in our most recent election makes reconsideration more urgent. In the popular vote, the Democratic Party won by some 540,000 votes; in the Electoral College, the Republican Party won by 5 votes (271 to 266).

In his view, there are four major arguments to retain the present legacy of elitist rule against the will of the people as represented by more contemporary one-citizen-one-vote democracies. They are:

1. The Electoral College system has usually worked. It has the resonance of historical tradition and, if it raises concerns, alternatives proposed are problematic too.
2. It protects the interests of smaller states by giving them disproportionate weight. This occurs because the number of electors is determined by a state’s total number of representatives in the national House of Representatives and Senate, in which body each state, regardless of population, is accorded two senators.
3. It preserves federalism, the sovereignty and separation of individual states.
4. It assists in maintaining the two-party system because it is difficult for third parties to claim electoral votes. For instance, Perot won nationwide an historic 19 percent of the popular vote but earned none in the Electoral College, which operates on a winner-take-all state by state basis.

Dr. Battista’s arguments against the Electoral College system are:

1. It causes delay, uncertainty, and instability. It is possible for no candidate to win a majority (270), in which case the Constitution lays out a complicated set of steps, beginning with the national House of Representatives where each state has one electoral vote, giving disproportionate weight to states with smaller populations.
2. It is essentially undemocratic in the sense that it distorts the distribution of popular votes and the will of the people.
3. It raises the possibility, seldom realized, of a “faithless elector” -- one who “breaks faith” with citizens by voting an individual choice against the expressed intent of state ballots cast.
4. It is contrary to the one-person-one-vote principle in favoring small states by the number of electors allocated including Senate representation.
5. It is anti-democratic in favoring large states by its winner-take-all structure on a state by state basis. Together 4. and 5. above constitute a disadvantage and disenfranchisement to voters in mid-sized states.
6. There remains always the possibility of a divergence between the popular and the electoral vote. Prior to the recent election, that had not occurred for 112 years.

The last election highlighted inherent problems with our legal methods of determining the presidency -- including campaign financing, irregularities of man and machine in distorting or disenfranchising some citizens, and the fragility of the Electoral College structure -- in balancing federalist and populist interests while preserving democratic ideals of an involved and responsible populace serving and served by representative government. -- jh