Diatribe: Here’s a solution for oil-burning cars

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Updated: September 13, 2011 4:11PM

At one time it was fairly common to develop lung disease from working at steel mills, coal mines, smoking heavily, living with smelly people or something as simple as driving down the highway. If anyone has ever seen movies of a cell of B-52s taking off at 20-second intervals, then they can visualize what the average busy highway looked like in the 1950s and 1960s.

But no one seemed too worried about the effect of car exhaust on the environment in the Midwest.

However, in 1962 I moved to Miami. Back then one had to get a six-month vehicle inspection to ensure cars were safe enough and clean enough to drive on Dade County roads. In those days, driving a blue-smoking vehicle up Collins Avenue in Miami Beach was tantamount to being groomed for a prison cell. Until a vehicle could cut down on excess pollution it simply didn’t belong on the road. Eventually this requirement was dropped. I guess the junk car lobby had some pull in Tallahassee or downtown Miami.

I’ve been reminded of those halcyon days lately because there seems to be a return to those gagging days of yesteryear with more cars pumping out the pungent odor of an ill-maintained engine. I’m sure the economy has played a huge part in how people do or don’t maintain their vehicles. Not all cars can go 100,000 miles between tuneups. There are still many older vehicles around that require tuneups every 10,000 to 15,000 miles. Consequently, when someone is faced with the choice of putting a box of cereal on the table or feeding his 1967 Dodge a bowl full of spark plugs, the kids eat and the car smokes.

Compound this with the economic conditions of depressed areas across the country and you have a cloud hovering over the roads like smoke screens for convoys during Atlantic crossings during World War II. The difference is that as environmentally dangerous as it is, at least the U-505’s captain isn’t looking at your car through his periscope and marking your bearing and range.

To prove my point: How many times have you been driving and you or someone in your vehicle has asked, “What’s that horrible smell?”

It’s the smell of a poorly maintained car or truck. You can look ahead and easily pick out the miscreant from a mile or more away. If it isn’t smoking up a storm then at least its age and physical condition give it away.

There’s only one cruel, but sensible, solution to this problem. We should launch geosynchronous-orbiting satellites with sensors that monitor carbon emissions from vehicles 120 miles below. Should a vehicle produce more than 15 percent over the maximum allowable numbers then a laser-firing cannon should zap the vehicle and vaporize it.

What about the poor driver? Well, there’s good news, even better news and bad news. The bad news is that the driver is probably now sharing meals with the aunt and uncle he hated until the day they died. The good news is that a vehicle that was slowly killing wildlife and farm animals has been removed forever from the highway. The even better news is that there is another job opening in that community where the driver lived. It’s win-win all around – except for the dead guy.

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. E-mail him at vinikour@comcast.net.