Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQs: About driving and roads

These are probably dim-witted questions, but I hope you can help me just the same.j

1) Say you were driving along a highway... What kind of things could go wrong with the car that would make you stop and phone for a recovery service?

2) What would the 'symptoms' of these problems be?

3) Do American roads / highways have hard shoulders?

4) Are there any parts of Iowa where you wouldn't be able to get a signal on a cellphone?

Many thanks in advance!

Chris

Radiator overheating would be one...

The engine/temperature light would come on. After a while smoke will start coming out from under the hood because the oil is over heating. If by that point you haven't pulled over DO SO!

Depends, in rural area, like Iowa, most roads have a soft shoulder and most of them are wide enough to allow a car to be fully off the road. Some places have next to no shoulder at all.

Most Highways have at least gravel shoulders. In and around the few major cities in Iowa, the shoulders are hard concrete.

Can't help you there...

However, in most of rural Iowa, you can walk up to most any farm house and get help. Most folks are very friendly.

Now, if they have a dog and it's tail ain't waggin', it is best that you go to the next house you can find, don't even bother leaving the road and what ever you do, DON'T RUN!

James, Iowa born and glad to be in Missouri...

Your engine would die and car roll to a stop if the shear pin at the bottom of your alternator sheared off because the oil pump stopped, due to the pump sucking up something from the oil pan. In that case, your only recourse is to call a tow truck or towing service because your car is dead in the water until the shear pin is replaced. Hmmm...symptoms? You press down on the accelerator and nothing happens because the engine dies in the middle of whatever you're doing--no other symptoms. Yeah, it happened four times with my old van.

I can't tell you what roads, etc. are like in Iowa, but not all American roads have hard (paved) shoulders. Here in the rural West, some of our state and even federal highways have just enough shoulder to make sure the side stripe is on the asphalt. The shoulders often don't even have gravel on them--most are just packed dirt. Where I live in the mountains, not all of the shoulders are even wide enough to get a car completely off the road. My point is that a lot of this will depend on where your story takes place.

Thank you! You two have been great!

I'm pleased to say that, touch wood, I've not had real car problems, at least when I've been on the road, and I wanted to get the nuances right. I'd thought about radiators, but didn't know precisely what would happen, apart from stuff billowing out from under the bonnet.

Hadn't thought about the other, and that sounds far more interesting than a flat tyre!

James, you comments about friendly people may well help more than you can know. Was the advice about the dog borne of bitter experience, though?

Chris

Actually, yes, sort of...

As I stated earlier, I was born and raised in rural Iowa. My Grandparents also had farm nearby so I visited them often. I would go for walks up and down the gravel roads that connected the various farms.

Most people were very friendly and had very friendly dogs, but there were a one or two that REALLY didn't like uninvited company and so they had dogs on very long chains that would almost reach the road. The chains were necessary, trust me. The dogs acted in such a way that you could not help but feel like you were about to become their favorite chew toy!

After one dog's chain broke, I developed an incredible talent for climbing trees and a very healthy fear of dogs!

James


This is from Elisabeth. (I feel so stupid for not explaining this, but it's one of those things that it was so commonplace in my thinking that it didn't occur to me that it would need explaining.)

Most Iowa roads have wide shoulders so that slow moving tractors/farm equipment can pull over far enough to allow traffic to get around them.


And here is her amusing story. She was driving down a city street and was slowly pulling up to the intersection. It was a rear-wheel drive and one of the front tires blew. She didn't notice anything odd until she started driving again. She could hear the sound of the tire going thwap thwap thwap, but didn't realise the source.

She kept thinking to herself, "I wonder where that helicopter is cause it sounds like it is right on top of me?!"

A simple blown tire can also be cause of calling a tow truck. Even if you have a spare tire, it's hard trying to get the lug nuts off. First time it happened with my first car, I was jumping up and down on the tire iron, trying to get the lug nuts off. When a passing driver stopped to help me, I realized I'd been jumping on the wrong end...

Another time (another car), we came out of our apartment to go somewhere and noticed a flat tire. I believe that even our spare was flat. We had to call AAA to help us fix the tire.

Lol, James. Very well put.
"billowing out from under the hood". Bonnet conjures up the image of a soft woman's hat, particuarly old western pioneer wear.
And a comment on flat tires. Most modern US cars come with a spare tire that will last only 50 miles or so because it isn't inflated very much. So a tow truck would be called for a flat tire since many towns in the west with garages are more than 50 miles apart.
We've driven in Scotland and I would say that basically the average Iowa country road is a tad wider than the average 2 lane Scottish road. Generally Iowa country roads/minor highways have dirt shoulders like Sheila said, but they are hardpacked dirt. There is little chance of sinking into the soil unless there has been a recent rain. Seldom is there lush vegetation on the shoulder.
So, basically you can pull off anywhere and have your car totally off the roadway. Don't forget we drive on the right side of the road, so you look left at intersections first for cross traffic.
As for cell phone coverage, if you are near an Interstate, you will probably have cellphone coverage the whole width of state. So that's I-80 going through Des Moines, going West/East, I-35 coming up from Texas going North/South and I-380 through Cedar Rapids.
Go here: US Maps and type in IA for the state.
Anywhere else, coverage would be doubful. We drove from California though Arizona, New Mexico and half of Texas on I-10 at Christmas time and the coverage was excellent, except where blocked by mountains. For Iowa, there are no mountains. Bluff at the rivers, but no mountains.
Good luck with your story. Think a dryer version of the Lowlands of Scotland for your environment.

Artemis
P.S. There are no roundabouts in Iowa. Most roads are straight lines on a North-South and East-West line with straight cross intersections.

Here's a couple of coverage maps for Verizon and SprintPCS. It looks like coverage could be a bit spotty since large parts of Iowa seem to not be covered, at least by digital plans. You may have to focus the search on a specific part of Iowa since the URLs only give you the start point for looking at the coverage maps.

Here's Verizon:
Verizon\'s Coverage

Here's Sprint
SprintPCS Coverage

There is also Cingular which recently bought AT&T Wireless. I went to their coverage map and blew up the picture of Iowa and it looks like it covers the rest of the state. I can't post it here because this laptop doesn't have FTP capability. But I would say you have statewide coverage.
Now the only problem is that this is now. If the story takes place in 1995 there would be only spotty coverage.

Artemis

Now that you mention it, Artemis, you're right about the lack of coverage in 1995. Digital service such as Cingular/SprintPCS/Verizon would be non-existent since there was no effective digital service back then. Analog phones ruled. So you'd have to look closely at these coverage maps and look only for analog coverage and even then, the maps are probably inconclusive since analog service in much of the state has been replaced by digital.

I don't think any of those companies even existed back then. Sprint did, but not SprintPCS. Verizon was a recent conglomeration of a number of companies including US West and Vodafone. And Cingular did not exist as an entity.

My sisters drove across the country right around 1995. We live in NJ, and one of my sisters got a summer job in California. My other sister went with her to keep her company on the long ride. Mom got them a cell phone so they'd be covered in case anything happened. Mom thought that would gaurentee them a back-up measure (even though if they did have to make a call, they'd have to pay for airtime, landeline charges, and roaming).

As Roger said, digital coverage was just being introduced at the time. The few digital phones were dual-mode so they could also use the far more extensive analog network.

Even that, though, was fairly spotty in less populated areas. There was little if any coverage along large stretches of the midwest and northwest, even on the interstates. My sister still tells stories about going for miles across California not only without cell phone coverage but gas stations. She quickly learned to fill up at every chance, even if she had over half a tank.

So, yeah... back then, it wouldn't be hard to find a place in Iowa with no coverage, even on an interstate. Coverage is, of course, spottier the further you are from a city or town. Frequency of motorist aid callboxes (solar-powered emergency phones stuck on poles along some highways every few miles or so) would similarly depend on population and budget. There's more need for them in less populated areas, but they were put along the more trafficed highways first.

Paul

Wow, Paul, emergency call boxes aren't just a figment of someone's imagination? They really exist?

I've never even seen one along I-70 here in Colorado, much less on the other US or state highways in the state. The one time I took a cell phone with me, I had a blow-out halfway between the two towns that are 40 miles apart, and, since the area was tucked between the mountains, there was no cell service, neither analog or digital. I had to hike a mile or so to the nearest house and borrow a land phone to make the call. The dogs who came rushing out to greet me were noisy, but friendly enough. Barking and panting, they escorted me to the house, but the one who hid under the porch sneaked out and bit me while I was knocking at the door. Lesson of the day: never travel without a jack and a large screwdriver to fit into the slot in the back of the van. It was impossible to get to the spare without it.

Thank god I've always broken down between home and Denver. The population density is greater and so is the traffic. Between home and Salt Lake City, I could have a 20-30 mile walk to the nearest phone, and even with a cell phone, it could be 5 or so miles to the nearest point where the phone could actually connect to a tower. We have signs warning, "57 miles to next services," and they aren't joking.

Yes, Sheila, don't you love mountains? They do that to coverage. For years I-15 in California between LA and Las Vegas has had solar powered phones every mile and they are attached to a land line, not a cell phone, that alerts the California Highway Patrol. These are being phased out as cell phones become ubiquidous. In the wilds of Iowa, you don't have mountains to block coverage, but only main roads would have hard wired emergency phones. I really thought there were phones on I-40 going into Denver.
Something that did work in 1990 was satellite phones. They were about $1000 a pop and reporters in Kuwait had them for the Gulf War. The average citizen wouldn't have them, but a reporter for a big newspaper might. They were the size of a box of tissue and weighed 20 lbs. Just and additional thought. They were a huge pain to use because satellite coverage wasn't as good. But you could get around the world.
Out in the bush where I live it can be 90 miles to the next gas station. So yes, you learn when to fill up!

Artemis
Aloha from Waikoloa on the Big Island of Hawaii

Again, thank you for the info! You guys are great!

I'd remembered that coverage would have been a lot worse in 1995. I think I'm just going to have to make certain assumptions.

As for poor networks... Yeah. I know all about them! (I really must look into changing my provider...) At the moment, I'm getting more use out of my mobile phone as an alarm clock than I am as an actual telecommunications device!

Chris

Not in Iowa they don't!

James

If you want there to have been a cell in Iowa at the time, Chris, it's possible. Let's just say coverage was spotty. It would kind of be hit or miss, but if you just happened to be close enough to a place where they decided it was worth putting in a cell, and if you just happen to have a good, relatively uninterrupted line-of-sight to that cell (no mountains or concrete buildings or anything like that in the way), you could get a signal. Maybe a spotty one, maybe not. Luck of the draw, basically.

As for call boxes, I can attest that they do, in fact, exist along certain lengths of I-95 and I-75. They were up early along "Aligator Alley" in Florida. It's a long highway which serves as the major connection between the east and west coasts of the state, but there's little more than alligator-infested swampland, two rest stops, and a native reservation (with the only gas station for *miles*) along the way.

Mostly, I've seen them in places like that. Places with little population, but along roads that connect major cities. They can't always maintain them for the entire length, but I've seen them every couple of miles for stretches of 100 miles or so at a time.

Paul