36.0°

Being summer and the beginning of the tourist influx, we all need to take some time to think about highway safety. Let's face facts, folks, we get a flood of visiting drivers that make negotiation of the roads challenging this time of year.

It's not hard to notice poor driving on the part of tourists when the vehicle swerving around has "RENT ME!" emblazoned on three of its four sides. The rolling advertisement for rental RVs is sort of an Alaskan visitor's version of a "Kick Me" sign.

I've heard many comments regarding how there ought to be some sort of driving test, or training, that a visitor must pass before they are handed a set of RV keys. In theory, we have one already when the would-be RV driver provides acceptable proof of driving competence by presenting a valid driver's license from their home state. Such evidence is accepted without question even if it is from a third-world country, such as Uganda, or Texas.

In my humble opinion, it would be far easier to enforce, and far more effective, to pass legislation mandating RV rental agencies paint all their rigs with a high visibility color pattern, such as fluorescent orange with chartreuse stripes. (Any complaints from renters could be deftly swept aside with a quick explanation about a special "REI Explorer RV" paint job.)

The most common complaint surrounding visitors driving motor homes is the issue of speed, or more precisely, lack of speed. Having never driven a rental RV, I can't say with absolute certainty they don't come with some kind of speed governor. However, when we owned an RV, the Tarmac Tortoise, the issue was not going too slow, but trying to keep the speed down to fifty-five, or even sixty-five. Regardless, when rental motor homes are at their peak, there is always an urge to hum "The Impossible Dream" whenever passing a speed limit sign while stuck behind some "RENT ME!" behemoth.

To be entirely fair, however, it isn't hard to sympathize with the tourist experiencing an RV adventure for the first time on Alaska roads. Truth be told, the best of our highways look bad when compared to the average Lower 48 county road standard. Really, it's the ultimate cruel joke: someone fresh off a red-eye flight from the Lower 48 is handed the keys to a 10-foot wide motor home, and then sent along their merry way down a road with bridges that have a single, 11-foot wide lane. If you think the Alaska DOT doesn't have a sense of humor, follow a rental RV down to Homer.

When you think about it, that's almost as bad as renting cars without snow tires to people from Outside in the winter.

I'm guessing that is why the Fred Meyer parking lot is so popular with tourist motor homes. It's not so much because of the free rent, or the RV facilities, but because there is a fully stocked liquor store on the other side of the lot.

After a grueling introduction to RV navigation like the drive from Anchorage to Soldotna, even the stoutest of souls could use a little bracer and some down time.

Speaking of stopped RVs, the exclamation of, "Look, Bert! A MOOSE!" will bring a charging RV to an immediate and complete stop in the middle of the road. Before the echoes of the screeching tires from the vehicles backed up behind the RV have died away (to be replaced with loud speculations concerning the lineage of the RV driver) a camera is thrust out a window of the RV to take enough pictures to support a National Geographic documentary.

Again, I believe there is a simple solution to this problem: extra road signs with a moose silhouette, like those used for designating moose crossings, ought to be posted every mile, or so, along all major Alaska highways. The extra signs should have another sign hung immediately below that says, "Not Endangered -- You WILL See More -- Keep Moving."

However, to be fair and honest about the whole driving thing, Alaska has an abundance of bad resident drivers.

For whatever reason, local drivers are impatient. Perhaps it's the fact that nine months out of the year a bowling ball could be rolled down the main street of most communities without fear of hitting anything. More than five cars constitute rush hour traffic.

There seems to be a time limit on how long local drivers will wait to pull out into traffic from an uncontrolled side road, or parking area. It's as if they figure they've waited their allotted amount of time, and are therefore entitled to go; end of discussion. You can almost see them counting, "One, Tuntutuliak, two, Tuntutuliak..." And when they get to five, somebody better make some room.

The combination of long commutes, due to how spread out the community is, and the normally low level of traffic has allowed some people to develop some very poor driving habits. The worst of them is the tendency to "multi-task" while driving.

Cell phone use may immediately come to mind, but there are much worse things drivers can do as they mindlessly toodle along. I saw a guy driving down the road last week, with a book opened up on his steering wheel. Seriously. Either he was too cheap to buy the audio version, or it was a copy of "Driving for Dummies," and he was doing a little last minute cramming on the way to DMV for a license. Who knows? As long as he doesn't too engrossed when he's behind Bert's "Rent Me!" when the moose strikes a pose, everything should be OK.

A.E. Poynor lives in Kenai.