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Bay Area folks under 'shelter in place': are you going for a drive?

59K views 766 replies 93 participants last post by  Sold Over Sticker 
#1 ·
The roads cannot possibly be more open during this time...
 
#4 ·
It's rush hour right now and literally every road in the Bay Area is green on Google Maps traffic. Also every traffic cam shows roads w/Sunday morning levels of traffic...again at peak rush hour. While the roads aren't North Korea empty, traffic is very light.

Back on topic, I'd really like to but all non-essential travel is banned and there's no way I could convince a cop it was absolutely necessary to drive my 1963 Porsche on some twisty mountain roads like Skyline Blvd.
 
#6 ·
I am getting my coilovers, drivetrain mounts, and exhuast installed on Friday. If a LEO wants to find me in the canyons this weekend, I would be happy to have him/her explain to me how I am legally required to stay in my residence.

Shelter-in-place is not martial law. Its a measure to contain the public to their homes, most of the time, to mitigate the spread of the virus. If someone has to proof to the contrary about what the legal precedent might be, I am all ears. Until then, I am going to try to avoid people, but I'm not going to stop living a reasonable life. Just like the public statements of the local governments have encouraged. (For the record, I've been doing nothing but working from home and playing xbox for the last 4 days)

-Cid
 
#9 ·
I kinda doubt LEO will be patrolling the canyons anyway. As long as you stay inside your car, you're not putting anyone at risk. Worst case, you'd probably be asked to head home.

There aren't actual check points set up, right?

The fact that there's so little traffic means the mandate is working. It was pretty eerie driving to work this morning with practically no traffic.
 
#7 ·
Drove the x5 across the street to top up the tank 2 days ago! :)

Mostly just been running and cycling.

Only been in touch with a couple people since I started working from home 2 weeks ago.

It's been pretty wet lately anyway, not the best time for a drive. *shrug* I guess I sorta outgrew "going for a drive" for the most part. I enjoy a fun road if it's on my route, but I don't go out of my way to carve the canyons when I could just be doing something else.
 
#8 ·
I'm driving up to Santa Cruz tomorrow to "Rescue" my daughter from her college. I'll be interested to see how much traffic on the 101.
 
#13 ·
I have been very tempted to go out to highway 9, actually. I might go on the weekend so I don't feel too guilty about skipping work.
 
#19 ·
Actually, here is what you can do. Engaging in outdoor activity, such as hiking, walking and running is still allowed. Drive up to Castle Rock or Saratoga Gap for a hike. You are going to be far away from most people. Social distancing at its best!

And you have a nice little drive there and back.
 
#28 ·
Truckee is probably one of the LAST place I'd want to be right now :laugh: God, I was on another forum, a guy from Reno was just going OFF about how everyone's falling for the biggest psyops campaign in history, and the usual ranting Internet Tough Guy threats about what will happen to anyone who tells him he has to shelter in place and blah blah blah blah big words.

Basically: Avoid places where people insist on buying their heads in the sand, and that draw people from *other* places that also share that mentality. I'd rather be somewhere folks are taking it seriously. :thumbup:

Unfortunately the report yesterday was it was in 19 nursing homes in Florida :( It's not necessarily the spring breakers' fault, but, again, folks who take it seriously vs don't.... they're closing down Clearwater beach... but not till Monday, once they've extracted them tourist dollars.
 
#39 ·
^ You're either not thinking of the potential outcomes, or if you have, you feel they are statistically too low to impact your decision making. See above for references to scenarios where you get into a accident during your non-essential drive. Say a deer runs out in front of you, or something else that's outside of your control. That will force a team to come out and assist you, and if you're badly hurt, a team at hospital that can any day become inundated with cases of COVID-19. Is that a far fetched scenario? It may sound like it, but that would have been true for Italy the day before as well.

My fear here is that by doing all the right things and avoiding the unfortunate circumstances in Italy, we're going to have the "see, it was nothing, we over-reacted" folks coming out, which would make something similar in the future even harder to deal with.

I hope we contain it and that we limit the impact as much as possible. I understand and share your need to get out and do something pleasurable. You're not wrong in desiring that. But before you decide to go out for a canyon drive, I just ask that you think of some worst case scenarios, and take them into consideration.
 
#40 ·
It's the latter. I have an imagination, I am capable of the infinite scenarios that could possibly happen. I am not a child.

I'm curious what the likelihood of true accidents requiring medical attention in the average single family home compare to the likelihood of a single vehicle accident requiring medical attention. We're just getting in the weeds of what is possible - an infinite journey of what ifs. I acknowledge that anything can happen. Guess what, anything can happen anywhere - it would be really unfortunate if something unplanned happened to anyone, whether that's an in-home accident while sheltering-in-place or an accident out on a road. I don't think what your getting at is any more or less likely to happen that any event requiring medical attention that could happen inside my residence, your residence, or any other residence. You know what else I bet is happening all over the country? People getting drunk and doing stupid **** in their house. I'm not being negligent by driving my car, alone. Sorry.

I hear you, and I am thinking about it, and I get it. Its just not the way I live my life - I'm not going to be scared of remote consequences if they are not directly related to the impact of spreading the virus. That might sound selfish on the face of it, but it is realistic.
 
#49 ·
No pickle chips and salmon jerky?

Good discussion here; I see both sides of the spectrum between going out for a drive and staying put completely.

Depends on how long this virus thing goes, I will have to take my car out for spin sometime; where I have it parked there's no facilities to install a battery tender.
Thankfully the Evora is on the tender. It’s built into the car. Because Lotus. :laugh:

Good. Now they will stop moving to Texas.
Ok. I lol’ed. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
 
#51 ·
I've been to three stores today looking for distilled water, and all the stores have sold out of it.

Who is hoarding and drinking distilled water?! I literally just need one gallon for my coolant. So much for being on lockdown. Doesn't stop all the dumb people from hoarding everything.
 
#52 ·
You still have tap water, right?
You can make your own distilled water at home...
 
#58 · (Edited)
I've been tracking the number of cases in Santa Clara County which is the worst hit in the Bay Area and also where I live. To keep apples to apples I'm basically running these numbers every 5 days starting in March. Check this out..

Date: Total cases
1/31: First case
3/1: 7
3/5: 20 (+185%)
3/10: 45 (+125%)
3/15: 114 (+153%)
3/20: 189 (+65%)

That's a huge improvement. Using the average % increases seen for the previous weeks I was expecting 290 cases by today. I would attribute this not only to Shelter in Place but the massive number of people who started to work from home the week prior.
 
#67 · (Edited)
Drove to Santa Cruz and back yesterday to bring my daughter home from college. You would never know, based on the number of cars on the road and people out and about, that those counties were in "Lock Down." People are not taking this seriously. On the brighter side, anyone panic buying over fear of supplies running out should have been on south bound I5. So many trucks! Costco is not going to run out!
 
#68 ·
Drove to Santa Cruz and back yesterday to bring my daughter home from college. You would never know, based on the number of cars on the road and people out and about, that those counties were in "Lock Down." People are not taking this seriously. On the brighter side, anyone panic buying over fear of supplies running should have been on south bound I5. So many trucks! Costco is not going to run out!
Yeah I am heading to get my daughters stuff from her college dorm as well. 3 day notice. All state colleges here are online now for the rest of the semester.
 
#70 ·
I had to pick up dog food today and there were way too many people out and about given the State's Order of yesterday. The county order here doesn't go in the effect until midnight, but the state order is more expansive and already in effect.

That being said, there was zero traffic all week and my 25 mile commute each way was taking 30 min instead of the usual hour 30. Maybe this is how we beat climate change....
 
#71 ·
I had to pick up dog food today and there were way too many people out and about given the State's Order of yesterday. The county order here doesn't go in the effect until midnight, but the state order is more expansive and already in effect.

That being said, there was zero traffic all week and my 25 mile commute each way was taking 30 min instead of the usual hour 30. Maybe this is how we beat climate change....

Earth to us: "I'll take it from here."
 
#85 ·
Went out for a run again today with the wife. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with peoples' compliance. TONS of people enjoying the outdoors but trying to stay safe, and traffic is maybe 10% normal, maybe 20% at worst. The freeways are virtually empty. It's really nuts.

Stay safe, everyone.
 
#90 ·
On the local news the guy doing traffic reports is still doing his job. He has nothing to report! I suppose he's on there for a feeling of "normalcy" and because he's a reasonably popular/funny guy.


The air quality has been fantastic, so that's nice.
Our silver lining is clarity, then? I'm okay with that part, too. It's the kind of thing that makes me wonder how much this is going to change people's attitudes, outlooks, and priorities. Perhaps not at all, perhaps quite a bit. Only time will tell. :beer:
 
#92 ·
I ran out of Letterkenny.

Nows whats am I supposeds to do abouts that?
 
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