I Love Backroad Driving, but It’s Time to Quit
Back in September of 2019, I was driving through a backroad as I passed by two parked cars that piqued my interest. There was a Subaru WRX VA and a Toyota AE86 SR5 Trueno. I quickly turned around and pulled up to the turnout, interested in this AE86 which I recognized as a legendary car from a Donut Media YouTube video. The paint was faded, it had skinny all-season tires wrapped around the stock wheels, the car was a s***box, and it had 45 horsepower! What I did like about the car was that it had popups, it was loud with those satisfying carbureted backfires, it was light, and the car had some character. As a side note, it was so loud because the exhaust had rusted and fell off of the car, not because it had some custom exhaust. I talked to these guys for a little bit and they explained to me their purpose in the canyons. I was eventually invited to go for a ride-along which at first made me suspicious but I had the sense that these guys were being genuine so I accepted when they assured me that I would be safe. Thankfully, I was. His driving was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced at the time. His driving style was quick and snappy but he was “one with the car”. He would describe the car as an extension of his own body. He says it's like he is plugged into the vehicle, taking in high-quality information through an HDMI cable, feeling exactly what the chassis, the suspension, and the drivetrain are doing, down to the minute detail. His eyes are just scanning for any road hazards, looking for anything that he would need to avoid. Others have said that he could be frame banging(scraping the frame on the pavement) while the car likes everything he does, almost as if he is babying the car. I realized what it meant to be dedicated to such an obscure pastime as driving on back roads. This guy had been on this road for years and years, regularly going out every night, running hard, and competing with other drivers. At the time, I thought I was fast but I soon realized that my driving was simply casual, in comparison to them. That was the realization that fueled my will to improve and become fast.
These guys did this because driving was their passion and it’s what they were probably daydreaming about all of the time. Touge(峠) is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “mountain pass” and drivers loosely use this term as a reference to a mountain pass or mountain pass driving. Mountain pass driving had been growing all around the world but Initial D opened up the world to the nature of touge(backroad) racing and gave a more defined purpose to the “underground motorsport”. There is another show called Best MOTORing, which shows a lot of these fan-favorite Japanese cars being driven spiritedly on mountain roads. Touge driving is often referred to as motorsport and I would agree with this, but it can also be casual and light-hearted. It’s all about having fun and enjoying the experience of driving on beautifully twisty roads, but many choose to compete. This can mean doing a “cat and mouse” format battle or a time trial competition. Traditionally, winning is the reward. This is why most just drive to drive and battle only for fun, but money can be involved on rare occassions. While many drivers are hanging out to hang out, there are some drivers who really want to be fast and have more than just a need for speed, but a need to refine their abilities behind the wheel. One of the greatest benefits of street driving is that drivers can potentially have unlimited seatime at their own convenience. As some drivers might say, “there is living, and then there are the times when we aren’t driving.” Call me crazy, but backroad driving is just what lit up the lightbulb above my head, or triggered the curious and creative side of me. It’s what made me excited, and it’s what made me the happiest. When I first declared myself a touge driver, I was constantly thinking about “raging my dream”. Was this all worth it? I am going to find out when I finish this piece.
The touge community that I was a part of is quite an interesting one. I cannot speak for other mountain driving communities, but I know some have different dynamics, and some are more organized or casual than others. There will always be drivers that are negative nancies and just want to cause trouble or act overly elitist. Everyone wants to be the fastest. There are going to be toxic drivers in the touge community. Sharing positive energy will always help the community become a better place for everyone to share their passion together, as friends, and fellow drivers. Some people choose to make friends with everyone and there are others who choose to be confrontational or brutally honest. This accost approach may cause more conflict but it is sometimes necessary for the benefit of the community. Allowing certain actions to persists can bring down the other people who aren’t even involved. There are always going to be some drivers who don’t like each other and it’s all a part of it. Whether there is some misunderstanding or they simply disagree with another’s actions, it goes to show how everyone sees their own perspective and everyone thinks that they are doing the right thing. There are disagreements about whether it’s okay to use both lanes or time runs. This is driving without regulation, in a sense; the legality has already been voided by the nature of the activity. Touge is every man for himself, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find the good in others and create a positive environment. There is nothing to win so people take action based on their own, personally cultivated, goals. It’s not for anyone to decide what is right or wrong, but the way we react to these circumstances will often dictate the ultimate outcome of a conflict. Everyone has their own personal reasons for driving at speed on a mountain pass and this is something to consider when observing the actions and attitudes of other people. Touge, to me, is all about enjoying the experience of driving, learning(improving), and spending time with others who share the same passion or pastime. The more positivity within the community, the better everyone will feel, the more enjoyable everything will be, and the better everyone will drive.
A heavily discussed topic within my touge community has been our time trial leaderboards. Basically, people can record a video of themselves driving on a given segment and add their segment time to the leaderboard. There are a lot of mixed opinions about this system and there are a lot of drivers who ignore the leaderboards completely because they feel as if it causes more issues within the community. The leaderboard was originally created as a learning and motivational tool. Many argue that it creates pressure for drivers to push themselves and upload faster times, just to fit in or feel respected. The problem isn’t the leaderboard itself, but the way people use the leaderboard to rank other drivers. A lot of drivers act entitled or special because they have fast times and others feel disheartened when their times are lacking. A lot of people who don’t post times or have only slow times are often regarded as lesser unless they have otherwise been proven. Some people rank the skill of other drivers based on leaderboard times and this is a gray area. It’s obvious that some people are faster than others, but it's just leaderboard time. If someone sets a fast time in a fast car then people will attribute some of their speed to the car. If someone sets a decent time in a slow car then they might think that they could beat someone else’s time if they had the faster car. These assumptions aren’t wrong or right, but who is a better driver is opinion-based. Whether people choose to be competitive about times or not, they have to accept the fact that one driver is better than another. These are the effects of street driving, where there isn’t a rule book. If someone goes faster because they take more risks and drive more fearlessly then that is their choice and the same is true for a more skilled driver that chooses to leave more room for error. The beauty of the scoreboard is that everybody gets to make whatever they want of it. It's simply a collection of everyone’s runs that allows people to draw their own conclusions and watch what other people are doing. Some drivers love the leaderboards while others do not care so much for it. After all, it's just street driving.
Alright, it’s time for me to confront the elephant in the room. In Initial D, there are a few crashes but it doesn’t really send the message to drivers that driving late at night on a mountain road has many risks that can only be avoided so much. All of the fastest drivers that I know have crashed, some more than others, some crashes worse than others. The point is that incidents are inevitable because even the greatest drivers are human and we can only do so much to spare our precious vehicles. There is a reason why a lot of the drivers who go to my local mountain pass drive cheap cars that they could crash and move on with their lives, assuming they weren’t severely injured. Even the drivers that drive slowly and casually crash sometimes, because it isn’t always your fault, or maybe it was just a one-off thing that you never could have expected to happen. Incidents are inevitable, but those who choose to drive touge have to get good at risk management, or else they are going to have a very hard time. People say that crashes may be out of your control but I believe that no crash is a coincidence. There is almost always something that went wrong before the crash, that could have gone better, to avoid the crash or lessen the severity. Even if there was a branch or a deer in the road, it wasn’t a coincidence that you hit that hazard, going at the speed you were. It’s not a coincidence that some drivers crash less than others either. It comes down to the small, tiny, sometimes subconscious, decisions that you make in your head.
Before a crash happens, the driver will usually think about how they don’t want to crash, whether this is hours before or in the car. Oops! Instead, the driver should think of themself saving it or completing the run flawlessly. Many of the most common causes of crashes are road hazards, which include branches, debris, dirt, water, oil, mud, trash, broken pavement, wildlife, other cars, bikers, and hopefully not pedestrians. Cyclists and pedestrians should never be involved in car crashes, specifically on a mountain road, but this is unfortunately overlooked by some drivers mostly driving in the daytime. These 'other cars' could be commuters cruising in their own lane or it could be another driver with the pursuit of speed. A diligent touge driver will let his group know when he is going out so that there aren’t any close calls between friends or fellow touge drivers. Some of the basic causes of crashes are: swerving to avoid a road hazard, something in the car broke, too much speed was carried into a corner, or a bump unexpectedly upset the car. Hopefully, there are not multiple of these conditions happening at once, but anything can happen and the smallest error can set off a bad chain reaction. Cruising a road beforehand is always good to check for road hazards. The biggest mistake that new drivers make is going too fast without enough road knowledge. It’s important for drivers to build up their pace because driving slow on a road doesn’t show all of the areas that may upset the car when the tires are being pushed harder. Even advanced drivers can make this mistake on a road that they thought they knew well when they simply didn’t remember one small detail accurately. This applies when driving a new setup or car as well because different cars react differently to the pavement. All it takes is one small bump or imperfection to send a driver into that tree that they are noticing, just now. If it’s a matter of going off of a cliff or tapping the rock wall, the driver still has the power to make that split-second decision for their safety and save as much of the car as they can. Never give up on saving it. I am saying this because it’s inevitable that any real touge driver will find themselves in a make-or-break situation. The best drivers can usually turn a total-your-car situation into simply ruining their alignment or scraping their bumper. Don’t put yourself in a position that would require you to save a wild car, but use these abilities to save yourself if the time comes. You can practice for these moments in your head, putting that safety card in your back pocket. Many touge drivers talk about crashes, lightly, but this is because they don’t want to kill the mood. It’s like dark comedy, it’s all fun and games until it’s not.
Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.
~Hunter S. Thompson
Going back to my introductory touge experience, the SR5 AE86 was probably one of the slowest cars I have ridden in, on any road, but that doesn’t mean it was driven slowly. Touge driving is great because it’s fun in all sorts of cars and setups, even cars that aren’t meant to be driven hard. Sometimes I see a fly-by and think, “I wonder if the people who made this car had this in mind?” I like to think Miatas were made for my home roads because they are not only the most fun on these roads, but they can also be very competitive with the right setups for the road. I learned about 'slow car fast' early on, when another AE86 was decently pressuring me in my modern, and much faster, Volkswagen GTI. He was sliding through each corner and I was sloppily understeering, only to abuse my car’s straight-line capabilities. My skill level was pretty low back then but I wanted to be able to handle a car as he did. If you know what it feels like to drive a slower car at the limit then you can replicate than you can replicate that feeling of milking out the car’s hidden potential. I am not saying a driver can’t develop skills in a fast car but the car often hides mistakes and the driver might think they are getting more from the car than they really are. Backroad driving emphasizes someone’s high skill level or their mediocrity and this evens the playing field for intermediate drivers. The car matters, but the best drivers can do some amazing things in any car or setup!
I have to admit that my home roads are bumpy and there are a lot of aggressive changes in elevation that simply aren’t found on racetracks. Drivers who know the road in fine detail can really take advantage of undulations and lumps in the pavement to generate more grip or rotate the car, depending on what the car will do. It also depends on the type of turn, the type of feature in the road, and what comes before and after the turn, along with the risks associated with each driving strategy. There are an infinite amount of considerations to make, but every driver has their own thought process and way of overcoming it. There are no books or papers about the fastest way to drive on a backroad, so drivers are encouraged to use their own style and creativity. This is why there is such a great catalog of driving styles seen on mountain passes and the road’s more gnarly characteristics exemplify every driver’s habits. Drivers can apply track driving techniques, which often work, but there have to be adaptations made to bridge the gap between the two similar, yet different environments.
My love letter to touge driving:
Dear Touge Gods, I appreciate all of the joy and happiness that you have brought into my life. I have learned so much and there is infinitely more wisdom to be absorbed by my curious, monkey-like brain. The feelings that I have felt from you are like no other; feelings that are so elegant and satisfying. I am not quitting you because you did something wrong, but rather because I could not handle the privileges that I was given and the opportunities that you had offered me. I will always hold you as a place in my heart and you will always be my favorite motorsport, even if I find success and flourish elsewhere. I have seen a glimpse of my potential and I thank you for that, alone. It gives me chills, just thinking about the amazing ways that a car can be driven on a backroad. When I picture a car being driven to perfection on a racetrack, I feel inspired and enlightened. When I picture a car being driven with that same level of creativity, through the mountains, I am in awe, speechless, and ecstatic. Mountain driving hits different and it can never be fully explained in words. It’s a feeling that can only be felt. I should have listened when you warned me when I sensed your uncertainty about my decisions. I am thankful and grateful for the lessons that you have taught me, even if I crashed. I hope you can watch over everyone else and allow them to keep getting faster. I have enjoyed the experiences that you have provided for me, even if I tell my children not to. I will cherish you but it is time for me to go, as I must carry on with my life for the better or worse. You are special. Also, what do you think about Initial D? Should I just buy a touge s***box? Anyways, thanks but no thanks. I cannot afford to crash any more cars or endanger myself, or others. Will I see you again? I do not know. What I do know is, you have served me well and I will always cherish my eventful years as a touge driver. You gave me very much happiness, so thanks. Farewell.
