Category: Automotive

Not Long Enough


The sentence that this woman received, for killing 63-year-old Christine Lyon, is a joke.

Having myself, TWICE, almost been wiped out by other drivers using their phones whilst driving I am particularly appalled by this light sentence.

Keisha Wall, the driver, had her mother, a qualified driving instructor, sitting alongside her at the time so I am also confused that her mother apparently took no action to prevent her daughter from using her phone. Although I don’t apportion blame to her mother I feel that she must have some sense that she could have intervened, should have intervened.

Then this disaster might never have happened.

Texting motorist who killed OAP is jailed after she turns up at court carrying mobile phone | Mail Online.

Bahrain GP Cancelled


To say that I am disappointed that the Bahrain F1 GP has been cancelled would be a bit of an understatement.

It’s OK for all you football fans, the season never really ends any more. There is football available on the TV 365 days a year. OK so some of it isn’t British football but it is there for you to watch.

For F1 fans there is nothing from the end of one season to the next.

And now, just when the F1 juices have started to flow with the Bahrain race due to run on the 13th March, we are faced with a further two-week delay before the season truly starts.

And before the dissenting voices start beating me up and telling me that human life takes precedence over sport.

I do truly, totally agree. I wish the Bahrain people well and hope that there is no more bloodshed or injuries.

But as a F1 fan it is my right to feel disappointed.

Today Is The Day


My new car is delivered.

I must be the least enthusiastic car buyer on the planet. I ordered the car back in October of last year after an “exhaustive” search, trekking around the various dealerships.

I haven’t test driven any cars but I did sit in quite a few. After all my criteria for determining if a car is going to be suitable are very simple. Most cars offered by the major manufacturer’s seem to have similar specs. They have to meet the same international standards for safety etc. and since I was looking at a family car then the handling and so forth was going to be fairly similar across all makes. I know  there will be differences but I wasn’t looking at buying a sports car and won’t be driving any car to its extremes. Finally I was also limited by what I could afford so there was one last criteria that had to be fulfilled.

Would I fit in it ?

Being a tad on the large size, that is over six-foot tall and weighing in at around twenty stone I don’t like to feel crowded. Nor do I like to be touching the sides of the car during normal driving conditions.

In the end my choices seem to be limited to either a Skoda Octavia or the Renault Megane. The final selection was governed by the actual spec of the car and so I plumped for the Megane.

Friends and family have been asking me if I am getting excited and I have steadfastly maintained that I am not. It’s just a car. OK its a brand new car.

So I suppose, now the day is upon me I am, I admit, getting mildly curious.

 

Frozen Weather = Frozen Brains


Despite the snow based chaos that is going on all over this country we, in the Portsmouth area, have managed to get off quite lightly. Not much snow but there is a bit of ice around.

We might not have much snow but we still have more than our quota of idiots on the roads.

Take the praTT in the Audi TT that I was following. At the best of times the visibility from the TT is little better than that of a crash helmet. I’m speaking from experience here, my granddaughter had one for a while and I had cause to drive it. Anyway, this praTT had not bothered to clear any of the snow off the car. The rear screen was totally obscured, as were the side windows. The front screen was partially cleared. Every time he managed to get over 30 mph a great cloud of powdery snow erupted of his bonnet obscuring his vision and diminishing mine at the same time.

Even my neighbour couldn’t be bothered to clear her screens before setting off this morning. Just a little port-hole to peep out of.
And then there are those who obviously feel nice and safe and warm cocooned inside their cars such that they feel they can drive like lunatics. Never mind that the temperatures are still sub-zero and that there is ice on most of the side roads. I lost count of how many idiots came sliding up to junctions with all four wheels locked. Obviously praying that the laws of friction would cut in….SOON.

Why can’t these people take a few minutes to boost their safety and mine too. So what if they are a few minutes late but we would all have a few less grey hairs and suffer a little less stress in our lives.

Update 2/12/2010 Apparently if you drive around without clearing the snow off your car you can be ticketed by the police for dangerous driving. On the basis that when the snow flies off your car it could cause problems for both you and other motorists.

Dickheads


What a pair of total dickheads.

Harassed and corralled a hapless motorist. Prevented them from leaving the motorway and all the while shouting and gesticulating at them as they drove at speeds up to 80 mph.

How could they be so incredibly stupid. I believe they deserve a custodial sentence.

Its herberts like these that are driving our insurance costs sky-high. No wonder the insurance companies make it nigh on impossible for youngsters to get insurance at a reasonable price.

Wave Goodbye To Speed Cameras


I say Hooray. Lets get rid of them all.

I am one of the school who believes that they were only ever a money-raising mechanism. Especially when you take a look at where some of these cameras were situated and not necessarily on accident black spots.

I have never understood why we don’t use the same method of speed reduction that I saw on the road south from Alicante, Spain.

There they had installed radar controlled traffic lights. All the while traffic maintained a legal pace the lights remained at green. If someone broke the speed limit the radar detected the infraction and switched the lights to red.

Everyone stopped.

Then the lights changed back and the traffic got underway again.

Eventually everyone, well the locals anyway, are trained to keep their speed down. On my trips down that road it was typically the holiday makers in hire cars who were triggering the lights to change.

I would suggest that here in the UK this would be better than having signs that flash up a motorists speed. My experience is that this type of sign is largely ignored by the regular users of the road covered and it is only the newcomer who is “startled” into slowing down. At least with radar controlled lights all motorists would have to stop. The warning could not be ignored.

Bloodhound


Bloodhound is the name of the ubiquitous Surface to Air Missile (SAM) that entered service around the end of the 50’s and was still doing service up to the 90’s. I even had an Airfix kit when I was a lad.

However, there is now another Bloodhound to get your heart beating. This Bloodhound does bear a striking resemblance to the SAM. It is long, streamlined and beautiful. But that’s as far as the similarities go. The new Bloodhound is a car but at 42 ft long it is half as long again as the SAM and weighs in at 6 tonnes which is well over twice the weight.

The new Bloodhound is being developed to take on the world land speed record. In fact the target is to take this “car” beyond the 1000 mile per hour mark.

Apparently Bloodhound has been trying to emulate the SAM. One of the major challenges has been trying to keep the car on the ground. The aerodynamic modelling has shown dangerous amounts of lift. Having resolved these particular challenges putting manufacturing contracts in place the team are now looking forward to building Bloodhound for real. The expectation is to carry out shakedown runs at the end of 2011 or early 2012

If you want more information the Bloodhound SSC website is … HERE