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| If possible, please do a U-Turn |
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So concerned is the government about drivers relying solely on satellite navigation to find their way about, that it intends to add to the driving test a requirement that candidates navigate to a particular location using normal direction signs alone.
Candidates will be allowed to move their lips when reading the signs, but extra marks will be awarded for correctly pronouncing names like Hunstanton and Happisbrough.
It is sad but true that there is now a whole generation of motorists who arrive at their destination without knowing how they got there. But one man who didn’t arrive at all was the chap who blindly drove his BMW up a steep trackway to the very rim of a 100 ft precipice. It took nine hours to rescue him, and he has now been charged with driving without due care and attention.
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| India\\'s new people\\'s car |
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The big news in India this week has been the launch of the 1 Lakh (2500 dollars) Tata Nano people’s car. Looking like a stretch smart on castors, the baby Nano is powered by a small 2-cylinder engine and can just about manage to carry four people.
Just as the first Nanos were rolling off the production line, Rolls Royce announced to the world that its own ‘baby’ model - based on the 200EX concept car - will be powered by a 6.6-litre V12 manufactured by BMW. Rolls Royces were once very popular on the Indian sub-continent and frequently ordered in fleet quantities – one for each day of the week. With the recent emergence of a prosperous middle class, Rollers are once again proving popular, and no doubt the baby model will be snapped up in sizeable quantities.
Meanwhile, Tata will continue to churn out Nanos for a nation of poor people who can afford nothing better. I will let you know when the first models arrive.
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Cars no more affect climate change than do tumble driers. The cycle of climate change we are presently experiencing has occurred several times before - long before cars, long before people. We should be spending our money not on trying – Cnut-like - to prevent the inevitable, but on finding ways to live with the foreseeable and predictable changes.
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I thought I’d seen it all on Monday, when the North Downs turned into one giant ski slope, and even ambulances crashed off-piste.
But yesterday was worse. The snow – although still in evidence – had stopped, er…snowing, and instead we had thick fog. 50-metre thick fog – that’s 4 coach lengths – and thickening.
Or sickening, I should say, at least when it came to the crazy, mindless antics of people who were driving in appalling visibility yet gave not a single thought to switching on their car headlights. Although judging by the majority of culprits, my guess was that they did think, and thought “Am I bovvered?’
About one car in ten loomed suddenly out of the fog with not so much as a nite lite in the window. About half the rest though that side lights would do, which, considering the conditions, would be like trying to land a Jumbo at night on a couple of bicycle lamps. And the silly thing is, the drivers had gone to the trouble of switching on some sort of lighting and then presumably decided that switching on their headlights would be a waste of a good battery. This despite the fact that they must have realised from the fellow idiots coming towards them that side lights simply could not compete with the fog.
I’ll give you one guess and at which combination of car and driver made up the greatest number of offenders – and I saw hundreds of cars without lights, by the way, so my observation and sampling was sound.
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South-east England ground to a halt yesterday. But it wasn’t so much the snow that caused the chaos, it was the drivers.
When you cocoon a driver in a car with ABS, ESP, traction control, and hill-start assist, he or she will never learn to drive properly, never learn to interpret the feedback from tyres, brakes, steering on so on – largely because there isn’t any: it’s all absorbed by the nanny mechatronics.
There are times when traction control and ESP do more harm than good – ask any experienced off-roader. Yet if the average motorist were told to switch off the ESP system and actually take control of the car, they wouldn’t know what to do.
And its not just the amateurs: I went out in my Range Rover yesterday – I live on the North Downs by the way, where the snow was at its worst – and during the course of the morning recovered several cars and two ambulances, and one of those was a Land Rover Red Cross vehicle – with a patient on board.
Various companies and organisations have today issued helpful press releases about driving in the snow. My own tip would be stay indoors, and leave it to people who know what they are doing.
But if you really must attempt a journey, first remove the snow from the roof of the car so that it doesn’t suddenly slide forward over the windscreen, drive with your headlights on, and drive gently: any sudden or aggressive control input will cause the car to skid. And as I teach novice off-road drivers: in conditions where there is little or no grip, brakes merely stop the wheels, not the car.
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| And you thought it was in Surrey |
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Subaru has just launched what it calls its S Drive programme to encourage dealers to clue up on its products and to ‘go that extra mile’.
Whoever wrote the copy on the Subaru web pages should also ‘go that extra mile’ and actually proof-read what they’ve written.
For example, a link on the home page, under a heading ‘NEWS & PRESS’ reads: ‘Visit our stand at the Ordanance Survey Show. Clicking through reveals the message: ‘Join us for our first visit to the Ordanance Survey outdoor show’, even though right alongside the copy there is an Ordnance Survey logo. The spelling must look different.
In the next sentence, the author of the piece points out that the Subaru stand at the show will have ‘….a range of accessories to compliment your active lifestyle’.
And according to another entry, the London to Paris cycle race will start from Hampton Court, which we are informed is in Kent. I suppose that’s one way of getting people to go that extra mile.
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I thought I’d hit on something the other day when I saw in a technical paper that Ferrari had committed to reducing its carbon footprint.
Was the company intending to launch a ScuderEco model, I wondered, or an Environzo? The word photovoltaic was mentioned, so I began to think solar power. A hybrid, maybe, the F430 Solari, juiced up by the currant bun? (Or should that be current bun?)
Then I read the article properly. Apparently solar panels have been fitted to the roof of Ferrari’s Engine Mechanical Machining facility at Maranello. Manufactured by Mitsubishi, the photovoltaic system will substantially reduce the engine plant’s environmental impact. I’m glad about that. Given the carbon offset created by the solar panels, I needn’t worry the next time I have to test a Ferrari.
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Buy one of these. The way things are going, it could soon become a collector’s item.
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We’ve been off air for a while. There was dry rot or something in the blogging software, so we had to sit on our hands, and keep our thoughts to ourselves.
But we’re back now, or at least I am, and I thought I would rekindle the embers of our virtual relationship by telling you about the floods.
Notwithstanding the fact that I live on top of the North Downs, the road into our village is frequently flooded to a considerable depth. There is a dip between some fields that slope towards the road, and after heavy rain, it’s like living on the shores of the Ganges. And so it was last week. Several feet of water, floating logs, and water buffalo.
It doesn’t bother me; I drive a Range Rover, so three feet of water is but a mere puddle. But I get just as stranded, just as cut off from the outside world as if I were in a G-Whiz, and all because of the muppets who drive right up to the water before they notice it’s there. Then instead of simply turning round, they get out of their cars and huddle in perplexed groups like the tribe of Israel contemplating the Red Sea. Usually there’s one in wellies who will wade in up to his ankles and proclaim the water wet. Meanwhile, the road is utterly blocked, supplies are cut off, and the Red Cross is mustered.
It happens at least once a month, yet to most of our doddering village motorists it always comes as a surprise, and they are no better equipped to deal with it now than they were when De Dion first met Bouton.
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This image is from a new SEAT cinema commercial. I won’t bore you with the puerile plot, but the punch line is a woman driving off into the distance having outwitted a number of male drivers – hence the finger.
Motor journalists are supposed to exercise a duty of care and not write or say anything that is likely to encourage reckless or belligerent driving. It seems that SEAT, at least, does not consider itself to be subject to the same common-sense restraint.
Moreover, the gesture exemplifies the attitude seemingly prevalent among certain classes of young, female drivers who seem to regard any male driver, and for that matter, each other, not as fellow road-users, but as targets, to be outwitted in a show of belligerent driving that reveals inexperience rather than skill.
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