Category - News

This article in Racing + Waiting raises questions about the driving test. It seems the author has a thing about this (in his own words). He argues that the test should include motorway driving, skid pan training, and some sort of continuing assessment for new drivers.

The article is based on a survey by Ford and the DIA – so it’s basically a publicity thing by a large car manufacturer, and an organisation which would find fault with anything the DSA did just on principle. The survey says that around 70% of current drivers “doubt their own abilities if they were to be re-tested”,

Let’s just look at some facts.

To start with, Racing + Waiting has selected a tiny part of the actual survey – more detail is given here. And even more detail here on the AutoEvolution site. The issue of the driving test is far from being the main thrust of the survey.

Next, most accidents involving young (or new) drivers occur on rural and twisting roads, at night, and with a car full of mates. Motorway accidents come way down the list.

And skid pan training? The author cites localised flood alerts, snow last winter, grease on the roads, punctures, and so on as reason for introducing this. But we need to be realistic about what skid pan training really amounts to.

Unless your job pays for it, almost no one could afford proper skid pan training – at best they’d get 10 minutes of playing around (and that’s assuming that there are more than a handful in the country to start with). And even if they got a whole day on the damned thing, what on earth makes the author feel that a new (young) driver is any more likely to remember that training than the stuff they supposedly forget that puts them in that 70% of people who doubt their own abilities?

In all honesty, the fact that the article leads with a photo similar to the one above says a lot more about the problem than the author might imagine. Accidents happen because of the mismatch between the brains of chimpanzees and the bodies of men – the two don’t mix. A 17-year old who drools over pictures like this, and who wets himself when Top Gear comes on, is a loaded gun when out on the roads.

A couple of years ago I was tail-gated down a single track road by a pratmobile as it was getting dark. I pulled into a farm gateway to make a phonecall, and the driver sped off with a spin of wheels. I heard him again in the distance and thought no more of it – well, I actually thought “wanker”, but you know what I mean. About 10 minutes later I almost shit myself when a voice out of the darkness said “can you help us?”

The screech I’d heard was him spinning off the road and into a ditch. When I got there his car was upside down in a nettle-filled ditch – I’d have missed it if I’d have driven by, it was so well hidden.

He didn’t end up in the ditch because he hadn’t had any motorway training. He didn’t end up in it because he hadn’t been on a skid pan.

He ended up in the ditch because he was a twat. That’s where the problem is – not with the test or their training.

I saw this story on the BBC website. An 85-year old driver got on the wrong side of the A3 dual carriageway and collided with two other cars.

On a related note, I was with a pupil on a lesson today and had to use the dual controls as an elderly (he must have been 70+) driver came towards us off a bend on a narrow country lane on the wrong side of the road. In this case, he was making no attempt to move back. The cars behind him couldn’t believe what they saw, judging from their expressions.

It really is time our society stopped playing games and started to acknowledge the fact that as people get older, they tend towards being greater and greater risks to themselves and everyone else. They need to be assessed regularly – and harshly.

There has to come a time in everyone’s life when the decision has to be made about whether they should be allowed on the road anymore before someone innocent gets killed.

A reader sent me this link from Autoblog about CCTV footage being used to issue automatic penalty charge notices.

It makes unpleasant reading – some drivers never actually stop, but are still issued with PCNs. Others stop for as little as 17 seconds. But only a small percentage (1%) of those caught bother to appeal.

In one case, a car approached an entry way but had to move out of another vehicle’s way, wait for a pedestrian, then another car before going in – but he was still ticketed.

It doesn’t say which councils the scam relates to – and it IS a scam, let’s not be in any doubt over that. These councils are lying and coercing people into doing things that they then fine them for (the camera cars even park on double yellow lines, to play on the monkey-see, monkey-do mentality of motorists).

I Just saw this in the newsfeeds. It seems that those dinosaurs at PCS are at it again.

The DVLA’s IT staff are contracted from Fujitsu, and it is they who are involved in a pay dispute. Fujitsu has made a pay offer, but it says:

PCS has decided not to ask its members to vote on our pay offer, which we believe is a fair one, but has decided instead to ask them to vote on whether to take industrial action.

You see! PCS isn’t interested in resolving any dispute – it just wants to take strike action. And to add insult to injury, PCS has said:

[Fujitsu could face financial penalties for missing service agreements if the strike goes ahead.]

How childish and petty can they get?

It seems to revolve around the fact that some senior managers are likely to get bonuses of up to £14k, but the pay offer is for rises of 1.5-2.5%.

This is why unions are outdated and out of place in modern society. They STILL keep harping on as if we were in the 1930s and have failed to learn that senior managers DO earn more than shopfloor staff. And always will.

I saw this story in the week (link now dead). The AA is calling for driver education to be part of the National Curriculum. It seems that this is yet another “solution” to the problem of younger drivers having more accidents than older ones.

I mentioned this recently, but I’ll say it again…

Most new drivers are young. By definition, a NEW driver does not have the same experience as an OLDER driver. Less experienced drivers are likely to have more accidents more experienced ones.

Can you see the logical result of that? It means that young drivers have more accidents, BECAUSE they tend to be the new drivers. It isn’t rocket science.

Some thing else that isn’t rocket science is the fact that experience – again, by definition – comes with time. And Steven Hawking would be able to tell you that it isn’t possible to get 5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 years of driving experience into 6 months without some really heavy theoretical events coming into play (i.e. several Black Holes and some gaffer tape).

So, it seems that the AA’s solution to the problem is to start ’em young. However, unless we’re talking about sending 5-year olds out on the roads (and that is obviously ridiculous), anything included in the National Curriculum is not going to contribute significantly to changing the fact that…

Young people are much more likely to suffer a catastrophic crash than older and more experienced drivers.

New drivers have always had more accidents than older ones. You will never stop it completely.

But there is one thing that MUST be stopped, and that is this continued bleeding heart approach which suggests that the fault is with driver education. It isn’t. No instructor teaches people to behave like chavs and drive like idiots, and yet THAT is the cause of most accidents.

The problem starts way back at the moment of conception – and goes downhill from there.

And as if this were necessary, let’s just remember that that National Curriculum contains a lot of things already – like maths, English, and science – but it is not exactly renowned for its production of numerate and literate scientists!

What Car? has an article for those worried about riot damage to their cars. They point out that those with comprehensive insurance should have no worries, but insurers should be contacted as soon as possible.

On the subject of the riots, I was thinking of Victor Hugo’s description of certain elements of society in Les Misérables. Even though it was written in 1862, it is remarkably accurate in describing these rioters:

These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the class called “middle” and the class denominated as “inferior,” and which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the bourgeois.

They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and woman possessed such souls…

The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty–that is the point of departure; to be Satan–that is the point reached. From that vault Lacenaire emerges.

What is amazing about these riots is the incident which apparently started it. The police shot Mark Duggan – a man who they had had under surveillance, and who had links with London gangs and gun crimes in the black community. He appears to have been in possession of an illegal gun. Of course, his family claim he was a loving “family man who would not have shot at police”.

I’m expressing my own opinion here, but he had a gun. Quite frankly, I don’t care whether he shot first or not, you don’t carry a an illegal gun around with you if you are a “loving family man” who “wouldn’t shoot at police”. You carry it to shoot people.

Ironically, the police are being slated for not acting sooner on the riots. But what could they have done? They’re already being slated for shooting a lunatic with an illegal weapon, so can you imagine what would have happened if they’d have waded in and cracked a few skulls and prevented this whole sorry situation? The Bleeding Hearts Society would have had a field day.

In any case, you can’t just “arrest” a mob which is armed with bricks, knives, definitely guns (several people have been shot), firebombs, and so on. Officers’ lives would then have been compromised.

The police should be given firearms and allowed to open fire on these morons. Society would be better off without them particularly as it appears to have come to murder. Every one of the scum taking part in this is responsible for any death which takes place 

Mind you, the riots have had one amusing effect. People who for whom politics is high up on their List of Things They Don’t Understand But Talk About Anyway are having enormous fun.

A story from Australia, but obviously it is going to apply to the Western World generally.

Apparently, the younger generation is:

• more stressed when driving
• most likely to get lost
• more likely to make erratic decisions
• more likely to make impulsive decisions

One of the researchers says that younger drivers are less effective at absorbing and processing information, and blames it on information overload through social media and the internet.

Or, in other words, they are poorer drivers.

The research appears to be flawed. All it is doing is comparing young drivers with older ones. What it needs to do is compare young drivers with older ones from the same internet generation – something which is obviously a bit of an oxymoron.

You see, new drivers – who are mainly young – are always less experienced at all aspects of driving than older, more experienced people. The only thing they have going for them over older drivers is (allegedly) faster reflexes – which can be a double-edged sword when it comes to making a snap decision without any experience. That’s why the normal young person’s reaction to a car coming directly towards them – albeit 300 metres away – is often to fling themselves down an embankment or into a kerb. As I often point out on lessons when I grab the wheel to prevent this, we have this pedal in the middle called “a brake”, and it makes you go slower and stop…

I’m sure the research is identifying a real problem. But I think it’s a problem that’s always been there in one form or another, and the researchers are drawing the wrong conclusions (probably in order to support a premise).

According to this story in the Daily Mail, electric cars offer motoring at less than 2p per mile.

Likewise, if I win the Lottery I won’t have to work any more. But we have to be realistic.

You see, the problem is that there is nowhere to charge them. The government published the results of a 12 month trial involving 40 electric Minis covering a total of just over a quarter of a million miles. The average daily travel distance was 30 miles.

Almost all charging was done at home. Most of those involved in the trial said that a network of charging points was essential. Or in other words, those involved in the trial HAD to charge at home because there was nowhere else to do it (except for those in London, of course).

Nissan announced at the same time that it was installing a charging point (Wow! One whole charging point) in Lincoln after Top Gear showed that there isn’t one there when they ran out of juice on their TV show.

The experimental results confirm that 72 percent of participants said they’d only managed (the story misses out the word “only”) because they could charge at home. And that’s something everyone seems to be missing – or concealing.

Look at the table below. On the left is the typical procedure for filling a petrol or diesel car. On the right are the various options for charging en electric vehicle. The realistic options involve waiting for a long time – either by going to sleep, or by queuing. A quick fast charge is highly unlikely.

There’s no two ways about it: electric cars are being talked up (especially at All Cars Electric and also at Business Green), but the reality is completely different. Even if there were charging points everywhere, waiting even for 20 minutes to get 80 miles range is too much.

And while we’re on the subject of talking electric cars up, 2p a mile might sound fantastic compared to £1.33 a litre – but that fuel price works out at 10-15p a mile on a typical petrol car. Electric cars might be cheaper to run, but not that much.

Reported in EADT24, Axa has called for an end to the “compensation culture” in this country, which it says is sending everyone’s insurance higher and higher.

Two and a half years ago I was involved in an accident. A new driver went through red lights (probably misjudged them) and I went straight into the side of her. I was not injured – apart from a diagonal row of bruises down my chest where the seatbelt pulled. Maybe I had a sore neck for a few days, but it went away. I don’t call that an “injury”. An “injury” is something that requires urgent medical attention, or when something is broken.

Since that day, I have been inundated with text messages saying that I am entitled to “£3,750 for the accident you had” and such like. I have ignored every single one of them, because I wasn’t injured.

The female driver of the other car, however, didn’t lose any time. She had already filed for whiplash injuries to anyone within a 500 metre radius within a few weeks (in spite of not needing an ambulance at the scene of the accident). In order to do this, she had to lie about what happened and as a result the case is STILL ongoing.

But she is just typical. The money is like winning the lottery to her.

The problem is that as soon as you notify your insurer of an accident, they give your details to one of these compensation companies and you’re can’t get rid of them. Axa has banned referrals like these.