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My university is mid-fresher's week. The uni is in Scotland, but a lot of Americans come here, and somehow their parents have managed to hire THE LARGEST CARS IN THE COUNTRY. They also don't break any stereotypes about signalling, use of roundabouts, knowledge of signalling, or really any ability not to roll their multi-ton impotency wagons over my very short car. The standard of driving is so much worse than usual that were I marking driving tests for them I'd give them good points for getting the seatbelt (that they don't use) on without breaking their arm.
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Sep 8, 2013 23:15
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BrokenKnucklez posted:What's so confusing about roundabouts? They keep traffic moving as long as there are no idiots floundering around in there. And the best part... miss your turn? gently caress drive in a circle and try again. People seem to be under the impression that you NEVER stop at one - not even if there's a car you'll hit.
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Sep 9, 2013 13:13
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:My wife's mother has a new Mercury something or another. She didn't get a manual with it. She'd had it for a couple of weeks and broke down. A police officer let her know that she should have the hazards on. She replied that she couldn't find them. He told her to try pushing the button with the hazards symbol on it. "Oh, that's not a button, that just tells you it's on!" "Push it anyway." "Oh, so that's how you turn them on...." I don't have hazards 
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Sep 10, 2013 01:26
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Mooseykins posted:I usually offer that, but bus stops were literally 100 feet away, and we were a quater of a mile from the nearest Tube (Subway) station. Also, after asking to use my car while theirs was having some minor repair carried out was a fairly good indication of their piss-taking nature. I later on fired that customer over other unreasonable demands. I'm very lucky - the closest shop of any kind is a specialist in my classic car (MG), owned by an ex-rally driver, so they can understand driving a car hard, and they provide courtesy cars free.
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Sep 17, 2013 01:38
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Mooseykins posted:Well that's a major inscentive for me to not provide a courtesy car. You know the joke about the fastest car in the world being a rental car? Well courtesy cars fall under the same treatment, so i don't want to pay for a courtesy car for people to bomb around in and generally not give a gently caress about. You see how they treat their own cars, they'll be even less caring and mechanically-sympathetic to one they don't own. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was referring to clutch-drops, doughnuts and gallons of tyresmoke, in the MG world in Britain "driving hard" means not always parking under cover as soon as rain hits you, or driving every day. Some specialist garages won't touch the car if they think you're not keeping it in a temperature controlled garage, and refuse to do things like undercoating because "you shouldn't drive in the rain anyway". These cars are basically meant to be cheap Jagternatives, but people act as though the Midlands was some kind of nirvana, and each car a delicate droplet from heaven that must be nurtured and preserved in a reliquary.
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Sep 17, 2013 13:02
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Boris Johnson (mayor of London, v. keen cyclist) just said he wouldn't mind banning riding with headphones or earbuds, after I think eight people were killed on London's roads in about two weeks. London cyclists (well, some) have exploded at him.
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Nov 19, 2013 18:50
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I love when heavy snow hits Scotland - driving the empty motorways in a softtop land rover with no sound and just a blanket of flakes in front of you is very calming. Until some fucker emerges from the falling curtain going at 20 with no lights on.
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Nov 28, 2013 19:27
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devmd01 posted:I was there this summer and loved it, I can't imagine how beautiful the highlands are covered in snow. Bloody. That's how. Bloody, bloody beautiful.
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Nov 28, 2013 21:30
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I was barreling along a road at 60 (the limit, and totally fine for the road) today, when someone first turned into a turning area in the middle, quite far in front of me. I thought "Ok, I was reading that AI thread earlier, I'll brake". They continued, and had I not started braking early, I would have hit them - or rather they me. My car is from 1972 and weighs as much as a ghosts fart; I would almost certainly have died had I not thought of you. Thanks guys.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:53
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--Car was made in Britain. Indicator switch does not operate indicators, but does do something, possibly related to oil leaks or intermittent hot smell.
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Dec 28, 2013 17:30
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Cakefool posted:Ah, so you've heard of the Lucas oil filled relays then? I have a product of the 1970s British motoring industry
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Dec 28, 2013 17:40
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So many of my facebook friends (actually one. 1 many) are complaining about driving in snow. One girl said "I had the speedo at 160 and it didn't unstick itself! I thought a Beemer was supposed to be quality!". Jesus christ.
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Jan 6, 2014 23:34
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clutchpuck posted:You don't know anybody who rides a beemer, eh? She was Canadian. I can't understand it. I've driven pretty much everything in pretty much every amount of ice and snow. Just.. just don't put the hammer down? It's not like impressing girls in summer, in fact it's the opposite - in winter movement comes before noise, in terms of importance.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:40
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Some bastard in a Ka was tailgating me, being really aggressive, swinging side-to-side trying to get by, honking the horn, dropping back and zooming up to me a few days ago, because I was going at 20 in a 20 (school) zone. Which was crowded with kids. Who were constantly running back and forth across the street. I also don't understand how someone thinks they can intimidate somebody on the road if I'm in a huge-rear end Land Rover covered in mud and dents and they're in a tiny Ka.
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Jan 10, 2014 18:13
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InitialDave posted:Please tell me it opened up to a 60 on a country road, they nipped past, and you spent the next five miles bullying them incessantly to go faster. It went to 30, he overtook me (dangerously), then went to 60 on a country road and he shot up to...40. so I overtook (safely) and left.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:50
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Here's a new one to me: I was heading down the motorway, doing 65-70 in the slow lane (the land rover isn't light on its feet), when I see a car come hammering up the fast lane, slow down then swing in behind me. A small, baby-poo brown boxy hatchback. It then straddled the dashed line between the lanes, still behind me, as I squeezed to the left (or as far left as a car the size of a continent can go) and then shot in front of me in the passing lane. It slowed down for a while in front of me, straddled the dashed line in front and then shot off again in the fast lane. It felt like meeting the huge bald tattooed man in the pub who is drunk and mentally unstable enough to either bite your ear off or buy you a drink - I have never been more unsure of another driver's intentions.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:22
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Colonel Sanders posted:How the hell did the car flip? It looks like he was going maybe 20 or 30mph, hell maybe even 40mph but I doubt it. It looked like the car was quite level after going up on the curb, and then hitting the tree that is more like an over grown shrub. I guess the tree is tougher than it looks and made out of loving rubber if it could just bounce the car like that. Trees always win.
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Jan 14, 2014 05:19
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I'm getting rid of my vintage MG and getting a used BMW; driving the MG people either nearly hit me because they weren't paying attention, or they were really good about letting me out, not tailgating and basically being nice. I'm worried that people will be dicks when I'm in the BMW, but at least it's a rather safer car for an idiot to hit me in.
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Jan 17, 2014 16:34
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I just picked up a BMW 1 series, and if you double-bat the horn it makes a really happy little noise - like what I imagine an MX-5 (or Miata) horn sounds like, and it's really useful to draw people's attention to you if they hadn't noticed your car was near them. If you hold it down though it unveils heaping spoonfuls of road clearing Bavarian fury.
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Feb 5, 2014 20:26
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Wish I had a dashcam, because somebody just clutchdumped their way backwards out of a space in a parking lot and I got a lovely chance to test my brakes. Then they stopped sat for around 10 seconds, and slooowlllyy pulled back into the space. I gave them a LOT of room when I went around. Wish  came in a reversing version.
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Feb 12, 2014 14:06
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Previa_fun posted:
Amazing.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:19
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Here you go. 
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rcman50166 posted:To summarize what is going on in the south: Holy poo poo! Looks pretty hot in there.
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Feb 13, 2014 22:56
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CharlesM posted:That was BMW's answer when people complained about the iDrive. The slow as poo poo and depends on you having the right accent voice recognition. Newer models got redundant radio controls put back in. I like iDrive, but then voice recognition also works well for me because my accent is basically RP.
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Mar 8, 2014 12:00
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Pham Nuwen posted:or just put the plate on the front christ I was going to say - what kind of place do you live with no front plates? Do you need room at the front of your car for a horse?
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Apr 10, 2014 01:24
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subx posted:Yea, I'm pretty sure I'd need new pants. Apparently the russian term for someone who calmly deals with road emergencies (e.g. sliding his lada around a crashing lorry, not falling into a hole while staying cool) is "concrete anus".
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May 10, 2014 01:36
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The Midniter posted:My gym is part of a large shopping plaza with several large connected parking lots. It gets me boiling when other drivers act as though all paved areas, parking spots or not, are free game to drive through at 30mph as long as no cars are parked there. I've almost gotten t-boned several times because I'm properly following my lane toward a stop sign and some rear end in a top hat comes blazing diagonally across eighty parking spots headed toward the same stop sign I'm headed toward and they have to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting me. Then I'm the one who gets the dirty look. Everyone knows empty lots are for sweet drifts
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May 21, 2014 14:56
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GoodbyeTurtles posted:Had my first proper emergency stop / threshold breaking exercise today. I once had to emergency stop a Land Rover defender, loaded to the gills, because someone pulled out from a side road in front of me without looking or slowing at all. Didn't stall, which was good because there was an artic lorry just behind me barrelling up, I'm proud to say that I got gravel spray off all four wheels when I set off and I'd challenge anyone to drag race between 0 and 15 mph.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:56
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:07 |
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blk posted:Jesus, this. I entertained moving to the UK 10 years ago but it's become such a nanny/surveillance state that I wouldn't be able to take it. Nice place to visit, though. How can you take "stopping people with failed inspections from driving" and say that's a bad thing?
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Jun 27, 2014 20:11
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