Texting while driving

I've just noticed, in my previous post, I made the same typo several times. Where I said "moment", I meant "momentum". Silly me.

I agree with all that, except the bit about not slowing down straight away when something goes off. My dad once told me, don't wait til its too late. I ignored that advice once when I was a new, inexperienced driver, and found myself locking up and skidding at speed towards the back of a line of now stationary cars. I did everything wrong, the text book went out the window so to speak. I waited too long to react, then when I did I booted the brake pedal into the floor, locked up, and instead of pumping the brakes like I'd done so many times in my emergency stop drills as a learner, I just pressed harder in blind panic. I must have took 10,000 miles worth of tread off my tyres in just a few seconds. Luckily, the car came to rest with about 2 or 3 ft to spare before the car in front.

Every car I've had since had/has ABS. Let the computer keep its cool if I panic on the brakes, that's what I say.

 

Yes ABS is great, but I find it gives me a start when it comes on, as it's very rare.
Usually in the winter at very slow speeds if it's icy.

On the foot to the "floor bit" it reminds me of my first car.
I saved up my "Saturday job money" while I was at school and bought a car as soon as I left aged seventeen. I was lucky as a cousin of mine worked for a garage in Wimbledon. It was an Austin Seven Ruby convertible, over twenty years old. An architect who lived locally had bought it for his wife and had it reconditioned there, rebuilt engine, new hood, side screens and new seat covers. But she couldn't get on with the brakes which were Bendix cable brakes. So as it was the late fifties, the mini was just coming out so he bought one and asked my cousin to sell it. I paid the princely sum of £35 for it. My best friend's dad bought a new Morris Oxford at the time and the awful tartan plastic seat covers he bought for it cost as much of my car.

Anyway, the amount of braking power you had was directly proportional to the amount of pressure you could apply to the brake pedal. You developed a technique for emergencies where you would hold onto the steering wheel and if the hood was up, stand up with all your weight on one foot on the brake pedal.
I loved that car, I kept it for a year, it was a gentler age, I drove a few thousand miles in it. All I spent on it, (I did my own sevicing) was oil and petrol, the price of a new set of tyres and 1/- for a new dynamo bearing.
I was rather naughty, I'd actually learned the basics of driving on a private road, taught by my uncle when I was fourteen, so after I bought it I drove it around for two months without "L" plates for several hundred miles until my test came through and fortunately passed first time.
In those days petrol was 4/- (20p) a gallon, the same as a pint of Flowers bitter. The ratio between the two, still pretty much the same.

 

Flowers bitter............................nectar of the Gods.

 

I'll say, I think at the time it was available "from the wood" at the Hand in Hand or The Crooked Billet in Wimbledon. We tended to visit a lot of pubs on the same evening, there, or in other places like; Richmond, Hampton, Kew, Eel Pie Island, at Twickenham etc., except those that sold Watney's Red Barrel. Absolute rubbish.

But at this distance it's now, a bit of a blurr.

 

I've had my share of a beer festivalkor two in my time.........................wasn't there one called Black bat? Tasted like treacle.


I had my first taste of the proper stuff at the Strawberry Duck in Darwen. That's ooooop North. ( Oh my, that's nearly twenty years ago...............how time flies).


You can't beat a glass of the creamy silken stuff on a hot Summers afternoon. Spent many a youthful Sunday afternoon sat out on pub lawns trying them all. We have lost a lot of the freehouses but there are still a few good uns near me. Terrible for the figure but as filling as a pub lunch.

 

Good information above reading. I also drive with the thought that that people around me will not act quickly, saved me several times. Twice I was slowing down due to a traffic accident in front of me, and a quick look in the rear view, I saw a car coming, said to myself, he's not breaking. Thank goodness for a nice shoulder and my quick nibble car--move fast to the shoulder and sure enough the car that was in front of me got rear ended.
And just last winter, I avoided being plowed by a huge suburban sliding sideways down the country road on ice. I quickly took my SUV and ran it into the front yard of a house. And the SUV kept sliding past where I would have been. Got my car out just fine.
And other stories I can share. The bottom line drive defensively and look for quick exit.
Have to say, I don't think my husband is really observant enough, I can pass him in my car and he never sees me. Here I am in a medium blue SUV, red hair. So not sure what he sees. And these are on country roads, simple two way roads. That worries me.

 

If he thinks like a lot of blokes do (certainly how I think) when driving, then that doesn't mean he isn't observant. When I see a vehicle while driving, I see a large moving object heading in such and such a direction, at such and such a speed etc. That's all the info I need about that object, so I don't note its colour, make, model etc, so my limited male brain can focus on the next large moving object, or the stationary object just ahead. As soon as a piece of info is no longer of use to me while driving, it goes out of my head, thus freeing up mental processing time for other large objects in my path.

Its like the scientists reckon. Women are better at multitasking than men, so a woman can drive and take everything else in. A bloke is more likely to just focus on the job at hand. Its like if you ask a woman and a bloke to describe another woman, the man will describe how pretty (or not) she was, and the woman will describe what she was wearing.

 

I'd go further than that, I can drive between A & B and not recollect all or part of the journey. Men can slip into automatic pilot, most don't look at shops they concentrate on the road, so if the journey is without incident, I can like with many things I choose, (particularly some things my wife says) not commit it to memory.
My wife never stops talking when we're in the car, because I'm a "captive audience."(she doesn't drive). She often distracts me by pointing something out on a regular journey.

"Oh look! they've opened a (whatever shop there!)."

It's...been..there.. two..years..."

The difference is of course women notice what they want to notice.
She's very critical of any bad driving she sees. I just accommodate someone's mistake by making any driving adjustments necessary.

But she falls for the same gag every time.

She'll say; "Did you see that driver pull out with no indication at all!" (I've seen it, but made no comment).

I always reply regardless of whatever in very "tolerating and resigned tone."

"Yes I did, it was a woman."

 

"But she falls for the same gag every time.

She'll say; "Did you see that driver pull out with no indication at all!" (I've seen it, but made no comment).

I always reply regardless of whatever in very "tolerating and resigned tone."

"Yes I did, it was a woman."



Cheeky so and so........................................

 

My wife thinks she's the indicator police too. She will express considerable annoyance at someone 500yds ahead on the motorway switching lanes without indicating even if nobody is near them and it affected nobody else.

 

I should think so too Clueless-that's what we are for lol

 

I've mentioned elsewhere, that my pet hate is those one car in front of me at a set of lights with a yellow box junction, when we both want to turn right, refuse to get in the box. Quite often you can get three cars in the box, as you can locally at two junctions on the main road where for on-coming traffic there is no right turn.
As the lights change they creep into the box and round and I'm sat there on red.
I've got to say this it's usually (not always) "very careful women drivers." I just wish they'd read the highway code.

Also the number of cars I see with a brake-light not working seems on the increase. It's easy enough to check every day, by pressing the brake pedal when stationary in traffic and either looking at the relection in a shop window, or looking in the mirror at the reflection of your brake-lights in a bus or lorry behind.

 

I hate that too. It seems that only a minority understand the box junction rules. What annoys me even more than fellow right turners not entering the box is when lefters or straight aheaders do enter the box when they can't get off, this jamming up the whole junction for half an hour or more at a time as the traffic lights lose control and take their ball home in a huff. One light turns green, so everyone piles into the box. Then the other light turns green and more pile in. Then suddenly the lights are pointless as nobody can move out of the box so it becomes a free-for-all.

For any that don't know (not just among our lot but any lurkers that might be reading), the box junction rules are this:
Don't enter the box unless your exit is clear as you enter it. The only exception is if you intend to turn right and the only thing stopping you is oncoming traffic, in which case you may enter the box and wait for a suitable gap in the oncoming traffic for you to get through safely.

To be fair, in my experience its no more women than men. It is often posers in posh cars who dread the very idea of getting stuck in the middle of the junction in the BMW 7 series and then everyone gets to stare at them as they sit there with their designer shades on trying (unsuccessfully) to look cool and in control.

Technically, by law, it is the driver's responsibility to check his/her car for any obvious defects before every journey. That's why, if they wish, the coppers can do you for having a bulb out.

 

I've a story to tell about brake lights.

We were driving into Altrincham once and pulled up at the lights with a police car next to us in the inside lane. I wound down my passenger window and indicated to the driver to do the same.

"Did you know one of your brakelights isn't working?"

The rather sheepish response was; "Err no, we checked them this morning, this is the second time in a week it's happened."

Very sternly I said; "OK, I'll let you off this time, but get it fixed." The other officer was killing himself laughing.

At that moment the lights changed, we moved off and the police car had to turn left.

If it's safe to do so, like pulling alongside as in this example I always mouth to other drivers if they've a brakelight out.

It's a "moving traffic violation" the police like to use it after the pubs shut as a reason to get out their breathalyser.

 

Also I, try to tell the car next to me, if something is amiss with their car.

Thanks Clueless for clearing up the "man" thing about driving. Still it makes me wonder, my car is parked in the driveway next to his, you'd think he'd notice. But whatever.