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Post by spinno on Feb 19, 2024 9:36:15 GMT
I've never driven a car that hasn't been equipped with a feature that told me I was exceeding the speed limit, driving too close to the car in front, deviating from my lane, and various other hazards. She does the washing up and laundry as well. Does she ask for directions or let you guess? |
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Post by kate on Feb 19, 2024 9:40:02 GMT
Having learned to drive a foreign job with double declutch required, I reckon I could tackle anything now (eyesight permitting).
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Post by geoffr on Feb 19, 2024 10:09:29 GMT
Yes, I don't know what I will do when Le Van Rouge meets its end, it's still fairly low tech - a cd player is as good as it gets - I may have a lot to learn, and a lot of crotchetty tech to get fixed... All the technology in more recent cars certainly hasn't done anything for driving standards as there are far more distractions, touch screens in particular. Imho drivers are made to feel too cocooned and as such isolated from what is going on around them. Of the cars I drive the newest is a 2016 Alfa Romeo, a couple of years ago I was driving around in a 2019 VW Golf for about 10 days when the AR was being repaired after a lady scraped it when parked. I have to say I did not like the newer car, it felt cheap and the touch screen could easily act as a distraction should the driver have let it do so, many probably would. Touch screens are great but not for controlling functions in a car. The problem with touch screens is that one is pretty much forced to look at the screen when using it. The last thing a driver needs is to be looking at a screen to operate a control. All essential controls should be designed such that they can be located and operated by feel alone, some won't agree with that.
One thing I do think should be in every car is a Head Up Display, being able to see one's speed without looking away from the road is a great advance in safety. Unfortunately some car manufacturers have decided to offer the option for text messages to be displayed on the HUD! Why? Nobody needs to be reading messages while they are driving, even roadside message boards, giving road information, are a distraction and, in my experience too cluttered. One roadside board giving details of a closure of the A3 on 23-25 February took four visits to get the complete details because it was on a 50 limit dual carriageway giving little time between being legible to having passed was minimal. The authority that had placed the board had, in trying to get all the information on one board, made the text too small for the location.
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Post by andy on Feb 19, 2024 17:31:21 GMT
All that fancy tech but do they tell you when a bulb is out or washer fluid is low? Working lights and washers are a legal requirement but it still seems like few cars alert drivers to issues there despite the technology to do so having been around for 40 years or so. How many people like finding out they are out of washer fluid when they can no longer see where they are going? Much better to get a warning days before that happens. My 17 year old scrapper did that. I assume that the replacement does as well but it's too soon to have experienced it.
It once told me that a headlamp bulb had blown. It didn't tell me that it was necessary to remove half the engine in order to change it.
Mick
Here's hoping it does and bulbs are easy to change if it comes to it.
Still not looking to get another car here although have thought about trying a Toyota next. Either that or I'll crumble and get another cheap Saab to run into the ground. A nice Saab looks to be £4-6k these days but I'd feel bad ruining a nice one using it for work on salty roads.
I'm really enjoying the free ebike though....it's got slick road tyres on it and is an absolute hoot sliding it around in the mud.  |
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Post by Chester PB on Feb 19, 2024 17:40:50 GMT
Andy, yes I think so. Kate yes it does - sort of. SWMBO negotiated the fitting of dashcams before we bought it.. Chester how much I paid for car and insurance is my business so I won’t be answering that question. AFAIK everything I’ve mentioned bar dashcams comes as standard. Mick The amount you chose to spend on the car is your decision, but as with modern digital cameras, I suspect you have to paid for a lot for features you may never use or need. Also, having recently had a lift in a modern electric car, I cannot understand how all the items in the display in front of the driver cannot be distracting and hence a safety issue.
The insurance costs of hybrid and all-electric cars has been investigated in various parts of the media in recent months, because of the repair costs after a collision. I have read of cases in which damage to the body which would once have been repaired and the car returned to the policyholder, now results in the car being scrapped because the insurance companies are concerned about possible undetected damage to the battery that might later lead to a fire. In the latter case the cost of the claim is obviously much greater, which of course will be paid for by other policyholders - including drivers like me who do not drive a car like this.
Drive carefully, and don't forget that many of the 'safety features' depend of software that may not have been tested in every conceivable situation. Tesla have had widely reported problems like this. |
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Post by nimbus on Feb 19, 2024 18:50:13 GMT
Many cars are now written-off by insurers simply due to the high cost of repairs, soaring spare part prices and in a number of cases cases poor availability of some items along with bodyshop labour rates then adding in the replacement vehicle renders it easier to do it this way. It does mean that many vehicles with damage that is purely cosmetic are sent to the salvage auction and subsequently repaired with used parts.
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Post by Ivor E Tower on Feb 19, 2024 21:59:46 GMT
Having learned to drive a foreign job with double declutch required, I reckon I could tackle anything now (eyesight permitting). Are you any good at boiler replacements? Mine packed up[ last Wednesday, not confirmed it was irrepairable by the so-called emergency insurance call-out service until Saturday afternoon, and I have to arrange replacement unassisted. I'm getting somewhat cold..... |
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Post by mick on Feb 20, 2024 8:43:01 GMT
Andy, yes I think so. Kate yes it does - sort of. SWMBO negotiated the fitting of dashcams before we bought it.. Chester how much I paid for car and insurance is my business so I won’t be answering that question. AFAIK everything I’ve mentioned bar dashcams comes as standard. Mick The amount you chose to spend on the car is your decision, but as with modern digital cameras, I suspect you have to paid for a lot for features you may never use or need. Also, having recently had a lift in a modern electric car, I cannot understand how all the items in the display in front of the driver cannot be distracting and hence a safety issue.
The insurance costs of hybrid and all-electric cars has been investigated in various parts of the media in recent months, because of the repair costs after a collision. I have read of cases in which damage to the body which would once have been repaired and the car returned to the policyholder, now results in the car being scrapped because the insurance companies are concerned about possible undetected damage to the battery that might later lead to a fire. In the latter case the cost of the claim is obviously much greater, which of course will be paid for by other policyholders - including drivers like me who do not drive a car like this.
Drive carefully, and don't forget that many of the 'safety features' depend of software that may not have been tested in every conceivable situation. Tesla have had widely reported problems like this. Are you a Luddite?
Eventually you will have no choice about buying a car like this. Yes it certainly does have features that I hope that I will never use - such as the ability to automatically brake hard if I'm about to collide with something or some one. I haven't dared test that!!
It's in insurance group 22, my old one was in 33.
I can (and often do) turn off all the extraneous display items leaving the usual - speedo, fuel guage and odometer.
BTW I found that the model T went out of production some time ago.
Mick
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Post by Kath on Feb 20, 2024 9:23:55 GMT
Enjoy your new car - it sounds amazing! While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed for my 18 year old Polo. I mean, I say 18 year old. It has a new clutch, new brakes, new wing mirrors, new exhaust, new just about flipping everything. I keep thinking there can't be much more left to replace but it keeps surprising me!
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Post by peterob on Feb 20, 2024 9:43:19 GMT
Enjoy your new car - it sounds amazing! While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed for my 18 year old Polo. I mean, I say 18 year old. It has a new clutch, new brakes, new wing mirrors, new exhaust, new just about flipping everything. I keep thinking there can't be much more left to replace but it keeps surprising me! We've got [MoT] decision time on our 1997 Volvo coming up. Whether to spend or not is the question. To be "100%" it needs clutch, engine oil seals, recon steering rack, all hoses replaced, handbrake replacing plus bits and bobs. By 100% I mean jump in and do a 600 mile trip to Devon and back without a care in the world. It works fine but it doesn't like [aged] E10 - we had 6 months of it not starting reliably, which meant it wasn't used. I think that was because of fuel degradation while not doing miles. It has been fine since I put a tank of E5 in it. |
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Post by geoffr on Feb 20, 2024 10:13:30 GMT
Enjoy your new car - it sounds amazing! While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed for my 18 year old Polo. I mean, I say 18 year old. It has a new clutch, new brakes, new wing mirrors, new exhaust, new just about flipping everything. I keep thinking there can't be much more left to replace but it keeps surprising me! We've got [MoT] decision time on our 1997 Volvo coming up. Whether to spend or not is the question. To be "100%" it needs clutch, engine oil seals, recon steering rack, all hoses replaced, handbrake replacing plus bits and bobs. By 100% I mean jump in and do a 600 mile trip to Devon and back without a care in the world. It works fine but it doesn't like [aged] E10 - we had 6 months of it not starting reliably, which meant it wasn't used. I think that was because of fuel degradation while not doing miles. It has been fine since I put a tank of E5 in it. I was, until December, driving a nearly 13 year old car, it had been reliable but things were failing. There is a practical limit to how long a car remains a viable resource before it becomes a liability. I know that to bring it back to the condition I would like a number of items might be required, new windscreen (covered in very minor stone chips) repaint the bumpers, new heater pads in the seats, some cosmetic repairs to the passenger side. It has done 141,000 miles. We'll see what it is like when it is running again. I'll probably sell it as I don't need two cars.
The "new" car, being 7 years newer has lots of technology but, fortunately, not most of the things designed to warn the driver of things he/she should have noticed already. That it does 35% more miles for each gallon of fuel is a very attractive trait.
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Post by andy on Feb 20, 2024 10:38:56 GMT
Enjoy your new car - it sounds amazing! While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed for my 18 year old Polo. I mean, I say 18 year old. It has a new clutch, new brakes, new wing mirrors, new exhaust, new just about flipping everything. I keep thinking there can't be much more left to replace but it keeps surprising me! We've got [MoT] decision time on our 1997 Volvo coming up. Whether to spend or not is the question. To be "100%" it needs clutch, engine oil seals, recon steering rack, all hoses replaced, handbrake replacing plus bits and bobs. By 100% I mean jump in and do a 600 mile trip to Devon and back without a care in the world. It works fine but it doesn't like [aged] E10 - we had 6 months of it not starting reliably, which meant it wasn't used. I think that was because of fuel degradation while not doing miles. It has been fine since I put a tank of E5 in it. FWIW E10 doesn't necessarily have more ethanol than E5 as the numbers are a maximum percentage allowed. It would appear that petrol usually contains far less ethanol than the maximum allowed. Some numbers from a test should be in this video.... Perhaps they just called it E10 to fudge some co2 figures?! |
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Post by mick on Feb 20, 2024 11:03:31 GMT
Enjoy your new car - it sounds amazing! While you're at it, keep your fingers crossed for my 18 year old Polo. I mean, I say 18 year old. It has a new clutch, new brakes, new wing mirrors, new exhaust, new just about flipping everything. I keep thinking there can't be much more left to replace but it keeps surprising me! Thanks Kath, To me it is amazing - but that's because my experience was 17 years out of date! I really think that my car is fairly ordinary by modern standards.
I'll keep fingers crossed for your Polo. It's always tough to know when to pull the plug on a car. The clincher for me was extensive corrosion that would have been a more or less certain MoT failure and 100% certain that it would cost big bucks to correct. Even as a runner it was worth little more than £1000 because it was high mileage (as I've boasted about) and had a big diesel engine. It was a green warrior's nightmare!
Mick
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Post by Chester PB on Feb 20, 2024 17:14:17 GMT
The amount you chose to spend on the car is your decision, but as with modern digital cameras, I suspect you have to paid for a lot for features you may never use or need. Also, having recently had a lift in a modern electric car, I cannot understand how all the items in the display in front of the driver cannot be distracting and hence a safety issue.
The insurance costs of hybrid and all-electric cars has been investigated in various parts of the media in recent months, because of the repair costs after a collision. I have read of cases in which damage to the body which would once have been repaired and the car returned to the policyholder, now results in the car being scrapped because the insurance companies are concerned about possible undetected damage to the battery that might later lead to a fire. In the latter case the cost of the claim is obviously much greater, which of course will be paid for by other policyholders - including drivers like me who do not drive a car like this.
Drive carefully, and don't forget that many of the 'safety features' depend of software that may not have been tested in every conceivable situation. Tesla have had widely reported problems like this. Are you a Luddite?
Eventually you will have no choice about buying a car like this. Yes it certainly does have features that I hope that I will never use - such as the ability to automatically brake hard if I'm about to collide with something or some one. I haven't dared test that!!
It's in insurance group 22, my old one was in 33.
I can (and often do) turn off all the extraneous display items leaving the usual - speedo, fuel guage and odometer.
BTW I found that the model T went out of production some time ago.
Mick
Not a luddite, just somebody who looks for the simplest tool for the job. In this case, travelling economically and safely from A to B. For example, my small 11 year old hatchback needs some IT and software to monitor and control things that affect emissions (it is ULEZ compliant and runs happily in E10 petrol), and to warn me if some wheels are rotating faster than others (a slippery road surface), but does not need sensors in the front bumper to tell me I am driving to close to the car in front. Last year, when driving at 70 mph in the middle lane of a motorway to pass a line of slow vehicles in the left hand lane, I was tailgated by somebody in a new Range Rover that probably had the technology to warn the driver he was being stupid and driving dangerously close, and which he must have chosen to ignore. He suddenly pulled out into the third lane, without indicating or looking behind him, so he was not aware of the police car that was going somewhere in a hurry in that lane and had to brake to avoid him. I hope he got lots of points and had to pay a greatly increased insurance premium the next year.
However how clever you new car is, you will still have to be alert for other drivers who, hopefully unintentionally, are trying to kill you. My point is that some drivers (but probably not you) will put so much faith in all the latest safety features that they may think they can drive with much less care. When seat belt use became compulsory the risk of going through the windscreen during a collision may have been reduced, but many drivers still drove dangerously. |
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Post by geoffr on Feb 20, 2024 18:12:16 GMT
Are you a Luddite?
Eventually you will have no choice about buying a car like this. Yes it certainly does have features that I hope that I will never use - such as the ability to automatically brake hard if I'm about to collide with something or some one. I haven't dared test that!!
It's in insurance group 22, my old one was in 33.
I can (and often do) turn off all the extraneous display items leaving the usual - speedo, fuel guage and odometer.
BTW I found that the model T went out of production some time ago.
Mick
Not a luddite, just somebody who looks for the simplest tool for the job. In this case, travelling economically and safely from A to B. For example, my small 11 year old hatchback needs some IT and software to monitor and control things that affect emissions (it is ULEZ compliant and runs happily in E10 petrol), and to warn me if some wheels are rotating faster than others (a slippery road surface), but does not need sensors in the front bumper to tell me I am driving to close to the car in front. Last year, when driving at 70 mph in the middle lane of a motorway to pass a line of slow vehicles in the left hand lane, I was tailgated by somebody in a new Range Rover that probably had the technology to warn the driver he was being stupid and driving dangerously close, and which he must have chosen to ignore. He suddenly pulled out into the third lane, without indicating or looking behind him, so he was not aware of the police car that was going somewhere in a hurry in that lane and had to brake to avoid him. I hope he got lots of points and had to pay a greatly increased insurance premium the next year.
However how clever you new car is, you will still have to be alert for other drivers who, hopefully unintentionally, are trying to kill you. My point is that some drivers (but probably not you) will put so much faith in all the latest safety features that they may think they can drive with much less care. When seat belt use became compulsory the risk of going through the windscreen during a collision may have been reduced, but many drivers still drove dangerously. It was suggested many years ago that putting a spike in the middle of the steering wheel would be a more effective safety measure than seat belts. If a driver knew that an accident would inevitably be fatal he or she would try very hard to avoid hitting anything. All the improvements in road safety have, so far, been achieved by mitigating the effects of an accident. One might reasonably expect a person of average intelligence to understand that preventing the accident from happening in the first place would be more effective and possibly cheaper. Things like lane departure warning and blind spot radar are potentially moves in the right direction. Unfortunately governments have, over the past 30 or 40 years seen motorists as a source of income. A result of this is that, instead of requiring a higher level of competence from new drivers, we have a driving test that requires a dubious manoeuvre, parking on the right side of the road. Instead of making the Cycling Proficiency test mandatory for school children it has been dropped. Road safety begins with parents as soon as their child can walk and needs reinforcement all the way through school and beyond the driving test. Technology can’t replace common sense and a sense of self preservation. |
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