| A naive question about lorries |
[Jan. 24th, 2008|12:54 am] |
Prompted by my driving to Coventry and back today (I haven't done that for a while). I've never quite understood this one; someone explain it to me please? (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gerald_duck, I'm looking mainly at you here.)
How, on $DEITY's green earth, have we ended up in the situation where all HGVs appear to be limited to very slightly different speeds around 60mph and it is legal (AFAIK) for them to attempt to overtake each other on two-lane roads such as the A14, painfully slowly, over the course of about a mile, jamming up dozens of following vehicles? The total time lost to occupants of following vehicles due to this phenomenon seems large. More importantly, so does the increase in accident risks, considering typical impatiently short following distances.
Have there ever been any attempts to get a law passed banning overtaking with a speed difference of less than ~4mph (at least, when there are only two lanes)? If so, what was the outcome? |
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| I am become White Van Man, shouter of obscenities |
[Jul. 3rd, 2007|12:59 am] |
Cambridge is now wildeabandonless (but it's ok, because she'll come back regularly). Things I have learned and/or (over-)generalised from helping with this process:
- Cambridge Car & Van Rental are to be recommended and will hire vans to a 23-year-old (me as of a month ago), though they were a bit booked up and therefore didn't have a long wheel base one available.
- I seem to be able to drive a van passably (yes, I'm aware that this is almost as foolish an ability to announce as tech support).
- I probably would have had somewhat more difficulty with a long wheel base van. Manoeuvres were difficult enough as it was.
- London driving is hard, London parking is harder, more so in a van. This was only the Finsbury Park area; I dread to think what it would have been like further in.
- "Drive-by-wire" vehicles (those with power-assisted everything) are annoying; they provide far too little feedback in the controls and therefore require more attention to e.g. sound.
- There is nowhere sensible to place a GPS receiver in a van cab, even if separate from the device running the software; there's just slightly too little sky that isn't blocked by metal. This can result in directions being spoken a few seconds too late, which is irritating. Adjustable timing of TomTom's directions would have solved this, but does not exist.
- Moving the brake pedal of an empty van by a seemingly sane amount will result in enough braking power to stop a full van (and therefore potentially an emergency stop).
- People don't just slam van doors out of frustration or for dramatic effect, they really don't close properly otherwise.
- On a vehicle the proper parking of which is that difficult, I can be grudgingly persuaded of the usefulness of the I-have-parked-stupidly-and-caused-a-hazard lights, for 30-second stops.
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| Happy New Year... |
[Dec. 31st, 2005|07:11 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  pensive | ] |
...to those who are celebrating it, but especially to those doing nothing special and thinking "oops". *shrug* While I'm at it, do we really need a new year? I quite liked the old one, myself. :-)
In other news, I have a car (Corsa in the end, because it has ABS). |
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