Be Excellent To Each Other

Humblest apologies, Mr. Norton. I didn't see that bit in the post, my mind seems to disregard stuff in brackets (I'm a cock).

Empirical real-world evidence has shown that traffic travelling lots slower than the speed limit is more dangerous than traffic moving above it

hence variable speed limits work?

I was joking based on the fact that I smacked into the back of a guy who'd stopped on a slip lane.

RTAs are no joke!

I would feel utterly unsafe if decision to apply the brakes or adjust the speed were outside of my control. Even if someone is over the limit, I would rather they had control of the vehicle, not a black box.

They're called RTCs now. RTA suggests that it might have been (shock!) an actual accident, with no-one to blame.

And we can't be having that, can we? What would all these firms—with real lawyers—do?

What does the C stand for in RTC?

Collision.

oh yes of course...

Calamity.

Craster

Any news on your car?

Nah. They said it would be midweek before the assessment was done.

Have you got a Courtesy car?

Again, once they've made up their mind what happens next, I get a courtesy car. A little annoying, I must admit.

This is why I don't feel comfortable driving an automatic. /control freak

I quite liked that automatic HYAnDAI OF DEATH I had in Ireland. It was proper mental.

I hardly use cruise control for this reason... feels odd just pointing the car

If you don't get a courtesy car as soon as yours is unavailable, what's the fucking point in paying for a courtesy car policy?

Yeah, that's rather what I said. Their response was "blah blah blah small print blah". My understanding was that the courtesy car comes from the garage that does the repairs, and they aren't open on the weekend. As a result the car went into a holding area and I won't see a courtesy car until they transfer it to the garage.

I, er... You what?

That raised an eyebrow here too... even in an automatic you're still in full control of the important bits, Jasmine. Namely the "stop" and "go" pedals

Hypothetically a car changing gear by itself when you're cornering hard would have a poor ending for all concerned.

Of course if you have a car with TC or SC or ABS you're not in full control of the go and stop pedals already.

It just feels weird, it always sounds like the engine is over revving and I want to change gears. I was never a very confident driver to begin with (alright now though) and not being in control of everything I can be makes me feel a little nervous.

The ESP on MrsA golf is awesome fun. I love it to bits. It's an awesomely fun "get out of jail free" card, and anyone that thinks otherwise tends to have "lost the back end on a bend", or somesuch. Thing is, a lot of the time, one doesn't know that they are working it's only when they really kick in that people notice them.<sup>1

1</sup> Someone from uk.rec.motorcycles talking about his Alpina BMW car thing.

W00t - write off! Not that they've confirmed they'll pay it yet.

Also, they need me to send them a copy of my insurance certificate. Of course, I have no idea where that is, so they're going to send a new one out to me. For me to then send back to them. FFS.

Hahaha? Seriously?

Yeah. Morons.

Insurance companies: cunts, the lot of them.

Seven months on, and barely anything has been done with regards to my insurance claim. No liability has been decided as the other guy's insurance have been dragging their feet to the max. They were supposed to look at the case and get back to me within three months, but they keep making bullshit excuses and there's no repercussion for stalling.

And to top it all off, I appointed my own solicitor, who tried to get hold of my insurance company with regards to acting on my behalf as per the vague terms of my policy. They didn't bother getting back to him, despite numerous letters, phone calls and emails for four months. When they did get in touch with him, they explained that he couldn't act as my solicitor unless liability was refuted, but that seeing as he'd done so much legwork he might as well carry on against the terms of my policy.

Complete, utter, incompetent lazy shits, the lot of them.

edit: I'm back in hospital on June 1st, hopefully to be discharged. If that happens, my solicitor will send me to an independent doctor for a medical, then he's going to take the NFU (other insurance company) to court. He says the courts will be pretty pissed off with them.

Ooh, you may remember that a couple of weeks back I emailed the council to ask them about their strategy for incorporating accessible electric vehicle charging points in my local district:





Hurrah! Wait, some guys are going to some meetings? Oh. Good to see you're right on top of this, chaps.

Did you expect them to be out digging up the street?

I expected them to have some kind of plan for how they were going to do it - on street versus dedicated parking structures, some dates around when they would have budget to begin installation, that sort of thing.

Craster you fool. Man was not meant to live at such speed!

Heh. Even the fact that they mention 'pilot scheme boroughs' without giving any indication whether they themselves are part of this pilot scheme is silly.

When I was a kid you used to see loads of rusty cars and vans about. These days you don't see as many, or if they are then they are 10 year old Fords.

So why don't cars rust anymore?

Like the Chemical Brothers say, GALVANISE!

In Canada, we had our car re-rustproofed every year regardless, because of the harsh winter and fact that the previous winter's road salt is still there in summer, still eating your car.

Saying all that, there's a Vectra on my street with some pretty bad rust, and it's not that old (R reg, I think). And that's far from the newest car I've seen being eaten.

They're made from better materials? They're galvanised?

Isn't it just that cars are cheaper in real terms and so rather than fix up old rusty ones they just get scrapped and replaced?

Cars for the UK are undersealed - it's one of the biggest things to check/do when importing from somewhere like Cyprus or Japan.

My Octavia had a service and diagnostic at Awesome yesterday. They can't find the cause of (or even reproduce) the craploads of (little, intermittant) things that point at turbo system issue(s), but the ECU's flagged up a new code since the coolant sensor was fixed a few weeks ago.
Guess what my local garage did (and apparently fucked up) in November? Here's a hint - it rhymes with "ham felt". Shit. Awesome reckon it's an hour to check how many teeth out it is*, and another to re-fit it properly. After that, we can return to figuring out the other (pre-existing) issues.

* "Probably half a one, or the tensioner's not tight so it's only showing up now the belt's stretching slightly" - makes sense, given it's only showing up as intermitant after 6 months, and the engine hasn't beaten itself into an exploded mess yet, that we've noticed.

And what I thought was, on the drive home, is it might be nice to chop in the M3 against a 1.9cdti Astra for Charl, giving me back the Octy to have a play with. Lower insurance, more comfort, less costly maintenance and 10+ mpg better economy, for both of us.

Then I looked at how much the 1.8T (150bhp) 4x4 Elegance goes for. Fucking hell - £3k for something better suited as a base for power and handling. Another £3k to get it to ~240bhp and I'm laughing; it's 80% the same changes as the RS would need anyway - intake, exhaust, bigger intercooler, remap, suspension, anti-roll bars, brake pads, seats - just RS front discs and calipers, plus the S3's diff software needed - that's an absolute bargain.

No need to spend £10k on a 2 litre + big turbo conversion for it that some people do.

One of my favourite little stories of insurance companies comes from one of my friends. She recently had her Yaris written off when some comtemptable arsehole who was three times over the legal drink-drive limit ran a red light at a crossroads and straight into the side of her. He was arrested on the spot.

About a year later, she finally hears from her insurance company about her claim. Apparentely the other party's insurance would like to settle the claim 50/50, would that be alright?

AFAIK the major advance has been in terms of paint treatments, more than anything else.

Galvanising is good, but only tends to be used on more expensive cars.

Heh, I once sat scratching my head for an entire day whilst trying to figure out why the timing marks weren't lining up on my old Sierra, while changing the timing chain. Someone had put it on wrong, and then it had stretched by exactly two teeth or something. Very confusing. Weirdly I think it ran better the way it was though.

Awesome

I guess that's probably it. You still see some Ka's that rust when still fairly new, but more expensive models don't. My old Golf had a couple of small spots (L reg) but the newer one (S reg) seems immune. Touchwood!

I was driving in West Sussex today and got stuck behind an identical car to mine being towed. From the familiar burning smell from a few weeks back I guess his coil has packed up as well.

No because you used to see cars that were 5 years or older that would start to rust. Fords and Japanese cars especially.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, all but the cheapest cars are now treated so they won't rust.

My driver's door has started to rust, annoyingly. Even more annoyingly, I'm not 100% sure that my car has been undersealed so I don't know how bad the rust is underneath, if at all.