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Oct 31, 2019 14:21:37 GMT
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the graphs prove that manufactured safety measures have reduced fatalities, when we are theory crafting that drivers are more reckless than 50 years ago. it neither proves nor disproves, because its not measuring the same thing
similar situation with people who think old cars are better because you can replace the points at side of the road with your tool roll, and modern cars you need a laptop and 1st class honours in electrical engineering
then you go on AA statistics and the top 5 reasons for call outs are things like flat batteries, ran out of fuel, miss-fuel, lost keys.
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Last Edit: Oct 31, 2019 14:24:30 GMT by darrenh
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,834
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Oct 31, 2019 18:01:56 GMT
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the graphs prove that manufactured safety measures have reduced fatalities, when we are theory crafting that drivers are more reckless than 50 years ago. it neither proves nor disproves, because its not measuring the same thing similar situation with people who think old cars are better because you can replace the points at side of the road with your tool roll, and modern cars you need a laptop and 1st class honours in electrical engineering then you go on AA statistics and the top 5 reasons for call outs are things like flat batteries, ran out of fuel, miss-fuel, lost keys. As the other graph shows the number of reported accidents (not just fatalities) has also almost halved since the late 70s. I would surmise that this means either:- - Current day drivers are now more reckless that previous decades, but the car/road safety features are so good that they crash less - Current day drivers are no better or worse for recklessness than previous decades, but car/road safety features mean that they now crash less. - Drivers in previous decades were more reckless and the car/road safety features weren't good enough to stop them crashing. - You're all turning into the old dodders that used to annoy you whilst driving when you were younger.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:27:08 GMT
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Is it fair to say then, that modern cars arnt better/worse than old cars, they're just different. If you look at new vs old crash tests its is blatently obvious there is a clear winner, I wont be the one to link it because the bel air one makes for shocking viewing. The bel air doesn't fair well.
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Personally I think one area that has drastically reduced road accidents is the punishing entry into driving for new, young drivers. They can only have certain cars (small engines, low performance), they have insanely hard tests to pass compared tot he 80's when I was handed a 'pass first time' despite failing to answer any of the Highway code questions accurately (or even correctly), the insurance cost is absolutely absurd, and the penalties for transgressions in the early days of owning a driver's license are heavy. I believe new drivers just get an automatic ban for almost any road/traffic transgression nowadays, but maybe I've got that wrong.
I do feel really sorry for young people hoping to get a driving license and a car today, and I've no doubt that ultimately it all contributes to a longer term depression of the automotive industry. But, Asda car park donut gangs aside, I think it works well to keep the streets safe during those early years where we might not fully appreciate the responsibility we have taken on without certain incentives / disincentives.
When we all passed our tests in the mid 80's me and my gang of friends all got cheap Austin Metros and frankly we drove like utter dicks for a long time before enough of us had had crashes and we started taking it seriously and stopped being absolute idiots. I shudder sometimes at the lunacy of some of the things we did back then. We were cocky and thought we owned the road. We were nothing short of menaces with absolutely no respect for anyone else. We weren't alone in that. Back in those days getting your license was often misunderstood for getting a license to act like Evil Knievel. I rarely see that kind of idiocy these days, but it was still a prominent feature of my time in London throughout the 90's when I was driving there (sensibly). The roads were awash with young dangerous drivers.
I do think a large part of road incident reduction will be due to a heavier control over that youthful sense of freedom expressed through unchecked mayhem.
(In case anybody connects this anecdote to a previous anecdote of mine where I rolled a Metro at a busy intersection... I did do that but that was long after I stopped being a road idiot. It was actually a really bad accident caused by another young irresponsible road idiot ploughing into my side after speeding through a red light)
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Last Edit: Nov 1, 2019 11:25:19 GMT by Deleted
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I drove a 2005 VW Bora TDi for 10 years. I was lucky enough to get a 1 owner ex fleet car with FSH at a reasonable price.
It was quick, economical and and a boot big enough for 3 bodies. It also came with cruise control, heated seats and numerous other things.
As a tool it was perfect. Never let me down. As a driving experience, not so much. I sold it earlier this year and bought a 17 year old SLK. I absolutely love it, although it's nothing like as efficient or roomy. I don't care.
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What @quatermass said I learned in a mini, passed a test finally in a mk4 cortina and within about 8 months was blasting around in a 3000E capri mk1, like a lunatic, as already said with little time or respect for anyone else Racing through the Hatfield tunnel one night we were bo//ocked by 2 traffic cops in a senator, blues and sirens on, didn’t even get out of the car, they pulled alongside and the passenger leant right out of the window, pointed at each of us in turn and wagged his finger at us, and then shot off down the A1 at warp speed. It had the desired effect! However driving old cars did make me a better drive I believe, the brakes and handling on the capri were so poor that i learned evasive tactics and forward planning pretty quickly!
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One of the craziest things we used to do as kids in Austin Metros ( by now this is just me going off on an off-topic reminiscence and nothing at all to do with the subject of the thread, apologies) So this is a hill near to where I grew up. Called Egg Hill, presumably because it's a bit like an egg. It's quite long and farily steep although it really doesn't look it in these screen grabs... ^ That's a layby at the very top of the hill, and we used to congregate there in our Metros to smoke tabs, light fires, smash stuff and generally get up to no good. But then we discovered a new fun thing to do. We were all ex-BMXers and had enjoyed a childhood of jumping ramps on bikes. We missed that. That's the entry to the layby, which we would exit from in order to floor our 1.3 litre Metros as hard as we could to get up speed on our way downhill... and right there, where the car is parked, about 250 yards down the hill, just after a right hand bend, there used to be a concrete ramp. It was probably once used for a police car. In our lifetime it was used as a place to store a grit bin for the winter. But the grit bin had not been filled up for years and was full of rainwater. So we emptied it and kicked it off the back of the ramp. We used to come haring down the hill, launch off the ramp, and land in the field. We broke lots of stuff doing it, but we were amazed to discover that Metros would take off that ramp and land fairly squarely on four wheels over the small hedge in the disused field. The first person to do it had a near-dead Metro anyway that had been handed down to him for free from his older brother because it was junk. It really was junk, and he decided that he needed to break it in order to have any hopes of ever getting a better one. So his plan was to say the steering and/or brakes went and he had to use the off-ramp to try and stop or whatever. he was an absolute mad man at the best of times. Once word spread that he was going to do this there were thousands of people gathered to watch. he wasn't the kind of person to say something like this and then not actually do it. It was the event of the year. But he made the jump fine, and drove out of the field at the bottom and back up the hill to do it again. After that, we were all doing it. But to make the turn onto the ramp you had to head down that bend on the wrong side of the road. We were doing it in convoy, for weeks on end until eventually somebody did it and it went wrong and their metro ended up planted into the ground vertically and we all had to scarper. Utterly stupid behaviour. But also quite good fun at the time.
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sounds like harmeless fun to me. beats sat "playing" with some random dude on the other side of the world on your pxboxstation.
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'80 s1 924 turbo..hibernating '80 golf gli cabriolet...doing impression of a skip '97 pug 106 commuter...continuing cheapness making me smile!
firm believer in the k.i.s.s and f.i.s.h principles.
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That was a damn good entertaining read @quatermass, and reminded me of when I first got on the road. All my mates were exactly the same, total hoons, but I wasn't so much, sure I had my moments, but I was generally quite sedate dispite having a mini that sounded like a warzone. Probably because my childhood influences were slightly different to theirs. Building my first car meant I wasn't looking to thump a tree with it, watching banger racing meant I knew very well what happened if/when you hit something, and already spending years on the road with dad meant that seeing someone driving like a spanner had lost its novelty somewhat. They all drove cheap snotters so it didn't matter what happened to them. If they passed their test today I wonder if they would value it slightly differently.
BTW, my sedate style of driving didn't stop me getting in their cars and getting the wotsit scared out of me.
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Last Edit: Nov 1, 2019 20:22:22 GMT by bmcnut
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,834
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Road bangers was our favourite. We used to manage about 15 minutes of driving in convoy before somebody would give another member of the group's car a tap and then it was game on.
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I had one particular mate, well mates older brother actually, who i point blank refused to get in a car with He was taller than me, and I'm over 6 foot, yet he drove with his nose on the screen and his knees up each side of the wheel Reason? He couldn't see beyond the end of the bonnet, and refused to get his eyes tested When we went out as a group it was a case of ‘who's driving? Mark? I’ll take my own car’ and suddenly i was the one with a carfull! He never realised, even when he wrote off my mates immaculate cortina 4 ghia!
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We’ve strayed waaaaaaayy off topic here!
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voodoo57
Club Retro Rides Member
That's not 2 metres! come a little...Closer!
Posts: 2,753
Club RR Member Number: 137
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OK, here's my 2 pennies worth, for what it's worth.... I have used this same explanation for many years, ever since it happened really...... M25, sunny day, in a beaten up van, plodding along looking at all the silver, grey, black and white shapes all doing what they do best, sitting in the middle 2 lanes of the 4 doing 55.7mph etc etc... then, i look ahead, about 1.5 /2 miles away, something catches my eye, on the opposite side of the motorway is an Orange mk3 Cortina! Now, i know there are a lot of you out there who are the same as me (not quite, i am a little...different!) where your girlfriend, mate, even Nan can be sitting next to you, and they say after your comment...'How do you see these things? ' whether down a small road, a built up area, you see them on drives, side roads and in garages with the door only slightly open, but you see them! They stand out, they make us individuals to a degree, days of the sweeney and professionals are long gone! There will never be 2 Mk1 escorts the same or 2 renault Gordinis in the same street etc etc.... therefore, to try to bring this thread back around to the start, if the car in front of me didn't have a badge on the rear... i would struggle to guess what it was? a mazda? oh no! it's the same but with a fiesta badge on it.... (wonky as well) This car is better than that? ? how? this has the same engine as that! just a slightly different body style, it's inevitable that the sealed engine is due for mass production, companies will mould into others, there will be a couple of companies existing and the small privateers will struggle to compete, in the meantime, your car will have 2 small pipes sticking above the bonnet that cannot open, one for windscreen water, the other for the radiator (of sorts) when the red light on the dash starts flashing, the company will call you, tell you to pull over, they then appear with another car, (you have a choice of colour.... but it won't be Orange!) you do a swop sign on the line, and get into your new car (same as your previous one) and off you go, your old car (not that old) goes to be recycled... you then join the motorway to join everyone else... BUT! there is a difference, you stand out from many of the others, not because of your car (that would be silly in the future!) but because you have a boot sticker! (bought from a guy on Retro rides) who has a box of oldskool bumper stickers! oldskool from 2019.... it's coming...... we all know it! No change out of those 2 pennies.....
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