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It's become a standing joke with us, every time we buy a new to us car, within a week mr/mrs anonymous will either have opened a door onto it as hard as they can or driven into it in the supermarket car park, we no longer buy anything expensive so the damage stays there and just gets added to, any body repair money gets spent on good maintenance and rustproofing.
However a broader point is that the standard of driving is getting worse week by week, too many car drivers choose vehicles too big for them to cope with, ever more have no idea whatsoever how to park the things without electronics, unable to stay in their lanes in heavy traffic, incapable of overtaking on a two way road etc....this dumbing down is across the whole spectrum of road users though, not just car drivers.
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It's become a standing joke with us, every time we buy a new to us car, within a week mr/mrs anonymous will either have opened a door onto it as hard as they can or driven into it in the supermarket car park, we no longer buy anything expensive so the damage stays there and just gets added to, any body repair money gets spent on good maintenance and rustproofing.
However a broader point is that the standard of driving is getting worse week by week, too many car drivers choose vehicles too big for them to cope with, ever more have no idea whatsoever how to park the things without electronics, unable to stay in their lanes in heavy traffic, incapable of overtaking on a two way road etc....this dumbing down is across the whole spectrum of road users though, not just car drivers.
You're not kidding, this morning in a multistory carpark which has fairly generous spaces, I saw a woman struggling for a good minute to get a Hyundai i10 into a space. And it was the original small one, not the Yaris-sized current model.
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It's become a standing joke with us, every time we buy a new to us car, within a week mr/mrs anonymous will either have opened a door onto it as hard as they can or driven into it in the supermarket car park, we no longer buy anything expensive so the damage stays there and just gets added to, any body repair money gets spent on good maintenance and rustproofing.
However a broader point is that the standard of driving is getting worse week by week, too many car drivers choose vehicles too big for them to cope with, ever more have no idea whatsoever how to park the things without electronics, unable to stay in their lanes in heavy traffic, incapable of overtaking on a two way road etc....this dumbing down is across the whole spectrum of road users though, not just car drivers.
You're not kidding, this morning in a multistory carpark which has fairly generous spaces, I saw a woman struggling for a good minute to get a Hyundai i10 into a space. And it was the original small one, not the Yaris-sizred current model.
I always park my car in a bay that is as far away from other vehicles as I can and if possible at the end of a row to limit any risk of damage but on most occasions when I return somebody has parked next to mine, why? I've been all over my cars for magnets and can't find any, very strange. To go slightly off topic, why do people in supermarket car parks reverse into spaces and then risk damaging cars with their trolley as they struggle to execute the transfer of their purchases from trolley to vehicle. Before I hear that it's safer to drive out rather than reverse if drivers can't reverse safely then they shouldn't be on the road.
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It's not just you. I can park in a totally empty car park row, walk away, and then come back and someone has parked tightly next to mine. All those other empty spaces but no, it has to be the one next to mine. Owner must think their car gets lonely or something and needs company.
I once asked such an owner once why it was important to park next to my car in an empty car park. I didn't get an answer, just a lot of eye blinking and cogs turning between the ears.
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I'm not saying that the majority of older drivers are a liability, far from it, but there appears to be the odd percent of the "silly old sod" mentality.
My local Wyvales gardening centre is a case in point. You can often spot the 80+ driver by the way they park in a particular bay (diagonal in some cases or just plain p***ed), whilst being literally inches from the car in the next bay. Then you have the entertainment of watching said owner, often with nagging wife interjecting guidance, trying to reverse out whilst coming cringingly within inches of surrounding cars. These people you go around the car park again, just to park away from because you know that putting yourself in harms way is not an option. You know the type, seen lots of accidents in the rear view mirror, never been in one.
But the worst? The woman driver behind the wheel of a monster Chelsea tractor who just cannot handle the beast, nose barely above the top of the steering wheel. I once watched a woman in a Q7, a veritable beast of a car, doing a 97 thousand point turn in a railway car park whilst being totally oblivious to the cars around her. I wondered who's insurance she was driving on, as her broker would have had some sleepless nights based on the quality of the driving being presented.
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The silly old sods were brought up on cars that needed to be controlled (driven properly), but were basically compact in design, had excellent visibility all round, had excellent turning circles due to RWD or narrow wheels/tyres on FWD so even those had an acceptable lock.
Now those same people go out and buy an auto, but unfortunately not being mechanically modern minded end up being talked into some dreadful lump of fit for nothing automated manual or some equally useless thing with two clutches and a lifespan of three weeks after warranty expires, these things are utterly useless for close manoevering control and always will be.
The car will have A B C pillars anything up to 4 times the width of their old car, the A pillar as well as being thicker will be raked back more for streamlining innit so effectively can be up to 6 times as thick for vision at any given level, higher waistlines with lower roofs and narrower windows result further cutting vision, then the windows at the back must be darkened for fashion cutting vision a bit more, and the rear window should resemble a port hole having lots of sexy looking black bordering and kicked up at both sides just in case the poor geezer trying to park might have been able to see out past the row of rear headrests.
It'll be front wheel drive, with a turning circle the same as a 1970's 40 ft Pantechnicon, it'll be sat on huge wheels with elastic band tyres painted on so our old mate's terrified of getting anywhere near a kerb or a ruined alloy beckons.
Last but not least the car will have no more room inside than his old 70's Escort but will be half again longer and wider, with really thick curved doors so you need twice the space beside you to get out as you did from that old Escort, not forgetting those fashion accessory door mirrors tiny useless things set into huge sporty looking plastic casings twice as bulky as they need to be.
Our old mate does well to drive the modern heap at all.
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