January 2002
Elderly man charged for Saanich accident
Vehicle driven into window of driver services office
Thursday, January 03, 2002
CH
Vehicle slams into driver's testing office.
SAANICH, B.C. - The elderly man who drove his car into the Saanich driver services branch on Wednesday has been charged.
The man was attempting to pass his driving re-examination when he lost control of his car.
"(The incident began) as he was reversing into a parking spot," explained Constable Marc Chateau of the Saanich RCMP. "I believe he hit the gas instead of the brake pedal at which time the car he was driving knocked back a door of the vehicle that was next to him. Then the car jumped the little sidewalk and broke the window on the motor vehicle branch."
The man has been charged with ?reverse when unsafe,? which is a $98 fine under the Motor Vehicle Act.
The incident marked the third time the man failed his driving exam.
Two people sustained minor injuries as a result of the accident. Read more
Judging from many posts, If you only do long enough journeys often enough the car will last for ever.
But that is not practical politics for those of us whose needs (apart from joyous if illegal blasts) are occasional shopping trips or taking SWMBO to medical appointments and things - and who pay for our own petrol.
There must be some mileage at which a car which has done short runs is a better bet than one which has done 200,000 on motorways. 5 miles? 500 miles? 5,000 miles? 50,000 miles?.....
Or when it comes to disposing, should one indulge in "positive clocking"? Read more
In the future, car life will not be limited by mechanicals, or even by rust and corrosion, see previous posts about out of date airbags at about 12-14 yrs
.
When (not if) this becomes an MoT item people will be throwing away perfectly usable but 'unsafe' vehicles since the costs of replacement will easily exceed the value of the vehicle. Insurers will probably get in on the act to.
I suppose the answer is to start collecting existing pre 72 classics now, at least they are repairable. My version of Bangereconomics has an element of if there are enough parked outside, one will start!
Must go, got get the welding kit out....
I hope I am not repeating something that has already been discussed. If so, please forgive me.
Yesterday on the news a chap (in the UK) caught on a speed camera refused to say who was driving and has now taken his case the the European Court of 'Justice'.
He says, and rightly so, that for centuries it has been up to the crown to prove the crime without reasonable doubt. It is not for him to own up to it. And the old police caution warned people of this.
I thought the law as it stands, punishes the Keeper of the vehicle if no driver can be traced.
What do people reckon? Sorry if you have thrashed this one to bits already. Read more
Lekas,
Whilst not exactly contesting the case in a court, I rec'd a Notice of Intent to Prosecute(NIP) for a speed camera offence.
As it happened I knew myself and car were hundreds of miles away at time of offence. I filled out the mandatory form and put "not known" for driver and did not reveal my alibi. They wrote back dropping the prosecution with no explation.
It turned out much later that my VRN had been cloned and used on an identical car - but this wasn't known at the time.
My contention is that it is just too much trouble for the police to pursue a contested case. However if you challenge them on a point of principle I suspect that will be a different matter.
There was the celebrated case of senior police officer in Yorkshire? who had his case dropped when he stated he didn't know who was driving.
Bob H
Just been in the loft to get the big box for packing away the Xmas decs. Thought I'd have a nose in the car magazine stock and pulled out a 1972 Motor for tonight's entertainment.
In no particular order.....
An editorial on the 1968/69 TRRL accident investigations showed human error was thought to be a factor in over 70% of accidents with the remainder equally split between vehicle design/condition issues and the road environment (Signs, surfaces, weather etc). Guess what? Not one mention of speed!
A road test of the Citroen GS Club Estate. Plus points included - Outstanding ride, roadholding, steering and brakes. Excellent luggage platform with high lifting tailgate and self-levelling suspension unaffected by load.
A comment that the 7-litre AC Cobra had held the 0-60 record time of 4.2 secs for over four years and they couldn't see when it would be beaten.
Small ads including a boxed unused Lotus bottom half engine for £50.
A full page ad for a Pioneer 8-track stereo with long and medium wave radio.
A mouthwatering group test of the Aston martin DBS V8, Citroen SM, Lamborghini Espada and the V12 E-type. Their conclusion was that you should make up your own mind. Having said that they rated the E-type (£3519) highly besides the overpriced Lamborghini (£9505). Torque from the Jaguar V12 was such it would pull from 10-145mph in top gear.
BMW 2002Tii's were winning the production car classes which included Z28 Camaros and Citroen SM's.
There was talk about the excise duty rate on LPG for car use, an LPG conversion cost was about £175.
Adverts included Kenlowe fans, Cosmic wheels (with the completely naked girl on the car bonnet!), Hilka spanners, Ellard garage doors, Locking wheel nuts and bargain Russian radios at £9.95 from "Shoppertunities" in Uxbridge Road.
Not in the magazine but music of course. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Band were at No.1 with Amazing Grace but due to be knocked off for the following two weeks by T.Rex with Metal Guru.
Do you think I've too much time on my hands?
David Read more
Umm, I got your e-mail David, and I replied at least an hour ago.
Thanks.
Ok - I'm going to buy one but I don't want to spend more than £100 - any recommendations? Read more
Oops!
Results are posted in the news on this website. I'll also be on LBC radio 1152 MW at the new time of 3-4pm (15.00 - 16.00hrs) rather than 2-3 to announce them and take your calls.
HJ Read more
Therese is in charge of her show, not me.
HJ
I think HJ said he would be on LBC tomorrow at 2pm UK Time ?
Well, despite the attrocious miscarriage of justice and distortion of reality which has, by some indescribably unlikely chain of events, prevented the Freelander winning "Worst Car of the Year", I thought I'd like to listen to the show.
So, for those people like me based outside the UK, although I believe myself to be the only expat in the world, there is a way....
Going to this website - www.lbc.co.uk/ - and looking down in the bottom right corner should allow you to listen to the radio over the Internet. You'll need Realplayer but you can get that free from www.real.com/. You only need the free one, so don't go paying for anything !!
And whilst I'm being helpful, anyone who downloads loads of stuff should be looking at www.getright.com - excellent tool and very simple to use.
I can't test the radio broadcast from here since my PC has no speakers, but I regularily use this method to listen to Capital Radio from home, so I don't see an issue.
Anyway, I'm tuning is, so you better be good HJ !!
And, HJ, if the Freelander gains the coveted position it so clearly deserves, I'll leave the unmarked, untraceable, currency in the sports bag behind the bus-stop.
BTW, for some reason I can't find where HJ said what time he'd be on, so if anyone else remembers.......
M.
p.s. are you going to plug this site ? You ought to. Read more
I also enjoyed the 2ed half of it ... well done John do let us know when you will be on again
~R
My motor lives out. The short driveway goes steeply uphill to the road. Obviously, these last few mornings windows have been frosted up. Being a noted skinflint I decided against one of those coldstart devices.
Conventional wisdom seems to be that you shouldn't run the engine at tickover before moving off. But in my particular circumstances what would you guys suggest is the better option:
(i) allow to tickover just whilst scraping off the ice, or
(ii)scrape off ice then start engine and go straight up the driveway.
Your advice appreciated! Read more
Clear the ice off the windows, then get in, start up and drive away. Cold idling is thoroughly bad for the car, as confirmed by all the manuals I have ever read -- Ford, Rover, VW, Audi, Mercedes all strongly recommend driving off without cold idling. Add to that the pollution and neighbourhood noise annoyance and there's no other option really.
Your recent letter reply in the Daily Telegraph regarding the failure of the water pump on the Audi2.5TDI frightened me to death. I have such a car and sofar the cogged belt driving the diesel pump has failed twice. Although the engine bay is plastered with signs saying that the timing belt etc must be replaced every100,000km when I went for the 40,000 mile service I was told that Audi had change the recommendation and the belts had to be changed. Obviously failure of the timing belt would be catastrophic and I had it changed. When the diesel belt failed for the second time at 80,000miles I had the timing belt done again. The cost for the job is about350 pounds and Audi justify the lesser period between replacement as an improvement to their spec. Can you tell me how realistic is the possibility of water pump failure and what would be the symptoms leading up to the failure?
Maurice Young Read more
Ian,
This is interesting. When I changed the timing belt (at 60,000 miles) on my A4 2.6 I wondered about the water pump (the timing belt drives it and it sits between the cylinder heads). I'll plan to change it with the next cam belt at 100k...
Does anyone else have any experience of this?
Martin.
There's been a great upsurge of messages since the holidays ended. We old retired blighters, who pay our own 'phone bills, can't afford to read them all! Read more
Lack of broadband is one of my biggest gripes. We spend many hours on line and would kill for a nice fast connection - as would a number of our clients. Even £100 /month is fine for all of us. I am not justifying the price as I think it should be much lower. But in business terms, if you can't get broadband because your local exchange has not been converted and you can't get cable because there is no local cable franchise, it is a real killer. Some of our clients have even considered moving to satellite but the start up fees for that are around a grand and monthly fees around £150.
Britain is really lagging here. In a recent Computer rag I read that the UK is 23rd in the world for broadband access. Friends from abroad seem to confirm this. A colleague from Sweden visited the other day - there he said that at home he has 512/256K for around £10 /month. At work they have 2Mb for around £100/month.
The French have also just invested around £2 billion into their telco infrastructure to make sure they are not left behind. They have realised that taking so much money out of the telcos for 3G mobile licences has left the telcos a bit cash strapped and unwilling to invest in broadband technology.
This government has just taken some £25 billion out of the telco industry and has also recently confirmed that they are unwilling to invest anything back into ensuring broadband is adopted swiftly. Short sighted or what? Meanwhile business is suffering and being upstaged by our continental friends..
If only they had had much more reasonable annual licence fees for 3g mobile licences instead of the one off mega sum that has proved to be so crippling.
Oh well rant over - I don't expect much to change.
Browse
What I found amazing was that they let this old chap keep trying to get his permit back... you would think at some point they would say to him it was time to hang it up... I hope I have good enough friends when the time comes as I doubt I will see it in my self...
~R