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In the interests of safe driving you shouldn't wear a hat at all. A hat effectively increases the mass of your head and consequently if you wear a hat you won't be able to turn your head as fast. If anything you should seriously consider shaving your head to reduce your head-mass to a minimum.
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And don't wear brown shoes in Town.
As an aside ref the thread title, I came across an enthusiast's guide to motoring written in the 1950s, and apparently then people never talked about the car being "in" a gear, but always "on".
I think it might derive from very early days when machinery changed gear by lifting belts or chains from pulley or sprocket, a bit like a cycle deraileur. I have never actually heard anyone use the expression "change down onto third" however. Maybe it was a dialect reserved for people who drove blown Bentleys in tweeds and goggles.
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no hat wearing in cars.....next you'll be telling me this 80's ponytail i have isnt gonna comeback in to fashion
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As I have grown more mature, my head hair has now reached sub prime levels.
Now I don't mind warm rain, but cold rain, or snow or frost means I HAVE to wear a hat. So in the winter mornings when it's raining, I wear a waterprood hat when walking or a baseball cap when running. If really cold - %C or lower, I wear a balaclava.
Of course when driving, I must remember to take a hat on wet days so the shapeless waterproof thing - like a battered trilby but less shaped.. may be worn .. by accident. (I grow forgetful).
It would be nice to think a hat was not essential but in the summer I get a sunburnt head:-(
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OAP - I suggest you build up to the hat wearing.....The process starts with you buying Werthers originals.....
Next its the string back gloves .......
Then its the pipe clamped firmly between the teeth ....
Then its the cardigan from the Edinburgh Wool shop
.....and finally you find yourself staring in to Dunns shop window at the trilbys thinking - that looks nice.
By then its too late , you have reached the bottom of the deadly downward spiral . :0)
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you forgot when you find over 50's life assurance junk mail informative not a nuisance
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Hang in there a bit longer OAP - unless of course you wear a baseball cap backwards.
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If you want to look old then buy a hat, but if you want to look cool then buy a baseball cap with a big peak, F1 style. I'm old but I still like to look cool, innit!
Edited by L'escargot on 14/05/2008 at 08:49
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People in baseball caps don't look cool, Escargot. They look like gormless yanks.
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Yes m'lud. Whatever, innit!
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Unfortuneately Dunns closed many years ago;something to do with lack of sales of hats!!!
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Yes, the demise of Dunns was a disaster - I'm on my last deerstalker and pair of corduroy slacks with that famous label. Fortunately they look like lasting forever.
To return to the subject, last weekend I did quite a few miles (well, kilometres) in the sunshine at the wheel of my friend's LWB Defender station wagon and had a lot of fun. It even boasts a two-person tent on the roof rack! But once, to my horror, I found that because of the headroom inside I was driving while still wearing my Panama. Snatched it off straight away...
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I think there is scope for a bit more research into the perceived characteristics of drivers wearing different kinds of hat.
As a lifelong non-hat wearer in any circumstances, let alone in a car, I have only recently decided to take the plunge and wear a panama on really hot days in the garden or beach. It is obviously an older person's choice, but manages to convey a subtle hint of debonair rougishness, perhaps something disreputable from long ago. Or so I like to think.
So I am intrigued by m-h's near gaffe of wearing one in the car. What kind of image would that portray, or perhaps betray? Might I be tempted to start calling policemen "Dear boy", like John Gielgud?
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Reminds me of a large American of indeterminate age I knew when I worked in the south of Brazil. He sported a Panama, a bedraggled once-white linen suit and a cheroot. Add this to his intrigueing false leg and his penchant for Chivas Regal and you get the picture. His party piece was to get a steak knife and ram it into the wooden leg to emphasise a point particularly if there was someone new at the table. Seen grown men nearly faint at this point. He drove an ancient 911 in a sort of similarly perhaps once-white paint job. He always drove with the Panama on but with the sunroof open. The whole package sort of worked in rural Brazil but might not cut it in most British locations.
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Just before I succumb to believing I am 'rogueishly debonair' I ought to admit that, hidden in the Prelude boot are a British waterproof trilby, a black Fedora and the aforementioned Panama - so I am prepared for all situations, but only when not in the car. Elsewhere I have a woolly bobble hat and a Thinsulate equivalent because it gets parky chopping logs here in the winter. And the deerstalker I wore for decades is in semi-retirement in the wardrobe after the French neighbours began to talk about me...
I guess it all comes from being forced to wear a school cap for years.
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If your gearbox fails and they tell you the main problem is with reverse, then you are not "wearing the correct gear".
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Of course, one's selection of a car is based on its ability to allow one to enter and exit with dignity wearing a frock coat and tophat.
The Yaris just about would allow a tophat and I don't think it would catch on the sunroof when closed as the fitting are flush with the roof lining.
I think the last time I wore a frock coat was when we were married... when I was much younger :-(
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"Of course, one's selection of a car is based on its ability to allow one to enter and exit with dignity wearing a frock coat and tophat."
No probs in a Berlingo - and what else would I wear driving such a car??
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>>I think the last time I wore a frock coat was when I was much younger :-(
You'd have a problem if the last time was when you were older!
Unless of course your name was Cher ;>)
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All this talk of apparel has got me wondering, will i have to go back up over the border to replace my harris tweed jacket and waistcoat.
I sneakily keep trying to get a matching flat cap, but swmbo seems tuned to my 'meldrew' instincts and puts the boot in, i am tempted by some of the more stylish trilby offshoots as well.
Tell me quietly fellow members of the 'i'll dress how i jolly well want to club', where can i go to get some decent tweeds apart from a shooting lodge?
(motoring link) plenty of headroom for all sorts of titfers in the hilux, another good reason for buying it.
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I've worn my black beanie hat many times whilst driving in the winter months, never thought it had had any effect on my driving to be honest.
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Wear a hat when driving? Being slightly above average height I find the majority of cars lack headroom let alone hatroom! This was less of a problem when I started driving so it seems as cars have got larger they have got lower, because I have not grown in the upward direction.
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No-one has mentioned the BERET-Army or French.
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A beret, army style anyway, I think possibly is the exeption to the general rule that wearing a hat in a car adds 20 years to one's age and driving style.
Thinking of those military landrovers one sees on the A40 near Sennybridge, it suggests a tough no-nonsense ownership of the road, preferably in a large but rather shabby vehicle with galvanised bumpers and clad in shovels, coils of rope etc, and with vertical exhausts. Those drivers are fearless.
For even more subtly restrained toughness, how about a close-cropped hairstyle and the beret rolled up in the shoulder strap?
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" the general rule that wearing a hat in a car adds 20 years to one's age and driving style"
Well if that's the rule, then I should have an old age pension backdated for over a decade:-)
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Many thanks for all the interesting replies and for some good advice. Without hesitation I award first prize to Helicopter. The only thing he didn't mention was that I ought to be driving a Honda Jazz but perhaps he knew from previous posts that I already do that.
I must confess that this started out as a tongue-in-cheek thread following a joke which MBH and I shared about the need to beware of drivers wearing hats (hence the smiley in the OP) not anticipating that it would arouse so much interest.
I have never been a hat person because a size 7.1/4 hat on a 5'6" body tends to look all hat but back in the 50s I had to wear something on my head when riding my Lambretta so a cloth cap was the answer. Imagine 21k miles with just a cloth cap for protection! Skid-lids were few and far between.
However, I must just tell you that recently I could not resist buying a trilby which caught my eye at John Lewis. There was a choice of two styles....one with pictures of Lambrettas all over it and the other, which I settled for, was appropriately called the Surf Board Trilby. I no longer scoot but I still surf.
Unfortunately, this headgear is not shown on nthe JL web-site so if you want to be seen in what the well-dressed scooterist or surfer is wearing this season, I recommend a visit to your nearest JL branch.
Thanks again....OAP.
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