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Surely puddles are of no interest unless one is going at high speed and they are very large? The only significant risks are loss of control through aquaplaning and soaking passing pedestrians in muddy water from head to foot. The car doesn't care one way or the other.
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It has bitten me once. I was driving a 55 reg Multipla (awful car - my opinion) and hit a puddle at 25-30mph. I got soaked. It came from below the dash somewhere and sprayed me and the interior even up to the carpeted dash (hmm nice). Goodness knows here it came in from as many a puddle or flood passed through again and it never repeated the performance.
Edited by Webmaster on 02/12/2008 at 00:16
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Enoughalready has reminded me that in Africa somewhere in a long-distance taxi, Peugeot 504 most likely, a jet of muddy water suddenly came through a hole in the floor and went straight up my trouser leg.
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When I had a Westfield ( have mentioned that before ? ) I became friends with a couple of other owners. Well, we weren't actually friends but no one else would really speak to us so we had to make do.
One of the guys proudly showed off his latest mod at a meet. ( see how the jargon just trips off the keyboard eh ? ) He had drilled lots of little holes in the floor in a pleasing pattern which spelled the letters WF in holes. The theory was that quite apart from its dubious aesthetic benefits that it would be a cunning way of dealing with the old "I left it parked with the hood off but it was raining when I came back" dilemma.
We admired his handiwork and compared roll hoop mounting techniques etc for a while and went home. It rained, heavily. He decided to do away with the little holes after that.
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 01/12/2008 at 15:04
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Whilst living in the Soviet Union years back, I was once imprisoned in the back of a Volga taxi which would charmingly fill with its own exhaust fumes whilst stopped at traffic lights. Whilst we were grateful to the driver for breaking the unwritten Soviet highway code disallowing stopping on red and recommending a good blast of horn instead, I would have gladly swapped you for a spurt of puddle water up the trews.
Compounding the problem, of course, was the fact that this particular Volga was no exception to the Soviet taxi rule of having had its rear window winders removed, lest a fare should nick them.
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@Alanovich. All rings very true in modern Russia. I particularly like the way taxi drivers take wearing a seat belt as an insult as it means you don't trust them.
To save passengers from this dilemma, a lot of them considerately remove the seat belts. Hurtling through the streets of Moscow at 100km/h in a Volga with non-existent brakes and no seat belts is a uniquely terrifying experience.
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Bagpuss, I'm strangely comforted to hear that things have changed very little. My Eastern sojourns these days stop at Belgrade, where they have the same attitude to those who don a seat belt in their vehicle. Raise eyebrow, shake head, suppress laughter, shrug shoulders and tell you you don't need to worry so much. Crunch Yugo Florida into first and tear off down the trams-only reservation, only leaving it to turn hard left across all the other six lanes down a one-way street.
Do all Russian taxi drivers still have a little clipboard stuck to the windscreen with a picture of Sam Fox/Linda Lusardi clipped to it?
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Do all Russian taxi drivers still have a little clipboard stuck to the windscreen with a picture of Sam Fox/Linda Lusardi clipped to it?
Which reminds me of a trip in a taxi when I lived in Romania which had not only a picture of a naked lady stuck on the dashboard, but a delightful 'Mary, Mother of Jesus' icon sitting proudly beside.... I'm sure Mary was proud :-)
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Do all Russian taxi drivers still have a little clipboard stuck to the windscreen with a picture of Sam Fox/Linda Lusardi clipped to it?
LOL, you must have been there a while ago.
What has changed, of course, are the prices. Last time I was there in September I got robbed charged 300 Euros to go from Domodedovo airport to an industrial estate 25km away and back in a relatively new (i.e. less than 10 years old) but completely unroadworthy Volga. The driver belonged to the "labour the engine in as high a gear as possible 'cos I think it saves fuel" persuasion.
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The driver belonged to the "labour the engine in as high a gear as possible 'cos I think it saves fuel" persuasion.
Bagpuss, I remember those well. Many a time I thought I'd witness a Volga gear stick finally giving up the ghost and shooting through the windscreen or straight in to my chest. I consoled myself with the fact that if it did hit me, the replacement Plasticraft gear knob containing some trinket from a holiday on the Black Sea would be blunt enough to make penetration of the rib cage unlikely.
Also, there were those who thought driving at night without any lights saved fuel, and those who liked to switch the engine off whilst free-wheeling downhill. Fortunately, Moscow is quite flat, but Tbilisi is another story. Terrifying.
I spent a fair bit of time there between 1985-91 in various Republics of the Soviet Onion, leaving a few weeks before Bozza took the White House and I have never, sadly, returned. I plan to go next spring, if I can hold down my job.
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