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A P-Plater In The Family
My teenage son got his provisional licence last week. I guess that most parents in this situation will have a mixture of emotions: relief (no more having to sit in the passenger seat! no more Mum’s taxi duty!), worry (I’ve read the stats on young male drivers…), wistfulness (my little baby boy is all grown up) and pride (hasn’t he done well!). I had expected that I would be a lot more worried the first time he drove solo (out to his uncle’s place for dinner and to drop off some furniture). When it actually happened, I was more worried that he was going to not tie the furniture onto the deck of the old ute properly and have it fall onto the road.
Which brings me neatly to one thing that the parents of P-platers need to remember: P-platers are still learning. They may be able to drive solo, saving you some of the hassle of running them about, but they still have got a lot to learn. My son still needs a few lessons in tying loads onto the deck of a ute or a trailer (it’s part of driving in daily life, after all), and in driving in snowy or icy conditions, for example. Your P-plater may need other advanced level lessons to sharpen up their skills.
Admittedly, some of the things they need to learn while on their P-plates are only going to be learned through experience. They need to learn to take responsibility for their actions even when Mum/Dad/the cops aren’t looking. They need to develop enough backbone to leave band practice on time to they don’t break the curfew.
And if they mess up, they need to do something to pay for any repairs or fines. If they don’t have a job and you have to foot the bill, then extra work should be done around the home to help you in return for this. You shouldn’t cover their butts and take all the consequences for them. With privilege comes responsibility, after all.
Having a P-plater in the family does bring a shift in the dynamics. There are new rules and possibly new routines to be sorted out. During the inevitable negotiations, remember that you are the real grown-up and you are still in charge! It’s your name on the ownership papers of the car, after all, so you do get the final say.
Some points worth discussing and setting boundaries for may include the following:
- What activities can and can’t your P-plater take your car to? For example, we have the rule that my son can take the car to band practice, to jobs and to church activities, but not to school, as there’s a perfectly good school bus that our taxes pay the petrol for… except on the days when his little sister has gym practice and he can drive himself and her to school as long as he takes her to gym (Big Brother’s taxi instead of Mum’s taxi). Rule two is that if we’re all going to the same place, we all go in the one car and don’t take two cars per family. You will probably have your own set of activities and rules.
- If you have more than one car, are certain cars off-limits to your P-plater? This may be for insurance purposes or for safety purposes or both. In our family, my son can drive the old Nissan Navara ute solo but not my Volvo. This may come as a surprise to some who know about the almost legendary safety standards of Volvos. However, the old Nissan ute is a manual with column change and a small diesel engine that can tow trailers well but isn’t particularly speedy. The Volvo, however, is an automatic and has the tendency to creep up over the speed limit, as it doesn’t have cruise control. Fast automatic car + young male driver = trouble.
- How will your P-plater contribute towards the upkeep of the vehicle? Not all P-platers have jobs. If your P-plater has a job, then it’s reasonable to expect some contribution towards petrol money, especially if he/she takes the car to get to the job. If your P-plater doesn’t have a job, then assistance can be made in the form of extra chores or running errands in the car.
Above all, remember that it’s your car and that you control the car keys. Use of your vehicle by someone else is a privilege, not a right.
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
P.S. The furniture didn’t fall off the ute and he got back before curfew.
Stereotypes: The Urban Tractor
Usually Seen: Parked in suburban driveways (but only in the better suburbs), outside the gates of private schools and near sports clubs. Occasionally spotted near chic cafés, shopping malls and hairdressers.
Typical Examples: Audi Q7 , Mercedes M-Class and Range Rover at the expensive end of the spectrum; Mistubishi Pajero , Hyundai Santa Fe and Ford Territory at the cheaper end.
Description: For a start, we need to define an urban tractor. An urban tractor, unlike a farm tractor, doesn’t get to see much mud, unless you count mud on the bottom of soccer boots. An urban tractor lives in the suburbs and was purchased as a family vehicle for safety reasons. The idea is that bigger cars will come off better in a ding and the high position gives the driver a better view of the road… when she (usually she) is not relying on the rear parking sensors, the blind spot monitor and all the other safety gadgets. It has AWD either part time or full time, but this is because it’s safer on the road rather than because the family goes off road a lot – unless you count mounting the kerb so the kids can be dropped off as close as possible to the soccer club gate as possible.
The urban tractor is usually (but not always) driven by a woman with the standard issue of 2.5 children. The children in question can be any age but are typically school aged. The urban tractor does a lot of Mum’s Taxi duty, and there’s certainly a lot of duty to be done. The taxi duty starts when Madison, Ella, Ethan or Jackson started at the Montessori preschool. Duty continued once the kiddies started at primary school and just about doubled ferrying them to all the extra-curricular activities (got to make sure that they get every possible advantage, you know): piano lessons, swimming lessons, soccer and gym, and probably after-school maths and reading coaching, too. Afterwards, the urban tractor takes Mum to work or to wherever she goes on her day off.
The urban tractor may or may not contain a dog at times. Once upon a time, this would have been a Labrador; today, it is more likely to be a Cockapoo or similar designer dog (with a decent dose of poodle in the makeup because they’re hypoallergenic).
The urban tractor is all about the kids and their safety. You may catch a glimpse of the kids in their Pumpkin Patch clothing when you are beside an urban tractor at the lights (best case scenario) or at an intersection, where it is a pain if you are turning and the massive urban tractor is blocking your view. They may not look back at you – they may be watching a seat-back DVD or fooling around on a tablet device. But it’s for their advantage and well-being that the urban tractor has been chosen. Mum would be driving a smart little hatchback or sleek sedan otherwise. But it is for the kids’ benefit that the urban tractor is parked on the footpath outside the after-school tutor’s premises and as close as possible to the gate. Can’t have them walking in the rain that might give them pneumonia or the sun that will burn them, can we?
Unfortunately, the safety-first mentality only applies to the kids inside the vehicle itself – the ones that are the offspring (usually) of the driver. The front and rear parking sensors will help minimise the horrible potential of how a driver can’t see a seven-year-old behind or in front of the vehicle. And woe betide you if you ride a bike past the urban tractor as the doors are flung open (but Sophie’s late for ballet lessons – can’t you understand that she comes first?).
Safe and happy driving, even if you aren’t in an urban tractor with a seat-back DVD screen,
Megan
Stereotypes: The Boy Racer Car
Usually Seen: Late on Friday and Saturday nights, either on long straight stretches near urban areas but not quite in them or near traffic lights. They tend to vanish when cops are spotted on the horizon, leaving unpleasant oil slicks and tyre tracks.
Typical Examples: Mazda RX-something, Toyota Levin, Nissan Skyline, Subaru WRX .
Description:
The boy racer car may be based on a small, cheap Japanese (or other Asian) vehicle but it certainly doesn’t look like one… until you look more closely. What makes a boy racer car a boy racer car is all the after-market additions. The boy racer car very blatantly tries to prove the manhood of the driver. Subtle, it is not. A large spoiler is an absolute must – the bigger, the better. Two spoilers are even better. The second must-have for the well-dressed boy racer car is the big-bore exhaust. Take a look at the size of both, the shape of the exhaust and the angle of that spoiler, and you’ll start to believe everything that Freud ever wrote about phallic symbols and probably compensation into the bargain.
Other key characteristics of the boy racer car are less phallic but are still very exhibitionistic. No boy racer car would be complete without the sound system. These should make the car vibrate when the doors closed. If the doors and/or windows are open (or, depending on the car, the top is down), you should be able to hear the vehicle from at least two streets away. Don’t bother trying to identify what is playing: all you will hear is the very, very distorted bass. In the case of dubstep, that’s all there is to hear, anyway. Everything else is indistinguishable from the sound of the exhaust but, unfortunately, doesn’t drown out what the passengers and/or driver are shouting out the windows.
Mag wheels are another must. But not just plain aluminium alloys! These ought to be colourful as well as shiny. Blue, orange, red and yellow are all possibilities. If you look very closely at some mag wheels, you may find that they are actually clip-on jobs from the local car supplies shop. But they have to be shiny. Shiny is the name of the game.
The boy racer car is low slung – they ride as low as the pants of the drivers did a few years back, but at least the car doesn’t give a glimpse of lurid boxer shorts. This can be done by fiddling with the suspension and shocks, or with a lot of body kit. Preferably both. It should just skim the ground, leaving the barest little gap to allow tiny pebbles on the road to pass underneath. If the car encounters something larger than a pebble, then all that fibreglass is in serious trouble.
Decals and paint jobs are often seen on boy racer cars, although sometimes you wish that you hadn’t seen them, as they are usually excruciatingly lurid. The go-faster racing stripes are the more tasteful versions. At the other end of the spectrum, you get the iridescent paint jobs and the swirly, streaky things that look like tattoos along the sides. The paint jobs usually look like they’ve taken peacocks or hummingbirds as inspiration after a decent dose of something illegal. But they don’t come in pink. If they come in pink, it’s probably a girl racer. This colour is enhanced at night-time by LED lights around the wheels, preferably in blue.
It is hard to see into the interior of a boy racer car to find out what it is like inside. This is because the windows have been seriously tinted. If the windows are down, the driver and his passengers are probably half hanging out of them, blocking any view of what’s inside. We suspect bucket seats if the owner’s budget stretches that far and possibly a prosthetic cover for the steering wheel to make it look sportier. We also suspect old cans of Red Bull, V or Monster will be found sprinkled in around the interior, plus greasy fast food wrappers. More than this is unknown – even as a teenage girl, I had more sense than to get anywhere near one of these cars.
The irony with a boy racer car is that once you get past the exterior and look at actual specs, all the bravado and body kit can be seen for what it is. Underneath all those modifications, even with a bonnet blower (another phallic symbol?), it’s still a cheap little hatch or sedan with a teeny engine, but one that’s lost all its self-respect. A decent European sedan – or even another car of the same marque with a better engine that’s actually been properly serviced by a responsible owner who doesn’t thrash it to death – will leave it for dead at the traffic lights. Ditto if the road is the slightest bit worn or uneven.
And girls aren’t irresistibly attracted to them. Loud noises, bright colours and big tails may work for peacocks and birds of paradise but not for human beings with half a brain cell.
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
The Biofuel Potential of Elephant Grass
What’s a big fluffy-looking grass that could be one of the answers to dwindling fossil fuel supplies? The answer is Miscanthus – also known as elephant grass.
Elephant grass (Miscanthus × giganteus) has been getting a bit of interest from the biofuel boffins since as early as the 1980s. And it’s got a fair bit of promise. It’s not an oil-producing plant but it does make a good feedstock for ethanol.
Elephant grass is a perennial (plant it once and then it just keeps on going) that grows from rhizomes (that’s big fat roots). It puts out fresh shoots every spring, grows up to 3 metres high in summer. In the autumn, it starts to go to sleep, sending a lot of the nutrients (including nitrogen and carbon) underground to the soil and the roots (and also smothers a few weeds with the shed leaves). This leaves tall stems that are kind of like bamboo standing. These stems are harvested in late winter or early spring before the new leaves start poking up again, and it’s the stems that get used as an ethanol feedstock. Then the cycle begins again.
Now, there are a number of issues that have to be tackled when it comes to finding a good plant source of biofuel. Firstly, there’s the land issue. There’s only a certain amount of arable land in the world, and with the global population growing the way that it is, we’re going to need quite a lot of it to feed us all (we probably also need to do something about the amount of food that gets wasted every year, but that’s another story). Then come the issues with water: again, there’s only so much fresh water out there at any one time for people and animals and plants to use, even if the water cycle means that it all keeps circulating. And you’ve got pesticides: if a crop gets a lot of pests eating it, then farmers need to dump on the pesticides, which (a) takes up a lot of resources and (b) puts a whole lot of junk into the soil and water.
It’s an added bonus if a plant used as a biofuel feedstock is pretty easy-care. That way, it doesn’t mean that the farmers use heaps of diesel in the process of ploughing, sowing, harrowing, weeding, fertilising and harvesting. Plants that have other benefits also get big tick marks.
Stems of elephant grass ready for harvest at the end of winter.
So how does elephant grass stand up?
Elephant grass has a high yield per hectare. This means that for every acre of elephant grass planted, you get a maximum of 25 tons of biomass (depending on the exact variety) that converts to over 3000 gallons of ethanol – better figures than you get for corn grown for biofuel and heaps better than timber. It’s not a food crop for humans or for animals. This means that on one hand, it will take up land that could be used for growing food. On the other hand, it means that it won’t drive up the price of food, like corn grown for biofuel can. It needs a moderate amount of water, but it’s pretty undemanding regarding other inputs. Because it’s a perennial plant, it doesn’t need to be re-sown every year. It also smothers weeds and puts some organic material back into the soil, meaning that you don’t need pesticides and it cuts down on the amount of fertiliser needed for a good crop – although a wee bit of fertiliser will be needed for best results. All a farmer has to do, more or less, is stick it in, water it and harvest it at the right time.
And is there anything else that elephant grass is good for? It can be used as a substitute for coal in coal-fired power plants (one US plant breeder claims that 1 acre of elephant grass can power two typical US households for a year). The stems also get used for kitty litter, bedding for racehorses, paper and composites (eco-friendly plastic substitutes). Unfortunately, these aren’t by-products of the biofuel industry. However, the tall green stands does provide cover for wildlife during summer. It can also be used as an ornamental plant – although it’s a bit on the large side!
Elephant grass grows reasonably well in the more temperate parts of Australia. In fact, a close relative of M. × giganteus (Miscanthus sinensis – also known as zebra grass) is considered to be an invasive weed in Victoria and New South Wales. Let’s hope the powers that be don’t just spray it off but make the most of it! Elephant grass, however, is a hybrid, so it’s not likely to spread as invasively, as the seeds aren’t fertile.
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
Level 2, 9 Help Street