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The Toughest Place To Get Your Licence
So you thought that the practical driving test that you had for getting your driver’s licence was hard. I know I did. Didn’t help that the cop who put me through my paces when I was a timid wee lass of 17 was built like a brick outhouse (fine for dealing with the local drunk and disorderlies; terrifying for a nervous teenager). However, the most difficult thing I got asked to do was to back around a corner – something that I’d never heard of or seen done so I initially suspected some sort of trap. Also, the small town where I sat my licence was out that back of nowhere, and there were no hills for hill starts, no uncontrolled intersections and, courtesy of the local council planners, no parallel parking in the main street. I practically got my licence out of a cereal packet.
It’s a different story on the other side of the world in Finland. I don’t think that I’d manage to get my driver’s licence even now that mumble-mumble years have gone by and my teenage son is preparing to sit his practical test for the second time (failed the first time for not having parallel parking down pat). Most of us don’t know an awful lot about Finland except that it’s up near the Arctic, borders Sweden, is the home of Nokia and produces rally drivers with names that look like they ought to belong to Tolkien characters. Good rally drivers. And given what you need to do before you get your licence, this isn’t surprising.
The theory test you get in Finland is pretty much like the one you’d get in most parts of the world – a set of questions with illustrations showing different scenarios, to which you have to apply your knowledge of the road code (which you probably spent the previous night swotting). After that, the practical driving begins. No being taught by Mum and Dad for the Finns: it’s driving school for two years unless Mum and Dad have an instructors’ permit and the family car (what’s the betting that it’s going to be a Saab or Volvo from across the border?) is fitted up with an extra pair of brake pedals for the front passenger. And you can’t get that provisional licence equivalent until you’re 18. Which means you get your full licence at 20, and it’s valid for another 50 years.
Driving school isn’t just a case of endless three-point turns and parallel parks in a safe environment. Safeish environment, yes – including computer simulations for situations that the instructors can’t make happen just like that… like night driving.
I have to say that the driving course does look quite fun. There’s quite a good video clip about it.
I certainly wish that I had gone through this course, with its controlled skids on icy roads, moose avoidance tests and car maintenance lessons. This sort of thing, especially the skidding bit, has two advantages. If you’re a Nervous Nelly like I used to be, being taught how to handle a skid (and what sort of action will get you into a skid) will make you more confident in your ability and you’ll thus be less likely to panic and freeze if things do get hairy. If you are at the opposite end of the spectrum and a bit of a hoon, then this will get all the skidding out of your system. Unless you go on to be a rally driver.
We might not get the super icy roads over here in Australia or even in New Zealand, or at least not as icy as that driving course looks. But we do get rain and we do get gravel. So learning this sort of thing certainly doesn’t go amiss. Rural kids get a bit of an advantage here, as they have the opportunity of finding a large field that isn’t full of stock, crops or trees, then tearing around like crazy doing doughnuts, fishtails and slides. Rural kids also know all too well that a large animal is likely to appear around the corner at random and either learn to take care around corners just in case or else how to dodge things. However, they can go to pieces when confronted with multilane roundabouts, right turns in heavy traffic and other delights of city driving. There needs to be some sort of exchange programme going on – shouldn’t be that hard…
Other countries have other interesting requirements for getting handed that piece of paper that allows you to drive. In Switzerland, you have to have done a first aid course. In Brazil, you have to have done a self-defence course. In Russia, you have to have a certificate saying that you’re sane (guess a number of former Tsars and other leaders of this country wouldn’t have passed). In Saudi Arabia, you have to have male genitalia, a Y chromosome and probably a beard. Yes, folks, in the place where a lot of the world’s petrol comes from, I wouldn’t have had a chance of getting a licence on the grounds of gender.
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
A Wee Dram For Your Car
Ok, so it’s St Patrick’s Day, so I’ll put this post in green text and will kick off with a wee story…
Two nuns were driving along a remote rural road in County Mayo in northeastern Ireland when they ran out of fuel. They walked to a nearby farmhouse and explained their plight to the farmer. “To be sure, sisters, I can give you a bit of petrol so it’s off on your good works you can be driving. But I’ve only the one jerry can, so the only thing I can give you to carry it back to your car in is this old whiskey bottle.” “Bless you, Patrick, and thank you,” said the nuns. They walked back to their car clutching their whisky bottle full of petrol. As they were pouring the petrol from the whisky bottle into the fuel tank, Sean O’Reilly drove by. Spotting the whiskey bottle, Sean shook his head and stared. “Begorrah, that’s what I call faith!” he said.
We chuckle about that one (or the alternative version where the farmer lends them a chamber pot) but the story can be killed stone dead if one remembers that alcohol is indeed one of the more common alternative fuels is alcohol – ethanol, methanol, butanol and propanol are good fuels. You’d never bother setting that story about the nuns in Brazil – over there, they have cars (often the locally produced VWs) that are designed for flex fuel – they run on petrol, alcohol or a mixture of the above. And we’re not too bad for the old ethanol in Australia ourselves.
And now the UK and Ireland are getting in on the act. A whisky distillery in Edinburgh, Scotland, has just announced that they have successfully produced a butanol blend that can be used on its own or blended with diesel or (better still from a sustainability perspective) biodiesel. They use waste products from the process of distilling whisky – an industry that’s quite large in Scotland, as you might imagine.
The waste products in question go by names that are anything but long bits of Latin and Greek: draff and pot ale. Draff is the malted barley left over after the initial brewing process (lovers of craft beer and home brewers of beer will know what I’m talking about here). Pot ale, on the other hand, is the leftover liquid after the whisky has been distilled out of the original brew of fermented grain (something that resembles beer or ale but without the hops). These two products are mixed to create a blend given the traditional name “broth” (isn’t it nice to see a scientific product that doesn’t feel compelled to use long and complicated names but just uses something with Anglo-Saxon or Celtic origins?). This broth goes through its own distilling process to produce the biobutanol.
The plant, which has hefty backing from the Scottish government and the UK government (let’s just not go into the politics of Scotland here, OK?), hopes to be up and running fully in 2016. Because butanol delivers plenty of oomph, there’s a chance that it won’t be appearing at British bowsers at this stage: as it’s suitable as jet fuel, the aviation market might snap plenty of it up. However, the potential is there to produce lots of biobutanol, as the UK doesn’t just have whisky distilleries to draw on as a source of draff and pot ale: there’s the beer brewing industry and other sorts of distillery to draw on as well.
Lastly, for the clever readers who’ve spotted the two different spellings of whisky/whiskey: “whiskey” is for the Irish version; “whisky” is the Scottish variety).
Safe and happy driving as well as happy St Patrick’s Day,
Megan
Idiotic Overtaking
OK, I might have to stick my neck out a bit and explore the gender differences in driving here a bit. But what is it with guys and overtaking? Or, to be slightly more specific, why on earth do the driving men in my life (husband, son, father and brothers) feel compelled to overtake anything that’s in front of them if they’re out on the open road? The only male I know who doesn’t is my elderly grandfather… who (a) is quite content to perform complicated mathematical operations involving the numbers on the licence plate of the car in front of him and (b) doesn’t do much open road driving. They always say I’m far too patient when overtaking, but I say that safety is more important, and if I can’t get a nice open stretch of road with plenty of visibility and clear road to pass safely, then I’ll resign myself to being stuck behind that freight truck for as long as necessary. Truckies are usually pretty considerate and if they can see you in the mirrors and a twisty hill’s coming up, they tend to find a shoulder to pull onto while you whip past.
However, I am happy to say, the men in my life are reasonably safe drivers when overtaking (with the exception of one leadfooted brother but that’s another story). I wish I could say the same for other drivers on the road. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are some real idiots out there. The most moderate of these idiots are the ones who overtake you when you’re doing the speed limit or possibly a shade over… but they still sweep past you and disappear into the wide blue yonder. You shake your head and wonder what they’ll do if a cop on speed patrol is waiting just around the corner.
This happens around town, too, although the likelihood that the overtaker will get picked up by a cop is much higher. Around town, there seems to be two main motives for pointless overtaking. Pointless overtaking around town involves whizzing past another vehicle and then stopping in front of the lights – a slightly risky manoeuvre just to gain a place in the queue at the lights, which will save that driver all of two seconds, if that. Motive number one for pointless overtaking seems to be the “I’m in a hurry” mentality. A hurried driver cannot bear to be held up for the merest fraction of a second. Any driver doing less than the posted speed limit will be overtaken, even if said person is only slowing down to turn into a driveway. However, it’s pretty easy to sympathise with these drivers. We’ve all been late at times and know what it’s like to be slowed by others when every second counts because you’re already late picking up the kids or getting to that appointment.
It’s a bit harder to sympathise with motive number two. Motive number two seems to be pride and badge loyalty. It is best demonstrated by what happened one night back when we had our Ford Falcon. We were quietly minding our own business and cruising along when a car roared past us. We got a glimpse of a Holden badge. The lights turned red in front and we and the Holden driver stopped side by side at the front of the queue. My husband was driving and couldn’t resist switching drive mode to sport and putting the foot down (the traffic was only light, I must add). We got away first but the Holden charged past at the next possible opportunity. The pattern was repeated at the next three lights, a skirmish in the ongoing battle between red circle and blue oval. Eventually, when we got to the motorway, the Holden driver had had enough and absolutely floored it. We laughed and let him go. I dare say similar battles could take place with other makes and models, depending on how passionately you are for or against a particular brand. As long as this overtaking is done safely and legally, it’s harmless fun. It’s a game that one of the Top Gear team dubbed “BMW Leapfrog” – i.e. find a posh, powerful car and overtake it. Wait and see how long it takes for driver of said posh car to overtake you.
However, there is nothing at all safe or harmless about the last sort of overtaking idiot – the sort that doesn’t allow him or herself enough room to pass properly. There is no sort of excuse for this behaviour. To quote the road rules , “Before overtaking another vehicle, you must:
- be sure it is safe to do so
- on a single-lane road, be sure that the road ahead is clear for a sufficient distance
- be sure you have sufficient distance to return to the same lane or line of traffic without endangering the vehicle being overtaken or any vehicle coming from the opposite direction”
Why do people not follow these simple rules? Why do they put other road users at risk? (Yes, I’m thinking about the driver of that grey Toyota last week that decided to overtake a scant 100 metres before a bend in the road… and I was coming in the other direction around said bend and had to slam on the brakes to avoid a nasty head-on. I don’t know who you were but if I did, your name would be MUD! I hope you saw me glaring at you. And why can I never find the horn at moments like this?).
I wish I could say that my near miss with that silver grey Toyota was an isolated incident. Unfortunately, it isn’t. There are jerks who try to overtake two B-trains at once. There are those who start a passing manoeuvre, decide against it at the last minute and slam back into the left side of the road narrowly missing the person they were about to pass. There are those who try to overtake not just the slow vehicle with the caravan but the whole conga line of patient drivers behind the caravan. You see these sorts of things and you just have to wonder: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? WERE THEY THINKING AT ALL?
Safe and happy driving, even to you, driver of the grey Toyota,
Megan
Totally Pointless Driving Habits
Low bridge coming! Duck your head and shrink down in your seat behind the wheel, as this really helps your car fit underneath!
We do some pretty funny things in our cars at times. I’m not just talking about crazy overtaking, attempting to do fifty things while steering or cutting other people off. Nor am I talking about the things we do at traffic lights when we forget that our car is not our own little bubble that makes us invisible. I’m talking about the peculiar habits we have while driving (or being driven) that are completely pointless.
You know the sort of thing I mean. We’ve all done them. Things like turning the radio down when we’re looking at the road signs because if it’s quiet, we can see better. Or if you’re the passenger being driven by someone who likes to put their foot to the floor just a bit too much, you try to stamp on invisible brakes. Why do we do these things? Do we even stop to think about them at all?
Here is a small sample of some more pointless in-car behaviour:
- Ducking your head (whether you’re in the driver’s seat or in the passenger seat) as you approach a tunnel or anything with a clearance warning sign. Because ducking your head will really make the car fit underneath that low bridge, won’t it?
- Talking to your car to encourage it to get going on a cold morning. “Come on, old girl, come one, come on! Get going!” Or when you’re trying to tow a heavy load up a steep hill and are nearly at the top and don’t really want to change down all the way to second gear. “You can do it, come on, nearly there, come on, old girl…” It’s a machine, not a dog or a horse. Even if the car has voice activated this and that, the engine can’t hear you.
- Shifting your centre of gravity depending on what you are trying to do, as if the car was a bicycle. This includes leaning back when going down a hill, leaning forward when trying to go faster, tilting your body from side to side to help it go around a corner, leaning right back when you want the driver to slow down… We do this in spite of how we’ve spent oodles of cash on wheel alignments and ensuring that the suspension is just right, to say nothing of picking a vehicle with stability control. This may be a hangover from when we rode bicycles but still…
- Closing our eyes during a near miss or when we think a crash is inevitable. OK, part of this is instinct kicking in to make sure that our vulnerable eyes are safe. Part of it is an ostrich-like feeling of “I don’t want to look at what’s about to happen,” but it’s utterly insane.
- Sucking our breath in as we negotiate a tight parking space or a manoeuvre in a tight turn. This works fine if we’re on foot and trying to squeeze past the shopping trolley in the checkout aisle so we can finish putting the groceries on the conveyor belt and go to pay. It doesn’t work quite so well when trying to park your big old Land Rover in a narrow gap between two very new Audis .
Of course, some pointless behaviour is encouraged by car manufacturers. Why else do they provide “chicken handles” for the passengers? (I think they’re called “overhead grips” officially, but I’ve never heard this term being used outside an official blurb or description from the makers.) You should be wearing your seatbelt, and your seatbelt is a lot sturdier than those little screws holding the chicken handle to the interior of the car. It doesn’t take much to pull one of those off. In a collision, rollover or similar disaster, hanging onto the chicken handle is not going to do much to protect you. The G-forces involved are going to rip the handle off or dislocate your shoulder before they stop you flying if they’re all you’re relying on. So why are they provided in cars? What is the point of a chicken handle? (Apart from providing a good place to hang up your best suit so it doesn’t get crumpled, that is.)
So, it’s confession time. What pointless things do you do? I’ll admit to stomping on invisible brakes as a passenger, ducking under low bridges and talking to my car (I also talk to other machinery, so I may be slightly insane). What about you?
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
Level 2, 9 Help Street