Author archive
Where The Streets Have No…
Do you get fed up with the multitude of traffic signs and signals that constantly bombard you as you drive around town? Have you ever missed a turn-off or some vital piece of information (like a speed limit sign) because it’s just another sign amid hundreds? Or, to take another tack, do sometimes wonder if the people who put up signs think that you’re an idiot (e.g. the sign saying “Caution: Flooding” smack in the middle of a temporary lake caused by heavy rain… as if you hadn’t noticed that there was six inches of water covering the road)?
Perhaps it’s time that the authorities gave us all a bit of credit for having at least a modicum of common sense. No driver wants to hit another driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian, after all. This was the view taken by the authorities in the town of Bohmte, a town in western Germany that had been struggling with a bit of a traffic problem.
The traffic authorities of Bohmte had tried everything to stop motorists doing dumb things that endangered the lives of pedestrians and cyclists in the middle of the town. Speed traps, carefully designed crossings and all the usual measures just weren’t working. So they tried something completely different. Instead of sticking up more signs and more signals, they ripped them all out. They also took out the cycle lanes and the pavements (what our American friends call sidewalks). Only three rules were in place for this special “shared zone”: (1) everybody – including pedestrians, wheelchairs, skateboards and heavy trucks – has to give way to anything coming at you from the right at an intersection, (2) don’t park your car smack in the middle of the road and (3) you had to keep to the speed limit of 30 mph. (That’s about 50 km/h and the usual urban speed limit in Germany – it’s only on the Autobahns that the no speed limit thing applies. A German hitchhiker we once offered a sofa to tells us that the no limits rule on the Autobahn is only fun if you have a big Mercedes or Audi – if you’re puttering along in a tiny wee Fiat hatchback, you want to cringe as they all sweep past you… but I’m getting off topic.)
The authorities were nervous. What was going to happen? Were motorists going to continue to barge ahead and cause at least 50 accidents a year in this particular section?
The thinking behind this “shared space” concept was that if the usual familiar signs weren’t there, motorists would get a bit nervous and would become more alert to what was going on around them. When the traffic lights are green, you usually just surge on ahead, confident that nothing’s going to be in your way… until some idiot running the red light T-bones you. The fact that you weren’t at fault is small compensation for a spell in hospital and a broken bone or two. It’s even less consolation if you were a cyclist or a pedestrian. But if there’s nothing at the intersection to give you the green light, then what would you do? You’d slow down and check that there was nothing coming, kind of like pedestrians and cyclists have to do all the time (oh, yes you do have to check all the time if you’re a cyclist – cyclists are legitimate road users in the eyes of the law but not in the eyes of a lot of motorists.)
The idea first cropped up in the 1970s courtesy of a Dutch traffic engineer named Hans Monderman, who challenged the conventional thinking that people become safer drivers with more signs, speed humps, etc. Instead, he took the view that road users aren’t stupid and they don’t want to crash, so if you took away the things that say “if you don’t have a motor, get out of the way,” drivers would stop taking the road and their right of way for granted. To quote Monderman, “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behaviour…The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”
And the concept seems to be working. What’s more, the idea is spreading. It’s even made it all the way over here to Australia. There’s a shared zone in Bendigo, Victoria, where there are no sidewalks/pavements for pedestrians and there’s a reduced speed limit in the city centre. Similar designs have cropped up in towns in Sweden (where traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were replaced with fountains and park benches), the Netherlands (where they took out the lane markings), Florida, the UK and New Zealand.
Shared zones usually have a bit of a different look to them. A lack of pavements and traffic lights is only the start. Usually, there’s something a touch more decorative on the road surface – interesting patterns of brick or stone, for example. There may be a bit more street furniture and other pretty things. It’s all supposed to scream “space designed for human beings not just machines”.
The idea does have some downsides. The biggest criticism comes from organisations for the blind, on the grounds that with a proper pavement, a blind person knows that he/she is safe from traffic. A blind person can’t see the traffic they’re supposed to give way to. The other criticism has come from a few cycling organisations, especially in the Netherlands, who have reported that some drivers have a tendency to bully cyclists, refusing to give way when they ought to yield to the cyclist on the grounds that if it came to a car-on-bike conflict, the bike always loses. Mind you, this sort of thing happens all the time even with all the traffic lights, lanes and Give Way signs in the world, as any cyclist will tell you.
But on the whole – I think it’s a great idea!
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
Driving With The Common Cold
Heaps of parents heave large sighs of relief when the summer break is over and the kids go back to school. There are, however, downsides. Downside number one is that Mum’s Taxi duty kicks back in, especially if school is too far for the kids to walk to but is not so far away that you get a school bus service (as happens in rural areas). Downside number two is that the coughs and colds start coming back home, especially when the weather seems to read the school calendar and decides to turn cooler the moment term starts.
Driving with a cold is not like normal driving. You’re not sick enough to avoid driving – it’s just a sniffle, for goodness sake, so you can’t really get out of it. Take a good bit of paracetamol or aspirin and you’re OK. Sort of.
It’s a wonder that they haven’t tried to ban or warn you about the dangers of driving with a cold yet. We all know about not drinking and driving, and the hazards of taking wacky baccy or worse before getting behind the wheel. For those who wouldn’t dream of overindulging in alcohol prior to driving or getting remotely near any illegal substances, they still warn us about not driving tired, as fatigue slows reaction times and increases the risk of falling asleep behind the wheel. Driving with a cold has its own hazards and risks.
For a start off, you get that general feeling of lethargy and malaise that creeps in when you are fighting off a virus. Pain in the sinuses and/or throat (if the aspirin hasn’t quite done its duty) imposes on your consciousness, sucking your concentration. Sipping one of the traditional remedies for this particular type of misery – a decent slug of whisky or brandy in orange juice – is, of course, out of the question when there’s driving to be done.
You’ve also got the more physical visible effects of a cold. You’ve got the runny nose, the sneezing, the snot and the coughing to cope with. These are difficult to deal with when you’re driving, especially in town when the traffic’s a bit heavy. You feel that drip pouring down your nasal passages and threatening to trickle out of your schnozz. The traffic is heavy and you need to make that crucial lane change, or you’re part way around a multi-lane roundabout or you’re just coming up to the lights and expect them to turn orange. Do you go reaching for your tissues or hanky and try to deal with the offending drip? Or will this take your attention off the business of driving at a critical moment? Or is it safer to just let the drip cascade down your face (eeeeeewww!).
Sneezing is worse. As we all learned from those trivial snippets that circulate around the place, it is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. You feel that inevitable prickle in the back of your nose, your chest expands as you draw a deep breath for the Ah, then you explode in the Choo, eyes closed and goodness knows what racing out of you at a fair clip (popular wisdom has it that a sneeze does about 160 km/h; Mythbusters puts it at 54 km/h – faster than you ought to be going in heavy traffic, anyway!). During that split second, your whole body is concentrated on the sneeze, not on the road. There’s no way you could react if someone raced across the intersection or slammed on the brakes in front of you. If you’ve covered your sneeze with the crook of your arm the way that the health boffins tell us to, you’ve only got one hand on the wheel at the time. If you haven’t, then you spray virus-laden moisture all over the steering wheel and possibly the inside of the windscreen. (Rub a bit of hand sanitizer over the wheel – something we probably all ought to do regularly anyway, when you consider how often we touch it). And let’s not even think about the thick yellow snot stage of a cold…
Coughing is probably an even worse hazard, especially if you get that dry tickly cough that just won’t go away and leaves you in uncontrollable paroxysms of hacking away again and again. Medications that control this sort of cough usually come with warnings not to drive or operate heavy machinery afterwards. However, uncontrollable coughing fits lasting a good ten seconds or more don’t exactly make you the most alert and responsive driver. Pulling over to the side of the road until your lungs have settled down might have to be the safest option.
So what’s a responsible road user to do? The obvious answer is not to drive at all when you’ve got a cold and to use this as an excuse if possible. However, we all know that there are times when you can’t plead the common cold as a way of getting out of your obligations. You have to pick up the kids from school or your friend from the airport. You have to drop off that important package. You have to get that big job finished. So you have to drive.
The best options are to take it slowly just in case, take routes that avoid high traffic if possible and keep your eyes open for handy places to pull over. Practice controlling coughs and sneezes before you have to do it in a critical situation. And keep the box of tissues on your lap for easy access.
Don’t forget to clean up the used tissues, and to disinfect the steering wheel and gear change knob when you’ve finished driving.
Safe, healthy and happy driving,
Megan
Decoding Automotive Alphabet Soup
Do your eyes glaze over when you read some descriptions of new car models? I know mine do occasionally. It’s not because the new car isn’t exciting or anything like that. It’s the alphabet soup. Yes, I know that a lot of technical mechanical terms are rather long winded and it’s easier to just use an acronym. Who talks about deoxyribonucleic acid instead of DNA?
However, if you’re not particularly mechanically minded and are just on the lookout for a new car, all these strings of letters can be a bit confusing. Do you want an SUV with EBD and DOHC? Or an MPV with LPG and A/C? To make things worse, one marque might use a particular string of letters for a particular feature but another manufacturer will use a completely different acronym.
So just to help you navigate this alphabet maze, I’ll try to be a GPS (global positioning system – uses satellites and a grid system to pinpoint exact locations across the planet. Often involves maps which update themselves with “You are Here” dots). There – that’s one taken care of!
DOHC: Double overhead cam(shaft). One of the camshafts operates the engine intake valves while the other operates the exhaust valve. Engines with DOHC are more efficient than those with SOHC (single overhead cam).
EBD: Emergency Brake Distribution. Usually found alongside ABS brakes (see below). This system makes sure that when you bang on the brakes, the right amount of power gets to the right wheels to stop safely depending on your vehicle’s load and speed, plus the conditions…. without skidding.
ABS: Anti Brake Skid. Stops your wheels locking up with sudden braking. If your wheels lock up during emergency braking, you are likely to skid and lose control.
BA: Brake Assist. A cunning device that “reads” how hard you’re stamping on the brake pedal and supplies extra power to the braking system if it thinks you’re doing an emergency stop.
LPG: Liquid petroleum gas. A fuel for your car that usually (a) costs less and (b) doesn’t produce as much nasty stuff in the exhaust. Needs the engine to be converted. Popular with family cars with big engines (e.g. Ford Falcons ). LPG is the stuff that comes in the cylinder for your gas barbecue. Don’t attempt to fill an LPG car from one of these cylinders or vice versa.
AWD: All Wheel Drive. Means that the drivetrain powers all four wheel. Yes, this is the same as four-wheel drive (aka 4×4 or 4WD). Usually used for city vehicles that are too sophisticated to associate themselves with tough, rugged Outback-style 4x4s.
SUV: Sports Utility Vehicle. A kind of cross between a big classic 4×4 and your typical family station wagon. Usually has AWD and a bit more ground clearance. Has lots of towing ability and seating space.
ESC: Electronic Stability Control. This usually combines all the anti-skidding stuff in brakes plus traction control to make sure that the car stays on the road more or less where you want it to during a skid or during cornering. Also known as ESP (electronic stability program), VDC (vehicle dynamic control) and heaps of other names – every manufacturer seems compelled to come up with their own acronym.
MPV: Multi Person Vehicle. A big car with lots of seats (usually seven) spread over three rows. Has more of a nose on it than a van.
CVVT: Continuous Variable Valve Timing. Inside your engine, the valves controlling what’s going in and out of the combustion chamber could open and close at the same rate. Not with CVVT – this fine-tunes how long each one’s open for to make your engine burn more efficiently.
A/C: Air conditioning. Do I really need to explain what this is?
EFI: Electronic Fuel Injection. A very precise way of delivering the fuel to the engine. Another efficiency measure. It’s all about efficiency these days.
HEV: Hybrid Electric Vehicle. A car with an electric motor to back up the fossil-fuel fired one. You also hear about PHEVs. This stands for “plug-in hybrid electric vehicle” – same sort of thing but easier to charge.
RPM (usually rpm): revolutions per minute. Used to measure the speed at which your engine is turning over. Your rev counter probably drops the last three digits off.
LSD. Not the hallucinogenic drug from the 1960s and 70s. Not “pounds, shilling and pence” either. This stands for “limited slip differential”. This system makes sure that if one of the wheels slips, all the power goes to the other wheels instead. Usually seen in four-wheel drives.
LED: Light-emitting diode. Glows like a regular lightbulb but doesn’t use as much power or blow as often as regular ones. Because they produce bright lights, last for ages and don’t use much electricity, they’re becoming increasingly popular. More common in cars than in homes… at least for now!
LCD: Liquid Crystal Display. What an information display panel probably uses. Most screens use this technology these days.
VTOL. Vertical take-off and landing. If you are looking at a vehicle that has this, it isn’t a car. You are looking at a jet.
Safe and happy driving,
Megan
The Biofuel Dilemma
The push for more sustainable sources of energy for our cars is intensifying. Biodiesel and ethanol are getting more and more common. Slurping through large amounts of fossil fuel is considered irresponsible, as is belching out a lot of greenhouse gases. In this sort of climate (both the metaphorical climate of opinion and the actual one, which is supposed to be changing), biofuels are looking like a very sexy option.
However, there is a bit of a problem when it comes to biofuels. You see, while it seems like a great idea to grow a crop that can be turned into fuel, there are a few snags. All commercially grown crops take up land, and they require nutrients and water. This means that they’re competing with other crops – like the ones that you and I eat. And this is where the problem lies: if we’re going to do away with world hunger, the people who are currently starving are going to have to eat something. And that something will have to grow somewhere.
They tell us that it’s going to become more difficult to find enough land and other resources to feed the world. This means that even if biofuels don’t increase, there’s going to be issues with growing enough food to feed us all. On the one hand, we want to get from A to B more sustainably. On the other hand, we don’t want people to die from malnutrition. So what’s the answer? Biofuel or not biofuel? Should corn go to feeding people or to making oil to power vehicles? (Let’s not even start on the feeding people versus feeding cattle debate.) Which is the best option for the thinking person who cares for the planet and other human beings?
The answer is to keep on thinking and to look at the wider issue. First of all, the food problem. It might not be as difficult to produce enough food to feed everybody on the planet as you think. For a start off, a large chunk of us (especially in the Western world) could probably eat less and be better off for it. Secondly, an awful lot of the food grown in the world today ends up going to waste. Some is damaged by pests and rotten weather while it’s in the field. Some doesn’t make it onto the market courtesy of bureaucracy, food regulations and other rhubarb like that – things like the European Union’s standards that state the colour, shape and size of vegetables that are permitted on the market, even though wonky carrots and cucumbers with more than a certain amount of curvature. A lot of perfectly edible gets dumped along the food pathway – things that are still good but are past their sell-by date, for example. Thirdly, we can all have a go at growing our own fruit and veg. We can feed a hungry world, people, if we really try!
One has to wonder why all this dumped and wasted food doesn’t end up being turned into biofuels. It certainly is possible. One wonders why this hasn’t been tried yet. Which brings me neatly to the next part of tackling the food vs biofuel dilemma. Often, biofuels such as ethanol can be made from waste products of the food industry. Take sugarcane – which is where most of Australia’s ethanol comes from. The juice gets extracted and taken to the refinery to be turned into what goes into our morning coffee, plus other goodies such as golden syrup and molasses (used as a dietary supplement for dairy cows). The leftover bits of cane are broken down to make ethanol. The only snag here is that the leftovers are often quite woody, which means that it’s harder to break down and turn into ethanol. In the world of biofuels, finding bacteria that are capable of breaking down tough woody stuff is a very hot topic. We might snigger at research papers that rave about the potential of some bacteria strain found in panda poop (actual example) but these bacteria might be the best way of turning, say, sawdust into what you put in your Toyota Corolla.
The third option for solving the dilemma is to find sources of biofuel that don’t compete with food crops for resources. Things that grow on bad soil or on bad water are particularly popular. This is where things like jatropha comes in. Jatropha grows like a weed on bad soil… and it produces oil-bearing seeds that make great biodiesel. To give you an idea of how well it can grow on marginal land, a close relative of the species that produces the best oil has been banned in Western Australia as an invasive weed. The other biggie is algae. Algae can be grown on sewage (something we’re not exactly going to run out of) and some strains produce a good dollop of oil that can be turned into biodiesel. The hunt is on to find the best types of algae that produce the most bang for the buck. Again, it doesn’t pay to snigger about research papers that rave about things that grow on sewage.
So what is the average Aussie driver to do in the attempt to “think globally and act locally” when it comes to the biofuel dilemma?
- As always, conserve fuel when driving (better for your wallet, too).
- Avoid wasting food, as this means that there’ll be less chance of fuel crops having to compete with food crops (also better for your wallet).
- Grow your own food. You might not be able to grow your own biodiesel crop but you can grow your own tomatoes and lettuces. Every little bit helps. If we all grew our own, a few more farmers could concentrate on growing biofuel instead.
- Use biofuels in your vehicle as often as possible – if we keep up the demand, the producers will know to keep up the supply.
Level 2, 9 Help Street