Band Aid not getting enough sympathy

Driving to work this morning on very icy roads I was listening to Band Aid’s do they know it’s Christmas (The original not the travesty of self promotion that was the latest effort) However I do not think the line “There wont be snow in Africa this Christmas Time.” Had quite the sympathy creating effect it was supposed to have.

Disabled Parking Permits

Something that has bugged me for a while are disabled parking permits. Now before I get thousands of complaints - as if I have that many readers - it is not the actual permits, or even the idea of preferential parking for those less mobile, in fact it is for this reason that I always park at the very rear of a car park, as I think any able bodied young(ish) motorist should. Neither am I going to complain about the pure amount there seem to be, in my youth they seemed very rare, but in many places now it appears that they are more common than ever, so whilst I admit I believe they are being handed out far to easily this is not the nature of today's whine.

What has got me today is that they can be used on double yellow lines, now correct me if I am wrong but I believed that double yellow lines were placed where it would be dangerous to allow parking, I fail to see therefore how safety is increased simply through the drivers disability.

This leads me to two possible options therefore, either our lives are being frequently risked by those who exercise their right to disabled parking, or, as I think more likely, many councils have used double yellow lines to fill up their car parks.

To be honest, I am happy with parking in a car park anyway, as on road parking in a town centre is always stressful. All I want is to not get lied too, why not replace the yellow lines with disabled bays, and put yellow lines back to showing where it is dangerous for anyone to park.

Google Car Set to Finish off Driving Instructors

I decided to go on line this morning to see if I had won the £115m lottery jackpot. Unfortunately it wasn't me, however I was very interested to read that Google have been testing a self-drive car, this is fascinating for a variety of reasons, not least of which that it shows just how diverse Google's business interests have developed - anyone else remember when they were just a search engine?
However as someone who loves new technology it is simply the idea that we may soon be driving around in real automobiles has got my mind racing.
Just think of what this would mean, on the down side it will completely wipe out the driving school industry - especially RED driving school's claims that it is a recession proof industry - I can also imagine it may increase the number of cars on the road, after all you could easily send a car off to get the kids whilst you are going elsewhere - now that I think about it taxis will be surplus to requirements as well, why call a cab when you can just call up your own car to pick you up from the pub.

Anyway onto the good, the main selling point is better safety, Google drove the car around San Francisco on what are some very challenging roads, each of The google test drives had a computer programmer and a human driver standing by and the police had been notified of the route in advance, however there was one reported incident however that was actually caused by a human driving into the back of the googlecar so if anything it could be said the problem there were not enough automatic cars not too many! Along side safety of course comes the potential to have much faster driving and less jams, the fact is that speed is not actually dangerous when driving, driving too fast is the dangerous thing, if you are driving at 200 on a completely flat straight road you should be ok (may be a bit frightening the first time, whilst at the same time if you are following someone in icy conditions at 20 you are probably going too fast, the google car should be able to plot you a route that ensures you can travel at the fastest and safest speed possible, if they were to move the technology on and actually create a mainframe of all traffic movements you could actually find that the car could easily programme you in the perfect route avoiding any need to stop at all (I guess this may put TomTom out of business as well.

Well I for one will be waiting with great interest to see what becomes of this trial and would gladly buy an auto drive once they are available (They look like ordinary cars with a sensor which reminds me of google's street view vehicle) Although I have to admit that since I started writing this I have realised just how many industries this could actually wipe out - but that would not be until the technology is very widely used - thinking about it, isn't there a Dr Who where the auto drives start killing people? perhaps I am not as big a fan as I was at the start of this post.

Un-wanted visitor

I have just completed a very unpleasant 1 hour drive to work, I had this little guy on my shoulder.

Obviously my first reaction was to remove it but as it was still I didn't want to anger it and have it flying around in the car, as it turns out it was dead, as I assumed by its not moving, no idea how it got there, I can only assume that it either went on at home or dropped on as I walked to the car already dead. Either way not a great start to the day.

What I did on my holiday - Part 1 - Driving

Our first day was spent driving; we left Crawley at 8am and arrived in Châtellerault at 18:30 CET so quite a drive not sure how many miles but we racked up over 2000 in total and the majority of this was on the journey there and back, I hired a car for the journey as it was a 7 seater and I thought with 4 adults and a baby we could do with the space. Also as it was a Manual and I have had an Automatic for three years there were gears to compete with as well as driving on the wrong side of the road, perhaps the most surprising thing is that I actually struggled more with the gears (A couple of times stalling as I simply didn’t push the clutch down.) than with driving on the right, after all if you just point your car behind the car in front you can’t go to far wrong, the only dangers were as you left the farmhouse and no one else was around, or approaching an empty roundabout. But otherwise it was fine. I had purposely not filled up with Fuel before going to France as we are always told that our petrol prices are ridiculously high, I was shocked therefore to be confronted with a cost of £1.40 a litre for unleaded, I was just starting to feel aggrieved at paying this ridiculously high cost for motoring when I reached the first toll booth and was charged 8€ for driving down the road, at the second Toll Booth I got my 10€ not ready to pay only to be asked for 24€ in total we paid around 45€ in Tolls and 65€ in Fuel costs for the journey down, so next time someone tells me that the Councils in this country are useless as they had the same bad weather in France yet do not have the potholes I will be telling them where to go.

We eventually arrived at our destination however it was a very tiring trip and was hard work keeping our daughter occupied the whole time so we pretty much just went straight to bed.