Driving standards

[zarniwhoop]

12 hours ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

By that time EV's will be obsolete themselves as other technology is perfected.

 

IMHO anyone who converts Series Land Rovers to electric should be tortured, then electrocuted........

Whilst I understand the sentiment, from time to time on one of the Discovery channels (Quest?)  there is a series about a Welshman ('Moggy') converting old cars etc to plug-in - mainly usingTesla parts, and lots of bespoke made to order fixings. Quite an old series, for some reason many of the vehicles were Irish. I dread to think what an insurer would make of them (e.g. old VW camper van with a large battery in it, "classic" BMWs and similar with what I would regard as a short range before needing to charge - bear in mind that even now charging - both availability and time - sems to be a problem in many areas.

 

Anyway, the one which did impress me was some sort of Land Rover - according to that episode, the off-road performance was much enhanced.

[StuAllen]

7 hours ago, Reorte said:

I quite like the idea of dynamic cruise control, not sure about the rest though. I've noticed more often people come around a corner with full beam right in my face before doing anything, and I've wondered if that's down to those sorts of lights.

I do like the cruise control especially in towns with 20mph speed limits - for some people following me I’m not sure they like going so slow (these are the same people that then stick to 45mph when you hit a national speed limit sign)

 

I do know what you mean about the headlights though, my previous car had auto dipping and could be sluggish, probably one or twice a week I needed to manually take over as it didn’t react. Can’t say I’ve noticed with my current car, its reactions are very quick.

[SM42]

There are too many electric gizmos in modern cars and whilst some are useful not all are. 

 

By far the worst I've experienced is lane assist, which tried to steer me into to oncoming traffic on  a narrow road and the car then had the cheek to warn me about the car I was about to hit.

 

The constant beeping  and flashing warnings on the dashboard are downright distracting at the very time you don't need distracting. 

 

My other pet hate is emergency brake assist, another system that has almost caused an accident. 

 

I could see the 44 tonner on  the  busyish roundabout would not be there when I got there. The car thought otherwise. The people around me had to take avoiding action to miss the unexpectedly stationary vehicle in the middle of a now empty gap in the traffic flow. 

 

I don't need the car to beep and the dashboard display to change to tell me I've turned on the wipers.

 

I know I did, I did it and there are two visual clues in front of me wiping the screen.  

 

I would quite like to not turn the headlights on at midday on a sunny day because I've passed a tree.

 

I don't like following cars that do  as unexpectedl red lights  instantly register as braking, so everyone behind does too unnecessarily  

 

A colleague apparently has a car that puts the brake lights on if you lift off the throttle. 

This explains the sudden stationary traffic on the motorway with no apparent cause. 

 

Oh and don't start me on the electric parking brake. 

 

I much prefer  control over the car rather than being in a constant state of " what's it doing now?"

 

 

Andy

[big jim]

1 hour ago, StuAllen said:

I do know what you mean about the headlights though, my previous car had auto dipping and could be sluggish, probably one or twice a week I needed to manually take over as it didn’t react. Can’t say I’ve noticed with my current car, its reactions are very quick.

the issue I have with them is on the motorway, if a lorry is coming in the opposite direction, in particular in an area with solid concrete central barriers you the sensor doesn’t seem to pick up on their headlights so it puts the full beam on, of course they are higher up so are getting dazzled and inevitably they put their full beam on, which on some trucks can be like perma noon! 
 

3 minutes ago, SM42 said:

By far the worst I've experienced is lane assist

the one thing I always turn off straight away when I get a hire car! 

[SM42]

5 minutes ago, big jim said:

the one thing I always turn off straight away when I get a hire car! 

 

One I had one that involved several menus and choices to turn it off and you had to do this every time.you started it.

The default position was on. 

 

Bit like headlights that are default auto. 

 

At Le Shuttle they request you to turn off headlights as you board.

 

No chance nowadays. 

 

You sit there with the red glow of rear lights stopping you getting a nap cos the kids in the car in front  want to watch a video

 

Andy

Edited April 24 by SM42

[TheQ]

10 hours ago, 30801 said:

 

You just need to do it proper.

 

 

This is from five years ago and IIRC it has the same weight & balance as it did when it was petrol.

 

 

I doubt it's the fastest landrover..

Some years back there was a tuned twin turbo 5 litre V8 petrol landrover in one of the LR magazines.

On a runway test it reached 165 mph... But ...

You needed a fuel tanker to go any distance....

[GrumpyPenguin]

14 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

So, if you are involved in an accident then you dont want investigators to be able to find out exactly what happened?

 

Driving is a licenced activity not a right and it carries the potential to cause death or serious injury.  If someone is driving like a we have the right to know so appropriate action can be taken.

As a semi-retrired HGV driver I am used to being monitored whist driving - basic Tachometer, CCTV (including a camera pointing at the driver) & full vehicle telematic - all "talking" to one another & capable of recordingh my entire shift & I don't have any issue with it at all.

 

However, in my car I feel it is an extention of my home therefore private. I drive responsibly & have an operating dashcam - that's enough thank you.

[GrumpyPenguin]

12 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

Most cars are electronics boxes with wheels no matter what propulsion system the employ.

Many people regard cars such as Range Rovers as "several computers on a network with an engine & some wheelsd attached".

[Reorte]

3 hours ago, StuAllen said:

I do know what you mean about the headlights though, my previous car had auto dipping and could be sluggish, probably one or twice a week I needed to manually take over as it didn’t react. Can’t say I’ve noticed with my current car, its reactions are very quick.

Even then of course it's still not quite as good as dipping the headlights before you come face to face with the car coming the other way. I usually dip mine before the other car gets around the corner or over the brow of the hill.

[GrumpyPenguin]

11 hours ago, 30801 said:

 

You just need to do it proper.

 

 

This is from five years ago and IIRC it has the same weight & balance as it did when it was petrol.

 

 

It can be done "properly" but doing that to a Classic 2-door Range Rover is nothing but mechanical vandalism !

[Reorte]

4 minutes ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

However, in my car I feel it is an extention of my home therefore private. I drive responsibly & have an operating dashcam - that's enough thank you.

I don't have a dashcam, it would be a bit rich to complain about being recorded if I then went around doing it to others.

 

Cast your mind back quite a few years to when there was a widely-observed meteor in Russia (don't worry, this will get to being on-topic!) There was a lot of dashcam footage of it, and I remember hearing a lot of people here surprised by that, thinking how iffy a place Russia must be if people felt the need to drive around with a camera in their car like that. Yet here we are doing the same.

[GrumpyPenguin]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

There are too many electric gizmos in modern cars and whilst some are useful not all are. 

 

By far the worst I've experienced is lane assist, which tried to steer me into to oncoming traffic on  a narrow road and the car then had the cheek to warn me about the car I was about to hit.

 

The constant beeping  and flashing warnings on the dashboard are downright distracting at the very time you don't need distracting. 

 

My other pet hate is emergency brake assist, another system that has almost caused an accident. 

 

I could see the 44 tonner on  the  busyish roundabout would not be there when I got there. The car thought otherwise. The people around me had to take avoiding action to miss the unexpectedly stationary vehicle in the middle of a now empty gap in the traffic flow. 

 

I don't need the car to beep and the dashboard display to change to tell me I've turned on the wipers.

 

I know I did, I did it and there are two visual clues in front of me wiping the screen.  

 

I would quite like to not turn the headlights on at midday on a sunny day because I've passed a tree.

 

I don't like following cars that do  as unexpectedl red lights  instantly register as braking, so everyone behind does too unnecessarily  

 

A colleague apparently has a car that puts the brake lights on if you lift off the throttle. 

This explains the sudden stationary traffic on the motorway with no apparent cause. 

 

Oh and don't start me on the electric parking brake. 

 

I much prefer  control over the car rather than being in a constant state of " what's it doing now?"

 

 

Andy

Could not agree more - my pet hates are active lane assist (as opposed to a simple beeping) & emergency brake interfere (sorry assist).

 

Cruise/Active Cruise Control are OK & quite handy at times though.

[Jol Wilkinson]

Ironic that there is such concern over car date being shared with the manufacturer/dealer.,when your mobile phone is doing it all the time. When you sign up for Google, you have to agree to data sharing AFAIK. Our latest car has overly complicated software but there is a "Privacy" setting although I have yet to fully understand what that does.

 

At least six years ago I took a photo of a box of garden furniture that my better half was interested in in a local garden centre. When I got home there was a message from Google, showing the photo I took (I can't remember what the rest of the unsolicited message said as I deleted it immediately).

 

 

[GrumpyPenguin]

3 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I don't have a dashcam, it would be a bit rich to complain about being recorded if I then went around doing it to others.

 

Cast your mind back quite a few years to when there was a widely-observed meteor in Russia (don't worry, this will get to being on-topic!) There was a lot of dashcam footage of it, and I remember hearing a lot of people here surprised by that, thinking how iffy a place Russia must be if people felt the need to drive around with a camera in their car like that. Yet here we are doing the same.

Two issues here ;

1) I don't want my entire journey recorded (there are enough ANPR & other cameras that do that anyway & that data is saved) - my Dashcam only saves a limited amount & woiuld only be downloaded/saved in the event of an incident.

2) AFAIK it is a condition of vehicle insurance in Russia to have a working dashcam fitted.

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Ironic that there is such concern over car date being shared with the manufacturer/dealer.,when your mobile phone is doing it all the time.

Are you assuming I have a mobile phone?

 

Anyway the presence of other bad stuff doesn't invalidate complaints about this lot, and since this is a thread about driving it's the things in the car that'll get mentioned here.

[Reorte]

Just now, GrumpyPenguin said:

Two issues here ;

1) I don't want my entire journey recorded (there are enough ANPR & other cameras that do that anyway & that data is saved) - my Dashcam only saves a limited amount & woiuld only be downloaded/saved in the event of an incident.

2) AFAIK it is a condition of vehicle insurance in Russia to have a working dashcam fitted.

On the first one I don't fear an incident enough to feel a need for one. There's always the chance of course, the risk isn't zero, but I hate the idea of going through life with a "but what if? Better protect myself!" attitude. There's a time and a place for that but the concern has to be rather higher.

 

On two, well, that's sort of the point. We shouldn't want to be getting more like Russia!

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

It can be done "properly" but doing that to a Classic 2-door Range Rover is nothing but mechanical vandalism !

 

BL already mechanically vandalised it by fitting an engine that never ran right. My mate's dad once spent his pools win on a brand new SD1 that was similarly junk from the factory.

 

Get over it. It's a mass produced consumer product. It's not Jesus.

[Deeps]

I have a mobile phone, somewhere, but unlike the majority of the population I do not need to have it my hand for every waking hour of the day. I certainly do not use one in the car and I am highly critical of those that do. However, whilst it is clearly dangerous to do so, I’m fairly sure it is less distracting than fiddling around with all the media and setting functions in modern cars, including built-in satnav. Don’t shoot the messenger but you can use your phone whilst monitoring the road ahead but trying to fathom out how to find Radio 2 requires me to focus on the digital display in the centre of the dashboard (remember the halcyon days when to change channels you had push buttons, easily found without looking down?).

 

Use of a handheld phone had to be made a specific offence, even though it was effectively covered by existing legislation, but can you imagine the upheaval if it became illegal to search your in-car settings whilst on the move?

 

Earlier in this thread it was suggested that sticking an electric motor and batteries in a Series Land Rover would produce the equivalent of a milk float. Well, at least you would be unlikely to exceed the prevailing speed limit and you wouldn’t have the additional distraction, expense and questionable reliability of the gimmickry they insist on fitting in EV’s. As it happens, a milk float would be ideal for our supermarket run!

 

 Don’t take all this too seriously, it’s just the observations of someone who no longer enjoys driving.

[Reorte]

Agree very much on touchscreens in cars, and not simply because of my dislike of excessive electronics everywhere. They're a very bad idea for exactly the reason you say, can't operate by touch (there's an irony there I suppose).

 

Haven't some manufacturers started to move away from them?

[kevinlms]

38 minutes ago, Deeps said:

I have a mobile phone, somewhere, but unlike the majority of the population I do not need to have it my hand for every waking hour of the day. I certainly do not use one in the car and I am highly critical of those that do. However, whilst it is clearly dangerous to do so, I’m fairly sure it is less distracting than fiddling around with all the media and setting functions in modern cars, including built-in satnav.

 

But you're supposed to set up your navigation BEFORE you start the vehicle, not afterwards.

 

At my club we recently installed a camera system and a short while ago, we had the police come to clubrooms. We had good footage of a 90 year old, being hit by a car driven by an 18 year old. The car couldn't have been driven more than 20 metres and went straight ahead across the grass, instead of around the bend.

Police said she was distracted, so almost certainly setting up the navigation.

[Nick C]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

On the first one I don't fear an incident enough to feel a need for one. There's always the chance of course, the risk isn't zero, but I hate the idea of going through life with a "but what if? Better protect myself!" attitude. There's a time and a place for that but the concern has to be rather higher.

I fitted a dashcam after one of my wife's colleagues got caught up by a 'cash for crash' scam - they didn't have one, so had no evidence to dispute the lies told by the scammer...

 

6 hours ago, StuAllen said:

for some people following me I’m not sure they like going so slow (these are the same people that then stick to 45mph when you hit a national speed limit sign)

Getting back to driving standards -  I had three of those yesterday, tailgating me through 30 or 40 limits (in which I was driving at the posted limit) - all younger people in small hatchbacks...

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, Nick C said:

I fitted a dashcam after one of my wife's colleagues got caught up by a 'cash for crash' scam - they didn't have one, so had no evidence to dispute the lies told by the scammer...

Several years ago there was one of those in the news not far from here. It got in the news because the perpetrator was a bit of an idiot and kept crashing outside the same office, making the people in the office rather suspicious.

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

I don't have a dashcam, it would be a bit rich to complain about being recorded if I then went around doing it to others.

 

6 minutes ago, Nick C said:

I fitted a dashcam after one of my wife's colleagues got caught up by a 'cash for crash' scam - they didn't have one, so had no evidence to dispute the lies told by the scammer...

I was caught by a 'cash for crash' scammer three months ago and my car was written off. I didn't have a dashcam fitted but I have fitted a dashcam to the replacement car.  Despite not having the dashcam there is an independent witness to the other drivers actions which were extremely suspicious.

[Deeps]

38 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

But you're supposed to set up your navigation BEFORE you start the vehicle, not afterwards.

I don’t navigate by satnav, and my post was meant to illustrate that OTHER drivers could be distracted by digital display's.

 

The wife will use satnav but generally I plan long distance journeys in advance and commit the route to memory. Plus, having been a Boy Scout, I have a good sense of direction anyway!

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Agree very much on touchscreens in cars, and not simply because of my dislike of excessive electronics everywhere. They're a very bad idea for exactly the reason you say, can't operate by touch (there's an irony there I suppose).

 

Haven't some manufacturers started to move away from them?

 

Well Tesla have doubled down and made the gear selector a slide control on the touchscreen in the Cybertruck.