Comment

Driving up the cost of calls

Tuesday February 27th 2007

The new laws in place today that deliver a £60 fine and three points onto the license of drivers who are caught using a mobile phone has been met with polarised opinion. Me, I’m all for it.

But then, I’m all for people getting fined when they speed along the streets where I live, passing the schools with wreckless abandon. Them and the dick head teenager with the motorbike who feels the need to race around our area at ridiculous speeds.

The thing is, there aren’t any police around to do anything about them. I have a 20 minute commute to and from work, and I see people on their mobiles all the time – not all of them driving dangerously, mind, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. However, it’s lucky if I see a police car once a week on my route, so how the heck is that one police car meant to enforce the law?

A couple of weeks back I had the idea that people should only be allowed to use a mobile phone at the wheel of a car if they’d passed their Advanced Driving Test. The folk who are crap at driving and using a mobile at the same time get fined off the road, while the people who really need to be contactable whilst on the move become better drivers.

The trouble with the Advanced Driving qualification is that it’s voluntary, and people assume they’re more than qualified after taking the current piece-of-piss driving test. But what if they made the Advanced Driving qualification a requirement with obvious benefits; you can use your phone, and you get cheaper insurance?

Continue Reading
1 Comment
Journal

Back on the Road

Friday February 23rd 2007

Sooner than expected, I got the car back from the garage yesterday afternoon and it was great to be behind the wheel of it again. Despite growing in familiarity with the Corsa as the days went by, it always felt awkward, even if my initial thoughts about it being “gutless” turned out to be unfounded – it had quite a bit of power, it was just much lower down the rev range than it is in the Jazz.

Later that evening, Elisha seemed very pleased to see we had our own car back when I picked her up from nursery, too. She does this “ooo-oooh” thing when something catches her attention, and that was in full effect when I was strapping her into her car seat.

For myself, it’s good to be back in a car I can step out of, rather than one that I have to scramble out of like a turtle on his back. The Corsa was so low down that it really did take a bit of effort to enter and exit, so I’m not going to miss that at all. I did kind of get used to the “throaty” sounding engine, though… the Honda engine is so much more refined, but it was quite good fun to blip the throttle of the Corsa for a low roar from the engine bay. I can understand why boy racers like them so much – it sounded like a much faster car.

Hopefully I can avoid making any more careless mistakes in future – the Jazz is a great little car and it’s a shame that it’s spent the time it has in the repair shop, because, for the most part, I’m really careful with it.

Continue Reading