Thread: High performance cars and young drivers

Originally Posted by Debacle

One thing that I have been noticing over the last few years, when visiting shopping centres and crowded car parks is the number of cars that cannot park straight between the lines.The flow on effect is the next one has to park a bit over to the side and so on . This may seem inconsequential, but to my way of thinking it means that that person has no pride about how they drive, or park their car and no consideration for others around them.

That is the crux of the problem, they are in their own little bubble and when someone comes near that bubble they want to challenge them and win a battle, without proper control of their weapons.

Does that make sense ??

I've had a few beers

Makes perfect sense, a lot of drivers dont give a crap and are often in too big a hurry to take the time to park well.

Yes parking spots are getting smaller and for this reason and because SWMBO has banned me from coming into the supermarket (Dont ask ) I usually sit in the car and read or listen to the radio.

Now my Wifes Daily is a big old 740 Volvo wagon and this is what we normally drive so when i hop out to have a smoke I have a look up and down the row at the way cars are parked and shudder.

Small cars seem to be the worst here and the white lines may as well not be there for the amount of notice they get.....

And when im not in the Volvo I tootle around in a big old 450SEL Mercedes which by current standards is a land yacht in both width and length and both myself and my wife seem to park this old girl just fine too (I proudly taught my wife to parallel park in the benz).

The other issue in car parks seems to be the number of girls driving large Four wheel drives who dont really seem at ease in them and once again having helped a few friends wives with small issues piloting their husbands new toys (Yeah I said it) im not surprised at how badly some people park these things.

My point re parking is that most kids are taught to park between the lines in an empty carpark, no pressure and little chance of hitting another car, I remember my instructor 30 odd years ago used PVC conduit to set up parallel parking tests and the closest I got to parking around real cars was with my Dad and when I was tested.

Also a lot of wives are driving cars they dont want nor are comfy with and yet they endure until the fear and uncertainty turns into lack of giving a rats about the cars around them and this I have struck both as a mate and professionally re-training adults often using simple points of reference inside their own cars to help with parking the same way id teach kids.

These pencil marks or similar reference points are more of a confidence builder than anything else but by giving a visual reference to the learned sequence to parking a car the mere accomplishment sets firm the lesson taught until they believe in their ability over my pencil mark.

Im not saying that the girls shouldnt drive big vehicles BTW because thats just silly but I am saying that sometimes the girls dont want to drive a hulking mud monster so get em a car they are comfy with.

Originally Posted by Davo

Good God, you hit a few nails on the head there. This biggest problem I've had constantly is when parents have tried teaching their kids and then I've spent extra time undoing the damage.

I loved it Davo, the evil mongrel in me would ask if the Students wanted to be better drivers than their parents and the kids would all say "You bet", So id suggest they quietly critique their parents/older siblings driving.

A few students started taking notes which would infuriate/embarrass/annoy the drivers and best of all some would speak up and correct their parents.

I also gave out gold stars, seems a bit childish sure but my small gold stars were printed for me and had a thumbs up on the back and these went to students I felt had done well to stick on the rear window and I eventually got keyrings made as well.

All good fun!

Today's Brisbane Courier Mail "Cars Guide" has an illuminating article by motoring writer James Stanford in the Big Wheels section, titled "Licence to be tormented". He details his experiences preparing to obtain his heavy combination licence...

"A LITTLE (sic) hand pops out the rear window of the Holden Commodore that has just sped past after being held up by my truck.

Then I notice the hand forms so the middle finger is exptended. I spot the booster seat of the gesticulator and realise a child no older than seven has just flipped me the bird.

I laugh, then wonder what the driver, presumably the parent said to prompt a little kid to give me the finger."

My observation of this as well as the growing rude aggressiveness particularly of young women behind the wheel (many young blokes have always been immature and rude) points to a general loss of community values... the "moral law" has been steadily eroded so that lawmakers can no longer rely on generally accepted 'principles' to define acceptable behaviour...so we have a society driven by "compliance" where there is a rule/bylaw/regulation/Act etc for almost every conceivable situation...

Take a look at the Local Council sign on the entrance to the local park or beach and you'll see what I mean. We have, as a society moved to the situation where anything "seems" to hold unless there's a specific legal provision which forbids it...and vice versa. The WHS legislation fiasco referred to in other posts is a good example of this also.

For this reason, I don't believe "Education" as such is going to do much good either...my bet is that the overall message of such courses will just drum in the sanctions/fines/prison etc etc etc if "you" break the law.

Attitudes, respect , values etc need to come from within the person... education courses always fail when the students see one thing in the classroom and opposite behaviours acted out elsewhere (i.e at home!)

Perhaps I am overly pessimistic... but I think lawmakwers and enforcers and emergency services people are on a hiding to nothing until someone comes up with a strategy to get community realisation that careless road behaviour is the wrong thing to indulge in because it is intrinsically wrong towards others, not just because self indulgence may get you into strife with the law...
end of rant!

G'day Folks

Interesting read this thread,with lots of interesting points of veiw,the 5th of January is an anniversary to me,as 40 years ago at 5am I blew a left front tyre while negotiating a right hand curve,in a little Ford Thames van,I went off the road down 80 yards of mountainside missing most trees until I found one I couldn't miss,wore it straight inline with the steering column only thing that saved me, I wasn't wearing a seatbelt,(vehicle pre-seatbelt) steering column went through roof I spent several months in hospital,so there are times that seatbelts do not help,rollovers, where helpers release the belt in upturned vehicles only to break the neck of the accident victim,(seen that 3 times now).

Having just returned from a trip up to Nambour some of the driving by both young and old varied from bad to terrorifying,and I was driving a RRC, caravan towers with wildly swaying vans at 120 not a care in the world "they will stay clear of me" all just to get a steering pipe for a D1


my 2c's worth

Thanks Tony

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I find it interesting that there are many posting in this thread about how bad the standard of driving is - yet accident rates as well as road death rates continue to decline.

... .... ....

John

That may be because a lot of the complaints seem to be about inconsiderate, aggressive or stupid behaviour on the roads.

Not all of those incidents result in something that appears in the accident statistics. That may be because the perpetrator is lucky or because the rest of us are driving cars that handle and stop well enough that we can avoid the carnage they almost created.

However the point about road accident statistics paling almost into insignificance in comparison with other causes of death is something that is hard to get into people's heads.

Originally Posted by tony66_au

I loved it Davo, the evil mongrel in me would ask if the Students wanted to be better drivers than their parents and the kids would all say "You bet", So id suggest they quietly critique their parents/older siblings driving.

A few students started taking notes which would infuriate/embarrass/annoy the drivers and best of all some would speak up and correct their parents.

I also gave out gold stars, seems a bit childish sure but my small gold stars were printed for me and had a thumbs up on the back and these went to students I felt had done well to stick on the rear window and I eventually got keyrings made as well.

All good fun!

Great stuff, which I never would have thought of. You're right on the money there. Driving should be seen as a skill worth being better than others at, and something to be proud of.

Unfortunately, my job has dried up so I doubt I'll be able to try this out here - I think I've run out of students, but we also now have the mandatory 25 hour logbook before the test, and there just ain't nobody that's going to go through all of that up here. (I believe Transport will be very careful about faked pre-test logbooks this year!)

To my own detriment, I've never done any official training, and learned from the guy who did this job before me, who had done the course, and then I learned on the job and from what the assessors would bring up after a student's test. It is ridiculous that the standard for instructor training is so low, or virtually non-existent.

My own driving is far better than before, but I'm still pretty sloppy. Which just goes to show that it's all about training and practise, over and over.

Personally, I have a theory that bad driving is the individual's rebellion against the constraints of society, but I'll wait for someone else's thesis on that one!

Originally Posted by Davo

Personally, I have a theory that bad driving is the individual's rebellion against the constraints of society, but I'll wait for someone else's thesis on that one!

Yes, in the same way that 2 year olds say "No" to everything because they have discovered that it gives them some sort of power over the world around them, some drivers seem to do some things as a similar sort of rebellion.