What Grinds My Gears.

[Trev]

Oh, and while we're at it, a different licence class for anything over 2 tonnes. Little people in big 4wds are fecking scary and and dangerous if they haven't been taught how to drive them.

 

I fully agree.

 

On another note retesting would suck (my opinion anyway), I lived on my own at a very early age so when i got my L's i just drove everywhere and when i went to get my P's i had some bad habits like only using one hand instead of doing the whole 10 to 2 and he even said to me about changing gears so many times other than that it would be a great idea.

[Des]

Bus' shit me off, They just pull out in front of you. Nearly rear ended one today, The driver is lucky i didn't have a road rage stick in the car at the time :D.

[JiP]

You have to realise that a bus has a schedule to stick to and that most people wont let them in. Plus finding a big enough gap in traffic for them to merge is harder. So they do what they can otherwise its their ass.

[towe001]

getting retested really is a good idea. i think I'd have to brush up on my reverse parallel parking though lo.

If i got re-tested i'd have to brush up on more then just reverse parallel parking but also bad habits

The worst thing for an l-plater to have is trying to manage their gears and mastering take-off while idiots behind beep and cause a fuss.

I know i'll cop a flaming for it but when my girlfriend went for her car she wanted an auto and i wasn't going to stop her cause she'd have enough on her plate as it is with learning to control the car, keeping her eye's on the road, other traffic and other situations that tend to pop up.

 

 

And then i'll throw her behind the wheel of a manual.

 

My idea behind her driving an auto is that, when you get down and think about it, the hardest thing of driving a manual is mastering the clutch and then its the gears..... Throw all that in traffic with a panicked, novice learner there won't be a lot of learning happening.

(I was stuck in my lane behind a hopelessly bunnyhopping learner today, I waited patiently :) )

Wish there was more like you with that 7shades :D :)

[towe001]

You have to realise that a bus has a schedule to stick to and that most people wont let them in. Plus finding a big enough gap in traffic for them to merge is harder. So they do what they can otherwise its their ass.

They also have a sticker on the back stating "Give way". But they still have to use the right hand blinker and look before they move off.

[fusion]

I reckon I got a great start for my L's. like towe said, I started the first two lessons in an automatic from my dad in the back streets, which taught me how to control a car firstly. Than I progessed into the lighter feeling corolla which was a manual. Yet again I learnt in the back streets with lots of twists and turns so I could get use to down gearing and up gearing at appropriate points. After that I progressed onto open roads, where it was really quite easy.

 

However people do s*&t me off. They think because I am an L plater that I am going to slowly. So they will either pull out in front of me, making me brake hard or swerve in a couple of cases, or rev past me and give me the flick for doing a little over the speed limit. Bah! :D

[towe001]

....that I am going to slowly. So they will either pull out in front of me, making me brake hard or swerve in a couple of cases, or rev past me and give me the flick for doing a little over the speed limit. Bah! :)

You grandpa :hmm:

 

Bah, i'm about the same these days, i've got to just about force myself to sit on the speed limit on the highways some days and if i don't i'll sit around the 90 mark and not even realize it

 

 

And as a side note - the bloody "Foodworks" adds are shutting me to tears "Yes, its feta that really does it" :) :D what the heck is wrong with that woman of his.... the one behind the counter knows he hates the stuff.....

[fusion]

With the amount of cops or unmarked cop cars around SA at the moment do you blame me for not wanting to break to speed limit :D

[7shades]

On the subject of learners and manual transmissions:

 

Get thee a shitbox and a big f@$koff paddock. There ye shall learn all that is needed to navigate the urban jungle with confidence and safety.... I was driving as soon as I could touch the pedals, out in the boonies.

I understand not everyone is lucky enough to have the space to do such a thing, you unfortunate city dwellers you, but i have always believed that thrashing the buggery out of an old car in a field is the best way to understand how to control a nice one on the street.

[Toy-Yoda[RL]]

Get thee a shitbox and a big f@$koff paddock. There ye shall learn all that is needed to navigate the urban jungle with confidence and safety.... I was driving as soon as I could touch the pedals, out in the boonies.

I understand not everyone is lucky enough to have the space to do such a thing, you unfortunate city dwellers you, but i have always believed that thrashing the buggery out of an old car in a field is the best way to understand how to control a nice one on the street.

 

Well said! I learnt to drive in a paddock, driving, well ok, thrashing a 180B wagon........ My dad threw me the keys and said "drive it" first time in the drivers seat, no idea that you had to use a clutch to change gears when the engine is running, he points at a tree 150-odd meters away and says "drive around it, come back, stop" that was a very quick lesson in understeer, but I learned how to get reverse! :D took days to fix the fence up properly tho.......

 

Learning to drive in a field is the best way to learn oversteer, understeer, and emergency braking/evasion in adverse conditions too........ and the safest.

 

On topic, what grinds my gears, soccer moms in their over padded-child killing-gas guzzling-ugly bastard-fake-4X4's, before anyone takes a shot at me about 4X4's being halfway safe, I'll say this, I am by no means a big person (I weigh in at about 80 kilo's), I'll never claim to be a perfect driver, (but I try) I own a 4X4, I drive it regularly, I know first hand that they are big, heavy, and have the turning circle of an ocean liner, they don't like to stop quickly, and they are made of real metal (I refer to "real 4X4's here, the ones capable of driving offroad, not just the nature strip out the front of the house) the end result being, you hit someone/something, it will likely be maimed or quite dead by the time you stop.

Add to that, my 4X4 doesn't have ABS, airbags, traction control, stability management, or any other silly little electronic gizmo's to make a car "safer".

Does that make my 4X4 dangerous? No, but it could be, I'll explain, the modern "fake" 4X4 with all the addons, can be absolutely lethal, same as a car built in 1964, reason being, is the driver........ If I look in my rear view mirror and see a big 4X4 with one or maybe two guys in it, staying a safe and reasonable distance from my rear bumper, I don't think twice of it, if I see a a big 4X4 driven by a female, with her 2 kids, and her neighbors kids in the back, I get off the road as soon as possible, I've been run off the road twice by females in 4X4's, and four times by women in cars, every time, the woman was so involved in screaming at the kids that she was completely and utterly oblivious to what was happening around her, once the said woman had successfully managed to put me into a kerb/ditch with me laying into the horn while yelling the "obcenity dictionary" at her, she would wake up to what was happening, stop, apologize profusely, and go on her merry way........ Except the one time that the woman kept on driving like nothing ever happened. <-- That shat me.

Ultimately, my point is, concentration, without it, a car, 4X4, truck, motorbike, anything on the road can be a lethal weapon, waiting to strike.

Best thing I've ever seen was a dad, taking his kids to school in the roughest looking Landcruiser I've seen in a long time, 3 kids, all dead silent, all barely moving........ (no tv's, nothing)

That bloke had total control of the kids behaviour, why can't the women seem to do that?

[78_7kRolla]

probably because the kids are scare shitless that if the muck around their dad would pull over and "fix" them. I know i bloody was.

[Hiro Protagonist]

probably because the kids are scare shitless that if the muck around their dad would pull over and "fix" them. I know i bloody was.

 

Funnily enough, my mother taught me to drive, not my dad. He never once sat in the front passenger seat whilst I was on my L's.

 

I can confidently state now though that I am a better driver (skill-wise) than both my parents

[Rolla__Boy]

Funnily enough, my mother taught me to drive, not my dad. He never once sat in the front passenger seat whilst I was on my L's.

 

I can confidently state now though that I am a better driver (skill-wise) than both my parents

 

Arrogant much?

[Trev]

I had to teach my sister to drive as my mum was too scared and my sister got sick of my dad being so impatient, The reaseon she was more comfortable is if the instructor is showing anger, nervousness and so on the driver will too so i just used to sit there and let here drive while politely telling her what she is doing wrong.

[KE70-from-mt-panorama]

When i was on my L's i joined the light car club, i started out in motorkhana's and after a few of them i did some khanacross's. These really helped me to learn control of cars, Which made me a safer driver.

 

Today i spun out on mt panorama (forests Elbow), i wasnt hooning or speeding or being reckless. It was in a front wheel drive car, i was thinking if i was going too quick (even though i was going less than 40km/h) it would just understeer a little bit as it has done in other situations, but instead it slid right out and spun 90 degrees to where i wanted to be facing. The road was wet and greasy and my back tyres are getting low on tread, Went around and before i knew it i was facing the wall. But with the small amount of experience of driving from the light car club i managed to keep it away from the wall. Still scared the shit out of me but if i hadnt had that experience of driving in motorkhana's/khanacross's then i would have been facing some damage. I'm not bragging that I'm an ace drifter cause i didnt hit the wall, ill say it, i was lucky.

 

I believe paddock driving is a really good way to learn some skills before you hit the roads.