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My BIL nearly always has to buy a new tyre whenever he gets a puncture because he drives on them flat. He's had to buy a least one new wheel for the same reason.
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My ole mum used to say there are more out than in.
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I was riding to work last summer, picked up the smell of burning rubber, naturally thought ot was a bike problem, caught up with a Saab Convertible (roof down) driven by an immaculately dressed woman of a certain age - the rear offside tyre was actually on fire, she drove on seemingly oblivious to it - takes all types
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How can a person be oblivious to the car slow to accelerate and constantly pulling to the right.
I wonder if she turned up the car stereo and the problem went away
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Drivers are in their own box and refuse to acknowledge anything that might cause them to have to leave it and do something different.
I once followed a car with a large inflatable dinghy on the roof bars. It had come detached from the front bar and was riding up vertically, flapping alarmingly and looking as if it might come off at any moment.
Lots of people flashed and sounded their horns. I pulled alongside, hooted, and my passenger wound his window down and gestured to the roof. The driver refused to make eye contact or show any reaction, he just kept going.
The only thing was to get safely out of the way and leave him to it. Presumably the dinghy broke free eventually.
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Yesterday driving up north on the A1/1M we came across a very simple driver error - a red car was looking very sorry for itself having crunched into the back of a Defender or similar, which had obviously slowed down for the white van stopped in front of it. This is o a section of the road which quite often has slowing traffic, due to entering vehicles and sheer volume of traffic at busy times.
The road was straight, clear and conditions were perfect.
Obviously driving too close to the vehicle in front and going too fast, as well.
Lots of similar rubbish spacing from many, many, vehicles, both going north in the morning and south in the evening.
There are loons on our roads!
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In Roger's A1 incident too fast/close will be factors but another is failure to look well ahead. If your visual sweep extends as far as it can ahead you'll see hazards like junctions or other vehicles braking - even if you cannot see why.
FAr too many are fixed on the bumper of the car in front.
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Roger, was it near Doncaster? I know there's a slip road there that is very short just on the other side of the brow of a hill. Quite a few incidents there as some pull out from a very low speed. Needs a longer slip road.
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All Qashqais have Bluetooth handsfree as standard. This morning, in a short 5 mile drive I saw two separate instances ( both women, both in Qashqais ) blatantly driving along chatting with their mobile phones to their ears.
What part of "it's illegal now and you'll get points and a fine if you are caught" are they not getting I wonder? Quite apart from the admittedly debatable, but certainly possible, real dangers.
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>>All Qashqais have Bluetooth handsfree as standard........................................................
They'd have to RTFM to set it up and how many drivers open the book?
Friends of mine took their Astra back to the dealer to have the bluetooth set up, they still can't use it. They had a previous car for eighteen months when I asked them why they didn't use the air-con. Not fitted they replied, so I pointed to the switch on the heater controls.
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>> All Qashqais have Bluetooth handsfree as standard. This morning, in a short 5 mile drive
>> I saw two separate instances ( both women, both in Qashqais ) blatantly driving along
>> chatting with their mobile phones to their ears.
>>
>>
>>
I can never understand that. My Bluetooth earpiece cost less than a fiver on ebay, apart from the legal bit it is just so much easier to use than faffing about trying to hold a phone while you steer and change gear.
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Years ago now but I saw a family sitting in a car on the hard shoulder of the M25 between the M2 and M20 junctions. There were flames licking up from under the car and as it was dusk they were really visible. I pull-up as did the van behind me and he had a fire extinguisher thank goodness otherwise they would have been toast. No effort to leave the car at all, despite the very fast road!
Idiots!
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I noticed a lot of young women on that same journey this morning! The fact that they were all dressed appropriately for the warm weather was a mere coincidence of course...but of the ones that weren't driving and phoning, many ( most? ) were walking along, hunched over, peering at phones. Can't help feeling they're all going to have bad necks when they're older. They make me think of some kind of obscure religious sect, all bowed over their scriptures while walking about. The young men seem in general, more able to go about their business without constantly having to consult a handset.
;-)
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There's a thread running on pepipoo at the moment about a lady who briefly brushed her hair from her ear, with her mobile safely in her bag. Police pulled her over and issued a ticket as "in the opinion of the officer" she was using a phone.
As best as one can tell, of course, she wasn't, as portrayed in the thread anyway.
She's apparently going to court over it to argue and the feeling is it will be a struggle. Be interesting to see the outcome.
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I'd have thought they could look at her mobile usage records and see if it was in use at or around the time of the offence. Assuming they recorded the time accurately.
I expect the police have to put up with all manners of excuses when they stop someone, and they must have heard them all, and be fed up with people thinking they are so gullible. But then again, they must sometimes get it wrong...
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>> I'd have thought they could look at her mobile usage records and see if it
>> was in use at or around the time of the offence. Assuming they recorded the
>> time accurately
That only shows you weren't using that particular phone, not any other in the world you might have borrowed, for example.
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>> I noticed a lot of young women on that same journey this morning! The fact
>> that they were all dressed appropriately for the warm weather was a mere coincidence of
>> course...but of the ones that weren't driving and phoning, many ( most? ) were walking
>> along, hunched over, peering at phones.
>>
>>
>>
That, apparently, is a big hazard for blind people in busy cities, smartphone users walking into them. When passing a school at chucking out time twenty years back most of the kids would be lighting up as they left the gates, very few smokers among them now but nine out of ten are bent forward tapping away on a mobile.
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Sat 27 May 17 at 17:17
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>> Roger, was it near Doncaster? I know there's a slip road there that is very
>> short just on the other side of the brow of a hill. Quite a few
>> incidents there as some pull out from a very low speed. Needs a longer slip
>> road.
>>
In that general area. There's a daytime TV program about the A1 and A1M, and there it has been said that the stretch from Donnie to Ferrybridge is a known black spot.
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One I see fairly regularly is loose undertrays flapping beneath cars. I've even heard them scraping along the road surface when I've been walking alongside the road. The noise in the cabin must be considerable but drivers remain oblivious.
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I am the opposite to these drivers, I have noise OCD. I consider the slightest unusual sound to be a potential problem in the making and cars don't heal themselves. I have picked up a puncture by the ticking of the nail as the wheel rotated, I suspect that modern cars are too well insulated for that. Yesterday I heard a car leaving a carpak with an loud engine tick, reminded me of the Cortina soft camshafts.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 27 May 17 at 16:13
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>> I have picked up a puncture by the ticking of the nail as the wheel
>> rotated,
I've done that too.
On another occasion thought it was tyre until, driving with window down, I twigged noise was tracking engine speed rather than road speed. Turned out one of the cambelt idler wheels had distorted and was causing the belt to fray. Noise was frayed edges contacting the belt cover.
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. The noise in
>> the cabin must be considerable but drivers remain oblivious.
>>
As in cliff's example they can well hear it, but they've no idea what to do about it so as long as the car still moves they'll just ignore it.
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Which I suppose just goes to show that not everyone is expert on cars or mechanicals. I expect most people, excepting of course all of us here, have done something daft when we really should have known better. It's just not always caught on film or published for the whole world to see thankfully... :-)
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I don't know so much.
Years ago I was driving up the M4 to Langley in a GS Club. I'd been aware of a couple of people looking at the car but didn't think much of it. The car felt, and smelled, fine.
When I pulled off at Langley and got down to the roundabout it was clear something was wrong.
There was little except smoking rubber and bits of wire left of the front left tyre. I hadn't noticed a thing.
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For your delight, here's a couple of Citroen GSA adverts showing front wheel punctures not affecting the steering. The DS had similar steering geometry.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Kfd1Um4YI
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There was a big thing made by some manufacturers in the 70s about negative roll radius steering. Volkswagen was one I think.
Traditionally the kingpin axis on which the steering wheels pivoted when steering had intersected the road surface on the inside half of the tyre. This made for lighter steering.
Putting the pivot axis on the outside edge of the tyre makes the steering heavy but that matters less with PAS, now universal. What it also does is help the car stop and steer in a straight line when a tyre deflates or when brake friction is uneven between the front wheels.
Perhaps the GSA used this geometry. On the other hand it is very possible that Citroen in the 1960s/70s invented a far more complicated way of doing it.
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>> Perhaps the GSA used this geometry. On the other hand it is very possible that
>> Citroen in the 1960s/70s invented a far more complicated way of doing it.
>>
IIRC the key principle was the steering ball-joints were on the centre line of the road wheel inside the dish so that if the radius of the wheel changed by virtue of a puncture, the geometry was unchanged. That can't be achieved with a Macpherson strut; the size of the thing makes it impossible to hide inside a dished road wheel. A puncture therefore changes the steering geometry and gives the characteristic pull to the side on which the puncture is. It wasn't complicated but it wasn't cheap. Peugeots had Macpherson struts so that's the way Citroen went.
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I recall Vauxhall advertising a system (in the '80s?) called something like 'reverse castor steering geometry', which placed the steering pivot point of the front wheels outside the centre line of the wheel. This meant that in the event of a deflation of a tyre, the drag caused the steering to pull to the other side of the car, helping to counteract the drag caused by the deflating tyre. ie. a puncture on the left caused the car to pull right and vice-versa.
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>> IIRC the key principle was the steering ball-joints were on the centre line of the
>> road wheel inside the dish so that if the radius of the wheel changed by
>> virtue of a puncture, the geometry was unchanged. That can't be achieved with a Macpherson
>> strut; the size of the thing makes it impossible to hide inside a dished road
>> wheel. A puncture therefore changes the steering geometry and gives the characteristic pull to the
>> side on which the puncture is.
So Citroen did have their own thing.
Certainly 'negative roll radius' can be and is achieved on cars with struts, with the same aim of stopping the car swerving. Moving the strut tops inwards combined with positive wheel offset means the virtual kingpin, the the extended line passing through the strut top and the bottom ball joint, can meet the road nearer the outer edge of the tyre than the inner edge. The drag on a flat tyre then tends to turn the wheel inwards, counteracting the moment of the drag on the mass of the car, achieving the effect that car still wants to go straight on.
In the extreme opposite case, if the struts were vertical, there would be a very strong tendency for the moving car to steer and swerve in the to the side with the puncture. A grabbing brake would very noticeably pull on the steering. It's unusual to feel a pulling brake on modern cars even with a stuck caliper.
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>> The noise in
>> the cabin must be considerable but drivers remain oblivious.
>>
Baffling isn't it. A few years back I was driving down the M11 when I heard what sounded like the Flying Scotsman at full chat approaching from the rear, the noise was incredible and baffling. An A4 comes belting past with the engine undertray hititng the tarmac, then bouncing up against the bottom of the car, then back onto the tarmac, and so on. Lord knows what it must've sounded like inside the car.
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>> Baffling isn't it. A few years back I was driving down the M11 when I
>> heard what sounded like the Flying Scotsman at full chat approaching from the rear, the
>> noise was incredible and baffling. An A4 comes belting past
>>
Was it an A4 Pacific ...
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>> Was it an A4 Pacific ...
Filmed a noisy A3 last night
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIAES48IwEU
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 7 Jun 17 at 08:19
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>> Filmed a noisy A3 last night
>>
Well up to your usual standard, good one Z, thanks
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>> Lord knows what it must've sounded like inside the car.
>>
Presumably it was a company car with the solution to all funny noises in the middle of the console, turn volume up 2 notches, funny noise gone.
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> In that general area. There's a daytime TV program about the A1 and A1M, and
>> there it has been said that the stretch from Donnie to Ferrybridge is a known
>> black spot.
>>
No surprise that area on the a1 is poorly laid out. It needs a redesign like has been carried out further south as it heads into notts. They got rid of all those god awful roundabouts and replaced them with proper mway type slip roads, which it should have had from the beginning.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Sat 27 May 17 at 17:05
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When the A1 was designed you didn't get people joining at 90 mph and heading direct to the right lane or performing late high speed exits from there regardless of the traffic. Traffic calming is already on motorways with average speed cameras and variable limits with cameras.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 27 May 17 at 17:23
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>> When the A1 was designed you didn't get people joining at 90 mph
90! The parts of the a1 i was talking about, those joining are likely to be closer to 9 mph than 90 mph when entering on some junctions!
Last edited by: sooty123 on Sat 27 May 17 at 17:29
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As it is not a motorway tractors etc are an expected hazard.
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Its not really tractors etc, more the slip roads are too small. Traffic flows well and a more than reasonable speed, the speed differential between those joining and already on is too great.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Sat 27 May 17 at 17:44
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I think it is down to the age of the original design, similar more recently constructed roads in this area have motorway type slip roads. They still have speed differential collisions though
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Of course, but I think it's less likely to occur if they are there from the beginning.
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The beginning for the A1 was in the horse and cart days, certainly before motorway design. High speed slip roads were not necessary or invented. I agree an update sounds like a good idea but the motorways are the primary routes now.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 27 May 17 at 18:45
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I don't know they've already done about 90% of the road junctions, in that area, a couple of years ago anyway. Around the markham moor stretch, and further north at cattrick its going to 3 lanes.
Doesn't seem that much more out of the pot that has been ploughed into the a1 over the last couple of years to tidy up a few dodgy junctions.
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I don't know that area, I use the M74, M6, M42, M40, for my north south travels. I will also be using the M5, M3, and M25 in a couple of weeks for a pensioner roam around. Good job I won't be in a hurry!
And before any of you jump onto your keyboards I will not be holding up the traffic either. :-)
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The A1 parallels the much more glamoursly named Great North Road, the ancient road to Edinburgh from London. Most of it now consists of bypasses but there are a few stretches where it follows the course of the ol the old road
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I have used the A1 but prefer the motorways, particularly the almost deserted M6 and M74 north of Preston.
www.motorwaycameras.co.uk/viewcamera/?motorway=&motorwayid=2&cameraid=1681
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 27 May 17 at 19:05
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>> I have used the A1 but prefer the motorways, particularly the almost deserted M6 and
>> M74 north of Preston.
I don't mind using them, they just don't seem to be where I'm going quite often. An east-west mway across the Midlands would be quite useful, but I don't think that's ever likely to happen.
>> www.motorwaycameras.co.uk/viewcamera/?motorway=&motorwayid=2&cameraid=1681
>>
Doesn't seem to work on my phone, just a still.
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>> Doesn't seem to work on my phone, just a still.
>>
That webcam has a slow refresh rate.
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That webcam has a slow refresh rate.
>>
Maybe it's a traffic jam ;-)
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>> I have used the A1 but prefer the motorways, particularly the almost deserted M6 and
>> M74 north of Preston.
For a while in the eighties I preferred the A1 to the M1 for London to Yorkshire. A more engaging drive and in a Mini 850 there was no opportunity to utilise faster speeds on the M1.
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I think there's a few miles of it around Grantham that still follow the great north road.
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>> I think there's a few miles of it around Grantham that still follow the great
>> north road.
>>
I knew that stretch when I was a child, often staying on my uncle's farm. He had land on the other side of the Great North Road, and I remember holding up the traffic while we drove a flock of sheep across.
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Take a look at this. A trip down the A1 in 1939. It shows Grantham.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPhkZSWxt_I
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>> The A1 parallels the much more glamoursly named Great North Road, the ancient road to
>> Edinburgh from London. Most of it now consists of bypasses but there are a few
>> stretches where it follows the course of the ol the old road
I have actually traveled and explored most of the proper Great North Road (where possible). Its a fantastic route, fully exploring most of the UK's history since (actually pre) roman times.
The "old" routes are fantastic to explore. The A3, the A4, the A30.
Funnily the A303, that has most personal memories for me, is a bit of a modern hybrid
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>>
>> I have actually traveled and explored most of the proper Great North Road (where possible).
>> Its a fantastic route, fully exploring most of the UK's history since (actually pre) roman
>> times.
You'll remember then the Ram Jam Inn, now I think closed if not demolished.
Haunt of Dick Turpin.
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>> You'll remember then the Ram Jam Inn, now I think closed if not demolished.
>>
>> Haunt of Dick Turpin.
I do, had breakfast there. Seen it was closed, but didn't think it was demolished.
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>> You'll remember then the Ram Jam Inn, now I think closed if not demolished.
>>
>> Haunt of Dick Turpin.
>>
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Jam_Inn
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Passed by today. Looking very forlorn.
tinyurl.com/ya4xzpeo
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>> Passed by today. Looking very forlorn.
>>
>> tinyurl.com/ya4xzpeo
Spent weekend close by at Rutland Caravan and Camping site.
Still a prominent sign for Ram Jam Inn on n/b A1, along with another advertising the delights of the Greetham valley.
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>> The beginning for the A1 was in the horse and cart days,
Roman legions. The A1 as we know it is a roman invention.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 27 May 17 at 19:55
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Some of them got north of the wall.
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4541318/Roman-sling-bullets-deadly-44-Magnum.html
But not far. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 27 May 17 at 20:17
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Or boggled mind - DUI and get me home itis ?
www.surreymirror.co.uk/man-arrested-after-jagermeister-found-in-van-with-missing-wheel-after-10-mile-police-chase-to-cobham/story-30368324-detail/story.html
IMO there appears to be a typos / confusion in the report
M3 should read A3 ( southbound?). Missing wheel ?
An early evening happening so a good extended lunch ?
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A biker is due in court accused of standing up, taking selfies and breaking the speed limit on a motorway.
Police claim the motorcyclist was doing wheelies and riding his Yamaha R6 in a dangerous manner on the northbound M6 near Yarnfield, Staffordshire.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/motorbiker-caught-taking-selfies-doing-10570871
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The Mind Boggles - bathtub tom
