I've got a Kia Pride.
Daughter's got an MX5.
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Sadly my Dad passed away many years ago but he was car and motorbike mad and had some real beauts. Far too many to list but highlights included a Morgan 3 wheeler as his first car. Later on he was working for a company and his boss had specially imported an early '50s 4 Litre Buick for his wife. The lady didn't like it and and Dad must have been flavour of the Month because his boss just gave it to him! I think the firm was making quite a lot of money in those days. We still have an old B&W photo somewhere with my parents standing beside the Buick, Dad's foot on the running board wearing a long overcoat and fedora hat looking for all the world like Bonnie and Clyde! There followed later a Z-cars style Zepher 6 and a Wolseley 3 litre 6/110 complete with trays in polished wood veneer which folded down from the back of the leather seats. Going back to the Zepher which had a bench seat in the front with a pull down armrest and a column change. I have a very early childhood memory of perching on the armrest between my parents sans seatbelts for our regular journeys from Edinburgh to Northampton. Later again he became a Volvo fan and had 144's and several 244's. Strange as it may seem now but because of inflation at the time he could change those Volvos every couple of years and trade them in for more than he had paid for them new. Of course the subsequent models had gone up accordingly but he always said it psychologically felt like free motoring.
I currently have a Mondeo 3 Estate. I have also had some more unusual things but overall he still wins hands down.
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okay i'm going to start a new thread
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Sorry Nick - I didn't mean to be rude. I just sort of got carried away with the memory !
SS
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Shoespy
Your post was magnificent
No need to apologise
My old man is 70 and is a mechanical engineer
Unfortunately he has never had the cash to buy the kind of car he would really appreciate.
I respect the way it finds solace in the practical and economical virtues of Vauxhalls
Thanks to the old fella I got a good education and am doing pretty well
So I can more or less afford any car I want, but the old fella will not approve!
Maybe I?ll treat him one day.
Nick
Edited by nick1975 on 24/02/2008 at 00:13
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Spelling correction "Zephyr", sorry !
SS
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I've been wondering in odd moments in my over-long M40 commute about stirring some debate on this. I think the middle-lane issue's probably been done, but more than the sheer hoggery, what scares me - especially on my way home - is the amazing shrew-train convoys that build up in lanes 2 and 3. From my lonely spot in lane 1, I've counted six cars in the space between two 100m posts - that's four cars in what ought to be empty space between the other two. Each of the drivers, 12m from the bumper in front at about 65mph, is presumably convinced that if only the moron in front would move over, he would be free to cruise home at the speed he's entitled to.
Amazingly, in five months of this, I've seen only the aftermaths of accidents - although a couple of times I've been convinced I was about to be an eyewitness to carnage as one of the 65mph shrews decided he ought to be in the 67mph train in lane 3 instead.
I could comment on the drivers who have no idea which lights to use, or of how many of theirs are even working, but the other thing that really scares me is the occasional driver who seems determined to drive much faster than everyone else. The safe speed argument belongs elsewhere, but while I can concede that there are circumstances where driving a sound car at 100mph is reasonably safe, doing so on in the finite clear space on a busy motorway, where those around you are travelling at 60-70mph, is homicidal lunacy. The vehicles are invariably German, the drivers presumably male and full of their own importance (and would regard being caught as a gross affront by a police force who ought to be catching real criminals) but I see a couple of them most days and a bit more enforcement would be welcome.
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good post WDB, the discipline on our roads is sadly getting worse
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the discipline on our roads is sadly getting worse
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What discipline? There hasn't been any for a long time - I have been driving for 17 years, and in that relatively short space of time I have seen the standards deteriorate rapidly.
In traffic on motorways I happily sit in lane 1, as a rule it always moves more freely then 2 and 3, junctions being the exception.
People seem to know very little about either the rules of the road or what different markings mean. A couple of years ago I was in an artic passing a slip road when a young girl in a corsa was trying to join the motorway, she accelerated up the inside of me, then when the slip was just about to run out she finally checked her mirrors and looked to her right, only to be confronted with 50ft of bright red artic, now she seemed to think I should pull across or brake!!!! (there was a car in lane 2 so prevented me moving) Quite what she thought the dotted white lines meant is beyond me - I always thought it was a give way line that she had to adhere to - seemingly the rules had changed since I took my tests. When she did eventually join she came past and hollered abuse and hand signals!!! Always sticks in my mind that one, but she is by no means alone!!!
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In answer to the OP, I think the risk of DVD players on headrest is to the driver from the unit being flung forward not back.
I use them occasionally. Mine have a pretty thick velcro strap plus a thick elastic strap which is designed to stop them coming loose from the headrest in a crash.
I figure that in a crash thr weight will be going forwards into the back of the headrest and if that turns into vertical motion, then it's heading for the rooflining if it does get free of the elastic strap which will be arresting its progress.
Don't know if that's enough. Life's a risk isn't it?
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I aggree with Nick1975 I think there has to be an added danger. I can imagine a kids face being buried into one ! In a high impact I don't think velcro will keep em in place & the forces will go in all different directions.
Definatley not for me, the kids have to go with out.
IJ
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Oh come on are we not taking things a bit too far here?
I have these on my Altea, think the kids in the rear would be hard pushed to hit their heads off the front passenger headrest unless they were not wearing their seat belts. Unless of course they have been halved in two in which case......
I am not going to wrap my kids in a cotton wool cocoon in the back of the car, yes I take precautions, thats why I have the safe car, airbags etc. Most importantly I try and drive relatively safely.
But taking this to the extreme, they better anchor their mobile phone down as it could become a missile in the crash, as could the ipod, the hard back book, the bottle of water etc.?
In H&S terms, you need to take a look at the likelihood of the risk occurring , and the severity.
I think both are minimal.
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Sure anything in the car could become a missile, but an ipod, phone, bottle of water is a lot lighter and most likely tucked inside a door bin or at a low level in the centre console
Obviously these screens are at eye level, so they are in direct line with the head. Maybe the physics is that they would fly forward, but then wouldn?t they rebound of the headrest?
I don?t know if there has been any research into this but seems a bit iffy to be.
Surely the kids should be made to appreciate to radio 4 anyway (says someone with no kids?J)
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Nick, you haven't seen my car on long journeys!
Two kids on two end seats. Middle seat then gets everything dumped in it, whether it be the above items, the picnic, the dvds themselves, the DS or PSP etc etc.
I would think the law of physics would mean that child's head would go forward and down, missing the front headrest but more likely coming close to connecting with their own knees?
The other good thing about the DVD is that it encourages them to sit up straight, when its not on I find them slouching in the seat, sometimes sitting side on with their back against the door and the belt wrapped round them in a not-too protective manner. Now that gets my goat up!
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An object strapped to the headrest is going to be travelling in a straight line and will want to continue doing so in a collision and it will have the headrest impeding it.
That force against a curved headrest means it will probably start going upwards.
How it will then manage to curve back down to clout the driver's head is a mystery to me, especially when the driver's head is now on its way towards the steering wheel/airbag.
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Yesterday on the way to Sussex and today on the way back there was mimsing SE weekend stuff, with some very slow drivers among it. You just have to stay calm with a bit of polemic and zip by when the time comes, if it ever does.
Mimsing on the A29 is quite often caused by horse boxes. Obviously the beasts can't be subjected to g forces or they will slam against the sides of the thing and start kicking it and each other to pieces, bad cess to the savage creatures.
Sitting in one of these queues today two or three cars back from the animal container, a person in a white Focus estate with a dud nearside headlight bulb tried to pass my white Escort estate - could this be a clue? - on a left turn through a roundabout onto another single carriageway road with double whites down the middle of it, the heavens protect us. I hooted and kept station, and the chap fell back. He had perhaps mistaken the place. But perhaps he was just a really carp, occasionally very rude driver. Who knows? He vanished into the distance behind a bit later.
Meanwhile, my wife said that she 'wouldn't have done that'.
'What he did or what I did?'
'Neither,' she said in that terrifying, calm, neutral tone.
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