Petrol and time savers

I was driving through Durban's CBD yesterday and was stopped at every traffic light along a straight section of road. 
I wonder how much time and petrol will be saved by synchronizing those lights. Strictly speaking, if you get stopped at one light and all the others are synched, when you go you should get through them all. Not only will that be really pleasant, you wouldn't have to brake, then accelerate again in first gear and go through the gears again, your engine could run at constant, lower revs in a higher gear saving you fuel as you go.
This wouldn’t work for those that tear from light to light at high speed because by the time they arrived at the next light, the traffic that had built up there would not have moved off yet and they would be braking, then accelerating again, wasting more fuel than ever...

Who has Right of Way?

I do like a courteous driver. Someone who will let you into a gap in traffic, or get out of your way and let you all get on with your commute happily and safely.

We need to be careful with our generosity. Today I was at an intersection, a T-junction where I wanted to turn right an dtraffic was fairly heavy. A woman who was going to turn into the road waved me to go. As kind as her offer was, there were cars streaming around behind her basically meaning I could not go at all. She drove off with a frustrated look on her face because I didn't accept her gracious offer.

When doing this you need to be aware of a few things, look at the traffic from the other person's point of view. Can they actually go? Is there something that is blocking them and not you? Be mindful that you may have right of way on the road for a good reason, stopping to allow someone into the road will actually be causing an unexpected blockage in the road. We know that most people aren't concentrating on the road anyway, how would you feel if your corteous act caused a tragic accident a few meteres behind you?

My general rule is, if you have right of way, take it.

The Cost of Bad Driving

This morning there was an accident where a minibus taxi overturned when it swerved to avoid a car that had slowed down in front of it. Twelve people were injured.

That means the following;

• 12 people didn't make it to work today
• 12 people are now in a government hospital that won't help them much
• 5 people were seriously injured
• The hospital system, if it does save their lives, will probably leave them unable to work for a long time.
• Disability grants will be claimed.
• Further claims will be made from the Road Accident Fund
• There is one less taxi to take people to work (I'm not sure if this is a bad or good thing)
• A driver will lose his job, if he is not injured or killed and the Taxi owner will have to pay for repairs or a new taxi.

All this because one person wasn't paying attention on the road. Children die because of this kind of behaviour. The cost of an accident on the government, and ultimately our pockets is ridiculous. You and I pay for all those claims intax on our petrol. The worse we all drive, the more we end up paying...

This time it's Me

I'm afraid that I have been a pain in the traffic ass lately.
I always bitch about unroadworthy cars, or people unable to service theirs so they break down. Well, I picked mine up from a service, and broke down...

in the middle lane...

Then to make matters worse I even drove it without repairing the problem and broke down again. See my car is overheating. When it's cold I dont care, but then it splutters to a halt in the middle of the road and I really should.


Don't worry though, I'm fixing it myself right now

How you sit makes me laugh.

I had to chuckle when I saw someone recently adjust his mirror while sitting upright in his seat.

Then when he pulled off he leaned so far over to the left that he was in between the driver and passenger seats... There was no way he could see anything useful in the mirror.


ha ha ha, chop

Courtesy is a good thing.

I was driving on the N3 west bound yesterday and wanted to move one lane to the left. Traffic wasn't heavy but there were a few cars on the road. My only option was to move between 2 cars.

I had 600m to go before the off ramp so I indicated my intention and a woman to the left of me, in the lane I wanted to be in moved just forward enough to sit in my blind spot and close the gap.

to whoever you are, go fuck yourself.... If you do that you are a royal poes and I mean that in all sincerity. I had my indicator on ffs all you had to do was let me in.

I cut her off and then she started making gestures at me. Sometimes I wish we could communicate in cars because I would have told her to stop being a bitch and be nice to people on the road.

what is this world coming to?

I think I know why

I think I know why we get so frustrated with bad drivers. We have to tolerate such a vast number of horrendous traffic offences that constantly go unpunished, then get a ticket for going 111 in a 100 zone. (yes it happened to me once)

Sometimes we even find Metro police officers driving badly, not indicating or going too slow in the fast lane.

If they were to enforce the laws they are meant to, less people would be committing these offences and we would know that when we see someone commit an offence, we can be sure that they will soon do it near a police officer and get fined.

alas, it is a pipe dream in Durban.

Chasers

There are a strange group of people on the road. I guess we all do this and it shows a sign of not focusing.

Lets say you are on a freeway and you are passing someone, look at your speed before, then after. You would have had to speed up a lot more to pass them because they speed up as well. It is a mindless phenomenon that people are unaware of.

You will notice they do this, he/she will drive as fast as they can to catch up with any car in front of them. When passed they will drive at the speed limit, or if they see another car ahead, try catch that one. This same person when ambling along, if you are behind them, will slow down and when you pass, speed up again.

They drive around chasing everyone trying to jockey for position, but there is no finish line to cross so if they were, hypothetically going to the same place as you, the difference would be a few seconds, but their fuel consumption and the wear on the brakes, tyres and clutch will be greater.

My solution, pay attention to YOUR vehicle, not other people's.

Bad Attitudes

The year is coming to a close and pretty soon the shopping malls will be full of people rushing around buying everything in sight.

I want you to look at this analogy. In a busy shopping mall there are people all over, and a lot of them move slower than you, or faster than you. They even walk right in your path and bump into you. What is your reaction then? You either apologise, or politely ask that they move.

Why then, do we get into our cars, and flash our lights and hoot at someone who takes their right of way and pulls into a gap in the lane that WE are driving in. The audacity to get in MY way. So we swear and shout and even go to the lengths of following the person so we can tell them off.

Would we be so brave in a busy mall? Not likely. Don't be so selfish in your car, everyone is going somewhere just like you. Have a little consideration and maybe you will get some in return...

Light up for Safety

Your lights on your vehicle serve a greater purpose than just lighting your way. Sure on a dark freeway in the middle of the night it helps, but not enough. Even on full beams you get poor visibility.

You also may have noticed one of your lights is higher than the other. It is usually the Left (on right hand drive cars) so as to light up the edge of the road so you can see further. The right is slightly lower to prevent the car coming in your direction from being blinded.

It is very important to consider other road users at night. Most new cars have a motorised beam so you can lower your light beam, especially in well lit areas. The last thing you would want to do is blind other motorists on the road so they CANT see you. That is asking for an accident to happen. Be aware when you have your high beams on as well, I have seen a lot of people forgetting...

In well lit areas, your lights are there to make you visible. From around dusk I advise you put your lights on. All you need is the wrong colour car, someone not concentrating and a little bit of shadow and someone can easily not see you and drive into you. I actually drive with my lights on most of the time, even in broad daylight. When people flash their lights at me or signal that my lights are on I KNOW they have seen me, and will then not drive into me. What an easy way to avoid an accident...

So switch on for safety, its not hurting anyone and will increase your chances of incident free driving on the road.

Plan your Route

You must have seen those people who look so lost, they have the look of complete utter confusion on their face like they forgot how to speak at all.
You also get those people who wind up in the complete wrong lane and then perform the "desperate dive" across four lanes to make a turn.

Planning your route will not only avoid this, it will save you time, petrol and money.
For example, there could be 3 routes from your home to work. One is a freeway, one a large road and the other a back route. The back route may be shorter in km but there are more stops and more turns. The large road could have very heavy traffic or the freeway could be very difficult to get on or off. Whatever the situation you need to know the road so you can plan for what may happen.

Good planning could mean you don't stop at many traffic lights, you don't struggle to cross a very busy intersection and you don't sit in bumper to bumper traffic at the beginning or end of what may have been a very stressful day.

You know your own area, plan for what happens and it will save you a lot of time and stress.

Driving Rain

It has been a fairly wet in Durban lately and I have noticed a few blunders on the road.

When it is raining, or has been raining and the roads are wet you have a few dangers that could do a lot of damage.

The obvious one is that the roads are wet. Tyre technology has improved considerably and even though they have "been developed on the race track" it doesn't mean you should assume that you are safe. Bear in mind that a huge number of people watch motor sport for the crashes. We roads can not only be very slippery, large amount of water can collect anywhere unsuspectingly. All you need is a drain to fail and you have a recipe for disaster. Keep it slow, make sure you brake lightly, which means brake earlier than normal and be very vigilant.

The next is visibility. I'm sure your superman vision can see for miles in mist as thick as your ego and in pitch black but you are not considering how blind other drivers are. If you drive a silver car, and it is raining, even light rain, your car is only 5% as visible as it should be. Thi sis easily fixable by turning your lights on. Don't switch it just to the paring lights, you need your low beams on so peopl ecan see you and thus avoid cutting you off, pulling out in front of you or driving into you. This counts for every colour car out there. Even if it's not raining the other cars will be throwing water into the air and reducing how visible you are. Lights on is an easy way to ensure you are always seen and avoided.

De-misting a windscreen can be tricky. The concept is that the glass is cold, and the warm, moist air from inside condenses on the windscreen reducing your visibility. Heating it up should work but it is very slow. In vehicles without air-conditioning, the heater blowing on the windscreen with the front windows slightly open works fairly well. I always found the car got way to hot with them closed so it gives a gap for the hot air to leave the car. Cars with air conditioning the concept is that you blow cold air on the windscreen, thereby cooling the air so it does not condense. It works very quickly and can be don intermittently to prevent you from freezing in the car.

Your windscreen wipers should be functional, I don't think I need to even mention this. If they are not, your car should not be on the road.

Drive Safe!

Lets start simple..

I am quite fed up with the poor driving standards in Durban. Seeing as I have a lot to say I'll do it here. We'll start off simple for the BMW drivers.

Your car comes with indicators, in fact it is a legal requirement for them to be working and for you to use them!

When you should use your indicators;

• If you are turning left or right. This will help other road users identify what your silly ass is doing. We cannot read your mind so if you are slowing down to make a turn and we see what your intention is (that is the point of an indicator, a turn signal) we won't drive into the back of you.
  
• if you are changing lanes. This may seem like rocket science, but if you are going to suddenly dive in front of someone, at least have the decency to let them know so they can let you in without having to eat dashboard when they slam on brakes at the sight of your ugly car in the way
  
• If you are going to be pulling into a parking space. This is yet another simple idea, it is like calling dibs on the space so everyone knows not to pull into it. It also allows other people to stay out of your way so you can park and get the feck out of the way.
  
• If you are slowing down to stop on the side of the road to drop someone off. Logic dictates that if you just randomly stop in the road, you will soon have another vehicle implanted into the back of yours. Signaling will let us all know so we don't wind up going home in a tow truck,
  
• If you are pulling off from being stationary on the side of the road. I can't say how many times I've been startled when I drive past a stationary vehicle and it suddenly starts moving. A simple flashing orange light will let us know that there is a danger of a car appearing in front of us, and also allows courteous people to let you into the traffic flow.
  
• when in a roundabout (traffic circle) it is important to indicate right when not exiting and to indicate left when exiting. While you may think you know the rules, I can tell you you are probably wrong. A roundabout in South Africa is first come first go. if you arrive at the same time as someone, the person to your right has right of way. It seems so simple because of the layout but if 2 cars arrive at the same time and one of them is turning left where the other is sitting, then there is no problem and both can go. If the other is indicating right then he/she will cross your path so you must wait. if there is no indication you end up waiting for nothing, all because one person chooses not to inform you and save you time.

While we're on this it is important to note that you should also pay attention to other peoples signals. In all the cases above, if someone is signaling, let them in. It will just make traffic flow better.

Until next time, play nice on the roads.