Me thinks, forget giving the clowns in whitehall an excuse for yet another layer of red tape, lets have a Driver Intellegence Test, to be passed annually. The number of clowns on the road, its surprising there is not a lot more accidents. A basic test to determine if a person is actually aware of what he/she is doing when they take a car out on the roads, and the effects of various parameters on the car performance. For example, there is a black car, prob Mondeo or Audi, sometimes round the back of the house I am working on. It has low profile tyres on alloys. The other day I noticed that the front O/S tyre was flat, and the rim was crushing the tyre wall. The car was moved that night, and the next. It must have been a pain to drive with the flat. A couple of days later, I saw 2 guys sitting in it, so mentioned in a friendly sort of way that his tyre was flat. The car has now been sitting for a further week, still with the flat, so I hate to think what the sidewall is like. Just think, sometime soon that person is going to get the tyre blown up and start driving it, probably at 80mph in the fast lane. Ouch. Its common sense to us who know about such things, such as regularly checking tyre pressures, water, brake fluid etc to know the potential effects of something like this. But the person who always gets their car serviced at a certain garage will assume (wrongly) that the car is always perfectly safe and will always be, provided they get it regularly serviced. Legislation always tries to make things totally safe for people who have no clue about mechanical things, but who want to be allowed to drive a car, or operate electrical or mechanical things. It forgets that the person needs a basic intellegence, to assess how something works and hence the potential dangers before they are capable of doing anything. Things like there have been plenty adverts that show what happens if you drive without a seatbelt, and the effect of getting hit in the back from a rear seat passenger, yet the number of clowns (mostly young men) in Bradford that still drive about without seatbelts is amazing. There is also a significant number of drivers in that fair city, that you think "how the h*ll did they ever pass their test", yet they keep on going, paying no attention to stop signs, give ways, cutting corners, indicators etc. Someone who has a caravan should be capable of checking the basic requirements like tyres, pressures, bearings etc, but this is basic common sense, we don't need further legislation to control this. I was recently carrying a high load on the roof of my car. The load was within the limits for the roof rack, I was travelling at a slower speed (50mph), I had a very long, new, thick rope holding it down, and I use a technique where I secure it front to back, and side to side, several times, so it can't move forward or back, up or down, or side to side. I was stopped by the Police, because they didn't like the look of it. I demonstrated that it couldn't move forward/back, up/down or side/side, but he wasn't satisfied, and said he would get me next time, even after I pointed out that I had just driven 200miles with no problems. Government are trying to make things safe for the majority, which will kill individuality like building your own car, and heaven forbid programming your own injection system. We are heading for a 1984 environment. Shame really cause its not a bad world if you can get rid of the idiots.
Another can of beer required !
Ken
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Topic: Caravan (Read 3541 times)