People and what they drive Category

Someone wise once offered the opinion that the paranoid tend to have a better survival rate. They are always looking out for danger and taking steps to minimize the risks they foresee. Of course, carried to extreme, this leads to a very limited lifestyle. But there are times when paranoid is good. Take driving, for example. There are times when you feel you cannot leave your driveway without a police car flagging you down and writing you a ticket. You feel in danger. You drive more carefully and it stillRead More

To establish the strength of belief, many people count the number of worshippers who attend church on a regular basis. On this basis, the Christian religion is not doing so well in Europe as the number of regular attendees declines. It seems the young are progressively less interested in the practice of any religion. However, in America, the Christian faith remains strong. It may therefore come as a surprise to discover that one country is about to rise to the top of the list. Yes, China is about to becomeRead More

Ford Motors, already reeling from another recall affecting nearly 1 million vehicles, was dealt a second whammy as it watched its sales performance falter in September. Ford was the only major automaker to perform poorly in September as its sales dipped 2.4 percent from last year (180,000 versus 221,000). As a result, the automaker’s share of the market slipped 1.7 percent to 14.5 percent. A further result of the poor sales performance was a loss of faith in the financial markets. The automaker saw its stock value drop by moreRead More

This is the digital age so, no matter where you look, there are videos of bad driving available for you to watch 24/7. In fact only a few minutes of viewing will convince you there are some really bad drivers out there. And then you realize you have only viewed a tiny fraction of one percent of all the videos uploaded for just this month. In fact, watching local, state, and national news should convince you we are in the midst of an epidemic of bad driving. The result? EvenRead More

The world may be a big place but, in developed countries, it does not matter where you go, the problems stay the same. So in India which is the second most populous country, there’s a real problem both in the number of vehicles on the road, and in the standard of driving. It’s a sad fact, but driving conditions are chaotic and the new national government of Narendra Modi is proposing measures to make the roads safer. Today, you might be on the road in your new luxury vehicle alongsideRead More

The negatives now outweigh the positives When the automobile first appeared, it was a toy for the rich to play with. Everyone else relied on horses and the world continued to turn. Unfortunately, Henry Ford then decided to make the car a mass market product that everyone could afford. In a short space of time, horses were discarded and several thousand stables went into liquidation, throwing a significant number of people out of work. Automobiles have always had positives and negatives attached to them. With more efficient transport, economic activityRead More

The American culture always likes to declare winners (and mention the losers with a sad smile). We love winners and so tend to produce lists. Coming at the top usually earns a big cheer except, perhaps, when foreign brands beat American brands. Why, we ask, can we not do better? When it comes to the motor manufacturing industry, the lists for the last twenty-five years have shown Ford edging out Toyota or Honda as the winner. For those obsessive people who care about the losers, Nissan tended to be aRead More

According the song in My Fair Lady, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Unfortunately, when the storm clouds cross over the Atlantic to America, the rain falls everywhere and, given so much of our land is covered by concrete; it tends to pool and then drain on to highways and roads before passing on through the drains and sewers to the rivers and sea. If you look at the accident statistics, rain is often blamed for accidents. The problem is that many drivers fail to realize youRead More

If the science fiction dreamers have it right, this century will see us abandon driving. Software will take over this mechanical function and leave us free to do whatever we want during the journey. To give you an idea of the timescale, some manufacturers are promising self-driving vehicles in 2020. This is probably too optimistic because, in addition to proving the software systems safe enough to take over completely from human drivers, there will be endless debate between the law-makers and the insurers as to who is going to beRead More

In a perfect world, all parents love their children and would not willingly put them at risk. Unfortunately, when the economy goes into the tank, compromises have to be made and this can mean the risks of injury rise. If you listen to the politicians, they will all tell you the economy has picked up after the crash of 2008. To some extent this is true. Many of the jobs that were lost have now been replaced. Not always at the same rates of pay, but at least more peopleRead More