Monday, October 31, 2011
Piling on the years
Last week was my secondary school reunion. It’s odd to think that it is now more than ten years since my pals and I were still living at home dreaming about the freedom of becoming young drivers, fearing for our A-level results and complaining to our parents that they couldn’t possibly know how it feels.
However, I was surprised to see just how many of us have put on weight. I confess, now that I’m no longer running round the football pitch three times a week and now search for cheap car insurance quotes rather than frantically try to find my student bus pass, I do have something of a small paunch.
I promised my girlfriend and my personal trainer brother that I’d address it over the summer, but summer has now been and gone, and the paunch is still there.
Still, it’s not nearly as considerable as some of the girth on show at the reunion last Friday, so I take heart.
I also take encouragement from the fact that a personal trainer has gone public on his decision to put on weight in order to better understand his overweight clients.
In just six months he has put on a staggering five-stone, all through “no exercise and eating” and “the typical American diet: Chips, juice, cereal, soda, pizza etc.”
It’s going to be interesting to see how quickly he manages to shed his extra weight. The race is on – I certainly hope to shift my one spare tyre before he’s shifted his five.
Photo © Mike_fleming via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: cheap car insurance, quote
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wisdom of old
Perhaps it’s all a myth that young driver car insurance is more expensive than the equivalent for older drivers.
Perhaps, instead of receiving cheaper quotes, older people are simply better at making decisions.It’s long been the prejudice, that far from being less able to make smart decisions, older people are less able than us, as the wear and tear of years fogs their senses and slows their faculties.
However, a recent study by scientists at the University Geriatrics Institute of Montreal reveals that older people are less likely to be thrown off course by making a mistake and more likely to make sounder decisions.
One of the researchers comments, "The older brain has experience and knows that nothing is gained by jumping the gun. It was already known that aging is not necessarily associated with a significant loss in cognitive function.
"When it comes to certain tasks, the brains of older adults can achieve very close to the same performance as those of younger ones.
"We now have neurobiological evidence showing that with age comes wisdom and that as the brain gets older, it learns to better allocate its resources.”
So perhaps older people are simply more adept at comparing car insurance quotes and choosing the one that is cheapest – but seeing as you’re here and you’re choosing Hoot, we know that’s not always true, don’t we.
Photo © giopuo via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: quotes, young driver car insurance
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sat-nav blindness
Sat-navs can be really useful for people who haven’t taken a certain route before and feel more confident if they have some guidance.
The problems begin when motorists rely too heavily on their GPS system and begin following it blindly to the ends of the Earth. The truth is, voice on the machine may sound authoritative, whether it’s Yoda or the basic man or woman’s voice, but it is still a machine and doesn’t have a brain.
No offence meant to sat-navs, they’re a great piece of technology, but if they hasn’t been updated for a while they could take you down a road that’s blocked off, or across a junction that doesn’t exist anymore, or tell you that through the new shopping centre is the best course of action.
One lorry driver recently got his vehicle wedged between two buildings at the end of a narrow lane that his sat-nav had told him to go down.
A car probably would have gone through – but this man must have forgotten that the GPS doesn’t know what vehicle you’re in.
A landlord near the narrow lane stated, “It was a very stupid thing to do and the locals thought he was a bit of an idiot for doing it.”
He caused damage to the properties on either side and the lorry was finally freed in a six hour operation the next day.
Next time he might try to judge the situation for himself before blindly doing as the sat-nav tells him…as should we all.
Photo © Mavroudis Kostas via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: GPS, guidance, junction, lorry, motorist, narrow lane, road, route, sat-nav, technology, vehicle
Friday, October 21, 2011
Road-kill cooking
Usually the only thing people do when they see road-kill is think how horrible it looks and maybe feel sorry for the poor animal that met its end on the tarmac.
However, one man from Bournemouth has been eating road-kill for about 30 years instead of buying his meat at supermarkets.
The man explains, “I guess at the age of 14 I just wanted to be different. But even then I understood that what I was doing was better than eating meat in the shops because of how it was produced.”
He doesn’t keep his strange dining habits from his friends either, who are often treated to rat stir fries, owl curry and pan-fried crane-flies.
Anyone who is interested in following suit and abandoning the supermarket meat aisle should be wary though. The road-kill cook says, “It's not something everyone can do. I have grown up around nature and know just by looking how an animal has died and how long it has been there.
“I am careful, obviously, not to eat anything that I don't think is fresh and if I don't know how an animal has died I will perform an autopsy on it first.
“I found a raven recently that had been poisoned, probably with strychnine, and that is something that other people would probably not think to look out for.
“I do have to be careful, but I have never been sick from anything I have ever eaten.”
Hmmm, it seems like a good idea if you’ve got the know-how. Still, I’m not sure I’ll ever look at road-kill and feel hungry.
Photo © dadadreams via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: animal, eat, meat, road-kill, tarmac
Monday, October 17, 2011
Running on empty
It’s a good thing that cars are so fuel efficient these days – back in our grandparents’ day, it was almost impossible to travel 100 miles without needing to stop at a petrol station, even on a full tank of fuel.
However, environmental considerations aside, fuel efficiency is becoming a practical necessity.This is because petrol stations are beginning to disappear from our nation’s roads. Even in my short driving life, just six years, I’ve noticed that petrol stations are becoming increasingly scarce.
More than ever before, I need to plan my fuel stops when making a journey otherwise there’s a very real risk I could be left short and stranded.
Perhaps supermarkets, which offer cheap subsidised fuel are to blame – as other sellers struggle to compete with their prices they shut up shop and disappear.
There are now only 9,000 fuel forecourts in the UK, which is 12,000 fewer than in 1991, and this is despite a doubling in the number of vehicles on the road in the same period.
Cheap car insurance, easy access to fuel, low house prices – our parents and grandparents don’t know how lucky they were.
Image © Adrian Wallett via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: cheap car insurance, efficient, fuel, miles, petrol station, roads, tank, vehicles
Friday, October 14, 2011
London landmark lands on MPs
Could you imagine the car accidents and carnage which would occur if Big Ben (the clock tower, not the bell) actually fell over – well, apparently it could happen because Big Ben’s tower is beginning to lean.
But, if you’re a London young driver, you don’t need to worry about getting a special clause in your car insurance just yet, because it is likely to be somewhere in the region of between 4,000 and 10,000 years before there’s a risk the structure could topple over.Apparently, the tower leans to the north-west by 0.26 degrees – which means it’s 0.5m out of line at the very top – and this is enough to make the lean visible to the naked eye.
Some pundits have suggested the listing may have been caused by the building of an extension to the Jubilee Line on the London Underground but experts who have been monitoring the tower since 1999 say there is no evidence to support this.
Other specialist civil engineers suggest that the clay on which the famous clock tower is built is drying out more rapidly on the north side and this has caused the structure to sink on one side. However, there is no concrete theory! Ha ha – concrete theory – get it!
And architectural historians worried about the demise of important, beautiful buildings need not be too concerned because if the tower eventually falls, its trajectory will see it landing on Portcullis House, the modern block just over the road from the Houses of Parliament, which is home to the offices of many MPs.
I’m not saying a word!
Image © J Venn
Labels: car accidents, car insurance, London, young driver
Monday, October 10, 2011
An alternative way to create a road trip soundtrack
Here at Hoot, we love to prepare a CD or tune into the radio to make our car journeys more enjoyable.
However, most drivers wouldn’t even dream of the method used by an ambitious trio of young men in Russia to ensure that they could rock out on a highway.The three men have been filmed sitting astride a motorbike and sidecar while travelling along a busy road in Russia, but that’s not the strange part. While one of them drove the vehicle, another played a drum kit positioned on the sidecar whilst the final man, seated on the bike behind the driver, strummed a guitar
Although an unusual vision, the musicians appear to be having the jamming session of their lives as they all display bright grins.
The English translation of the video title reads ‘Town Musicians of Bremen’, which is a Brothers Grimm fairytale in which a donkey, a dog, a cat and rooster embark on a journey to Bremen in the hope of making it as musicians.
The animals’ strange musical sound scares some robbers out of a house on route, conveniently giving the mismatched four a place to live happily ever after.
Despite the main stars of the viral film having not yet been identified, the video has scored well over a million views. Impressive, but not a technique we’ll be trying out anytime soon!
Photo © treehouse1977 via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car, fairytale, journey, musicians, radio, road, vehicle
Friday, October 7, 2011
Incredible reporting of young (?) driver’s race win
It’s amazing how the definition of “young” has changed over the years.
Recently, an archived news piece from 1929 came to my attention which talked about a young driver who had won the Indianapolis 500 race.The piece described Ray Keech as a daring young auto driver, but after researching the American racing driver, I found that he would have turned 29 years old just four weeks before the race took place.
Nowadays, we tend to think of motorists between the ages of 17 and 24 as being young drivers and someone aged 29 would be considered an experienced motorist, especially if they had been driving since their teens.
The article, which featured in the Calgary Herald and can be accessed here, reports the astonishing revelation that although another driver, who had crashed during the race, died at the track while the race was still being contested, the event was seen through to completion.
And, the three separate headlines to the piece further tell the story of how the driver’s death was valued by editors of the newspaper:
“Louis Meyer Finishes Second in Annual Indianapolis 500-Mile Grind”
“Only 13 Cars of 33 Complete Course”
“Bill Spence, Victim of Crash, Was Trailing Leaders – Car Rolls Over”
Quite incredible!
Image © momentcaptured1 via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: 17, 24, experienced motorist, Indianapolis 500, young driver
Monday, October 3, 2011
Hoot says drink driving should be zero tolerance
So, Northern Ireland could be about to reduce its drink-driving limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to just 50mg/100ml, with a reduced limit for young drivers of 20mg/100ml.Well, I for one young driver think it’s about time too. In fact I’d be up for zero tolerance in the UK.
Having seen the consequences of being involved in a drink-driving accident first hand, and having lost a good friend as a result, I can say that no alcohol for drivers should always be the way to go.
When you’re the designated driver it’s sometimes so tempting just to have one drink, but once you’ve had one you might feel like having another because you feel fine and before you know it you’re over the limit with all your mates relying on you for a lift home. It’s just too easy to get in your car saying, “I’ll be really, really careful.”
But sadly, a careful drink-driver is not the same as a sober driver.
Here at Hoot, we say don’t risk it – ever. Don’t even have one. A lifetime of pain and regret just isn’t worth the risk.
Image © K-tee Snape via Flickr, Under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: young driver, zero tolerance drink-driving