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Curmudgeon Corner

Welcome to the future. They're softening us up for self-driving cars. I've set my driver assistance to 'individual', which basically means that most of it is switched off :)
Apparently on the car I’m picking up this Friday the dials and gauges are not always necessarily in the same position. There is no doubt whatsoever that I will press the wrong button within seconds of getting in and will have to drive home with only the heater settings or tyre pressures on display to guide me.
 
Sounds like mine. If I drive down a straight bit of dual carriageway with cruise set at 70...*BONG!* LANE ASSIST - PLEASE PUT HANDS ON WHEEL... *BING!* TAKE A REST! *CLANG!* - AUDI PRE-ASSIST ENGAGED... A man can't even tailgate nowadays...
Aside from the fact I love it for the drive this is another reason why I'll stick with my 15yo car until it dies or becomes illegal.
 
Apparently on the car I’m picking up this Friday the dials and gauges are not always necessarily in the same position. There is no doubt whatsoever that I will press the wrong button within seconds of getting in and will have to drive home with only the heater settings or tyre pressures on display to guide me.
Plenty of curmudgeon potential there (back OT)! I'm still discovering new buttons that make themselves apparent in various displays. There's a blue one which looks like an engine. I'm assuming that if it's blue, nothing will blow up, but maybe it will go red in time. I may have to read the manual at some point.
 
Plenty of curmudgeon potential there (back OT)! I'm still discovering new buttons that make themselves apparent in various displays. There's a blue one which looks like an engine. I'm assuming that if it's blue, nothing will blow up, but maybe it will go red in time. I may have to read the manual at some point.
Remember the good old days when it was just the Holy Trinity - speedometer, oil light, fuel gauge. Actually had an old van once where even the fuel gauge was absent, that was tricky! Nowadays I usually have no idea what most of the flashing symbols mean, why can’t they put in sexy recorded messages saying ‘front brake pads dodgy’ etc. instead of the smarmy woman who tells me my phone is disconnected every time I start up?
 
... it will go red in time. I may have to read the manual at some point.
I drove my digital wonder car about twenty yards away from my drive with a collection of engine faults and realised I was in limp home mode.

So I limped home.

Car towed to garage.

Car diagnostic tested.

Flat battery the only fault found.

Battery charged.

£230 to diagnose a flat battery. You have to love all the technological developments in modern cars!
 
I love modern technology. All except that which talks at me. ‘Would you like an Alexa for you Bithday?’. ‘No, I chuffin’ wouldn’t !’ I don’t even use Siri

I have a Jag that I can talk to, but it’s so old it can’t talk back
 
I have to say there is one warning I quite like, although it's probably a sign on oncoming senility. If I put my phone in its cubby on the elbow rest, a nice lady tells me 'your mobile phone is still in the vehicle' when I open the door to get out. As I use my phone to pay for pretty much everything these days, it would be a pain to leave it in the car.
 
I have to say there is one warning I quite like, although it's probably a sign on oncoming senility. If I put my phone in its cubby on the elbow rest, a nice lady tells me 'your mobile phone is still in the vehicle' when I open the door to get out. As I use my phone to pay for pretty much everything these days, it would be a pain to leave it in the car.

Any excuse to post a bit of Bill Hicks - from 1989

 
I have to say there is one warning I quite like, although it's probably a sign on oncoming senility. If I put my phone in its cubby on the elbow rest, a nice lady tells me 'your mobile phone is still in the vehicle' when I open the door to get out. As I use my phone to pay for pretty much everything these days, it would be a pain to leave it in the car.
Everyone else calls her the wife.
 
Indeed. Section 1 Road Traffic Act, IIRC: vehicles must drive on the left, and keep to the left on dual carriageways, etc, where possible. I don’t get why driving schools don’t drum this into people more.
There's a bus lane near me, operative in the morning rush hour only. The rest of the day most of the traffic still drives in the right hand lane, turning left into a hotel car park at 90 degrees oblivious to the fact that a few of us are driving properly in the left hand lane.
 
Same with the 2+ lanes by me, where most cars sit in the outside lane. Seems people can only look at pictures these days. Guess they need an app for it?

In fact wouldn't that be great? An app that tracks whether the phone is in the outside lane (and the number of people in the car, but we'll just skip that bit for now) and out of the blue shouts 'Get the f--k over to the left! Can't you read?'
 
There's a bus lane near me, operative in the morning rush hour only. The rest of the day most of the traffic still drives in the right hand lane, turning left into a hotel car park at 90 degrees oblivious to the fact that a few of us are driving properly in the left hand lane.
On this, I blame bus lane cameras. People are so afraid of getting a ticket and the stories of, eg, getting ticketed after swerving to avoid a cyclist, that they just avoid bus lanes. Also, it’s very difficult to read the signs showing hours of operation while giving due focus to traffic and all the other demands on your attention. So much easier to just stay the hell out of each and every bus lane, especially if you don’t know the area.
 


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