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Car Makes By State!
Thanks to some collaborative work with our friends at Progressive Insurance, we’ve got the results of some very interesting analysis on the distribution of car makes by state or territory using the data from the 2012 Survey of Motor Vehicles by the ABS.
Simply select the car make you are interested in and the map will show you the total number of vehicles registered in each state and the penetration – the number of that model of car against total vehicle registrations.
Here are a few interesting examples:
South Australia is the hotspot for Holden ownership. In fact there are nearly 50% more Holdens per head of population, than you would find in Queensland. Loyalty to local manufacturing perhaps?
Are the British expats in Western Australia responsible for the high penetration of Land Rovers?
And if you own a Citroen and live in the Northern Territory… well you’re one of only 35!
It’s an interactive map so please have a play around with the figures and see . Choose a make on the left-hand-side, check out the numbers of vehicles registered then hover over each state to see the percentages.
Pop back here and let us know what you found!
Lightning: Safety Tips For The Real Thing (Rather than Greased or McQueen)
One of the things about the warmer and more volatile weather of spring is that thunderstorms become a lot more common. Opinions are mixed about thunder and lightning (and hail and wind and…), with some people loving a good thunderstorm while others sit quaking like jellies with every roll of thunder. I’m in the former camp but every driver needs to know a thing or three about driving when conditions get a bit wild.
First of all: the issue of lightning. What should you do if there’s a violent storm when you’re driving?
Whatever you do, stay in your car. You may or may not be able to keep driving, depending on what else is going on. Even if your car gets hit by lightning, you will be safe as long as you’re not touching any metal. The car will take the hit for you thanks to the metal of the body, which will conduct electricity and help ground it. You might get a few problems with the electrics and the body work in the rare event that you get hit.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the rubber tyres acting as insulators between you and the ground that make it safe for you to be in the car during a lighting storm. It’s the metal. A cage of metal around you acts like a sort of shield so the lighting hits it and not you. This is known to science buffs as a Faraday cage, and if you check out a few good BBC or Discovery Channel documentaries on weather and electricity, you can see people standing inside these cages – and not touching the metal – while artificially generated lighting crackles around them. But make sure that you are surrounded by metal – if you’re in a convertible vehicle, put the top up. Those caught out in a soft-top convertible have a bit more of a problem as here, you’re not completely surrounded by metal. In this case, your safest bet is to get to a decent shelter ASAP until the storm passes. A public loo or a bus shelter will do the trick.
What if there’s no shelter in sight and you are out in a soft-top convertible? The various lightning safety websites I visited didn’t really give an answer to this one, but going by the advice they give for other situations, I guess the best thing to do would be pull over and get your body as low as you can. The front pillar in most convertibles is usually the highest part of the vehicle (you see a good example of this in the picture accompanying our VW Golf Cabriolet review ). This suggests that this will be the point struck by lightning, so keep well away from it as much as possible and don’t touch anything metal. The odds are in your favour and you might not get hit, so try not to panic. Whatever you do, stay in the car!
It’s a smart idea to switch your car radio off during a thunderstorm and to put down your aerial. Those with integrated permanent aerials in their cars might have a bit of a problem. Anything that sticks up attracts lighting. They also say that it’s wisest not to use a phone, even a cordless phone.
And if your car does get struck by lightning? The amount of damage does vary. You hear stories ranging from the tyres blowing out (all four of them) and the electrics getting totally fried, through to next to nothing happening. Just as well that most car insurance policies do cover lighting strike!
Men and Women Drivers: Does The Gender Gap Actually Exist?
From time to time – but less often than we did in the past – you hear people making snarky comments about “women drivers”. This has always puzzled me. Do women really drive differently from men? Is there are gender difference in the way that people treat their cars?
This is far from being scientific research, but I reckon that the answer is no, not really. Sometimes, it seems as if everything I’ve read about gender differences in driving conflicts with what I’ve actually experienced or seen.
What I’ve read: Men are more aggressive and competitive when they drive.
What I’ve experienced: The majority of guys driving aren’t all that competitive or aggressive. The majority of drivers aren’t aggressive and competitive. Yes, you get the odd berk who overtakes everything in sight just to get to the traffic lights two seconds in front of you, but as far as I can see, these people can be either gender. I’ve even given in to the odd competitive urge myself… like that time that I was waiting at the lights and noticed that the car beside me was an orange HSV. I have a soft spot for Fords, and orange is my least favourite colour, so if the road hadn’t been so busy, I probably would have turned the green light into a chance for the great rivalry to continue between the blue oval and the lion.
What I’ve read: Women have more of an emotional attachment to their cars and treat them more like pets, while for a man, a car is a glorified power tool.
What I’ve also read: Men have more of an emotional attachment to their cars – “boys and their toys” – while women just want something that goes from A to B.
These two statements are mutually exclusive, so it’s probably best to say that some people have an emotional attachment to their cars while others do not. It also depends on the car itself and memories associated with the car.
What I’ve read: Women get distracted more easily because they are more likely to text while driving and because they use the mirror to check their appearance and/or apply makeup.
What I’ve experienced: If you can see your face in the rear view mirror while you’re driving, it’s in the wrong position. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of my woman friends applying any sort of cosmetic while driving and I certainly haven’t done it myself. Not even at the traffic lights when I know from experience that I’ve got at least a minute to wait. Idiots who text and drive are just as likely to be male as female, judging by the ones I’ve had to dodge recently. And as for women being more distracted in general, well, those billboards featuring bikini babes we see all over the show aren’t going to be much of a distraction for a straight woman, are they?
What I’ve read (quite recently, in fact): Men are more likely to honk the horn at other drivers when ticked off, while women are more likely to swear or give the one-fingered salute.
What I’ve experienced: If you’re dodging some idiot who has decided that the give way laws don’t apply to them at the moment, then your main focus is going to be on avoiding a collision rather than using your hands to give someone the big finger or to find the horn (I always end up hitting one of the cruise control buttons by mistake). Applies to either gender. You might give some exclamation along the lines of “Oh, crap!” to give a printable example. Again, applies to both genders. By the time you’re out of the situation, it’s too late for either the horn or the hand, as the twit who forced you to jam on the brakes has vanished, so muttering comments about him/her is the only option left.
What I’ve read: Men are more mechanically adept than women and are more likely to take care of their cars.
What I’ve experienced: This is probably more a matter of training than actual ability. Most of us considering buying a new car today grew up when the “girls can do anything” movement was just getting underway and girls just weren’t taught mechanical bits and pieces, same as guys weren’t taught how to sew on a button. The reasons for this are obscure, as people from the World War 2 generation knew perfectly well that women could fix and make machinery. It’s changing again, with more and more girls and women being taught the basics of car maintenance and DIY.
What I’ve read (and this would have to be the stupidest claim of all): Men invented cars in the first place, so they’re necessarily more interested in them, are better drivers, etc.
What I’ve also read: While Herr Benz invented the horseless carriage and the internal combustion engine, it was his wife (no, she wasn’t called Mercedes Benz – her name was Bertha) that actually took the invention out on the road to show the world how easy this invention was to drive. And she did her own repairs on the road, inventing brake linings on the way.
In my opinion, there aren’t gender differences when it comes to driving. Personality differences, yes.
Why The Motor Racing Industry Is Better Than The Yacht Racing Industry
I guess a few of our readers will have been taking at least a passing interest in what’s been happening with the America’s Cup yacht race and the attempts of Team New Zealand to get the Auld Mug down on the right side of the equator, even if it’s not coming back to Australia… yet. Back in the 1980s when the Americas Cup race was held in Fremantle, the yachts looked a lot different to those catamarans with hydrofoils they have today.
And that got me thinking about the motor racing industry. It’s time for a small rant. You see, a lot of the things that designers and engineers tinker about with and fine-tune in racing cars eventually find their way into regular production cars driven by the average Joe and Jane Smith. More and more cars these days are tested on racing circuits to make sure that their handling’s perfect (the Holden VF Commodore and its recent feats on the Nürburgring circuit, for example). Paddle-shifters and carb-fibre components were the sole preserve of racing machines, but now they’re everywhere. Even something as simple as a spoiler – back in the 1980s, you hardly ever saw a regular car on the road with them, even though you did see them on racing cars. Nowadays, lots of cars incorporate them into the design.
The racing industry has been good for drivers in general. It’s been a way for designers to make cars – all cars, not just race cars – lighter, stronger, safer, more fuel-efficient, more powerful and more responsive.
However… the yacht racing industry. Most sailing boats I see look pretty much the same as they did back in the 1980s or even before. Now, with all the emphasis on being environmentally conscious and using renewable resources and all that, wouldn’t you think that somebody somewhere would be interested in making water transport more eco-friendly by going back to using wind power but with all the added technology they’ve developed for yacht racing? Doesn’t somebody else want to use the sort of thing we see on the racing yachts put onto other craft?
Some people might question the demand for using this sort of technology on a yacht, as there’s no commercial need for sailing boats like there is for cars. However, there are water taxis, coastal patrols, tourism operators and light fishing boats – to say nothing of the pearl industry up in the north of Western Australia and Northern Territory. These still seem to use regular motor boats… but there’s no real reason why they couldn’t switch to eco-friendly wind power when you really come down to it. I heard a commentator on the America’s Cup say the other day that they could generate 700 hp (that’s 512 kW) from cleverly designed sails in those racing boats. Your typical outboard motor gets about 150 hp, while larger ones as seen on water taxis might have two 250-hp engines. More powerful and much more fuel-efficient… sounds like a winning idea to me. Heck, if there was some means of getting a car’s engine from 250 hp to 700 hp without using any extra fuel, we’d all be demanding it and probably getting it, too.
One could argue that wind-powered means of transport are dependent on weather conditions. But aren’t we all? Ever slipped on ice while driving? Ever felt a strong wind buffet you or create a bit more drag? Ever had to slow down because the rain was so strong that you could hardly see, in spite of the best efforts of your windscreen wipers? Cars are affected by weather conditions, too.
The motoring industry is doing its bit for the planet, playing around with alternative fuels, hybrid engines and electric vehicles, as well as making petrol-powered things work more efficiently, and what’s been learned on the race track has helped these efforts. The airline industry is also getting on board with improved design features and even fuel types. But what about the marine industry?
I’ll close by saying that I’ll be overjoyed if I’m proved wrong and there are some operators who are using wind-powered boats on a commercial basis somewhere. Let us know.
Toyota Corolla in the 1980s and from 2013: spot the little additions from the race circuit?
Level 2, 9 Help Street