The Laws Of Physics Are No Respecter Of Persons Or Pocketbooks
The theme song of the 1980s TV show Fame implied that fame would make you live forever. Unfortunately, some celebrities (but not all) seem to have taken that a bit too literally and seem to neglect a number of basic safety precautions when it comes to driving and motoring. The years of the motorcar have seen a number of high-profile fatalities courtesy of a motor vehicle. Here’s a selection, plus how they could have been prevented:
Isadora Duncan: This dancer shocked the stuffy Victorian and Edwardians with her innovative dance style that broke the classical ballet mould as well as corset strings, but died as flamboyantly as she lived when her long, trailing scarf wrapped itself around the back wheels of the Bugatti driven by her car salesman boyfriend and strangled her. This particular type of road fatality is not so likely today, but if you do drive in an open top car, just make sure you take off any really long scarves or at least tuck them in, even if they do look glamorous flowing behind you as speed.
Cash for Clunkers Scheme announced
I won’t write much here as we decided this was important enough to deserve a home page mention 🙂
Suffice to say, the announcement from Julia Gillard over the weekend could be good news for anyone looking to trade-in their old banger for a new fuel-efficient vehicle. Please read the details on our Cash for Clunkers intro page and look forward to more comment and analysis on the rebate on this blog .
Who owns who in a changing global environment?
Who loves the legends? Rover, Lamborghini, Jaguar and Aston Martin are all legends that have experienced a change of hands in recent times. But who belongs with whom these days? The more recent economic climate has forced a number of new automotive amalgamations and buy-outs due to rising costs that have become too great for a number of iconic car manufacturers to manage solo.
Established prestige British marques like Rover and Jaguar are now Indian or Chinese owned. Almost all car manufacturers have needed to look elsewhere for building the cars that they create. So setting up a manufacturing plant in another land where the costs of production are lower makes a lot of sense. The likes of China, Brazil, India, Holland, Spain, Hungary and Argentina are a few of the locations around the world that have witnessed well known brands from Europe and beyond setting up low cost car manufacturing plants at these new locations.
Preserving Sanity and Safety on Long Road Trips With Children
This winter, you might be taking a road trip to a ski resort or somewhere similar. Now, driving along mountain roads are really quite fun from the motorist’s point of view. You get to put all the special features (or most of them, anyway) through their paces – winding roads give you the chance to really appreciate the car’s handling and steering around corners, while uphill and downhill stretches allow you to play with the gears to make sure that you keep the motor purring over at just the right rev level to run efficiently and at peak power. However, winding roads aren’t quite such fun for the passengers, especially those under a certain age occupying the back seats.
Bored kids on a long road trip are probably a safety hazard. They say that cellphones and GPS navigation systems can be a distraction to the driver and lead to near-misses or worse. However, you can turn off radios, ignore phones and turn off the GPS navigation – and some modern cars can do this for you automatically if they detect by your driving style that you are facing a demanding situation. However, kids don’t have an off switch, and bored kids tend to come up with the following, all of which are likely to drive you half nuts. (Add your own pet hates if I haven’t listed it here. They are listed from most stressful to least stressful.)
Level 2, 9 Help Street