{"id":69,"date":"2007-03-29T21:54:57","date_gmt":"2007-03-29T20:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=69"},"modified":"2010-12-30T11:39:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:39:29","slug":"driver-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/driver-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Driver Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I bought myself a new car (well, new to me – not brand <\/em>new – it’s a 2003 model).\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a small 2-door Chevrolet Cavalier LS Sport<\/em> (see picture on the MobLog).\u00c2\u00a0 I used to have a Vauxhall Cavalier last time I lived in England (14 years ago…) and this is nothing<\/span> like that.\u00c2\u00a0 This is actually a good-looking car, although the ‘Sport’ side of things only really extends as far as the spoilers, and it\u00c2\u00a0coming in a rather fetching\u00c2\u00a0“Sporting Yellow”.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a 2.2 liter engine, which sounds a lot in a small car by European standards (my last car in Belgium was a pathetically small 1.0 liter Opel Corsa [Vauxhall = Opel = Chevrolet: Notice a trend?]), but is laughable by U.S. standards, where the average is 4 liters.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, it has $125 ‘racing’ tires on alloy rims, sequential port fuel injection, and\u00c2\u00a0accelerates rather nicely at the top-end, so I’m not complaining.<\/p>\n

It was actually pretty cheap, due to a combination of it having a manual transmission (or ‘stick-shift’ as they have it here) – Americans don’t like anything that involves effort – and it being pock-marked\u00c2\u00a0with small dents along the top from what I assume is hail (yes, even hail is big in Texas).\u00c2\u00a0 The dents don’t bother me – I prefer to think of them as dimples like you get on a golf-ball and which will actually help the car travel faster through the air.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, they’re only superficial, and if it brings the price down by $1,000 (vs. the\u00c2\u00a0Kelly Blue Book value)\u00c2\u00a0I’m happy.<\/p>\n

I’ve been driving it around for the best part of a week now (and averaging around 30mpg [on U.S.<\/em> gallons – equivalent to 36mpg on Imperial gallons] which is pretty decent for a U.S. car) and it’s actually a pretty fun<\/em> drive.\u00c2\u00a0 Not quite as much fun as cycling was in Belgium, but I’ve found that I don’t mind\u00c2\u00a0a 45-mins\/20-mile traffic-jam commute in this<\/span> car.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, it has XM satellite radio, and a kick-ass set of speakers, so that helps.\u00c2\u00a0 “Yeah, I get a lotta looks!” to quote the Scion advert.<\/p>\n

But I have noticed a couple of ‘features’ that kind of puzzle me.\u00c2\u00a0 Firstly, on the inside<\/em> of the trunk (that’s a ‘boot’ to\u00c2\u00a0you Europeans) there is an ’emergency latch’ – so if you manage to lock yourself in the trunk (\u00e2\u20ac\u00bd<\/span>) you can still get out.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, why not, if people are that stupid – or maybe being kidnapped and bundled into the trunk is a common-enough occurrence over here – but given that the rear seats fold down, and the levers for that are also in the trunk, if you were<\/em> locked in, you’d just need to drop the rear seats and then crawl through into the front again (where you could whack your kidnapper with the tire iron you found in the trunk whilst scrabbling around in the dark trying to find the ’emergency latch’).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s kind of redundant, even if it does make you feel more safe and secure.<\/p>\n

The other feature had me worried when I first saw it.\u00c2\u00a0 I was driving back from lunch (good to see you again, Gerry!) when a light proclaiming “Check Gauges” appeared in the instrument panel.\u00c2\u00a0 I dug the user guide out of the glove compartment (where it was wedged into the handgun holster) to work out what had broken.\u00c2\u00a0 And sure enough, just like it says on the packet, it meant that I needed\u00c2\u00a0to check<\/span> the other gauges<\/span> on the instrument panel.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I did, and it turns out that this light was telling me that my fuel is almost<\/em> down to\u00c2\u00a0the level at which the ‘low fuel light’ will come on.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s right – it’s a warning that a warning\u00c2\u00a0may soon be displayed.\u00c2\u00a0 A bit\u00c2\u00a0excessively-mothering at the best of times, but given that the “Check Gauges” light is no more than an inch to the left of the fuel gauge, it is pretty much pointless – you can’t see one without the other, and I was already well aware my fuel was running low even before the “Check Gauges” light panicked me into thinking I had to get my car to a garage before it blew up.\u00c2\u00a0 I was just waiting until I found a station operated by my client (company man to the last drop!) to fill up at.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I guess a little extra safety-consciousness never hurt anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 Although it does worry me that the car manufacturers credit people with the skills to drive half a ton of metal at speeds in excess of 100 mph (I know<\/span> the limit is 65 here, but\u00c2\u00a0I had to test drive<\/em> it for goodness sake!) but apparently don’t believe they can be trusted to pay attention to the gauges.\u00c2\u00a0 Given that these ‘features’ must be the result of market research, I can only conclude that I must be driving along surrounded by some real idiots<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 And given that, I’m beginning to think that maybe I don’t have enough<\/span> safety features in this car…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I bought myself a new car (well, new to me – not brand new – it’s a 2003 model).\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}