Comments on: The Finnish line

By: Malibu

Malibu — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:10:27 +0000

Or should that be ‘next topic, please’? Or ‘next post, please’? Anyway, we want more fodder, Foreman Corbster.

By: Malibu

Malibu — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:09:30 +0000

Next blog, please. Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top???

By: Malibu

Malibu — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:37:35 +0000

Good to see we’re staying on topic, as usual. From Finnish driving, to Ddeebb hitting the side of a barn, to Corby creating havoc in a L/H drive Volvo. Love it.

Now, back on topic – the Mudgee RTA must have had a big week issuing L-plates. I have no problem with learner drivers, we were all one once. I give them space, I don’t tailgate, I exercise some strangely-out-of-characte r patience, but when they clearly have no concept of the difference between the clutch, brake & accelerator but are put on the road on a day like today, I’m afraid I berate the licensed passenger under my breath. Okay, sometimes more out the window than under my breath, but anyway…

Picture this: small country town. Dead straight main street, with potholes the size of, oh, the airport tunnel (or whatever you city slickers call it). Potentially rainy weather, so all the cockies are in town. And it’s tourist season (I do love it when someone with a city-car-dealer-plate-bra cket-thingy slams on the brakes to gaze adoringly at a pub that has been around since before Adam). It’s 5pm on a pension Thursday (?), a fortnight before Christmas. The only shopping days that are more chaotic are this Saturday, and next Thursday, and the following Saturday. (Yep, I avoid the main drag like the plague from now until 29 December.)

And why would you inflict those traffic conditions on your son or daughter for their first driving lesson? What did the Corbster say? Mobile chicanes?

To say that chaos ensued is an understatement.

By: Stephen Corby

Stephen Corby — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:58:07 +0000

Oh dear oh dear, I’m very, very concerned about your drivign Ddebb. It’s often said of poor shooters that they’d be lucky to hit the side of a barn, but clearly you’d have no trouble.
And Malibu, I think the first time I drove on the wrong side of the road was on a Volvo launch, in Pebble Beach, and I was terrified. Fortunately I was in a Volvo so everything I ran into broke, and I didn’t.

By: Annemarie

Annemarie — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:23:30 +0000

Confined spaces do your head in? Does that refer to the car (no, ‘cos you wouldn’t be ok on the road then)? So it refers to the house. Ddeebb, ddeeaarr, what on EARTH are you doing driving INSIDE a house? Or is that a requirement for passing the test in Oz?!

By: ddeebb

ddeebb — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:25:20 +0000

Good morning…I have a confession to make. I am not the world’s best driver. I feel for the girl who hit a house, as I have hit every house I have ever lived in with a motor vehicle…Never hit another car mind you, but property beware!!! I am ok on the road, but confined spaces do my head in.

By: topgearaustraliamates

topgearaustraliamates — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:41:51 +0000

Annemarie (AM), I dislike driving in Sydney now, and I learnt to drive on the same side of the road as them – I cannot imagine getting in the passenger seat, having the gearstick on the right, and having to contend with staying on the wrong side of the road.

Corby? You love going to the US, how did you find driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time?

By: topgearaustraliamates

topgearaustraliamates — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:36:33 +0000

Oh, this is taking me back about 23 years or so…

All I remember about my driving test is that the cop in the passenger seat had huge black boots. I was terrified. I passed first time, but I had learnt to drive in a column shift Falcon ute on a big block of land with not many obstacles. Oh, except for the horses & fences, but I don’t remember hitting any of them.

And despite my love of old cars, I still hate column shifts with a vengeance.

By: Annemarie

Annemarie — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:28:28 +0000

Scary stuff, Malibu (and Cali). If I’d known all of this before, I would’ve never explored Australia by rental car, what with all the potential killers lurking around the corner. Speaking of which: I’m always amazed that people from right-side-driving nations are handed the rental car keys without the rental car company representative so much as blinking, be it in Alice Springs, where I drove on the left for the first time of my life, or in downtown Sydney. I mean, think of all the things that can go wrong while you’re figuring out which is the windscreen wiper and which the indicator! Especially if you’re figuring this out while passing a traffic island on the right!

By: Annemarie

Annemarie — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:20:05 +0000

You bet we get driver training in NL! Most people take at least 25 lessons à 1,5 hours à ahelluvalottamoney (in my days, 40 guilders per lesson, some 25 ozzie dollars, maybe?); some fast learners could do with only 10 lessons, some weren’t allowed to take the test until they had close to 100 hours of instruction behind them. Basically, the instructor decides, based on your progress during the lessons, whether you’re ready to take the test (aka whether you stand a chance of passing it). Then you apply for the test, then you don’t eat or sleep until the day after you’ve taken the test, because it is TOUGH! If you even so much as create the impression that you’re about to pull up for a left turn but there’s oncoming traffic going straight ahead, which has right of way, you flunk. No discussion. Then you go back to some more tests, after which you try again. (Did I mention that in my days the test alone cost a couple of hundred guilders?)
And then, and only then, do you get to borrow your dad’s car and crash it into the first house that has the audacity to stand in your way. At least that’s what my guy did. But he’s German.