About A Week: Cars
Peter Hinchliffe reflects on the darker side of car ownership.
“Let’s go to Harrogate,’’ says my wife. “We haven’t been there in ages.’’
A nice town, Harrogate. Interesting shops. One of the best fish-and-chip restaurants in Yorkshire…
So at 9 am we start out to drive the 30 or so miles to the spa town.
And 15 minutes later we encounter our first traffic jam. The M62 has turned into a huge metal snake of stationary traffic.
We choose another route, trying to reach the Bradford ring-road -- and within 10 minutes we’re in another jam.
Oh the delight of driving in West Yorkshire!
It took us two hours and two minutes to reach Harrogate. We could have done the journey quicker on a push-bike.
Yorkshire and England are slowly grinding to a total gridlock. Too few roads, too many cars, vans and lorries.
And yet, and yet…
Folk still dream of owning metal speedsters capable of rushing from nought to 60 miles an hour in less time than it takes to say Wow!
Folk buy four-wheel drive monsters which take up the space of two Minis, just to tour the city streets.
Folk dream of the next car they will own, even though they have had their current machine for less than six months.
Folk burn and destroy speed-monitoring cameras rather than stay below a 30 miles an hour speed limit.
Obviously the majority of English folk have a special box inside their brains in which they lock away their common sense whenever the subject turns to cars.
Can anyone tell me why manufacturers and dealers are allowed to make and sell cars capable of travelling at 140 mph when the maximum speed limit in Britain is 70 mph?
Regulators can be fitted to car engines which make it impossible for speeds of more than 70 miles an hour to be reached - so why isn’t it done?
Why aren’t four-wheel drive vehicles -- unless there is a provable need of off-road use -- taxed at a rate 50 times higher than a Mini?
Why isn’t parking banned within a quarter-mile of the gates of every school?
Why isn’t the purchaser of a new car compelled to keep it for 10 years before being allowed to trade it in?
Obviously legislation could bring some order to our chaotic, traffic-choked roads. But no politician would dare to bring it into force.
And of course the politicians are also car-lovers, possessed of that special lock-away-your-common-sense box.
Hey, I’m no angel when it comes to cars. I too like to drive fast. I also resent those speed cameras. I mean…what do they know, the chaps who decide to erect them at our roadsides? I’m just as safe driving at 35 or 40 miles an hour as I am at 30...
There is just a glimmer of hope in my case though.
I do own a small compact car capable of 50 miles to the gallon.
I do intend to keep it for years and years.
And what do you know? I’ve just found a small dent in the side of the thing. A distinctive dimple near the off-side rear door, possibly caused by a stone, fired like a shell from the wheels of a speeding lorry.
There was a time when I would have immediately rushed off to the car body shop to get the holy object restored to its pristine state.
But what the heck! It’s only a small dent!
Perhaps driving a 10-year-old vehicle with its share of dents and bruises will one day be accepted as confirmation that a driver has finally managed to get rid of that lock-up-my-common-sense box.
