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A good car to have a crash in…? Part 4

2 Mar

This is the final part in this mini – series on how to choose a car that can save your life.

If you haven’t read parts 1, 2 and 3 then I suggest you do before reading this so that you can make better sense of the points raised in this particular post.

The latest figures released for America and Western Europe suggest that the cars we drive on the road are approximately ten years old on average. Personally, I am surprised to read this. I would have thought that the ‘average’ would have been younger – closer to seven. However, I simply cannot find data that contradicts this claim and so I shall have to accept it.

A good car to have a crash in is one that will maximise our chances of survival and minimise our chances of becoming “KSI” – Killed or Seriously Injured.

At this point, we can all imagine in our minds a few particular cars that we might choose to be in, solidly manufactured by makers who have a long and proven reputation for collision safety research and who build large and well-upholstered cars. ‘Large’ cars? No – hang on – we are already becoming confused.  Just because it is large does not mean that it better protects us from KSI. Yes, it may be scientifically correct that a large car is likely to better survive a collision with a small car, but large cars do not necessarily save us from being KSI. Ask Princess Diana.

We have to look carefully now at a whole range of factors and ‘values’ to understand how to make the best choice.  If “large cars from reputable manufacturers” are good to have a crash in, three questions immediately pop up:

1) Will manufacturers or insurance companies reveal KSI data for these cars?    Answer: No.

2) Is it easier to quickly alter the direction of travel of a large car compared to a small car?  Answer: No.

3) If both large and small cars are driven at 100 kph into an unmovable concrete block, is KSI data identical?  Answer: Yes.

To find out what is really going on with modern cars and to make an informed choice, we must go back and look again at the three ‘interested parties’ involved in a collision: The Car – The Occupants – The Investigation. I call this: “The Facebook Triangle”;  each player has an opposing self-interest. Let me explain it to you.

The car manufacturer works hard to build a car with a low KSI factor, including safety by design, by build quality and by product testing.  In the real world we live in, the manufacturer will only go so far before the budget dictates that they release the car on to the market.

The crash investigator visits cars that have been involved in KSI collisions and tries hard to establish what  factors caused the KSI result. Although the investigator may see obvious reasons for KSI that were not actually  to do with the car itself, for example – a 100 ton tree falling on the car when it was stationary, the investigator will still have to attribute a KSI cause – “car roof structural integrity failure”.

The driver and passengers of the car unintentionally became involved in a collision. Effectively – if we are accurate – the driver ran out of ways of avoiding the collision and therefore became involved. The driver now hopes that the car will protect them as a last resort.

There are three players involved: the manufacturer, the investigator, the driver. All three have totally different aims. The manufacturer is trying to avoid having KSI data attached to its product, the investigator has to attach a cause of KSI to the product. Lastly, the driver (or their surviving relatives) is hoping that the cause of KSI is not attributed to the driver.

By accepting the above scenario, we can see a greater truth emerging:

A mass-produced, affordable commuter car will attract more KSI “hits” than an expensive luxury car simply on the basis that it is generally driven for more miles, driven by a more diverse range of drivers, driven in more diverse circumstances.

So, manufacturers of large luxury cars do not want to reveal accurate KSI data because it might actually show that, mile for mile in the real world, that precise model of car has similar or more KSI hits than a competitor’s standard ‘budget’ car. Manufacturers of standard ‘budget’ cars don’t want to discuss KSI openly for fear that their product gets unfairly associated with a high KSI. We can see their point because many more unskilled or otherwise dangerous drivers will drive their product instead of an expensive luxury car.

Collision investigators have to attribute a cause of KSI. If they keep writing down “…I don’t know but, jeez, the driver was completely like spaghetti once he’d been passed through all the round dials on the dashboard…” they are only hanging on to their jobs by their fingertips. Accuracy is key.

And then, there is the driver. We drivers come in all shapes and sizes and skill levels. The collision investigator and the manufacturer want to ask us – in all seriousness – “…could you have avoided that collision?…”  We rarely answer “Yes.” When looking at KSI data, it is often difficult to separate out the acts of the driver from the behavior of the car. For example, did a car leave the road because it has poor road-holding or handling characteristics or else did the driver fail to use the car’s controls correctly?

Several popular manufacturers currently have cars on the road which, technically speaking, have fatally flawed handling characteristics.

More truth emerges: Insurance companies sift through the data of KSI. They have close access to that accurate data. Do they reveal the accurate, dissected data? Absolutely not. It is competitively sensitive. However, they do often put pressure on manufacturers to improve their products. They sometimes do this quite bluntly by telling the manufacturer to improve a particular car or else the insurer will effectively “kill it off” by use of high insurance premiums.

Conversely, the ‘People Carrier’ design of car emerged partly because insurance companies noted a new KSI trend: where two vehicles collided and one vehicle had its occupants seated higher than the centre of gravity of the other, (say, a conventional car) much of the collision shock passed underneath them. The obvious flaw in this initial advantage was that it canceled itself out if all vehicles were designed in that same way and it also raised the centre of gravity, increasing the chance of the People Carrier turning over.

To find out which car is good to have a crash in, we have to run all the data backwards. Instead of looking at all the shiny cars we have available to us and then wondering which one to drive, we must imagine each one already crashed and stationary, its occupants still inside. By doing so, stark realities become clear that were previously obscure.

All cars perform worse as more occupants and luggage are added to them. Regardless of size, if the car is carrying maximum occupants and maximum luggage, that luggage and those occupants increase the distance needed to stop or evade, increase the kinetic energy that has to be dissipated in the collision, reduce the interior space available to act as a ‘free zone’ where there are no obstructions.

All humans become KSI if their internal organs are subject to an impact above approximately 27mph. When we watch film of cars being crash tested, we see how the manufacturer tries to solve this problem by making the car’s passenger compartment slow down ‘progressively’. This is done  by transferring the impact forces away from the compartment and ‘soaking up’ as much force as possible in the parts of the car that are outside the passenger compartment – the engine compartment and the luggage compartment in particular. These areas are particularly used to make impact shocks to the passengers become more softened.

Airbags and flexible interior trim add more shock-reduction still, so the more of them one has, the better overall. They convert those sudden shocks and impacts into a series of more gradual ones. That passenger compartment has to keep it’s integrity, leaving the passengers with room to move inside it as the actual impact takes place. So, a sophisticated manufacturer can turn a crash at above 30mph into a series of decelerations, each one lower than 25mph, the g-forces dissipated as much as possible within the time frame of the collision.

Drivers and occupants often survive high-speed crashes because their car actually is involved in a series of collisions within that one event and each individual impact is lower than 25mph. For example, suffering a tyre failure at 100mph (lose 10mph), bounce off the railing (lose 15mph), skid diagonally across three lanes (lose 20mph), bounce off a truck (lose 20mph), bounce backwards into another vehicle (lose 20mph) and then skid to a halt (the final 15mph). Far better than hitting one item at 100mph.

Since the vast majority of crashes are head on, it is wise to design the front of a car so that it sequentially changes shape during an accident, altering the onward course of the car. This is best illustrated by looking at a Formula 1 racing car. Notice how the driver sits in a narrow canoe-like pod with a pointed nose? What would happen if two racing cars were to collide head on? The two passenger compartments would slide past each other, decelerating more slowly over a longer time period as  ‘sacrificial’ parts – front wheels and suspension – take the brunt of the forces. Clever stuff.

So some newer cars have their mechanical components angled such that they will fold inwards and downwards, reducing the chance of the vehicle stopping dead or becoming interlocked with another vehicle. Their suspension and wheels will progressively shear off as forces rise, their passenger doors will interlock with their door frames to provide a continuous structure instead of acting as a separate panel.

Walking among the lines of crashed cars in a recovery yard, I became aware that one category of car rarely appeared: the car with four new tyres. It was disproportionately absent. I checked this with my calculator and this car was under-represented by a factor of 75% in a yard made up of 175 cars. Those “missing” cars were not there in the yard because they had managed to stop in time or else swerved to avoid the crash.

Think on that. They never actually got involved in the crash. The crash never happened.

“A good car to have a crash in…?” has been a series of articles intended to help you make informed decisions and good risk assessment. In real life, a good car to have a crash in is a two to three year old medium-sized or large car from a reputable manufacturer, carrying a five-star (maximum) safety rating. Its occupants are average build, seated and belted correctly and relaxing as the airbags explode to meet them.

A good car to avoid having a crash in?  Well, that is a different question!

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The Airbus A330. Make friends with someone who owns one.

25 Feb

When our children were young, their mother and I never allowed them to sit on the knee of  Santa Claus. It seemed contradictory to warn them to beware of over-familiar strangers and then to suggest that they jump on the lap of some old man who has doubtful dress sense, a false beard and offers them presents in return for personal information.

So it was that we encouraged our kids to cling together in unity against the clearly unhinged logic of their parents. Between us both, their mother and I ran a dictatorial regime that, like President Assad’s, was so obviously designed to one day bring about rebellion.

In our case, we wanted them to rebel. We hated the thought of us clinging to power in old age and we also loathed the possibility that our children would grow up to be like ourselves. We couldn’t imagine a greater sadness than to one day discover that we had trained our children to conform, trust figures in authority and respect their wealthy rulers.

And so it happens that, as adults, we realise we must confront life’s contradictions instead of ignoring them. We have to doubt our own wisdom as often as that of others. For example, we have to listen closely to racists instead of ignoring them so that we can learn to question our own assumptions as well as neutralize their arguments. We have to think a lot more than we would wish to because very little of our lives makes perfect sense.

Let me now explain why jet travel is good for the planet.

Most of us are educated and aware that Planet Earth is a huge and fragile ecosystem. As we humans walk its surface and breathe it’s air, we change the way that ecosystem works. By the conduct of our daily lives, we strip it of renewable resources like plants and animals. We take its raw materials and convert them into chemical-based products which allow us to develop and grow our societies.  We use our world’s resources more preciously now than ever before.

There is now hardly a person on this planet who cannot be given a health-enhancing or life-saving drug from a plastic syringe. That syringe can then be recycled and that chemical manufacturer pays for carbon-converting trees to be planted to counter the pollution it creates in making the drug and it’s delivery system. We have moved so far towards protecting the ecological integrity of our planet by simply cleaning up our act. We have started to regain control of the deadly tail-spin of pollution and destruction brought about by our reckless ‘slash-and-burn’ development.

The extremes of Capitalism and Communism have been destructive of this planet. Both systems have turned fertile land into waste ground and contaminated once pure water. Both routinely blight and destroy the lives of some for the benefit of others. Both systems use the words ‘Freedom and Democracy’ as their flag, hanging it from Government buildings as proudly as they drape it over coffins.

But along the way, the social control brought by political stability has allowed innovation and mass production to flourish. One side-effect of an engaged and enthusiastic workforce is that great development projects may be conceived and delivered.

One of these projects has now finally come of age: low-cost transcontinental travel by jet aeroplane.

The 2nd may 2012 will mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of scheduled jet passenger travel. It has taken all those decades for the aerospace culture to truly spread across the world and to create  reliable, cost-effective  and fuel-efficient aircraft designs and a matching infrastructure.

Even ten years ago, most jets in operation were far thirstier and dirtier than today. One ought to bear in mind that although food retailers like M&S talk loudly of their green credentials and initiatives, the delicate and exotic fruit that lines their shelves would tell us a different story if it were able to speak. It has often been flown half way around the world to us by one of those hungry and polluting ‘old-school’ freight planes, long obsolete but too expensive to replace. Just because you grow passion-fruit or pomegranates doesn’t mean you lie awake at night worrying about fuel efficiency comparison data between aircraft operators.

And this is where it starts to get interesting.

Airbus announced a deal with business links to Singapore on 18th February 2012.  Airbus have worked out that 2,700 freighters are going to be needed by the World over the next twenty years. That is approximately one rolling out of the hangar every three days. Airbus has built its latest A3xx range so that it can be converted from passenger airliner to freighter – P2F – when those planes get towards the end of their useful passenger-carrying life. Out of those 2,700 freighters needed, Airbus plans to ‘create’ at least 900 of them from these P2F conversions in Malaysia.

Airbus already has 850 A3xx planes  in service around the world. You can see how they are thinking. The idea is really smart and definitely ‘green’. These birds are gonna be haulin’ more load over more miles than any White Freightliner or Mack truck ever did in the whole history of the American consumer boom.

Carrying between 20 and 40 tonnes each ride, for up to 10,000 kilometers, at 800 kilometers per hour, the figures start to look fascinating. As a simple example for comparison, we might consider that the Berlin Airlift of 1948 was successfully achieved mostly using planes that could only carry 4 tons at 300 kph.

Check out this link here and drag the little airplane around the screen. Go mad. It is great fun. A picture tells a thousand words.

This class of plane coupled with such sophisticated strategic planning has never before existed. But it is not just a revolution in freight – it affects us humans in so many other ways.

Last week, I flew on a standard pre-booked Easyjet flight from London to Cannes for £25. That is $39 for a 1,000 km journey. Two and a half pennies or 4 cents per kilometer. Compare that price to your local bus. Try cycling for less.

All through the history of our planet, our ability to travel has been strictly limited by time, technology and cost. Now, Free Market economic forces are creating the perfect conditions to move humanitarian aid and humans wherever it is necessary or wherever those humans need to be taken.

As the data from aeroplane manufacturers and the pricing of budget operators make clear, there now exists no logistical or fiscal excuse why either airborne aid or airborne evacuation cannot be made to happen when and where it is needed. When it comes to saving the earth, saving people from genocide also has its place. People are, after all, a most precious resource. Airlifts are being used right now to bring pomegranates to our supermarket shelves.

When it comes to saving humans,  should we demand that civil aviation operators utilize their resources for humanitarian ends or should we put our trust and belief in our politicians…and Santa?

 

© 2012 Loop Withers Roadwax.com

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A good car to have a crash in…? Part 3 – READER DISCRETION ADVISED

17 Feb

While researching this article, I have had to make some difficult editorial decisions. I refer you, dear reader, back to that very first Roadwax post which sets out my broad views about censorship.

Regrettably, I cannot tell you what I believe you should know without including some facts that may distress some readers. I do not wish to make this article appear as a ‘wise owl’ plod through statistics, farmed from reports and topped with a few vague suggestions. This is not a cut-and-paste job for a Sunday magazine. It is a genuine attempt by me to help keep my readers alive by having them empowered through their understanding of a serious issue.

Although I believe that children who are old enough to read should be old enough to also learn how to keep themselves safe, this post is not suitable for kids.

I am also stating here and now that you can skip this article and read the forthcoming “Part 4” and still benefit from a greater  understanding of how to choose a safe car. If you continue beyond this paragraph, please understand that some factual data below is distressing to read. I do not wish to sensationalize, I wish to put clarity in your mind.

On average five people get killed on British roads each day and almost sixty get “KSI” – killed or seriously injured. Deaths and injuries are declining but only by fractions of a percent and there are many complicating factors involved in dissecting even the simplest statistics on the Department for Transport website.

Other countries across the world have their own figure but one point is common to all countries: the KSI figure is unacceptably high and needs to be seen as a tragic and traumatic reminder of the human cost of mechanizing one’s population.

At this point, let us put aside how and why we crash. Being drunk, on drugs, distracted or losing control of your car or your judgement are examples that explain ‘how’ and ‘why’. Being caught in the path of somebody else who ticks any of those boxes may also make you an innocent victim.

Let us instead look at what happens in a crash.

We are all familiar with the Crash Test Dummy. These are replicas of humans, adjustable and modifiable to imitate how a human’s  body will most likely behave in a collision. Early ‘dummies’ were recently deceased corpses and even living volunteers but now these sophisticated replicas do the work.

We can watch hundreds of hours of YouTube film that shows us cars colliding with scientifically measured objects and we see what happens to the dummies. Other uploaded films show real-life collisions captured on camera and the effects on real humans. We must now make sense of what we see because there is almost no explanation attached to the footage we watch and this is itself unhelpful.

Each “crash” involves three “collisions”. The first is the car hitting an object and slowing sharply. The second collision is the passenger being hit by the g-force of slowing down, hitting the restraint systems or interior of the car. The third collision is the internal organs of the human passenger colliding with the retaining skin, skull and rib-cage of their body.

Now, we can see the limitations of the Crash Test Dummy. Researchers have to pre-load mathematical values into the crash data of a dummy because a dummy does not have a living brain or living organs.

Collision data gathered from real life crashes is far more valuable than might be expected.

A co-worker of mine called Dave once lost control of his Mercedes van and monumentally stuffed it into a wall, backwards. He was treated at the scene for shock, cuts and bruises by paramedics and again later on at hospital. He was released from hospital but collapsed within hours. Nobody had noticed a tiny, bloodless hole among his bruises. The ball point pen which he had left on the ledge below the speedometer had been launched backwards towards him during the crash. As his body twisted sideways the pen entered below his armpit, between the ribs, punctured his lung and then exited as his arm swung back and removed it. The pen was later found down by the pedals, thinly coated with the fluids from inside his body.

He recovered and returned to work. The rest of us spent our time debating furiously and fruitlessly over the safest place for a pen to be placed in our van’s cab. We eventually gave up and put them back…on the ledge…below the speedometer. Put it in the glove box? The glove box lid from Dave’s Mercedes was never found so we crossed that idea off the list early on in the debate.

This startling randomeness of real-life crash data evokes a behavioral response among emergency personnel involved in routinely attending serious collisions. It becomes necessary to cope with the unimaginable, the tragic and the completely insane world they encounter. Working with an established vehicle recovery operator, my own life changed forever. My daily contact with grieving and traumatized relatives and witnesses, handling body parts of the recently deceased, helping the Police and agencies reconstruct the last moments and cause of death of a stranger all taught me so much.

Two lessons that we discovered were deeply uncomfortable but also most enlightening.

Regardless of the car that the person drives, be it safe or unsafe, the advances in medical paramedic skills have significantly increased collision victims’ survival rates. More people’s lives are saved by prompt paramedic skill on the scene than ever before and this improves the survival statistics. One extreme example is the simplest way of linking this first fact to the next one. I have removed ‘identifiers’ from this following true story. It will make you think.

A woman was driving her medium sized car to work at 30mph on a wet road. Coming towards her round the bend was a 3 ton van, driving at 50mph. The male driver slid wide on the bend and the two vehicles met, directly and symmetrically head-on. The impact pushed the car 60 feet backwards down the road.

Paramedics and Police were on the scene almost immediately. The driver of the van was under the influence of alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. He had bruising and minor cuts. The female driver of the car was alive and sober. As the collision became inevitable, she had pushed both feet hard to the brake and clutch pedals. As the collision impact compressed the cabin in front of her, her hip bones had dislocated and her legs had traveled upwards, outside her rib cage but beneath her skin.

Paramedics were able to sustain her but she died later in hospital. Her survival that far illustrates the astonishing support for life that can now be deployed.

This account illustrates the second fact. Given the extreme but short-lived forces involved in many collisions, occupants of a car often reduce injury to themselves if their bodies are relaxed at the time of impact. If their body muscles are relaxed, they often escape greater injury when excessive force is applied to limbs and torso. Obviously, the unique and complex events of each collision involve many factors. However, it was apparent from our own empirical data as a business that drunk and therefore relaxed drivers were “walking away” from their heavily crushed vehicles more often than drivers who were sober and tense as they crashed in similar circumstances.

If, as either a car passenger or a driver, you realise that you are about to collide unavoidably with an object, you may decide to serve your body well by relaxing and making like a Crash Test Dummy.

© 2012 Loop Withers Roadwax.com

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A good car to have a crash in…? Part 2

13 Feb

We all risk injury or death with every car journey. But how do we assess or value that risk? Is it great or is it small?

My 87-year-old mother drives every day in a style that leaves her with few willing passengers. In her defence, I will point out that she has never caused an accident in over fifty years, a record that many of us might envy. Okay, there was an incident with a gate-post quite recently. But, since the gate-post no longer exists and therefore the evidence has disappeared, we cannot sentence her to hang for her crime.

She has what the French might describe as “…a joy of life…”. Many witnesses to her ‘enjoyment’ may later  need counselling or possibly just a stiff drink but my point is still upheld.

A passenger being driven by the late actor Sir Noel Coward once told of his horror at Noel’s driving style. During a ‘brief’ journey across London, the passenger suggested to Noel that it was perhaps safer to slow down for cross-road junctions and not to speed up, as Noel was in the habit of doing.

The great man disagreed. Noel argued that the less time one spent in a situation of great danger, the better for all concerned.

Today’s Motor Insurance industry seems to agree with Noel; they minimise their exposure to risk. They do not wish to insure people who are continually exposed to risk and danger. Taxi drivers, (who are driving for long periods of time  but therefore gain great knowledge and skill through their vast experience) have to pay over £1,000 for cover. My mother (who sees the world like Noel, or would do – were it not for her failing eyesight) is fully insured for £50. The price of a parking ticket.

Motor Insurance Claims Investigators fly across the world each day to visit the crashed remains of new cars. Why? The answer is a fascinating one. Switch your phone off and lean closer to the screen.

To avoid being pulled smartly off the internet by stone-faced lawyers, I shall illustrate my answer by using the example of a 1964 Morris 1100. All you have to do is open a new tab, click ‘Images’ on Google Search and type in the date and name of the car. I’ll wait.

The Morris 1100 first appeared in 1962. Although it looked as sexually alluring as a pork pie, it gained immediate success as a solid and well-priced family car. It had many features that made it attractive to buyers and was well designed and quite advanced for its time.

One of the features it originally possessed was a long and narrow chrome strip that runs along the centre of the bonnet. Held in place by wire clips, this bright metal strip added a sense of luxury and much-needed style.

After about two years, the small wire clips often became corroded and weakened. Insurance assessors noticed a fatal flaw. If you were unlucky enough to crash your 1963 Morris 1100 above a certain speed, you would be propelled forward through the windscreen just as a long, sword-like strip of metal was travelling backwards towards you.

Notice that the Morris 1100 quietly loses that chrome bonnet strip, some time around 1964.

This example perfectly illustrates how both manufacturers and insurers have to accept that new cars are effectively ‘Beta-Tested’ on their first owners. There is no such thing as a complete set of crash data information. Manufacturers and Insurers get much important collision information inside floodlit laboratories but all the rest of the facts are gathered by them daily, on location, under emergency floodlights, while those same cars drip their fluids and their metal clicks and pings.

Several luxury car makers proudly describe their vehicles as being “…built without compromise…” What hog-wash. No car would ever meet its owner if this statement were true. All cars are designed within a budget. There comes a point where money has to be made back for all the investment and research and that is called the “New Car Launch”. Get it out in the showrooms and get it sold.

Manufacturers are quick to try and come up with what the driving public wants. When Ford USA noticed American families desired an affordable and chunky-looking 4×4, Ford rushed to release the Ford Explorer. To mask its under-developed ride and handling, Ford lowered the tyre pressures. The tyre manufacturer objected. Ford persisted. Families lost loved-ones. Ford got sued and paid heavily.

Ironically, Renault went to great effort to protect rear-seat passengers from injury with their 2002 ‘New’ Megane II. The resulting rear end design reminded people of a cow’s backside. People just could not take the new car to their hearts. In a stroke of marketing genius, Renault spent a massive wad of money on a song and dance routine: “…I see you, baby…shaking that ass…” and by sheer persistence changed the customer’s mind-set. The car became a success, particularly with women of a certain age…

Once rust and wear takes significant hold of a car’s structure (normally after about six years) the car often behaves much less well in crash situations, even if it was originally well-designed and built. Therefore, we have to rule out most older cars as being a good bet to protect us in a hard collision.

It is a sad fact that young and less experienced drivers are mostly confined to driving old and small cars due to extortionate insurance quotes. While under 21, their yearly insurance routinely amounts to over twice the cash value of their frugal city car. Next time you read that local newspaper headline: ” Teenage clerk fined for being uninsured” consider that if you only take home £8,000 for a year’s work, £6,500 is a lot less to live on.

If both new cars (too little data) and old cars (too much corrosion) are ruled out, then cars of about three years age are ruled in; old enough  to have been modified using ‘real-world’ collision data and young enough to be rust-free, we can add them to the list inside our heads.

Large, heavy cars perform well but with some notable exceptions: tall SUVs have a higher centre of gravity and tip over far more easily than lower-slung cars, particularly if T-boned just in front of the rear wheels as they drive. Their larger, wider tyres  try to hold the car to the road, just as the laws of mechanics want to push them sideways and upwards. It is not a coincidence that top marque SUVs are becoming wider and lower, sacrificing ground clearance for a lower centre of gravity.

I have divided this post called “A good car to have a crash in…?” into segments. The reason is that so many factors come in to consideration that the answer is not a simple list and a box-tick. I can and will show you the answer…but you may at first feel uncomfortable with the results.

© 2012 Loop Withers Roadwax.com

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Six Second Pass

11 Feb

Do you want to know why the local garage you always take your car to could also be taking you for a ride? You don’t think that they are? Does it always seems to cost you between £300 – £400 for the annual service? You still don’t think they are taking you for a ride…?

Read my next blog feature. This is just a Six Second Pass.

Feeling like I just wasted your time?

Get your wallet out and count the money. Its all still there.

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The importance of serving toast correctly

7 Feb

156toastprius

It is 06.47 on a Tuesday morning in Autumn. The timing is important to me. It means that I have two minutes to pull my car over to the side of the long driveway that leads to the hotel. Then, out of public view, I can make sure that the side doors where the passengers will get in are still clean.

The rest of the car can wait. This Toyota Prius was hand washed only fifty miles ago but it already has a fine mist of damp cow dung and clay stuck to it from the last three miles of country road. Sometimes, this damned Prius gets washed twice a day. This is England. England is green and pleasant because it rains a lot.

There  is a finger mark on the back door handle so I polish it away with a tissue, get back in and select ‘Drive’. Six minutes to seven. I have been on the hotel’s CCTV since I turned in from the main road so now the receptionist will be telling the doorman that I am approaching. She likes the chauffeurs who pull over and check their car before advancing into her domain.

As I glide out from beneath the blue misty gloom of the trees that line the drive, the great house appears, lit silver and brass by the dawn sun. Its solid  lines dominate the cow draped pastures before it and one knows without doubt that this is how it was intended to be first seen by its visitors. The finest stone and brick faces outwards, protecting the whitest bedsheets and towels from those who have no business within.

The digital clock on my dash changes to 06.55 as I coast the last fifty metres on electric power towards the giant front door where a valet stands, staring intently towards me. On the raked circle of gravel ahead of me, a silver Mercedes S-Class is loading. Its passengers wait while the driver rushes to open the rear doors and let them inside. I brake to a halt early and flash my dipped headlights at the doorman. He raises one finger in acknowledgement from his white gloved hand to bid me to stop and wait. He brushes his electric blue waistcoat and turns to look to the valet who stands at the top of the great stone steps at the front of the house.

I recognise the driver of the Mercedes. His name is Eric. Eric used to be in business with my boss. Now, he is not. I can guess why. Eric is snatching the cases from the pea-shingle drive and stacking them in the back. He shuts the tailgate and strides round to get in behind the wheel. I can see his passengers settling in the back seat and then Eric is rolling, hard right lock, his headlights reflecting off the low stone wall that make his turn so tight.

The gardener stands with his rake and watches in case Eric’s turn requires the grains of pea shingle to be restored. I take my foot off the brake and roll forward to the Portland stone doorway. The doorman now looks to me, pointing downwards with his finger to exactly where he wishes me to position myself  beside his perfect shoes. I catch a glimpse of Eric’s intense and reddened face as he drives by. He glares ahead to the darkness of the beckoning trees.

I push the button and my window glass drops with a whir and the cold air creeps in. The doorman bows towards me and stares into my eyes. I set the parking brake with my foot.

“Having fun…?” I make a cheesy grin up towards him. His mouth is already forming his first words to me but he stops and straightens, looking back to the house. I can hear the valet’s voice. The doorman nods and then bows to me again. He speaks.

“No, I am not. Go round again. We are all out of sequence now…” The frustration in his voice makes me click the handbrake off without delay but his gloved hands still hold on to my door so I keep my foot on the brake.

“Give way to the black BMW that is just arriving, come in back here as soon as he goes, yes…?”

“Yes.” I make to move away but he still keeps his hands on my door. I look back at him. He is staring after Eric’s Merc. He speaks softly.

“That couple…” He struggles for words. “…they got drunk last night and then cancelled Eric’s car. Then, this morning they start screaming at us, asking where he is. They couldn’t remember a thing. Eric only just raced back from Heathrow now. They only had to wait half an hour but…my god…they made sure that everybody knew!”  He stares at me.

“Now…” he continues,  “…I have a gentleman who ordered that BMW for seven fifteen and then changed it to seven…then I do you…”

“What about my seven o’clock…?” I ask.

“She’s just enjoying her toast.” He makes a cheesy grin back to me and he winks. He drops his gloved hands from my door and gives me a dry smile. “Go, go, go…”

A black BMW 740 is approaching fast in my mirror and I glide out of  its path, swinging right lock as it stops on the gravel where I waited a second before. The doorman bows forward to the driver and speaks with him. I drive off and turn again in the staff car park. I wonder how long it takes to eat toast and if I can get a little more door cleaning fitted in.

A warning light in my head tells me not to stop and I swing back into the arrival point for the second time. It is just as well that I do because the black BMW 740 is just pulling away with the  gentleman  inside. The doorman stands, pointing to the ground by his feet, giving me a stiff nod. I coast up and stop a second time.

“Here she comes. One suitcase. Get the door for her and I’ll load you.”

I leap out as he strides to the tailgate. The great hotel facade reflects in the gloss black paintwork of my car. There is a patch of manure and straw stuck on the freshly waxed rear tyre. I scoot around the car and I pull my new passenger’s door open and she gets in without breaking her step or acknowledging me.

The doorman helps the valet who is struggling to fit her huge suitcase in over the lip of the tailgate. I close her door and I pull the boot lid down. A white Range Rover appears behind us and stops short, waiting for me to leave. Two slim businessmen are now standing in the hotel doorway, flanked by the valet and the doorman. They are holding identical carbon fiber briefcases and both wear a small enamel lapel badge, probably identifying their employer or the private society to whom they belong. They are glaring with disapproval towards me. I am in their way.

I pull full right lock and I am facing back to the long avenue of trees that line the drive. The Range Rover pulls up in my vacated space and the parking valet leaps out, holding the door for the two men who get in the front and slip sunglasses on in unison.

I greet my passenger.

“Good morning…!” I try to sound as welcoming as possible. ” Heathrow, terminal five..?”

I haven’t noticed that she has already got her earpieces in and is making calls on her Blackberry. She cradles it in her lap. Her crisp voice cuts across my last words.

“David, its me. Do Vogue America have our proposal on their desk…? Good…I’m in the car going to Heathrow now, so they only have forty minutes to speak to me…”

I curse myself in silence for my failure to spot the white wires that snake up the side of her neck into her blond hair. I push the car hard down the narrow drive. This will make it float better over the bumps and it will also show her that I am not wasting my time. The fallen leaves swirl behind us, sucked up by the car and left to tumble in wait for the Range Rover. I don’t want the two spooks in the Range Rover crowding my rear end at the junction.

Far ahead, a black Chrysler pulls over into the passing bay, flashing me to let me know that I have priority.

“Well…that is their problem, David. Make them sweat and I’ll call you when I am in the air…lousy…book me in somewhere else  next time David…dreadful….the toast was cold again…yes…I had to send it back twice, would you believe…?…I don’t care, David, anywhere that understands how to serve toast…”

I flash my headlights to the Chrysler as I pass him and I begin to brake for the cattle grid at the gate house.

She settles back in her seat and looks out of her window.

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