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Mikey wrote:I subscribe to Jerry Seinfeld's theory: you should be allowed to drive your age in mph. After all, some of these folks don't have that much time left to get where they're going.

Agreed.

Hmm, do you really want someone who's blind as a bat and can't remember what they had for breakfast tearing through town at 80 mph?

Captain Seafort wrote:Hmm, do you really want someone who's blind as a bat and can't remember what they had for breakfast tearing through town at 80 mph?

Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian. It was a joke.

Did I ever tell you all the story about the time my uncle got pulled over on the freeway? He was doing 28 mph in a 65 zone

Captain Seafort wrote:Hmm, do you really want someone who's blind as a bat and can't remember what they had for breakfast tearing through town at 80 mph?

Sure.

The three phenomenon that annoy me most on the motorway:

"Aged" drivers that have relatively nice and powerful cars (its the only time they've ever been able to bloody afford them), driving like they are on a B road.

Assholes in BMW's that think that, just because they own a BMW, they can automatically travel faster and with a higher priority than anyone else. Audi drivers are slowly becoming like it as well.

Young lads in the worlds puniest car, normally something like Vauxhall corsa or a Citroen Saxo, with enormous exhausts travelling so fast it forces other drivers to chop a lane down.

Reliant121 wrote:The three phenomenon that annoy me most on the motorway:

"Aged" drivers that have relatively nice and powerful cars (its the only time they've ever been able to bloody afford them), driving like they are on a B road.

Assholes in BMW's that think that, just because they own a BMW, they can automatically travel faster and with a higher priority than anyone else. Audi drivers are slowly becoming like it as well.

It was an old joke that BMW drivers thought they owned the road, and Mercedes drivers new they did. The reason Audi drivers seem to be getting worse is that all the bad BMW drivers have switched over to Audi. Well most of them anyway.

Young lads in the worlds puniest car, normally something like Vauxhall corsa or a Citroen Saxo, with enormous exhausts travelling so fast it forces other drivers to chop a lane down.

The big exhaust is a sign that they've boosted their engine capability. Some of these cars have had huge turbochargers fitted plus lots of other things. I know people who have such cards with upwards of 600BHP.

To look a the other side of the coin for a little, if you could afford to change down a lane with that much ease you where in the wrong lane to begin with. It's an often forgotten fact they you are required to travel in the left most lane that it is safe to do. Permanently sitting in the second lane of a motorway, for example, is bad driving. There's a common misconception that the left lane is for slow traffic. This is wrong, you are allowed to go just as fast in that lane as any other. In other words if the first lane is empty you should be moving over there.

Just so the people in the US get what the issue is with this. We are not allowed to overtake on the inside other other cars. We drive on the left. The left lane is the first lane, ie the one we enter the road on. The next lane is for overtaking people in the 1st lane. The third lane for overtaking people in the second etc. You are not allowed to overtake someone in the second lane using the first lane. It's illegal, even to the point it can land you in jail for a year or two. Thus the problem comes up when you get some numpty going slowly in the outermost lane. They are then holding up the rest of the traffic on the motorway.

Wow, um... I like American motorways better, they sound much less confusing...

Sometimes the bigger exhaust means they've improved their engine. About 2/3rds of the time it means they want to sound like they've done something to their engine even if they haven't.

Nickswitz wrote:Wow, um... I like American motorways better, they sound much less confusing...

The reason it's like that is safety - if you have a problem (sudden puncture, engine conks out, etc.) while you're in the centre or outside lanes, you need to be able to move over immediately, without worrying about some idiot undertaking.

IanKennedy wrote:Permanently sitting in the second lane of a motorway, for example, is bad driving.

Like I said - fucking clocs.

Nickswitz wrote:Wow, um... I like American motorways better, they sound much less confusing...

It's the same thing - like we have our "fast lane" or "passing lane" on the left (except for the damned New Yorkers going to Atlantic City who can't figure out what the hell the fast lane is,) theirs are on the right.

Tyyr wrote:Sometimes the bigger exhaust means they've improved their engine. About 2/3rds of the time it means they want to sound like they've done something to their engine even if they haven't.

Spot on. 'Round here, most of the time the big pipe is just a "cherry bomb" to make the car have an exhaust note that doesn't match it's actual output.

Mikey wrote:'Round here, most of the time the big pipe is just a "cherry bomb" to make the car have an exhaust note that doesn't match it's actual output.

Most of the time, it just makes it sound like the car is cutting one.

I didn't say they made an attractive exhaust note.

A cherry bomb produces a hopped up weed whacker exhaust note. A properly tuned engine has a deep growl you can't recreate without actually properly building up the engine.

That's what the kids seem to like these days, though. Even the ones who actually do some performance mods are more concerned about hp per cylinder rather than just hp.