Another thought on fuel efficiency...

[SteveW]

The cars that I have driven, have their speed limiting overridden by flooring the accelerator and then remain overriden, until you let the speed drop back to the set limit.

[SteveW]

That's were EVs work better - they can slow to a complete halt and then set off again when the traffic moves.

[SteveW]

Better still to teach the other people not to put themselves in a position to be hit. Figures from some years ago showed that for pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries, the PRIMARY cause of the incident, in 82% of cases, was "Pedestrian failed to look."

What has happened to road safety lessons in schools, public information adverts, etc.?

[The Natural Philosopher]

In general on a hot day the interior of a car will *without aircon* be up to 60-70°C.

If you want to recycle your stale farts, that's OK with me, but I prefer fresh air.

Er no. the interior air is full of your sweaty armpits stale breath and noxious farts. NEVER use recirculate to demist...heat plus fresh dehumified air is what you want.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My satnav adds up to 20 miles....another reason why I depend on it on roads I dont know well.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You obviously have never seen a car crash, What doesn't happen is that things come to an abrupt stop.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The car that I have flooring the accelerator is rather a dangerous thing to do

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. My first time in court was as a 13 year old witness to the death of an old lady hit by a rover in a 30mph zone...she simply stepped off the pavement right in front of it.

You can't fine and tax people for behaving intelligently on the roads. Post Blair the name of the game is to invent work for the state sector to create jobs. Te state sector is now 46% of GDP, That essentially means than 1 in 2 people work for the gummint, one way or another.

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[Andy Burns]

I hear plenty of grumbling over prices there, not like it used to be, West coast prices (e.g $6 per US gallon, not sure if that includes state and federal taxes) workout to £1.28 per litre ... not a million miles from ours.

[Paul]

Jollies aren't as cheap as they used to be.

If you take friends for water skiing at the lake with your speedboat, you can burn through a thousand worth of petrol over the weekend.

I expect habits have changed a bit.

Maybe when you get to the cottage, you'll be playing horseshoes instead. (We used to have horseshoe pits on an open field across from the house.) And there is always wind surfing, where the fuel cost is low.

Even back when fuel was cheap, some people had to give up their hobbies. One guy at work owned a DC3. But he couldn't really afford to fly it. I bet even "parking" was expensive.

Paul

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

In most cases, that is correct and they cruise at a very accurate 56mph.

[uk.d-i-y]

I heard an American being impressed by a car that did 30mpg. I thought I must have misheard. fwiw 75hp for a 3 cyl is very high here.

[Jethro_uk]

I make my own decisions.

Generally I do try to stay within the limit, since having a licence is useful. But that won't prevent me from an occasional "boost" to get past a know on a motorway.

Generally there is f*ck all advantage to speeding in town. Quite aside from the average speed cameras, it really doesn't save any time.

I drove for hundreds of miles in the US on cruise control. Many times I was the only car in sight. On both lanes. Texas is very big, as Noel Coward might have observed.

[SteveW]

Only when first starting up. Once the interior has dropped to the set temperature, the air-con is drawing cooler air from inside the car, rather than having to cool air from the hotter outside.

The air-con is continuously drying the air, so it it dryer than the outside air. Maybe you haven't noticed, but many cars have a dedicated demist button - which automatically switches to recirculation, turns the aircon on, puts the heat on max and runs the fan on high. For those without such a button, the manual tells you to do just that.

[SteveW]

It does if the truck ahead, that you are following, runs into a bridge support and pretty damned quick if it runs into a 500 tonne transformer movement truck. Both unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not with you in the car it aint. You need to understand the difference between total water content and relative humidity. The air outside the car will have far lower water content than the air inside, so for a given temperature inside the car will have lower relative humidity

Maybe you haven't noticed, but many cars have a dedicated

Recirculation is good to get internal temperature up rapidly, but not for demisting

[The Natural Philosopher]

As I said, you have never seen a motor accident

If truck runs into a bridge support the trailer will go upwards.

I saw a mini doing 100mph at a race circuit hit a tyre barrier only 5 feet deep head on at ~110mph. It leapt about 10 ft into the air.

Any truck that hits a bridge support will not end up in the middle of the road at a dead stop instantly. The rear will continue on and the while thing will rotate around the impact in in some dimensions or other. The far greater danger is low visibility and/or inattention. A line of stationary traffic seen too late and the drivers behind the leaders not having enough recation time or fiddling with their mobiles is what causes multiple car piles ups. That is the *only* case where you may on a motorway encounter what amounts to a cul-de-sac where there is no escape. And that is why smart drivers hit the hazards as soon as they see it to pass the message back as quickly as possible to increase reaction times

[alan_m]

He seems to pull apart engines with an unknown service history and is rather scathing about any small engine.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I see you haven't watched it very much.

He is pretty scathing about many big engines, too.

[alan_m]

Not for demisting but on my car with just air con (not climate control) there are manual buttons for turning on air con, for turning on re-circulation and a rotary knob for hot/cool. If the air con and re-circulation are both off and the rotary knob is the turned to the fullest cool position both air con and re-circulation are automatically selected, and airflow to the foot-well is disabled. So, if you want a colder interior the car automatically selects re-circulation, which can then be manually overridden.

For demisting the windscreen there are dedicated buttons for air to the windscreen and the heated front screen. Ford recommend turning off re-circulation for demisting as this allows moist air to be expelled from the cabin. Incoming air is dried by te air con.