OT: cars at traffic lights

Many cars now have electric "handbrakes" using a motor to drive a screw to apply pressure, takes 1-2 seconds to apply and remove ...

Do I conclude that you are a habitual driver of ULVs ?

ULV: unnecessarily large vehicle.

Moving on.. My beef is the driver who allows a long gap to build up when moving in a queue towards the junction. Someone here will know more than I do but I think modern radar sensing light systems assume the gap is the end of the queue and change to red:-(

I still remember a traffic light grand prix where the front rank had MiniCooper S and a Rolls Royce. The Mini driver kept 'blipping' his engine in readiness for the green light, When the green finally arrived the Rolls very quietly led the way with the Mini screaming trying to keep up.

In message snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk>, charles snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk> writes

Ha! I used to suffer from that. Age 20, I was gifted a 1956 series 2 Morgan 2 seater. Traffic light challenges were commonplace. Little did they realise that the engine was the Ford 100E side valve producing 36 BHP on a good day, coupled to a 3 speed gear box!

I used to leave all my friends behind at lights in my 650cc FIAT.

Seems no one taught them how to use the gears properly.

Cant speak to that. But I have noticed a lot of junctions have increased the green (and therefore other sides red) phases quite a bit. I guess fewer changes in an hour leads to better traffic flow.

Mind you that has to be balanced against the practice of putting pedestrian lights every six feet on some roads. There is a stretch on the A38 in Brum with 10 in a mile. (Plus some regular junction lights).

Our current car has the stop/start feature. I was very wary of it at first but now tend to enable it and it seems to work pretty well.

My observation is that when stopped at lights on a multi-lane road my car will start the engine and move away just as rapidly as the car in the next lane which has kept its engine running or sometimes more rapidly. And I also find that an automatic will nearly always get back up to the regular road speed faster than non-automatics, essentially because the manual transmissions lose power to the wheels during every gear-change.

I also wonder if some people are slow to start off from rest because it clearly uses a lot of fuel do do that? I think it is possible that proportion of people driving along motorways at 60 mph rather than nearer the limit also started when fuel got more expensive a couple of years ago.

Also a lower speed limit further down the road can effective make it lower the entire length.

There are a few A roads round here that are 30/40/30/40/30 (generally going through villages). If there is a busy road all the traffic ends up doing ..... 30.

See also: 20mph stretches and zones.

Something you now see every day! An electric car off to a flying and silent start leaving the boy-racer noisily behind!

nib

I suspect part of the reason for the sluggish pull away, at least on conventional cars, is the 'fashion'/ bad driving habit, of holding the car on the clutch, and rocking the car back and forth, to maintain position, and/or the use of the footbrake. This, instead of simply applying the handbrake, and putting it in neutral.

With handbrake on, the car is starting from a stable position, and you can be much quicker off the mark.

Both those vehicles have been loaded to full volume capacity on numerous occasions, so, while they might be large, IMO neither counts as unnecessarily so.

When asked by a motor magazine, many years ago, what the performance of their cars was, RR replied adequate.

It could be worse…he could be the habitual rider of a bicycle.

AIUI applying the handbrake when stopped is the correct way to drive.

Mine also has a radar device to detect a vehicle further away (tunable). Used for anti-collision actions.

Round here, yes. I'd estimate that 95% or more of cyclists I see are not proper cyclists.