VW automatic parking brake. etc

Never mind. The car will need to be recalled.

You have to larf. All those illegal diesels - 11 million - are gonna get crushed.

Meanwhile Germans in revolt over 'asylum seekers' and the Energiewende is collapsing in flames.

No they aren't.

Why would you crush them? Simply re-programme so they stick in the low emissions mode. Of course they might then cause a few more queues...

Yes, me too, and the wheel into the kerb if it's steep. But she leaves the handbrake off, and just leaves it in first.

I like to change it when I get bored. I'd been reading one of my favourite books at the time - 'The Best of Shrdlu' - which is one of those books about amusing printing mistakes.

I've driven my old Fiesta away a couple of times with the handbrake on, and hardly noticed. It's probably because the drum diameter is so small. And because I'm an idiot.

That's pretty good to see that with the mirror set to show straight behind you - better mirrors than on my car! With my mirrors correctly adjusted for straight behind, I can see a couple of inches below the rear door handles at the lower limit of the field of view

But how useful do you find it only to be able to see two feet *behind* the car, rather than to see part of your car (eg the rear wheel or the rear wing) in relation to what's behind/beside it? Fine for not reversing into something behind you but less useful for positioning yourself next to something alongside the car like a kerb or the white line of a parking bay.

I find I always have to drop the mirror to parallel park or to reverse into a car park space, and if it happens automatically when I go into reverse that's a bonus, though I agree that anything automatic needs a way of turning it off for the times when you want to over-ride what it normally a very useful feature.

My current car - a Mazda - has a dashboard warning: "Please release handbrake".

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Umm.. A hint in the Telegraph (don't sneer) implied that the software simply added more urea. Modern farm tractors have a tank of the stuff! Add blue!

Good time to buy some VW shares?

The old Fiesta has a warning light, but it's not very noticeable in the daytime.

I can see my rear wing and enough kerb to mentally project it alongside the car. I'll admit that's not much use for curved kerbs, but I don't come across those very often.

The very best car I've driven for parking is a rented Qashqai with all the toys. There were downward-facing cameras front, back, and both sides (under the door mirrors). The images were digitally skewed and combined to give a single image showing a bird's view of everything round the car. Fantastic.

I still have one. (Probably long out of date.) And a number plate.

Never been very good a reversing with the trailer but I put that down to fact it's totaly invisible behind the Disco until it has practically jack knifed. This is a "medium" trailer, the box will take a single matteress flat and the draw bar is a good 3' long. Never got round to fitting a couple of canes in the back corners to see if that improved things. B-)

Brakes on front are probably holding the car when using the footbrake. Put the handbrake on and you lock the rear wheels. Then release the footbrake and the front suspension settles.

Yes, I've never needed mess around with mirrors when reversing. True, with modern, bloated 'jelly mould' cars it can take a while to gain a sense of where the edges are; but once you know it isn't that difficult to sense where the kerb is.

All modern cars seem to have terrible blind spots caused bu the thick and sloping A pillars. Very difficult to see 'ahead' when driving on narrow twisty roads.

I agree. My S-Max is terrible for that.

Even worse when you have no left eye. You can lose a vehicle completely behind the A pillar!

Ok, one may well end up in a museum.

Mini's are terrible for vision. It's a fun car and SWMBO likes it, but I hate the appalling lack of vision - as you say, 2 thick A pillars and a bulky driver's mirror mean you can't see half of what's in front.

Reversing is worse - the B pillars are also in the wring place for me and the rear windows are a joke. So I reverse almost entirely by mirrors.