The North American fleet IS older than the UK fleet - partly because cars last longer here, on average. The safety checks here in Canada are not like in the UK, but both my 16 year old car and 22 year old truck will pass ANY safety check, here or anywhere.
In Japan cars are NOT required to be removed from the road at any particular age or mileage, they just have asliding scale licence/tax scheme that makes keaping older cars on the road EXTREMELY expensive compared to buying new.
I spent most of my working life driving vans where there was either no view through the back because of the type of vehicle or because the load blocked the view. You learnt to use the side mirrors for most things.
Which is why I said, upthread, that we don't tend to do statements of the bleeding obvious in this country. Although as I also said, that is sadly changing.
No, I get the binoculars out to read it. It's the same at home when I'm reading a book. I prop the book up in a tree at the bottom of the garden and lean on the window ledge to read it with the binnies.
I didn't know that. Good idea. Modern cars have such high window sills that you often cannot see the front or rear wings of the car unless you lift out of the seat till you head touches the ceiling - and maybe not even then. So you need mirrors.
When I am parking close to a kerb (eg when parallel parking) I cannot see the kerb on either side as I get closer, so the door mirrors, pointing downwards are the only way to see where my rear tyre is in relation to kerb, since I need to get as close as possible to avoid sticking out into the road any further than you can. I find I can judge the distance from the car behind fairly well via the rear-view and maybe door mirror, but judging sideways distance from something that is no longer visible is virtually impossible.
When I first changed my old Pug 306 (which had high enough wings to be able to judge where the front corners were) for a Pug 308 (which has droopy wings to make it more streamlined and pedestrian friendly), I was concerned about parallel parking it because of not being able to see my front corner relative to the back corner of the car I was parking behind - so much so that when I was test-driving it, I made a point of finding somewhere to practice parallel parking. It was scary at first but I now seem to have developed a sixth sense for estimating where this extremity of my car is - but I find I can't do the same with judging when my tyre is a couple of inches away from the kerb so I always need the mirror for that.
My last car was 10 years old when I sold it and my present car is coming up to 9 years. I don't think the costs of keeping them MOT-worthy each year increase with age such that there is a cut-off age. Tyres wear at a fairly standard rate and may last longer than a year or less than a year depending on how much you drive, so it's just the luck of the draw where they are in their wear cycle when the test is due. Ditto for wiper blades and brake pads/discs. I usually try to replace things (or get the garage to do so) in advance of the test, so I have never failed yet - instead it's a case of "I would have failed if I hadn't replaced those tyres that were wearing or that wiper blade that was juddering".
Maybe the only thing that is likely to "age" is the cat and/or diesel particulate filter. I needed to get my DPF and cat replaced at about 150,000 miles - mainly to cure annoying pop-up messages on the dashboard, but I probably wouldn't have passed the MOT once it became due, but I resigned myself to the eye-watering cost because my car is worth a hell of a lot more to me as a running car that I don't have to replace with a newer one, than for its part-exchange value which is probably a couple of hundred at most.
You mean the car didn't have any mirror apart from the one in the centre of the car that looked through the rear window? I thought some form of side mirror (whether wing/fender or door) was standard on all cars by the mid sixties - at least on the driver's side (and sometimes an optional extra on the passenger side).
I'd have thought that very long bonnets/hood would have been a reason for changing to door mirrors earlier than we did here with shorter bonnets/hoods because the further away the wing/fender mirror is, the narrower is its field of view so the bigger its blind spot would be.
I had one of those once, on a car made in about 1990. Surely none of those still exist? Bloody difficult to get the mirror to go precisely where you wanted, and for the passenger side, reaching across while driving wasn't very safe.
Why are you calling Huge a troll?
In what way?
In a car there's no need for aids at all. You can turn your head and have your full field of vision through all the windows.
I would in a van without rear windows, but not a car, it's just not necessary.
Rubbish. Turning your head means you can see everything.
No delay if you just look behind you, the way you're moving.
On Mon, 01 Jan 2018 17:14:22 -0500, Clare Snyder wrote:
And because Japan drives on the left and the cars are predominately RHD there are limited markets they can pass them on to with the UK being a target. About 12-15 years ago shiploads of the heaps were being brought in. I lived overlooking one of the unloading compounds in which auctions were conducted by a firm located in Southampton Docks. The drivers used to load new vehicles are skilled vehicle handlers ,they have to be to park the vehicles without costly damage inches apart on the vessels but the those used by the importers of the Japanese cars for this firm were in a different class, probably the only one they had ever been in. These lowlifes thought nothing of doing donuts, shunting cars with others ,driving around with flat tyres and leaving windows open for weather to get in. Despite this the importers seemed to have no trouble shifting them,to be fair not all vehicles were shitheaps, there were some interesting vehicles and the YEN was weak against the Pound Sterling then which made buying something like a Nissan Skyline or Mazda RX7 reasonably cheap even after various UK taxes were paid and a few modifications to get them UK registered on what was called single vehicle approval. The interesting vehicles were vastly outnumbered by none too special Pajeros , Bongo Friendees ,Toyota Hilux style vehicles . I've long since moved from there and they don't come in through Southampton anymore ,the real estate is now used for the more valuable cruise ship industry and new car exports, although they are tiny by US standards Britains longest freight trains bring Minis and Jaguars in to Southampton Docks for Export.
The Yen is stronger against the pound now so bringing in the cheaper rubbish is possibly no longer worthwhile and the traveller types to whom they appealed have probably resorted to stealing other peoples again. The firms that still do it now buy the vehicles in Japan to order before shipping. One picked at Random
G.Harman
Had it on my car for the last two years or so.
That is part of the reason that I went for the rear camera option. I have neck and shoulder problems, and since I have no vision in the left eye I have to twist a very long way round when reversing.
Depends on how the mirrors are adjusted. There is a place where an overtaking car is almost beside you but not in your peripheral vision where they aren't in the mirror. I hate it when someone is passing you on the freeway and taking three days to do so. I know they're over there but I can't see them.
I've spent too much time in vehicles where turning around didn't buy you anything. Even with a commercial van all you're going to see is the inside of the van. It's mirrors or nothing.
+1. I don't even think about turning around.
I remember having that on one of my cars, maybe the Lincoln. The rest had nothing.
Nope! had a '79 Ford Grenada that didn't have outside mirrors until I installed them to tow a trailer while helping a family member move - they were required if you towed a trailer.
Likewise. There is a breed of driver who will approach your car at a significantly higher speed that you, so you see them grow in your mirror and you anticipate how long it will take until they have passed you and you can pull out behind them - but they then mess things up by slowing down to the same speed as you, sitting in your blind spot for ages, before finally accelerating again and getting past.
It applies particularly to cars which are overtaking articulated trucks: I often find that I'm in the overtaking lane, following another car that is about to overtake a truck. We are doing about 70; the truck is doing about
60 - perfect, we'll be past soon. Suddenly the car in front slows from 70 to about 61 (often with fairly sharp braking) as it reaches the rear end of the truck. It then sits there, taking several years to pass the truck, before accelerating back up to 70 as it passes the front of truck's cab. WTF is that all about? I know from bitter experience that trucks occasionally pull out when cars are alongside them (presumably because they haven't checked that they are clear to pull out) so I like to get past as quickly as possible so I'm alongside them in the "danger zone" for as little time as possible.On a 3-lane road, it's no great problem because if the car in front plays silly buggers like this, I can overtake him in Lane 3. But on a 2-lane road, there's no chance of doing that - and some of the major roads in the UK (the A1 "Great North Road" from London to Edinburgh is a good example) are 2-lane for a lot of the route, in sections that still haven't been upgraded to
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