Goal? No - Gaol!

As a Welsh football supporter and proud Swansea boy, I was disappointed to read this story this week.

Fellow Swansea boy Dean Saunders has been sentenced to prison for refusing to give a breath test when caught in an apparently very drunk state at the wheel of his Audi in Chester.

Actually I'm quite annoyed.  He is described as "The former Derby County, Oxford United and Aston Villa forward" - no mention whatsoever of Swansea City.  Disgraceful bias against the team currently riding high in The Championship.

 

District Judge Nicholas Sanders banned him from driving for 30 months and ordered him to pay court costs of £620.  Which is less than his car-parking fine when he left his car in a short-stay car park while Wales excelled at the 2016 European Championships.

 

And the first 10 weeks of the driving ban will be irrelevant anyway due to him being banged up.

 

As he was jailing him, Sanders told Saunders, "Throughout these proceedings you have shown yourself to be arrogant, thinking you are someone whose previous and current role in the public eye entitles you to be above the law."

 

Quite right, nobody should be above the law.

 

They've let him out after a day.

I've Been Driving Through a Storm Lately

Rapper TuSimple has never performed a version of Jim Steinman's classic work "I've Been Dreaming Up A Storm Lately"

Here is Steinman himself performing it as part of the Pandora's Box album Original Sin.

I've been driving through a storm lately.

This was scary because there was a car behind me and another alongside me so I had no choice but to hit the water:

Here, you will hear me swear when I realise I've got into completely the wrong lane - then I overtake a truck.  If you don't like my swearing, you can enjoy Despacito which is unfortunately by Justin Bieber.

I'd got into the wrong lane by being in "auto-mode" where I was heading along a familiar route but going somewhere different to usual.

Imagine if that truck had been autonomous.

Actually, TuSimple is not a rapper.

He is also not Sainsbury's in-house clothing brand for people with learning difficulties.

He is actually an autonomous truck start-up.  Were you wondering where I was going with this?

Car+Driver have the story here.  It also includes a YouTube video - it is a much longer video than mine and the music is much naffer.  Don't bother watching it all - it's enough to know it's a truck driving itself through a storm and the speeds are quite concerning:

But, as Gerry Marsden said, "When you drive through a storm, hold your head up high."  which is actually from Carousel by Rogers and Hammerstein.

Is that enough musical genres for one Post?

I'll ask Stormzy.

Look Behind You!

I changed my car last month.

I now own a BMW 3-Series.

I like to confuse other drivers by using my indicators correctly.

I was a bit confused myself though, and also somewhat perturbed by these three red blobs that appeared on the dash whenever I started it up:

There was nothing in the manual about them and red is bad - right?

But they went away after a few seconds so they can't be that bad, can they?

Then one of then went green when I was giving my son and his guitar a lift to the station.

Green is good.

A bit of Internet research then told me that these blobs represent whether or not the rear seat passengers (irrespective of whether they exist or not) have got their seatbelts clicked in.

OK, I get that - it's nice to know, if you are planning to crash, whether or not the person sat behind you is liable to be flung through your helpless body creating gruesome carnage.  Or not - green is good and red is OK if there's nobody sizeable sat there.

So when I read this Car+Driver story this week about how Hyundai will be making rear-occupant alert standard by 2022, I assumed that it was something like what I had been experiencing.

But no.

This is a system already made available by some manufacturers to alert drivers IF THEY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY LEFT A CHILD IN THE BACK OF THEIR VEHICLE. (I put it in capitals because it sounds unbelievable)

How can that even be a thing?

I can understand people deliberately leaving children in cars if they think they'll only be a short time - it is very stupid and they should feel the full force of the law if anything happens to the child (and also maybe if it doesn't)

BUT HOW CAN YOU FORGET A CHILD IS IN YOUR CAR!?

Sadly - apparently you can.  I want to be flippant and mention the Darwin Awards but it feels wrong after reading that.  I don't understand how that could happen and also how car manufacturers have to put something in place to prevent it happening again.

So, rather than try to comprehend that, here's the cute picture they used in the story:

Chubby Chasers

I saw what I thought was a Mondeo estate on Friday.

But it had "Focus" written along the back of it.

And modern Astras are bigger than Cavaliers - (and a lot better looking but that's beside the point)

Anyway, Autocar looked at this phenomenon this weekend:

They suggest several reasons including greater crash protection (crumple zones and the like) and the fact that we are getting bigger ourselves (McDonalds and the like)

 

However, I've noticed that when Vauxhall, for example, bring out a new Corsa, they claim it's bigger and better than the Polo or Fiesta so when VW or Ford update their equivalent, they have to make it slightly bigger than the Corsa and an upward spiral ensues.

 

So much so that you don't see Mondeos or Insignias on dealer forecourts any more because they are too big for anyone to want - especially when the Focus and Astra are plenty big enough.

 

This also means that manufacturers have to come up with new names for even smaller cars to slot in at the bottom end of the range.

 

Meanwhile, new-build houses are getting smaller so nothing will fit in a garage any more.

 

To get around this severe problem (the car names not the small garages) we need a pact between Ford, VW and Vauxhall such that every 10 years:

 

The Focus is renamed the Mondeo

The Fiesta is renamed the Focus

The Ka is renamed the Fiesta

 

and similarly with the Up, Polo, Golf, Passat and the Adam, Corsa, Astra, Insignia.

 

It may cause a bit of confusion in identifying a Mark 7 Golf - but at least you'd know what size it was.