School's. Out. For. Ever

I've noticed a new 20mph zone has just appeared in the village in which I live.

I have no problem with 20mph zones around schools.

This one sort of coincides with where my car sat-nav thinks there is a school.

Here is a photograph of the school.

Apologies for the old photo - the school was demolished in 1975.

Anyway, here's one of the new signs that has just gone up:

If you look closely at it, you will see in the distance the next sign you reach when heading through the village.  Here is a close-up:

If you walk right up to it, you see the extremely faint outline of two children - it was once a school warning sign.  The next photo is what you come across once you pass the mostly-blank patrol sign:

That picture shows the end of a wall.  That wall is all that is left of the school.  It also shows the window of a DIY store built on the site of the school.  And a For Sale notice that isn't relevant to this post.

The final picture was taken after passing the DIY store and continuing through the village towards where the school was relocated to.  Just before you get to it, they've put up this sign.

Did they mistake Bonnie Tyler on the radio for their sat-nav?

Turn around bright eyes.

Although bright isn't really a word you could use about this Audi driver in the Birkenhead Tunnel.

The story (and dashcam footage) is here in The Wirral Globe.

They were heading toward Birkenhead when they turned around so maybe they didn't fancy paying the toll.  If they had been travelling in the opposite direction, they would have had to pay twice.

I did wonder if it was an April Fools story but the story was out yesterday and the incident happened on March 25th so the Tunnels Police can't be too bright either.  They only just seem to have acknowledged that it happened.

It's a heartache.

Van Morrison River Dance

We are in middle of Storm Christophe.

Here in the North-West of England we have a lot of water - the BBC report it thusly.

They have a dramatic picture:

That is a Ford Ranger.

Unfortunately it is not a Ford Ranger Splash which I think were only available Stateside.

It is, however, a Ford Ranger splash.

If you have a Ford Ranger then you can confidently make a big splash.  More of a splash than was happening on my commute home this evening - but we still had to make a splash:

Apologies for the lack of sound, I guess I must have accidentally switched off the audio recording.

I was amazed that most of the other vehicle drivers didn't test their brakes after going through that.

They could have got into an accident - like the Morrisons van driver in this other story from BBC News today.

I always think that Morrisons vans look like UK ambulances:

So I tend to refer to them as Morrisons Ambulances.  The driver of the van in the story was taken to hospital although it sounds like it was precautionary rather than necessary.

He "had to be rescued from his overturned van after he careered off the road and ended up in a fast-flowing ford", police said.

The pictures are pretty dramatic so it looks like he was very lucky although how he ended up in there is a bit of a mystery - on the radio it said he was driving through the ford (in his Mercedes) but it was swollen and too deep.  The Web story talks about careering off the road and speculates about sat-navs.

In any case, I like Morrisons because they give me 10% off my shopping because I work for the NHS.

So I'll finish this post now without any of my usual comedic comments or puns despite the list of Van Morrison albums with very relevant titles.

 

Balls to Bad Road Signs

This sign infuriated me recently.

Or did it?

 

No, I don't suppose it did really.   But the road layout it "helps" you with did.  It's like a big square roundabout on the edge of Swansea near the waterfront development.

 

If you don't go there often and you don't have a sat-nav it is a bugger to negotiate it.

 

But it would have infuriated this man for a different reason:

His name is Matt Parker and he dislikes the representation of a football so much that he started a petition (signed by 20000 people) to get it changed. The BBC have the story here. He is a maths geek and knows that a football made up of all hexagons, like the one on the sign, could not exist.  You need some pentagons.

 

Now I am a football fan and a maths geek. I could argue that this representation is OK because the roadsign is flat but that would be missing the point.

 

The Department of Transport say:

 

"The purpose of a traffic sign is not to raise public appreciation and awareness of geometry which is better dealt with in other ways.

If the signs were corrected, it would only be visible close up and not from the distance at which drivers will see the sign.

The higher level of attention needed to understand the geometry could distract a driver's view away from the road for longer than necessary which could therefore increase the risk of an incident."

But what about the distraction for drivers trying to mentally recreate a sphere from hexagons and realising that there is a fundamental error on the sign?

Meanwhile, for any Americans reading this - I would like to point out that the item in the picture that you think is a football is actually a rugby ball.  The football is the round item.

Here is a rugby picture for no other reason than I think it looks nice:

nice.cheese.sandwich

Search for "nice cheese sandwich" on Google Images and you get lots of pictures of cheese toasties.

You do get some proper ones too though - like these ones:

So what piece of motoring journalism prompted me to look for cheese butties today?

This piece.

It's an Autoguide story about something that is probably the biggest thing to happen to maps in a very long time - and how Mercedes are getting on board with it.

Basically, someone has gone away and quietly divided the Earth into 3m x 3m squares and allocated every one of them a three word identity.  I have some in my front garden and even more in my back garden.  My property includes the words "boring", "slices" and "upset".

I'd love to know what algorithm they've used to allocate these words - and can they move them around?

For example, good.food.prices is in an industrial area in the town of New Tazewell, Tennessee - I'm sure a few supermarkets would pay good.money to have that in the middle of their canned goods aisle.

Not all words are included of course.  The nearest they have to "Iver Child Bollards" is over.chill.billiards (it's in the bit of Angola that makes it look like a jigsaw piece)

location.location.location is in Russia.

The uses for this are incredible - imagine your ship is sinking at misspellings.appendages.history (for this covers the sea as well as land) - you could summon aid to exactly the right spot before you became a victim of The Bermuda Triangle.

Pirate treasure maps would be a lot simpler too.

This amazing tool is called what3words and can be found at  https://map.what3words.com/daring.lion.race or on the Sat-navs of upcoming Mercedes models.

And my phone.

Incidentally, nice.cheese.sandwich is near the town of Los Mantos in Northern Chile.

Sat-Nav Test

On December 4th, the practical bit of the British Driving Test changes.

The BBC tell us this here.

It sort of makes sense - bringing in the distractions posed by modern technology including switching on the rear-window heater while driving along. Hmm.  Not sure about that last bit - surely extracting CD 2 of Now That's What I Call Music 39 and playing Track 6 while driving along would be more realistic.

(and no, I picked it at random and can't be bothered looking up what that track actually is)

Another part of the new test will be taking orders from a Sat-Nav - I hope all Driving Instructors choose the Brian Blessed voice for their Sat-Navs.  It would be nice if the Sat-Nav could also include an instruction to turn on to a railway line to weed out the drivers who would just blindly follow it anyway.

There's no actual evidence that these unfortunate ladies suffered a Sat-Nav misdirection so I'll take you back to 2011, when my Blog was still young, for a few.

Asda Priceless

I think I must have been breaking the law today.

Especially if what happened to this young Lancashire man is anything to go by.  He was fined after pleading guilty to driving while ‘able to see directly or by reflection a TV receiving apparatus used to display something other than information about the state of the vehicle or its equipment, or about the location of the vehicle and the road on which it was located, or to assist the driver to see the road adjacent to the vehicle or to assist the driver to reach his destination.’

I was watching Asda adverts as I drove past a Cheshire Constabulary building this morning.

These adverts were on what I thought was an Asda delivery van but then decided must have been one of these: 

A van with three big TV screens, one on each side and one on the back showing ads - in my case moving (literally moving pictures moving along the road) ads for Asda.

Not the first time it has been done though:

That is Top Gear's attempt at putting James Bond technology (cameras & TV screens) onto a van to make it appear invisible.  Richard Hammond is driving it but, of course, you can't see him.

Looking for those picture did lead me to several others that made we wonder about the drivers of actual Asda delivery vans.

This one trusted his sat-nav too much:

This one had to be rescued after going down a slipway to turn around:

But this one is my favourite - getting stuck after attempting a three-point turn in a too-narrow road. 

So what about Adsa customers?

 

I can't decide if this is brilliant or stupid.  The car-park was full of cars belonging to people doing their Christmas shopping: 

More Olympic Mindgames

Don't know what the The Daily Mail and its online version are up to. They seem to be trying to undermine the British Olympic athletes and make up new ones at the same time.

Last week, they were having a go at Zara Philips for only coming second! - the paper's front page was worse and that was after attacking the Opening Ceremony. One of my Facebook friends found that - I bet Fox News were having similar thoughts - another odious, right-wing, propaganda-and-half-truths media organisation.

Next, although admittedly (presumably) with her consent (to promote her autobiography), they've got Victoria Pendleton down as some sort of scheming, womanising, ruthless person.

Today, however, they have a story about another Olympic Gold Medal winner - 30 year-old Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Haig, or, more specifically, her 1.5 litre Singer Le Mans sports car - were you worried that this post wasn't getting car-related?That's not her in the photo, by the way, that's some woman who works for The Savoy - it is the car, though.

The story tells of how they crossed Europe battling border-guards to win the Motor-Rally Gold - beating those nasty BMWs into the bargain - it doesn't actually say that last bit but that is definitely what the writer is thinking.

Anyway, quite an interesting story.

Pity I don't believe it.

I can't find any evidence of a Motor Rally Gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games. Even the official Olympic Website doesn't mention it - Britain only won four Golds that year - not like this year eh!?

Apparently, motorsport was a demonstration event in the 1900 Olympics - maybe they should reinstate it - Britain does particularly well at sports where you compete sitting down.

They did have some "Art" Gold Medals in 1936. Maybe that is where the Mail is getting confused, although it was an Italian, not a Brit who won gold for his "Sulky Driver":That is a statue of a man driving a two-wheeled cart called a "Sulky" - it's not an Audi driver who has got a gob on.

Like the Mail story I commented on last month, this Mail story also goes on to shoot off at a tangent. Last month's went off on a rant about BMWs, this one's gone with Sat-Navs.

Maybe they should try for a shooting Gold.

The Mayor of London is a Buffoon

But a very likeable one.

Again, I can't agree with his politics but the people of London seem to appreciate them - unless they have just fallen for his personality - but that's their business.

He was always very funny on Have I Got News For You? and suitably amusing as the celebrity guest on Top Gear and he is always good value for money when interviewed by Jeremy Paxman - but then Jeremy Paxman loves to interview an idiot.

The reason I am discussing Boris today, after discussing his old school-chum yesterday, is this story about him using glue to catch pollution on the streets of London. It seems a bit expensive and far-fetched to me but they claim it is producing results. I'm not scientifically qualified to comment (not that that usually stops me) so read the article and draw your own conclusions.

I suppose that I'm only really mentioning it at all because it is a good excuse to print a picture of Boris. That can be a bit of a problem choosing because there is never a picture of Boris that doesn't make you smile - check these out.

Sometimes you just see a picture and want to publish it...which relates to this story. Check out the video on that too - it is brilliant!

Sat Naff

Yet another story from my new Aussie source www.caradvice.com.au.

Only trouble is - I don't think it's true.

I don't like being let down by my news sources. This comes in the wake of the shock of this month's Top Gear magazine NOT having an advert for Seat on the back page. This must be the first time in many, many years that this has happened. Certainly the All Old Top Gear Magazine from 2004 had a Seat ad on the back. An even older copy I have from 1999 has a Mazda ad on the back but we're talking a minimum of 7-years worth of Seat ads here.

And what have they put there instead? - a flamin' perfume or after-shave ad! I don't take any notice of them - the TV versions are particularly grating. Usually black-and-white and full of very pretentious people you really wouldn't want to meet. Anyone fooled by these ads must be very shallow and very gullible.

Anyway, as Ronnie Corbett would say - I digress.

The story that led me to start wittering on here is about three women who let one of these thingslead them into a lake where they nearly drowned.

It seems far-fetched that even a woman driver (only joking!) would drive into a lake. Even at night, the headlights would show up a large mass of water where a road should be.

The other suspicious thing is that this is supposed to have happened in Washington, Tyne-and-Wear. And yet there is absolutely zero mention of it on the BBC North-East Website, nor on the sites of the Sunderland Echo or Newcastle Chronicle - nor anywhere else on the Global Interweb so how on Earth did a reporter in Oz get hold of the story?

I suppose it does reinforce the need not to blindly rely on Sat-Navs though. It's not as though we haven't been warned...

Not that everyone follows such warnings...
Anyway, what's wrong with good old-fashioned maps and following signs?