Are you a badge snob?

Let's think about it. You are sitting in the driving seat of a Mitsubishi Shogun, driving down a narrow street. Someone is coming the other way, so you move over to the left and creep along past. Can you see the wing mirror of the parked car on your left? I think not.

Or, you are reversing into a parking bay. At the back of this bay is a post about 3-4 feet high. You can see it clearly out of the back window of a family hatch, but can you with a 4x4? Again, I think not.

This might be seen as a controversial, nay discriminatory policy, but what if they only let you have a car that suited your size? That way you wouldn't get people barely able to see over the steering wheel of their Grand Cherokee, or in my case, unable to see under the roofline of an Audi TT or MG TF. Would that reduce the number of accidents?
 
Parking sensors? Or is there something that actually warns you of collisions on the front wings?

It works both ways: in my experience beeping is usually sufficient to stop other cars hitting my car! :D

I just want to know something: "beeps at me when I am about to hit something"... Logically, this would mean that it beeped at you, then you hit something! And you said 4x4s give you a better view :wink:
 
actually my last post wasn't not technically very accurate, it stops beeping at you and gives a continuous tone when you're about to hit something. I think the main problem is that although I maintain that you get a good view from a 4x4, a lot of people drive them as if they were a standard saloon or hatchback, they are not, and do need to be driven differently especially due to the fact that if you hit,say, a Corsa you will crush it. With regards to visibility, I used to own a Vectra SRi V6, I thought it was a great car but visibility at the back, due to the ludicrous rear spoiler, was awful and it didn't have parking sensors. Horses for courses as they say. I drove the cruiser to London recently, intersting to say the least. Mind you at least the taxis got out of the way!
 
Yes, I've got parking sensors, and they emit a broken beep when I'm close and a continuous tone when about 2 feet away, but has anyone found out what noise they make when you ignore the tones (apart from Crunch!!)?

Estimate to repair exquisitely painted bumper delicately inlaid with no less than 5 precious electronic sensors, also painted to match the shimmering bodywork:

£XXXX.XX + VAT.
 
I have only had parking sensors on hirecars, and resisted the temptation to fully test them. What happens if you have a thin post directly in between two of the sensors? Ultrasound usually travels out in a straight beam, so I was wondering if this is a falling point of the parking sensor systems. :?:

My Astra has rubbish rear visibility, I think they engineer it into Vauxhalls. :D The rear windscreen is too high to judge the back end of the car when parallel parking so in the name of caution I don't ever get it within 2 feet of another car. Great fun when you are trying to quickly stick it in a tight bay outside Harvey Nick's on a Sunday in December, with London traffic whizzing round you!

I did manage to reverse into a stupid bollard once. We have a multistorey car park at work. I was reversing into a space, only a few feet from the back of it in the corner there was a 2 foot tall bollard. Not in any other spaces, just this one in the whole car park. Anyway, I just touched it. Boy was that a loud sound! Luckily because I did just touch it the damage was limited to a minor graze on the corner of the bumper... annoying but non-fatal. I guess the sound was all that crash energy being converted!
 
Yeah, I've done this.

A thin post as you say, happens to go undetected, and I did hit my bumper (very slowly, as it happens). Where the black plastic trim is on the horizontal of the bumper (in the recess at bottom of tailgate - estate) there is a small bulge.

So they are not infallibubble.

Sorry, I'm starting to talk like Mike Howard.....
 
Well Mike, :wink: I suppose another falling point would be kerbs. I parked up in a car park, then a friend parked next to me. CRUNCH! He went too far forwards and grazed the front splitter on the top of the kerb. When I looked at the front of my car, if I had done this I would have pulled the front bumper off as it is quite near the ground. Thank goodness I have never tried to bump up a kerb in my car! :shock:

I guess parking sensors are designed to help with parallel parking and any other benefit is a bonus.
 
Curbs .... Womans brakes :?:

With the Nissan rear-cam you can park about 0.010" off anything !!
:wink:
 
After years of living in London, where I live now seems like the country to me. We have hills and everything. Really wound up my ex who is from round here, they like to think of themselves as townies. She did NOT like being referred to as a country girl! :lol:

But I think I prefer country girls to city girls, much less stuck up. Last time I went out in London I got talking to a very nice girl who would throw in questions such as "so how much do you earn?" into the conversation :? "My remuneration is sufficient to my needs" is always a good answer, but some seem to think that means "I'm f'ing loaded" so it doesn't quite have the desired results. :lol:
 
Well down 'ere in the country my beauty we don't have these 'ere kerb thingies, we have hedges and ditches. The former are all right as you only get scratches on your car if you go into them but, when you go tootling round a bend and come face to face with some erk from the smoke who has popped down to his weekend retreat in his Chelsea Tractor which is doing 60mph, the latter can be quite a problem for both parties.

These same people manage to end up in fields on their roofs as they can't handle the bends as well as us locals. Gives us all a bit of a laugh though. :lol:
 
I was always under the apprehension that it is the locals who speed. :idea: I remember some research they did a few years back when people had been calling for a speed camera in their village to stop people speeding through it. Turned out that most of them sped through all the surrounding villages quite horrifically. :roll: A case of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)

All the locals I know round here seem to drive a lot worse on the country lanes. It is all about familiarity. If you drive down the same roads all the time you get c*cky. I welly it down the straights where I can see (60mph), but any bendy bits and dips I am slow and careful with. And I beep before blind corners too, after several cases of plonkers coming round, way into the middle of the road far too fast (can't say if they are locals or not).

A mate of mine is from rural Yorkshire, all the roads round his way are almost permanently empty. You drive all day and see about 2 cars. Anyway, when he first moved down south he would do things like go onto roundabouts and pull out onto main roads without looking. 5 minutes into his new car he nearly wrote it off (with me in the passenger seat) by pulling out in front of some poor s*d on a country lane. He didn't even notice, and thought I was being irrational when I started wincing and sucking air through my teeth. He went white when he looked in his mirror! :lol:
 
In a village nearby, they are up in arms over vehicles passing through ... Yet park fully on pavements .. causing pedestrians to have to peer around the monolithic 4wds and windowed vans (people carriers?) then join us lunatics on the roadway ... Strange values, selfish ??
 
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