On the driveway 

Blogging Off

Well, it's getting close to the time that my owner is giving me the flick. I know I haven't blogged much, but thought I'd better say goodbye anyway. At least he's not getting rid of me for a younger model and forgetting all the good work I've done for him. He's off overseas so he's passing me on to someone else. I hear it's a female, so at least she might treat me better than he does! I hate to think how much she's paying. I think I'm worth about $35,000, but she probably doesn't agree.

We've had some good times over the years. I came to him in '99 with 190,000km on the clock and now I'm about 310,000km. We haven't been off the island (He borrowed an inoccent '05 car in the Sth Island a couple of months ago - but I'm not jealous!) but have been up as far as Pahia, over to the East at Gisborne, to the west at New Plymouth and lived down in Wgtn for the most part.

The owner's off to America first, hope he remembers the golden rule of international driving: the driver must always be in the centre of the road. I'm sure he'll get bored of those long straight roads over there and miss the good times we had on the windey NZ roads.

Oh well, that's it from me - I might see you on the road...

Fred.

What Grinds My Gears

Well, you humans will probably call it petrol, but whatever you call it - the costs have been going up. Still, I get by on about $50/week petrol which isn't too bad. My driver, he spends more than that on his food and can't run nearly as fast as I can go. I max out at about 170kph, he probably is closer to 17kph!

Performance aside, petrol price at nearly $1.48/litre is the highest it's ever been here in NZ and is apparently hitting peoples pockets hard. At $1.48/litre I get about 34 litres for $50. If the price was $1.10/litre the same 34 litres would cost about $37. A whole $13 less!! Pfff, I've heard what my driver earns and $13/week isn't that much in the scheme of things. It does however, make him happy he doesn't have a big petrol guzzling phalic symbol for transport, as they're feeling the pinch twice as much as he is. Suckers, serves them right.

Maybe the Land Transport NZ should do some advertising to remind people and get them thinking about how to conserve petrol. NZers will happily jump in their cars by themselves and go where they want when they want. It's nice to be able to do that, but maybe that has to change. Maybe now there is a new reason to. The get in your car and drive culture is easy, it requires less planning and foresight and less compromising with others. Much like cellphone culture now, you don't have to plan anything when you leave the house 'cause you know you can organise a meeting place later for example. Are humans losing important organisational skills as a result? Does it matter since they'll always have cellphones from now on? A little off track there, but what I'm saying is that with a little planning, creative thinking and flexibility, car usage could reduce dramatically, and humans will develop some usefull life skills along the way.

Adverts could also point out that driving habits have an influence on petrol consumption. Anytime you change your speed, you use more petrol. If you accelerate hard (if that's what makes you hard) you'll feel it in your pocket (or purse). Smooth slow take offs are cheaper. Same for deceleration - if you are braking, you are throwing away kinetic energy that you've built up by accelerating before. If you let road friction slow you down slower, by letting your foot off the gas earlier, you'll save $$$. Another one is following distance - we all know the 2sec rule for it's safety implications, but a by-product of not driving like you're want to be in the back seat of the car in front is you've got a nice buffer in front of you. This means that when the car in front slows down and speeds up constantly, you don't always have to.

Anyway, I wrote this a few months ago and never published it so the prices are somewhat out-of-date, but the concepts aren't.

Fred.

4x4 Bitch Session Part One

Yesterday, my owner and female companion felt compelled to make use of a rare Saturday in Wellington, where the sun was actually shining, by visiting the fur seals out at Red Rocks. Faithful as I am, I took them 95% of the way then they left me at the parking lot with all the other 2 wheel drives that couldn't make it any further. All they brought back was this photo of a seal to show me:

They came back happy to have seen the seals of course, but the whole experience was marred by some of my four-wheel drive counterparts. While I waited at the carpark, checking out the spoiler off a sexy WRX, some cars blessed with the ability to transmit power to all four wheels, were able to take their passengers all the way to see the seals. This is fine for all the lazy drivers who can't be bothered getting off their fat asses to walk a couple of hours, but what about the people who felt like a healthy, relaxing walk along the beach? Too bad for them. Instead they had to be constantly watching out for noisey, large, exhaust spewing vehicles, who's drivers drove like it's their beach and walkers should get out of their way. It was even worse and possibly dangerous for familes with children. It's not bad enough for them to be choking up our roads? Now they're taking over our beaches.

It makes me wonder if their motives are to give them a sense (albeit fake) of being out in nature, or as shallow as somehow rationalising their dumb purchase of a gas guzzling, dangerous, eyesore of a vehicle by taking it off a sealed road?

This was part one as I'm sure there will be more..

Do People And Cars Have To Die?

I was thinking last night, as I was freezing my exhaust off outside (at my age is it too much to ask for a garage?) about human deaths from car accidents. It is a subject at the forefront of many minds this week, following the tragic death of four teenagers from Hastings on a road I used to travel myself. There's talk about raising the driving age to match that of other countries like UK, where it's 17. New Zealand originally chose 15 because our school leaving age was 15 and rural people said that they need to be able to drive then, because if they leave school they can't take school buses to work. Fair enough, but now the school leaving age has risen to 16, it naturally follows that so should the driving age. Hearing about getting licenses in Australia, they have to have experience in different driving conditions (night, rain etc) before they can get a full license. They're also looking into restricting the number of passengers a driver can take with a restricted type license. Sounds like as well as our early age in NZ, it's also too easy to get a license and the restrictions aren't good enough. There were six people in the car in the Hastings crash. I notice that when my driver has more people in the car, it's harder for him to fully concentrate on the road, so surely that's amplified with youth, inexperience and testosterone.

Testosterone, yes. What laws will never be able to stop is the thrill that speed and showing off to their mates will give the male species. There's always going to be deaths on the road as long as males drive cars and driving is more dangerous than knitting.

I think there will be a level of death that is naturally maintained. If there were no deaths, people wouldn't be careful, and have more accidents. They would keep having accidents until the level of deaths made them scared enough to start being careful. This level must be more than 1 or 2 or even 10-20. So it increases to levels we see today. In the 12 months to the end of April 2005, 444 people were killed on our roads. This is two fewer than the 12 month toll at the end of April 2004. On average, if you don't die, someone else will, to make up the level. So if you die, you are saving someone elses life.

Introductions

Hi, I'm Fred and I'm a 1994 Nissan Sentra. Orginally from Japan, but spent most of my time in New Zealand.

I've just celebrated my 300,000km birthday a couple of days ago, and decided I'd celebrate by starting my own blog to share my thoughts, news, and experiences with the world. Everyone writes a blog from a humans point of view, but I think there's a niche out there for a blog by a car. I spend a lot of time with the human species, well one in particular, and travels where he does, listen to his music, overhear his conversations and put up with his Schumacher style driving, so think I've got some important observations to share.

Stay tuned.