LR drivers ..... old farts ??

you want to try driving an ambulance with muppets like that on the road!!

I was doing 85 with lights on & someone still decided to overtake, then managed to get in the way on a sliproad to a roundabout because he came to the junction too fast & ended up straddling both lanes....

I don't think it is the flicky orange things that are redundant, it is the pinky grey squidgy things between the ears of the drivers.

D

Definately + the need to be a Kamikazi

This afternoon I was overtaken by an oldish bloke in a Honda, doing about 45-50. That was in a 30mph zone.

Half a mile later in a 60 limit I find him doing 30mph up a steep hill, probably still in fifth gear and labouring away. As we level out onto a downhill straight I overtake him, as he accelerates back to

60mph. If I hadn't overtaken so firmly I'd have found myself having to abort the overtake.

The quality of driving is far worse at weekends - the motorways are full of people who rarely drive on motorways and local roads are full of chavs and drunks.

Are you thinking about the insurance company stats that stated that in fatal accidents where the occupant of one car dies, the surviving occupant is most often in a Defender? Personally I think this illustrates that the Defender is the *least* safe vehicle on the road, certainly for other people..

I drive a 110 commercial, no trim, no anti-roll suspension, every time I've had to hit the brakes hard in that thing I've scared myself silly, it's so dynamically unstable. My worst nightmare is hitting the brakes while cornering, the empty back end with no weight on it would overtake in a moment. On Top Gear maybe 6-9 months ago they did a "moose test" with a classic range rover, a swerve left then right, and it flipped over at 45MPH.. Mind you they did put a full roll cage on it so that added weight up top.

I love my defender to bits but I treat it like a tank with nasty spikes inside!

Well you've got me started now!

Liverpool city centre last Thursday evening. I think it must have been late night shopping - because the traffic was twice as bad as usual. This is how you drive at traffic lights: if the light changes to red as you approach, go through anyway. It doesn't matter if there's nowhere for you to go and you have to sit in a yellow hatched area blocking the traffic coming from your right. Oh no, you just do what you like matey. You're alright, s*d the rest of 'em.

I must have seen at least a dozen cars do it.

Judith

Well I can only tell you that my wife agrees as she always seems to be calling me an old fart. Cheers Stephen

Even worse during summer holiday...all those idiots who drive all day

1km from home and back again, once in the week 3km to a supermarket, and then, once per year, their great day is coming - they enter a motorway :(

regards - Ralph

rOn or around Mon, 20 Dec 2004 00:01:19 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

would that be the one where they deliberately provoked it into rolling over? There was a certain amount of controversy at the time about it.

as to the 110, never noticed mine being that wild on the road, although maybe it had more weight in the back being a CSW. Might be a tyres issue, what tyres is yours on?

I'm not sure it needed much provoking, they described it as an "emergency lane change", but even if they did exaggerate it, I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable swerving around in my 110.

I ran into the back of a van a few months ago after he hit a car in front of him and I was driving too close on a wet road. I knew what was about to happen and thought about taking to the grass verge but thought that driving onto a grass verge while braking would probably provoke a spin, and swerving the other way would unsettle the truck and take me into oncoming traffic so I just gritted my teeth and hung on.

Wrecked the step and doors of his van and needed a new bumper on mine, gawd these things are tough! He never claimed from me though, probably just not worth it for commercial transport companies.

Radial muds pumped up to 40, it's not so much the grip that worries me (never had it slide), it's the way the thing throws the body around due to the soft long-travel suspension. Does your CSW have anti-roll bars in the suspension?

In the summer our small winding cornish roads are suddenly having to deal with a massive amount of traffic.

Driving in cornwall is not like driving anywhere else I've ever been, the roads are narrow, stopping for close clearence (inches) passes are very common and most tourists have no clear idea where the corners of their cars are, when you are passing with 2 inches clearence at 10-20 miles per hours you better damn well knw where you car ends, the locals do, the tourists do not.

And don't get me started on the parking...

Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

My 110 csw doesn't have anti-roll bars and the body does swing about on the corners, but the weak link is the tyres for me (cross ply deestones (mud) ), and it's very easy to powerslide on the corners at this time of year, always the back end coming out. Yesterday I was trundling down a country lane, not greasy but wet, some hooligan was coming the other way rather too fast and I jumped on the anchors, I decided that the friction from sliding would stop me faster than dancing on the brakes due to the rough surface, I reckon I slid around 2 feet at around 20 miles per hour, all 4 wheels locked together, makes you think. the car coming the other way (on road tyres) slid around 10 feet but they had been going at least 40 mph.

Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

What was the old saying .... lies, damn lies and statistics .....

I tend to trundle along in mine as well, I never did trust someone elses opinion. After all when (in my innocence ) I bought the 110 it was because " they never rust" !!!

In message , Ian Rawlings writes

No YOU can't, but they can!!

So Ian Rawlings was, like

Another way of looking at this - you drive in the safest car for *you* and let other drivers make their own choices. That's how I look at it, but I have to say that I share your awareness of the problem and the need to drive with consideration. I drive the RR pretty cautiously when there's traffic around because a) I look at a Micra and think "I could drive right over that and not even notice", and b) if there was an incident, I'd be at fault in most people's eyes no matter what the circumstances, cos a P38, however old, is perceived to be posh.

But I don't feel guilty for driving a 4x4.

In news:cq79fs$lno$ snipped-for-privacy@sparta.btinternet.com, Richard Brookman blithered:

Bugger to get out of the tread!

Two years ago a family in a Honda saloon overtook me on the motorway. As he signalled and pulled back in, some dork came out of the inside lane at him. He saw it at the last minute and did an "emergency lane change." The Honda slid towards the central res, overcorrected, and started to spin. When facing the hard shoulder, the tyres bit and the car went from lane three to lane one then across two lanes of the slip road before hitting the barrier. It flipped upside down and skated on its roof back across two lanes of the slip road, overtook me on its roof in lane one and finally came to a halt a few yards in front of me. My wife was already in contact with the emergency services before it had stopped moving. The family survived with fairly minor injuries but it was an unpleasant experience for all involved.

The point is that anything may spin not just Landies.

TonyB

Thgis is very true. around 8 years ago I was driving north on the M1 around Jc31 (A57 i believe) in the pissing down rain. I was in lane 3 doing a very sensible 50-65mph, all of a sudden a saw a big black thing coming end to end down the motorway right at me. I got as far over onto the central reservation as possible without hitting the armco. There was no way I could avoid it & it hit my car on the NSF quarter. It was a propshaft from a truck that had fallen off (yes, really) & the truck was just going very slow as I spun past it. It utterly destroyed 1/3 of my car & i was lucky it didnt hit me at my side on it's end. A VERY scary incident & my car spun like a top for what seemed like miles (50 yards!) It was that bad it sheared an alloy wheel on half & took the whole side right in by around 10-12"

Another time on the A1 in a Sapphire I lost both front tryes at the exact same time - that did spin as I was going a tad over 70! Came to rest on the hard shoulder (near blyth services so is a motorway) facing the right way unscathed!!!!

Nige

-- Subaru WRX (The Bitch)

Range Rover Classic (Monty)

__

Absolutely, but I don't think the Defender in particular would take much provoking. I really ought to get around to finishing fitting that rollover hoop on my canvas-topped 110!!

Scary stuff! I had a blowout on the front driver's side on my 110 at

80 MPH while overtaking a line of trucks on the M6. Not much drama as I just held on tight to the steering wheel, came off the accelerator slightly and pulled over ASAP to the hard shoulder (with a bit of flashing and honking from the trucks). I dabbed the brake *a little* when on the hard shoulder and the landy very violently lurched to the right, I'm glad I've drummed it into my head that jamming on the brakes in an emergency is often the worst thing to do!

Once I'd stopped I looked at the smoking tyre, there was a four-inch sharp-edged slash in the tyre running straight from the wheel rim to the beginning of the tread. My tyre sidewalls had been cut up all over the place by off-roading in flint-peppered mud but I hadn't really worried too much about it. Lesson learned.