automotive news

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 10 March 2009 06:24:11

Don't worry everyone, the roads people gave me my full license - you were all worried about this I know, particularly as I didn't mention it. The test for full licenses is 15 "knowledge" questions (to most of them the answer is "car B was driving too close behind car A") then 10 erm... simulator questions where you're driving a car and it tells you to touch the screen when it's safe to turn right or overtake or when you should slow down. This bit is very hard to gauge - for some scenarios you have to touch the screen more than once and for others you have to not touch the screen at all because it's never safe to do whatever. But then there are ones like one of my practice question - you're driving behind a truck at 100km/h and you keep getting closer - I hit the screen, but then I was still getting closer... so I hit it again and kept getting closer so hit it a few more times... then failed that question because it was all the same hazard. Whatever. I maintain that the situation continued to increase in hazardousness!

Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a "black" license anymore. You used to start with green (Ls) then red (Ps) then black (early full license) then silver (or possibly that was black for people who thought it sounded better than silver) then gold. But they put me straight to a gold five-year license. That's rather good. But perhaps I would have been given black if I had any traffic offences...

Anyway, under the current license system I have no more knowledge or driving tests til I'm 85. Hurrah for that!

On the same expedition I also bought two new tires and had my battery checked in the hope that it is the reason for starting problems. Sadly it is not. A battery is nice and cheap to replace. Then when I came home and found an invoice for my roadside assistance.

But luckily the prime minister's economic stimulus money for students will be arriving in my bank account around the 6th of April. Easy come, easy go. Perhaps he'll give me another wad of cash for being a taxpayer too. That would be nice.