Conference kaosws::canada

    I beg to differ ...
    
    Canadian drivers are actually fairly under control compared to what
    I have seen in Europe and Boston.
    
    You may have noticed in Europe that there are no particular speed
    limits, and pedestrians are "fair targets" for anything on wheels.
    There would seem to be only one type of highway accident -- 
    fatal!
    
    Highway speeds of 150-160 km/hour are not uncommon over there.
    Now tell me that Europeans are better drivers ? Maybe faster.
    
    Boston drivers are another interesting lot, although somewhat more
    subdued than Europeans. Did you notice the two and three deep parking
    on the streets ? Did you notice that all police cars seem to look
    like they just came from a demolition derby ? Did you every try
    to find the Masspike from a downtown hotel ? Interesting.
    
    Toronto drivers really aren't that bad !!!
    

    
     Having travelled all over Canada by car, I can honestly say that
    the worst drivers in the country are in Hull, Quebec.
    
     Hull is just across the Ontario Quebec border from Ottawa.  
     
    This is the only place I know of where you have to drive agressively
    to be safe.  Not that I have anything against people in Hull (I
    have many friends there) but their driving is terrible.  In one
    day, I barely avoided 4 accidents.
    
    
    -Al-
    
    

    Being a Canadian now living in the Boston area I have to say that
    Canadian are MUCH better drivers than ANYONE in Boston!!!!!!!!!!!!
    

    Thank goodness, there are people with opinions out there...at least
    I woke up a corner of this notes file.
    

   RE: .1 
    >    You may have noticed in Europe that there are no particular speed
    >    limits, and pedestrians are "fair targets" for anything on wheels.
    >    There would seem to be only one type of highway accident -- 
    >    fatal!
    >     
    >    Highway speeds of 150-160 km/hour are not uncommon over there.
    >    Now tell me that Europeans are better drivers ? Maybe faster.
         
    Where have you been in Europe ?? You are generalizing your impressions
    of one country and you think they are applicable to all of Europe.
    It is _not_ true that "there are no particular speed limits", all
    European countries do have speed limits on country roads, most of
    them have them on highways as well.
    How much they are inforced is a matter of the individual countries
    police force.   
    The _only_ country that does not have speed limits on highways is
    Germany. There you can go as fast as you like, wheather permitting,
    but on country roads you have 100km/h and in cities 50km/h.
    Even though, the accident rate on the highways is lower than on
    country road or in the cities, with respect to the amount of traffic.
    We do have a high amount of casualties though, but then the population
    is three times that one of all Canada !!
    You could say it's survival of the fittest :-)
    
    I have to admit, though, that occasionally I enjoy driving in Canada.
    It is a far more relaxed way than over here. You can go your own
    speed , below the allowed limit !!, whithout someone behind you
    honking the horn and flashing his lights.
    That holds true for city driving.
    
    When you're out in the countryside, though - going from Toronto
    to Ottawa, for instance - you almost fall asleep at the wheel, because
    you can only go 80 !! 
    Or driving up north, it's a day trip to go 500 km, but you only
    see rocks and spruce and little lakes.  
                            
                      			Christoph, 
    					who likes sailing
 					more than driving.                  

    RE: .1
    
    What else are pedestrians useful for, haven't you seen 'Death Race
    2000'?  :-)
    
    Regards
    
    _Steven_who_likes_butting_into_other_peoples_notes_files_

    From a previus note of mine (4.5):
    
    One habit I found rather strange in western Ontario and
    Manitoba was that it seemed as if every fourth or fifth car
    I saw on the highways would drive with its headlights on
    even in broad daylight. Is there any reason (that makes a
    moderate amount of sense) for this?
    
    From CAMPV1::RICHARDSON (4.12):
    
    You may have found that those cars with their headlights on
    were more noticable than the ones that didn't. I'm a strong be-
    liever in this practice because I think it makes driving in two
    way traffic safer. (especially at night, and passing on curves)
    
    This too shall pass.....
    
    
    Now my response:
    
    I was specifically referring to using the headlights during the
    day, on a nice, clear, bright, sunny day, in fact. Using headlights
    at night is SOP, even in Boston. (Passing on curves? Who in his
    right mind passes on a curve?)
    
    Yes, even at high noon, a car with its headlights on is more
    noticible than one without them on, but not enough to justify the
    annoyance of a bright light aimed your way, or the extra wear on
    the bulbs themselves.
    
    --- jerry

    The stuff about nightime and curves was just a very small small
    small joke. It is however a law for police cruisers to burn their
    headlights at all times when they're on the road, in Ontario anyway.
    It is estimated that by the early 1990's it will be the law in all
    of Canada to burn headlights. Once we're done with the headlights,
    we're going to start burning books! The only problem with burning
    books is, what do you do for high beams???

>    I have to admit, though, that occasionally I enjoy driving in Canada.
>    It is a far more relaxed way than over here. You can go your own
>    speed , below the allowed limit !!, whithout someone behind you
>    honking the horn and flashing his lights.
>    That holds true for city driving.
    
The key word here is *occasionally*. If you must drive regularly here,
the *relaxed* drivers on the road are very frustrating. In the last 
week I have been to Ottawa, London and Guelph and it was proved to 
me again that half of the drivers had appalling road skills.

My road maxim is:	A *slow* driver does not a good driver make.
			A *decisive* driver does not a bad driver make.

The point being, plodding country driving is wonderful on Sundays and 
in the country...but not the rediculous stuff we get on our highways
on a regular basis. 

Exactly, why I still maintain, that the driving I saw and experienced
in Europe was *wonderful*, for its speed and decisiveness.

    
   	re: The headlights ---
    
    	It has been proven that driving with your headlights on makes
    you much more noticeable to other vehicles even in broad daylight,
    consequently, it is less likely they will hit you. This is especially
    true for passing, where a headlight on allows better judgement of
    distance and decreases head-on collisions. I always drive with mine
    on.

    You may be interested in a similar discussion in the Great Britain
    conference.  They also appear to suffer from the same idiosyncrasies
    of the cretins who foul our highways.
    
    Try this:
    
    	Notes> open 42376::Great_Britain/nonotebook
    
    	Notes> read 307.39
    
    I found .39 and .40 rather interesting.
    
    Pat

    With regard to the headlights, some cars have automatic shutoff
    of the lights when the car is turned off.  For these drivers, it
    is easy to leave the lights on continuously for all the previously
    mentioned good reasons.  They no longer think about the lights.
                   
    I have driven in many provinces, but Ontario has the slowest, most
    indecisive drivers in Canada.  Trying to get up to speed on an on
    ramp to a major highway is extremely frustrating.  Once you get
    on the highway, the slowest drivers are always in passing lanes.
    And no one knows what to do at a 4-way stop sign.  I don't mind
    people driving slower than the speed limit, but there is no excuse
    for not knowing HOW to drive.

    
    This is something I found by Dave Barry that I find that I think
    is appropriate for this topic.
    
    
                          Lousy Drivers I have Known
                                By Dave Barry
    
    
    Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, most people think
    they drive well.  As exhibit A, I cite my good friend, whom I
    will call Fred.  (That's not his real name; his real name is
    Joseph.) Fred is intelligent: he has never, to my knowledge,
    owned a leisure suit.  If you asked him, he would undoubtedly
    tell you he is an above-average driver.  He would not tell you
    about the time we were in New York's Chinatown during some sort
    of festival and the streets were crowded and he drove his Toyota
    Corolla at fairly high speed for an entire block on the sidewalk
    without seeming to have even the vaguest idea why ha was able to
    pass all the other cars so easily or why the pedestrians seemed
    so concerned all of a sudden.  I believe he thought they were 
    yelling at us as part of some ancient Chinese custom.
    
    "Aha," you will say: "He was drunk."  The tragedy is that he was
    not drunk, just as he was not drunk when he drove from Exit 6 to
    Exit 9 on the New Jersey Turnpike, a distance of at least 30
    miles, at 55 miles an hour but in second gear, and then glanced
    down and realized, seemingly for the first time, that his car,
    which he had driven for at least two years, had two more gears,
    and decided, more or less for the hell of it, to shift into one
    of them, which I'm sure is the only thing that kept the engine from
    exploding and killing us all.
    
    Exhibit B is a former newspaper colleague, who believes, in fact
    insists, that he is a good driver.  (Actually, I haven't seen him
    in several years, so it's possible he has driven off a bridge and
    no longer insists anything.)  I could give you many anecdotes to
    show what a truly crapola driver he is, but I think the most
    revealing one occured when he was not even at the wheel.  Once,
    after a bad winter storm had coated all the cars in the newspaper
    parking lot with ice, he announced that the best way to remove
    ice from a car window is to hit it with a hammer.  When we
    pointed out that this might break the windows, he smiled a
    condescending smile, the smile of a person who is thinking:
    "These utter morons still cling to the outmoded beleif,
    conclusively disproved by Modern Science, that if you hit a car
    window with a hammer, you will break it."  He went to his
    brand-new Fiat, took a ball-peen hammer from the trunk, broke one
    window, then, as a small group of us enlightened
    clingers-to-out-moded-beliefs looked on breathlessly, broke 
    another window.  Here is a man who could not competently remove
    ice from his car windows, yet firmly believed he was more
    qualified than most to actually drive on the public streets.
    
    I do not mean to belabor these people.  I mention them only to
    show that if you asked every driver to assess his or her driving
    ability, all but six would tell you they were above average.
    This means either that all those reports of people crashing
    into things are an elaborate media hoax or most of us overrate
    ourselves.
    
    No doubt you are nodding knowingly and saying "By golly, Dave
    Barry is, as usual in his column, which I urge all my friends to
    read, hitting the nail right on the head.  Most drivers overrate
    themselves, the fools."  But that's just my point: Maybe you are
    a lousy driver.  Somebody has to be.  And don't tell me you've
    never had an accident.  Lousy drivers don't so much have 
    accidents as cause them.  My mother never has accidents, but is
    responsible for more property damage than Tropical Storm Agnes.
    
    I think the problem is that we don't test prospective drivers
    will enough.  Most drivers' test ask questions like: "How far
    before an intersection should you be signaling?"  This is
    silly; anyone can honestly answer questions about what he should
    do; the real question is what he will do.  The question should
    be: "Once you get out of this room, do you plan to signal any of
    your driving intentions ever again?"  Most licensed drivers,
    under oath, would have to answer "no", which means they would not
    be licensed drivers, which woulud be good.
    
    Here are some questions I think we should ask:
    
    1. What is the left lane of a multiple highway for?
    
    A. Cars that do not plan to exit for a good while.
    
    B. Cars that are going the speed limit, which the government
    feels, in the interest of National Security, should be 55 miles
    per hour, and by gosh the government ought to know about these
    things, so nobody has the right to pass cars going this speed, so
    they should be allowed to be in the left lane all the way to
    Idaho if they feel like it.
    
    C. Passing.
    
    (While we're on the subject: I see no reason why it should not be
    legal to fire warning bursts from bumper-mounted machine guns at
    people who fail to get out of the left lane.)
    
    2. Before you pull away from he curb you should...
    
    A. Turn on the radio.
    
    B. Put on your signal, thereby giving yourself the
    right-of-way over every other vehicle,  which means you can just
    pull the heck out whenever you're ready.
    
    C. Look to see if anyone is coming.
    
    3. You are definitely too drunk to drive when...
    
    A. You arrange to sneak off to a motel with an inanimate object.
    
    B. Little tongues of flame shoot out your nostrils.
    
    C. You believe you are not too drunk to drive.
    
    (The best answer to question 3 is "C."  The surest proof you
    can't drive is that you think you can drive.  People are always
    claiming they can drink and drive.  They can, of course; the
    problem is that they drive like brain-dead Visigoths.  The
    only person I know who comes close to being able to drink and
    drive well is my friend Randall.  For years he had me convinced
    he really could do both.  I held that opinion right up until the
    Corvette he was driving us home in landed some 80 or 90 feet from
    the railroad tracks that launched us.)
    
    
    Reprinted without anyone's permission.
    
              -Dan-
    

    Re: .12   Geez, I wish I'd seen this article last December!
    
    Sometime late last winter, we in eastern Massachusetts experienced 
    a rain-freezing-into-ice storm which coated everything out doors 
    with at least a quarter-inch of ice.  I had a green VW bug at the 
    time, equipped with the standard non-functioning defrost system.  
    I feebly pecked and scratched at the ice with the ineffectual plastic
    ice-scraper for about 30 minutes; then, for diversion, I decided to 
    wack away at the ice frozen on the fenders.  It just cracked and fell 
    off in nice big geometricly shaped pieces.  Then I had a brilliant
    idea: 'If I just tap gently at the ice on the windows, it will crack 
    and I can just lift it off.'  That's exactly what happened.  

    Unfortunately, I also cracked my windshield, right near the little 
    once-a-year inspection sticker which, in my case, expired two weeks
    hence.
    
    I have never worked for a newspaper, and I know no one who has.
    
    CQ                                                         

    To revive this topic I'd like to add something about the headlight
    business.
    
    	In Ontario, the law states you must have your headlights on
    1/2 an hour before sunset and 1/2 an hour after sunrise.
    
    	Since that time, most drivers have taken practice in leaving
    their headlights on. For myself, I always turn them on. It is vewry
    safer.
    
    DL