Martin Underwood ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

The US is a particularly entertaining case - they've legislated
Daytime Running Lights that come on with the ignition.

snip

Only in 'merkinland.

Are the daytime running lights sidelights or headlights?

Not sure.

I think in
Sweden they're just sidelights (certainly Volvos here only have their
sidelights, not headlights, on permanently).

Scandi ones are brighter than sidies - sidies tend to be a 5w bulb, whereas
the Saab/Volvo daytime lights are 21w (or were on proper Saab 900s, IIRC) -
I think most tend to use dip beam now.

I wonder what the additional cost in extra fuel consumption is

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question424.htm

I can't say I'm surprised about the situation in America: they don't
require cars to have front number plates (though many cars do have
them)

Nor do they have MOTs.

"Adrian" wrote in message
. 244.170...
Martin Underwood ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

The US is a particularly entertaining case - they've legislated
Daytime Running Lights that come on with the ignition.

I think in
Sweden they're just sidelights (certainly Volvos here only have their
sidelights, not headlights, on permanently).

Scandi ones are brighter than sidies - sidies tend to be a 5w bulb,
whereas
the Saab/Volvo daytime lights are 21w (or were on proper Saab 900s,
IIRC) -
I think most tend to use dip beam now.

Ah! I'd assumed that the running lights were conventional 5W sidelight bulbs
rather 21W indicator/brake/fog light bulbs. I presume the sidelight part of
the cluster has a dual-filament bulb: 5W for night and 21W for day. Maybe UK
versions of Volvos etc have been modified so as to use 5W for both purposes.

I wonder what the additional cost in extra fuel consumption is

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question424.htm

A fascinating and well-reasoned article. Now someone needs to work out how
much extra American cars consume than European cars because almost all of
them are automatic transmission - though set against this is the fact that
US speed limits are lower so consumption will be less on that account.

I can't say I'm surprised about the situation in America: they don't
require cars to have front number plates (though many cars do have
them)

Nor do they have MOTs.

I didn't know that. So once you've bought a new car, is there no requirement
for periodic testing of brakes, suspension, body structure etc throughout
the car's life? Bloody hell!

Mind you, American road rules are very strange: they allow overtaking on
either side (it's quite common to get several lanes of an Interstate all
going at exactly 55 mph, with no relative motion, which makes it very
difficult to change lanes when joining or leaving the road), and cars change
their registration number (IIRC) every time the car is sold to a new owner,
which must make it very difficult to trace the car's history throughout its
life (eg for "has it ever been involved in any accidents" and "is there a
loan outstanding on this car" checks). And then of course there are those
"wonderful" (totally ludicrous) four-way stop junctions where priority is
determined by who arrived first (which different people could have different
opinions on) rather than being determined by position on the road (which is
unambiguous).

On the other hand, I like their concept of having part-time speed limits:
most schools have a reasonable speed limit outside them except at the
beginning and end of the school day when the limit is reduced. Over here
they'd slap on a blanket 30mph limit 24 hours a day :-(

Martin Underwood ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

Ah! I'd assumed that the running lights were conventional 5W sidelight
bulbs rather 21W indicator/brake/fog light bulbs. I presume the
sidelight part of the cluster has a dual-filament bulb: 5W for night
and 21W for day. Maybe UK versions of Volvos etc have been modified so
as to use 5W for both purposes.

On c900s, they were a dual filament - 5w for a switchable "park light"
which stayed on with ignition off, with the 21w coming on with ignition,
unless the fuse was pulled.

of Merkins

Nor do they have MOTs.

I didn't know that. So once you've bought a new car, is there no
requirement for periodic testing of brakes, suspension, body structure
etc throughout the car's life? Bloody hell!

Some states have emissions tests.

cars change their registration number (IIRC) every time the
car is sold to a new owner, which must make it very difficult to trace
the car's history throughout its life

We're actually the oddity in that respect. France has plates which change
whenever it's re-registered into a different department. Germany's similar.

And don't forget that they don't have breathalysers, either - you get
pulled, it's a case of seeing if you can walk down the line and touch your
nose...

Adrian wrote to uk.transport.london on Fri, 24 Jun 2005:

We're actually the oddity in that respect. France has plates which change
whenever it's re-registered into a different department. Germany's similar.

France's laws change in 2008, when they will no longer have regional
plates but a format of AA 123 AA, where AA are 2 letters & 123 are 3
numbers. I believe drivers who wish to do so *may* have a regional or
departmental indicator to the right of their number-plate; an "F" in
European stars to the left will be (I think) compulsory. No
personalisation will be possible - you will have to take what you get.

In Belgium, I'm told, the number-plate belongs to the driver, not the
car, and, like our system, personalisation within the limit of the
system is allowed. In the USA, though, some personalisations seemed to
bear no relation at all to the way cars were normally registered!
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 May 2005

]
Mrs Redboots a écrit :

We're actually the oddity in that respect. France has plates which change
whenever it's re-registered into a different department. Germany's
similar.

France's laws change in 2008, when they will no longer have regional
plates but a format of AA 123 AA, where AA are 2 letters & 123 are 3
numbers. I believe drivers who wish to do so *may* have a regional or
departmental indicator to the right of their number-plate; an "F" in
European stars to the left will be (I think) compulsory. No
personalisation will be possible - you will have to take what you get.

Indeed. This is exactly what I intended to post, only you did it first and
put it better :-) .

I might just add that scooters are already registered with the new
numbering, and have been since January 2004 (their plates are of the form A
123 A [note the single letter at the beginning and the end], to be extended
if/when new plates are needed with the A 123 AA and A 123 AAA series).

--
JFD
www.metro-pole.net -- Unofficial home to Paris' public transport networks

"Jean-Francois Dancre" wrote in message
...
]
Mrs Redboots a écrit :

We're actually the oddity in that respect. France has plates which
change
whenever it's re-registered into a different department. Germany's
similar.

France's laws change in 2008, when they will no longer have regional
plates but a format of AA 123 AA, where AA are 2 letters & 123 are 3
numbers. I believe drivers who wish to do so *may* have a regional or
departmental indicator to the right of their number-plate; an "F" in
European stars to the left will be (I think) compulsory. No
personalisation will be possible - you will have to take what you get.

Indeed. This is exactly what I intended to post, only you did it first and
put it better :-) .

I might just add that scooters are already registered with the new
numbering, and have been since January 2004 (their plates are of the form
A 123 A [note the single letter at the beginning and the end], to be
extended if/when new plates are needed with the A 123 AA and A 123 AAA
series).


Are Great Britain and the Irish Republic (but not Northern Ireland) very
much in the minority among countries throughout the world in still encoding
the place and year of registration into the registration number? It seems
such an eminently sensible thing for a registration plate to contain
*information* rather than just being a random number that I'm surprised all
countries don't do it. Apparently when the A 123 ABC format in GB was about
to come to the end of its life, the police strongly recommended to the DVLA
that future schemes such as the present AA 12 AAA format should still encode
place and date, because it was often the only thing about a registration
number that witnesses would remember if they glimpsed a car being involved
in an offence - presumably subconsciously they remembered the parts that
actually meant something.

I hadn't realised that some European countries had a system whereby the
registration number was owned by the person, not the car. Does that mean
that when a person passes his driving test and buys his first car, he gets
allocated a number (somewhat akin to a social security number?) that he uses
on all his successive cars throughout his life? Their equivalent of the DVLA
must be kept very busy recording all the changes of registration number
applied to cars as they are bought and sold.

It always intrigues me to look at other countries' ways of solving problems
(especially if I think our way of doing it is better!!) - in America, France
and Germany, someone obviously made a conscious decision that it was a good
idea to change a car's registration number whenever the car changed hands,
rather than either the car keeping the same number throughout its life or
else the driver keeping the same number throughout his life.

Martin Underwood wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 25 Jun 2005:

It always intrigues me to look at other countries' ways of solving problems
(especially if I think our way of doing it is better!!) - in America, France
and Germany, someone obviously made a conscious decision that it was a good
idea to change a car's registration number whenever the car changed hands,
rather than either the car keeping the same number throughout its life or
else the driver keeping the same number throughout his life.

Indeed, the present system in some countries is that the car must change
its registration number whenever the owner moves, never mind when the
car changes hands!
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 May 2005

Martin Underwood wrote to uk.transport.london on Fri, 24 Jun 2005:

A fascinating and well-reasoned article. Now someone needs to work out how
much extra American cars consume than European cars because almost all of
them are automatic transmission - though set against this is the fact that
US speed limits are lower so consumption will be less on that account.

Are they? I mean, when we were in Kansas a couple of months ago, the
local speed limit seemed to be 35 miles on streets and 75 on the
motorway (Interstate). What threw us totally was that these limits were
*obeyed*.... presumably why they can be higher than ours!
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 May 2005

In message , Mrs Redboots
writes
What threw us totally was that these limits were *obeyed*....
presumably why they can be higher than ours!
I'd noticed that and asked another driver why. Apparently breaking the
speed limit carries very draconian measures. A different issue but one
I found annoying was when driving an American auto box, slowly
accelerating was good but to attempt to overtake the response is to put
your foot down, each time I did I found I was without drive for about
two seconds whilst the box kicked down.
--
Clive

"Clive" wrote in message
...
In message , Mrs Redboots
writes
What threw us totally was that these limits were *obeyed*.... presumably
why they can be higher than ours!
I'd noticed that and asked another driver why. Apparently breaking the
speed limit carries very draconian measures. A different issue but one I
found annoying was when driving an American auto box, slowly accelerating
was good but to attempt to overtake the response is to put your foot down,
each time I did I found I was without drive for about two seconds whilst
the box kicked down.

I'm not a fan of automatic gearboxes. They are generally too inclined to
change down in situations where in my car (admittedly with a diesel engine
which has oodles of low-speed torque) I'd stay in third but push down on the
accelerator. I've driven a number of automatic cars. My dad's Ford Sierra,
about 20 years ago, was OK. His Hondas were appalling: it was very difficult
to accelerate smoothly out of a roundabout without the box dropping into
first gear (well, that's what it felt like) as you applied the power - you
either got very little acceleration in third or kick-in-the-back
acceleration in first - no half-measures :-( But the worst was a Ford Focus
that I drove from Oxford to Ipswich on business a couple of years ago. There
must have been a fault with the transmission because it was very hard to
accelerate from a roundabout or to overtake anything on the motorway because
the more you pressed the accelerator, the further it would change down, so
you were in the ridiculuous situation that you want to accelerate from 50 to
70 but the only option is to keep going at 50 - any any of 4th, 3rd, 2nd or
1st gear depending on how hard you pressed the accelerator ;-) Next time
the company hired me a car, I said "manual only, please"!

I'd be interested to try one of these sequential Tiptronic gearboxes such as
the ones on the Citroen C3 and some VWs. These apparently are manual
gearboxes (with a proper clutch, none of this fluid flywheel that can creep
forward in traffic and which uses more fuel) but controlled automatically or
manually according to preference. A colleague who I used to work with said
his was fantastic. I'd also like try a Variomatic transmission (Daf, Volvo
etc).