It seems that I have been completely incapable of making consecutive journeys in the same motor vehicle this week. Because the motoring menagerie at Grimley Towers currently exceeds the headcount of people and the driveway is thinner than a politician’s promise, a convoluted automotive ballet is required if you want to free up a particular vehicle for a trip to the shops. And because none of the current fleet is a Suzuki X-90 or a Volkswagen Beetle, I will happily grab the keys for whichever is closest to the road.
The current Mrs Grimley however, is a little more choosy and refuses to drive anywhere in my ancient Mercedes citing such unreasonable excuses as it has to be started with a screwdriver and currently has the weight of Ben Tameifuna in damp wood in the boot. As such she will happily spend any amount of time shuffling cars in order to avoid having to pilot the Panzerwagon, which means my next drive becomes a bit of a lottery.
How hard can it be?
There are a number of factors regularly blamed for deaths and accidents on the roads of New Zealand but drugs, drink, tiredness and mobile phones all pale into insignificance compared to the scourge of indicators. Yes, I know that as a responsible driver I should be completely familiarising myself with my vehicle before setting off, but after making four consecutive journeys in four separate cars with four different steering column layouts it takes about two minutes before I’ve completely forgotten the stalk configuration and am smearing dry filth across my windscreen.
Therefore rather than keeping myself fully aware of all the possible dangers when negotiating bends I’m far too busy screaming obscenities at the indicators and attempting to peer through a haze of bird poo and tree sap. This means a good proportion of my journey is spend completely blind to the road ahead – either through incandescent rage or avian faeces – and the only way I know what carnage I’ve inflicted is to count the number of readily identifiable pieces of wildlife stuck in the radiator grille when I finally stop.
Clearly this is not an ideal state of affairs and something that should really be rectified. While the excessive infrastructure changes necessary and bloody minded national pride may clap the irons on us ever deciding exactly which side of the car a steering wheel should be on, it would be relatively easy to set a convention on where the indicators should be located.
Of course, this means it won’t happen. In any situation where the end result really doesn’t matter one way or the other, people have a habit of developing very strong opinions and will pointlessly argue the toss until the end of time. So for the time being, I guess I’ll just have to make a bit of extra effort when changing cars to always get it right.
Except when it’s left, obviously.
Launching in November, the GM Holden designed and built Cruze hatch maintains the same safety standards set by the Series II Cruze sedan, which went on sale here earlier this year.
Africa or the Middle East it’s caught up in a war right here in NZ. The dominance of Toyota’s pickup is no longer total, it faces threats from all sides, the torque thumping Nissan Navara, Great Wall’s low rent V240 and the slick VW Amarok.
