The cars you drive
- Thread starter originaldrum
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I thought you were all about fighting overpopulation?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Not really in keeping with the title but driving related so I'm gonna put it here.... the car I drive is a Renault Modus though I think just cos the title demands it and I like to fit in.
Anyway it seems I have made a serious and it looks like, seriously expensive, error of judgment. Got our car (like I say, a Modush as they pronounce it here) in 2019 and it was the first time I'd driven for ages, first time I'd driven on the right hand side ever, so I had to kind of feel my way back in, always drive around looking for easy parking spaces so I didn't embarrass myself and hold up the traffic by trying to squeeze into small spaces (and to be fair I still do that). Eventually began to get the hang of things and grew a little bit in confidence and so on (although I do hate driving and always will), although I one* thing I don't think I'll ever properly adapt to here they have toll gates on the motorway and bridges so you have to stop and pay, sometimes quite a lot, like if you drove from Lisbon to Porto or Lisbon to the Algarve in the south and you took the motorway the whole way you would suddenly find yourself stung for 20 euros as you left the motorway. Also in some areas they just have cameras that take your pic and you get the bill for driving along that bit of road in the post a few months later - only small costs but in some areas almost every road is like that so it adds up. But the weird thing is that they take so long to compile it, you think "oh maybe that wasn't a toll road after all" and then aaaaaages later, you do get billed.
And this has proven my undoing, along with the fact that many roads don't have clearly marked speed limits, it's very common for them to have one sign at the side of the road that applies for miles and miles and if you don't see it you don't know how fast you can go. In fact, some roads, as far as I can tell, don't have signs at all, they just have the standard speed limit for that kind of road. Which can be confusing for a foreigner.... but it doesn't matter that much cos there don't seem to be any cameras and if you are breaking the limit and there is no-one around to tell you off you're fine....
..... or so I thought. It has suddenly started raining tickets here - this last week got three hundred euros in fines and it looks like another came this morning - and these are from 2019, what's it gonna total to? Girlfriend is going mental but luckily she has gone away for a few days so maybe I can hide that one and secretly pay it or something - problem is the car is registered in her name. Seems to me that it's a bit unsporting that they let you drive along going "Yeah yeah that's fine no problem you just carry along doing that sir" and then retroactively fine the shirt off my fucking back. I'm actually kinda worried about this... it's gonna be years of transgressions with me appearing to be a willfully recalcitrant repeat offender, when in fact I didn't even know I was doing anything wrong. I hope I don't go to jail or something.
*actually there are loads of things, like they have this thing they don't have in the UK as far as I know when slip roads on and off the motorway cross so you have people being forced to cross lanes from left to right and others being forced to go right to left and everyone is moving at top speeds, seems really dangerous. In fact every time I drive for more than five miles or so I see at least one car by the side of the road crashed or broken down. Anecdotally there seem to be way more accidents than anywhere else I've been.
Anyway it seems I have made a serious and it looks like, seriously expensive, error of judgment. Got our car (like I say, a Modush as they pronounce it here) in 2019 and it was the first time I'd driven for ages, first time I'd driven on the right hand side ever, so I had to kind of feel my way back in, always drive around looking for easy parking spaces so I didn't embarrass myself and hold up the traffic by trying to squeeze into small spaces (and to be fair I still do that). Eventually began to get the hang of things and grew a little bit in confidence and so on (although I do hate driving and always will), although I one* thing I don't think I'll ever properly adapt to here they have toll gates on the motorway and bridges so you have to stop and pay, sometimes quite a lot, like if you drove from Lisbon to Porto or Lisbon to the Algarve in the south and you took the motorway the whole way you would suddenly find yourself stung for 20 euros as you left the motorway. Also in some areas they just have cameras that take your pic and you get the bill for driving along that bit of road in the post a few months later - only small costs but in some areas almost every road is like that so it adds up. But the weird thing is that they take so long to compile it, you think "oh maybe that wasn't a toll road after all" and then aaaaaages later, you do get billed.
And this has proven my undoing, along with the fact that many roads don't have clearly marked speed limits, it's very common for them to have one sign at the side of the road that applies for miles and miles and if you don't see it you don't know how fast you can go. In fact, some roads, as far as I can tell, don't have signs at all, they just have the standard speed limit for that kind of road. Which can be confusing for a foreigner.... but it doesn't matter that much cos there don't seem to be any cameras and if you are breaking the limit and there is no-one around to tell you off you're fine....
..... or so I thought. It has suddenly started raining tickets here - this last week got three hundred euros in fines and it looks like another came this morning - and these are from 2019, what's it gonna total to? Girlfriend is going mental but luckily she has gone away for a few days so maybe I can hide that one and secretly pay it or something - problem is the car is registered in her name. Seems to me that it's a bit unsporting that they let you drive along going "Yeah yeah that's fine no problem you just carry along doing that sir" and then retroactively fine the shirt off my fucking back. I'm actually kinda worried about this... it's gonna be years of transgressions with me appearing to be a willfully recalcitrant repeat offender, when in fact I didn't even know I was doing anything wrong. I hope I don't go to jail or something.
*actually there are loads of things, like they have this thing they don't have in the UK as far as I know when slip roads on and off the motorway cross so you have people being forced to cross lanes from left to right and others being forced to go right to left and everyone is moving at top speeds, seems really dangerous. In fact every time I drive for more than five miles or so I see at least one car by the side of the road crashed or broken down. Anecdotally there seem to be way more accidents than anywhere else I've been.
woops
is not like other people
this sounds like a place designed to put you off driving
IdleRich
IdleRich
I hate driving. But the thing is cos we're 6k outside Lisbon it turns out we need to. Well, the train is reliable and it's twenty minutes from our stop to Santa Apolonia (I hate that word - is it one L or two? And same for Ps, there are just two many possibilities) but it doesn't run late. Also the train to other parts of Portugal is useless and to the rest of Europe is non-existent. We were spending 400 euros or more on ubers each month so we had to get a car - but I was tricked. Girlfriend and I both have licences from years ago but were really rusty and the plan was to sort of share the driving and feel our way back into it but it turns out she is so weak that effectively she can't even drive well enough to practise and get good so I'm doing it all. She did start lessons before the lockdown but then fucking lockdown put paid to that.
But the more I think about it the fines I'm getting do seem really unfair. Surely the point of a speed camera and a punitive fine is so that drivers slow down and drive more safely, it's no use if you keep it secret it from them that they've broken the law and implicitly tell them that what they were doing is fine so you can raise more money off them. It's like in Dr Strangelove when he furiously points out that the mutually assured destruction deterrent is no use all as a deterrent if you keep your capability hidden from the other side. Although in that case they were just talking about the destruction of humanity whereas here it's much more serious cos it's my fucking money.
But the more I think about it the fines I'm getting do seem really unfair. Surely the point of a speed camera and a punitive fine is so that drivers slow down and drive more safely, it's no use if you keep it secret it from them that they've broken the law and implicitly tell them that what they were doing is fine so you can raise more money off them. It's like in Dr Strangelove when he furiously points out that the mutually assured destruction deterrent is no use all as a deterrent if you keep your capability hidden from the other side. Although in that case they were just talking about the destruction of humanity whereas here it's much more serious cos it's my fucking money.
IdleRich
IdleRich
But my point is, the fine is to deal with precisely the people who don't do that. People who drive within the limit are outside the equation here, in fact I'm not talking about how drivers act at all, I'm questioning what the authorities do and what is the rationale behind their actions.
For example, suppose there is a stretch of road which has no clear speed limit indicated and which appears to be a fast road (like an A road in the UK) and a speed camera films someone doing 88km/h but the limit it is in fact 50km/h - I would have thought that the job of the person who gets the info from the camera is to notify the person driving that they have broken the law and shouldn't do it again. And they enforce that by fining them - doesn't it seem weird to do nothing for two years, and hope that they go down that road regularly way too fast so that after two years they have collected fines worth thousands of pounds and the whole department can have a day out in Krispy Creme donuts?
What if the driver has an accident during that period? What if they kill someone? Maybe the reason the limit is so low is cos that tarmac is slippy when it's wet and at 88km/h the driver has no chance of taking the corner and he comes off and goes across the middle and causes a fifty car pile up - none of the other cars can stop either cos they always drive at this speed and no-one has told them it's wrong. Tens of people killed, massive fireball destroys the road and some of the nearby housing blocks. Maybe one of the relatives of someone killed works for the speeding camera firm who relay the info to the police and knows that they had the information and didn't take action, perhaps this guy used to be in the special forces and he still has a huge armoury behind a special revolving wall in his garage and he tries to take out the police whom he deems responsible for the death of his family but he doesn't know exactly who made the decision and he just starts doing sniper attacks on all the police in Lisbon, and the police over-react, become suspicious and heavy-handed and start shooting random civilians whenever they see something in their coat pocket that could be a handgun. It could go anywhere from there.
For example, suppose there is a stretch of road which has no clear speed limit indicated and which appears to be a fast road (like an A road in the UK) and a speed camera films someone doing 88km/h but the limit it is in fact 50km/h - I would have thought that the job of the person who gets the info from the camera is to notify the person driving that they have broken the law and shouldn't do it again. And they enforce that by fining them - doesn't it seem weird to do nothing for two years, and hope that they go down that road regularly way too fast so that after two years they have collected fines worth thousands of pounds and the whole department can have a day out in Krispy Creme donuts?
What if the driver has an accident during that period? What if they kill someone? Maybe the reason the limit is so low is cos that tarmac is slippy when it's wet and at 88km/h the driver has no chance of taking the corner and he comes off and goes across the middle and causes a fifty car pile up - none of the other cars can stop either cos they always drive at this speed and no-one has told them it's wrong. Tens of people killed, massive fireball destroys the road and some of the nearby housing blocks. Maybe one of the relatives of someone killed works for the speeding camera firm who relay the info to the police and knows that they had the information and didn't take action, perhaps this guy used to be in the special forces and he still has a huge armoury behind a special revolving wall in his garage and he tries to take out the police whom he deems responsible for the death of his family but he doesn't know exactly who made the decision and he just starts doing sniper attacks on all the police in Lisbon, and the police over-react, become suspicious and heavy-handed and start shooting random civilians whenever they see something in their coat pocket that could be a handgun. It could go anywhere from there.
sufi
lala
do you own any weapons rich? just out of interest like
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Speed cameras should also tell you when you can speed cos there's no-one else ahead of you - people will drive more safely when they need to if there's a bit of give and take.
Two miles clear: 160mph recommended max
Two miles clear: 160mph recommended max
IdleRich
IdleRich
I dunno, I reckon that they are likely building up cos the one I got yesterday was from 2019. Maybe I haven't sinned since, but it seems unlikely cos I had no reason to modify my behaviour or realise that I was doing something wrong. I'm not gonna claim it was a totally unsigned road - I don't even know where it was - but I do know that in Portugal there are a lot of roads where I have found it very hard to know what the speed limit is and have remarked on this driving down them, but I consoled myself with the thought that it appeared that they were not enforcing any accidental transgressions that might be occurring in these ambiguous zones - but it appears that they are, only they're doing it too years later.
The main issue for me is that, speeding cameras and fines are supposed to reduce people's speed, but how is that gonna happen if the fine and the attached notification are not sent to the driver until two years later. Obviously I was exaggerating above, but what if someone is in an accident cos they are breaking the speed limit, and the police (or whatever authority) have that information which they are supposed to use to prevent this happening but they haven't used it.
I implied they were saving up the fines to raise money, I don't really think that, I think it's just incompetence - but the ultimate effect will be more fines and more speeding when surely the ENTIRE aim is to reduce speeding.
Nah. On the spectrum that runs from "Psycho who righteously takes justice into his hands" to "Doormat who quietly and politely backs down even when he knows he's right cos he cares way too much about good manners and also he's a bit of a wimp as well" I'm definitely much much nearer to the latter sadly. In fact I quite often wish I wasn't so far towards that end to be honest.do you own any weapons rich? just out of interest like
Leo
Well-known member
as a visiting yank, steering on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road, I would be paralyzed with fear and uncertainty at that one.
IdleRich
IdleRich
They are not that common, I think in the 80s or whatever there was a theory that putting five or six roundabouts together would lead to a kind of smoother traffic flow and they built a few as an experiment, I guess they were not deemed that successful though cos they didn't build loads more.
IdleRich
IdleRich
1972 apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
I did my driving lessons in Swindon so I did practise it but most wouldn't cos there are only about five in the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
I did my driving lessons in Swindon so I did practise it but most wouldn't cos there are only about five in the country.