681–690 of 900 posts
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I knew before clicking this was going to be a Saab, I miss mine!
Saab also had a feature where it would turn off all the lights in the instrument panel, but you could turn them back on by hitting the top of the dash. Might be a Swedish thing as Volvo had it too.
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My other pet peeve is the opposite - they've got LED daytime running lights, and use those instead of headlights. They're driving around at 11pm with no taillights and abysmal forward lighting, but there's enough of a glow from the DRLs that they assume their lights are on. Or worse, they're accustomed to "automatic" lights and don't even know where the switch is, so they're driving around at dusk or in fog, rain, or…
You forgot THE LEFTMOST LANE IS FOR BRIEF PASSING, NOT DRIVING
If there is one thing that tend to cause conflict and trigger dangerous situations in traffic, it is when someone driving at 0.001% faster than the next car enter left lane while maintaining the exact same speed, basically matching the speed on the right. That is just as illegal as speeding.
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Many if not most cars had green gauges in the 80s and 90s. They all had some sort of knob, wheel or other adjustment.
Saab went further though and just light up the relevant instruments. If you're good on fuel, it remains dark etc.
My saabs, of the 5 I own, only have working lights in about 2 of them. One has no tacho (from factory), one no speedo (broken)
Turns out you pretty much dont need any of that stuff anyway.
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Another one of those quirks of law that appears to be there to help avoid burdening the legendary smallholding farmer whose teenagers are hardworking farmhands towing around 8 head of cattle in the work truck, but which mostly just enables a bunch of idiots driving around surburbs in gleaming-clean four-door pickups that have never carried anything in the bed but a couple bikes or a little camping gear. I'd be all fo…
> you can bet that no regulation of any kind will ever be enacted to curb the disaster that CAFE rules caused to "car" size. I'm not a big EV person, but afaik EVs don't have efficiency standards and so they don't have to conform to CAFE footprints, so we can get compact vehicles again, hopefully. Up to manufacturers to put them for sale, and people to actually buy them, of course.
Plus, giant EVs have more room for batteries and most Americans think 300 miles of range is necessary even if they drive 20 miles a day and even if they can charge at home!
One of the main reasons people want/need brighter headlights is that there is much more light inside the car from screens. These don't let your eyes adjust to the dark properly. Older cars had dim green lighting for the gauges and even had a knob to adjust the brightness up and down. You could create a very dim interior instead of the huge amount of white light you get with modern cars and the multiple screens. I'm h…
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I might just be getting old, but more and more I see people not using indicators and not understanding the rules of junctions. Tail gating also really annoying. I was in a mates car recently and it scared the hell out of me, he was tail gating for most of a 3 hour journey. Eventually we got to a bit with chevrons and he wasn't obeying the rule staying N chevrons away from the car in front. I told him and he replied "…
My favorite is that if you try to follow a safe distance, some jerk will immediately move to fill the space
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My other pet peeve is the opposite - they've got LED daytime running lights, and use those instead of headlights. They're driving around at 11pm with no taillights and abysmal forward lighting, but there's enough of a glow from the DRLs that they assume their lights are on. Or worse, they're accustomed to "automatic" lights and don't even know where the switch is, so they're driving around at dusk or in fog, rain, or…
if you ever visit Portland make one up reading YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. drivers keep it weird here by ignoring the rules of the road for some kind of "no no i insist, after you" as if theyre giving some gift, but instead just confuse everyone if im biking and waiting at a stop sign: without fail, the last car in a long line of cars will slam on the breaks and insist i go when they have no stop sign. it would have b…
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> Lately, I see a lot of drivers who turn on their brights and just leave them on and this includes cars with the older halogen and even incandescents. This is a change in behavior. This is one of my pet peeves. I've categorized it into what I believe are the main causes: 1. People just don't know as well today that the blue indicator means you're blinding people 2. People with newer cars which will automatically tur…
I might just be getting old, but more and more I see people not using indicators and not understanding the rules of junctions. Tail gating also really annoying. I was in a mates car recently and it scared the hell out of me, he was tail gating for most of a 3 hour journey. Eventually we got to a bit with chevrons and he wasn't obeying the rule staying N chevrons away from the car in front. I told him and he replied "…
...which has done Legitimate Research into how dramatic the change has been over time. Incidentally, I found it through this great article: https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightne...
I drive a regular sedan, and since >50% of cars are ginormous trucks with fancy headlights, I'm regularly annoyed at all the high beams and misalignments.