hademall
Donating Member
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2018
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- VF CALAIS WAGON
You do make some good points.Everyone is all super safety officer these days. I reckon half the idiots that you see on the road just don’t give a **** these days as they subconsciously know the car will save them from their own stupidity. Although having said that I do see quite a few stupid motorbike riders too (riding slower than traffic, sitting in cars blind spots etc) so my observation on this might be incorrect.
Having spent the first 10-15 odd years of my driving life in sub $1000 manual transmission **** boxes that would break down on a semi regular basis was a character building experience.
First off I had to learn a manual transmission as an automatic car was out of reach of my finances so if I wanted to drive I couldn’t just do it the lazy way.
Having substandard cars taught me to respect the road and have a healthy scepticism in the other idiots on the road and not trust that they will do the right thing. I had a couple of near misses in the first 6-12 months of driving after I got my licence that scared the **** out of me as I knew if those near misses would have turned bad then I’d most likely not be here as I was in a Datsun 1600 that didn’t even have retractable seatbelts much less airbags etc.
It also taught me to man the F up and learn how to fix my own car otherwise I wasn’t going to be going anywhere on a Friday night! Money to pay a mechanic was non existent in my early years so if I didn’t get off my arse and fix the car myself I was staying at home until I did!
As much as everyone wants to be mollycoddled (and like mollycoddling their children) it reduces resourcefulness and makes you highly dependent on others. My son has already said he wants to have my SV6 when he gets his licence and I’ve decided I’m going to convert it to a manual transmission so he can learn to drive properly.
He will be doing the servicing on it too as having a car is a responsibility, not just something you jump in when you want to use it and palm off onto someone else (a mechanic) when something goes wrong with it.