How We Fall In Love With Cars At An Early Age

Although the legal age for driving differs between countries, one thing which they all have in common is that from an early age we all want to get behind the wheel of a car and drive it around. Indeed, many kids have a collection of toy cars at an early age, imbuing them with a desire to drive for real one day, and giving them an appreciation of which car they want it to be in.

What is it that grabs us about cars before we are old enough to understand anything about them? For many of us, it is the fact that they allow us to travel so fast from one place to another, and the freedom that they seem to give. Faraway places have a powerful hold over us as children, and anything that gets us to them whenever we want to go will seem like a dream. The same fascination applies to aeroplanes.

Additionally, we see cars in virtually every TV show we like as older children. Whether it is a cop show that features a kick-ass law enforcer or anything else with a charismatic central character, we will want to be that person and want to drive what they drive. Herbie, KITT and the General Lee are three examples, and most of us between the ages of thirty and fifty can remember having one or more of these cars as toys.

As we get older, the car loses some of its mystique. If they have not done before the first time we take them in to have the clutch repaired, cars will certainly start to pale in terms of excitement when we have to pay for repairs. Nonetheless, we will still love them. Heck, many of us even name our cars.

Cars In Video Games – Instilling A Passion For Driving

Anyone who has played a reasonable number of video games will no doubt have played at least one which involves motor vehicles. The humble – or not so humble, as the case may be – automobile is the star of many video games and a supporting cast member in many others. Starting with motor racing games and continuing on through a great number of others, most of us have driven a video game car.

The wide range of sports car games reflects the number of sports which include automobiles. There are games which replicate Nascar, Formula One, Indycar, Touring Car and even Go-Karting. These are all fun to play and can give the player a real appreciation of the skill involved in these sports. Every player has their own favorites, and there are official tie-ins with all the major motor sports.

Then again, there are other games which involve driving a car as one part of the game, of which the most famous would have to be Grand Theft Auto. In this series of games, you play a character (different games feature different ones) who has to carry out a range of tasks, many of which fall outside the law. In each of the games, as the name suggests, you can steal cars to aid you in carrying out the tasks.

What these games permit you is the chance to indulge a wilder side. Certainly you cannot expect to get away with stealing a car in real life, and using it to drive into a crowd of enemies is completely inexcusable. But on a video game screen it doesn't matter – unless you have difficulty separating what is real from what is not.

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Driving Abroad – Know Your Laws

Everyone likes a holiday every now and again, and if you can bring your car along then it can be even better. Knowing that you can go off the beaten track and holiday the way you want to has its attractions, ones nobody can deny. On the flip side, if you are holidaying in a country or a state where the laws are different from the ones you are used to, you need to be very careful.

Some countries have quite radically different road laws than others. For example, British drivers may well find themselves overwhelmed on a German autobahn because, while the top speed on a British motorway is (technically) seventy miles an hour, German autobahns have no speed restrictions. This can make for a very steep learning curve.

If you are American and you visit London on holiday, you might also find that its takes some getting used to that British drivers drive on the left hand side of the road. It is something you learn quickly if you want to stay alive, of course, because everyone else is doing it – but it can make for some tricky moments at junctions and similar situations.

There are various other laws which can lead to drivers becoming unstuck, such as the French law which requires drivers to have high visibility vests in their cars at all times in case of breakdowns. In the main, you just need to do your research and acclimatise quickly to different laws. Once you've done so, driving abroad is a blast.

Pimping Your Ride – Or Making Your Car Look And Drive Better

The popular US TV series Pimp Your Ride, which has been exported to other TV markets in recent years, is a logical conclusion to the popular hobby of auto modification. People all over the world look at their cars and think “I can make this better – faster and better looking, and it will corner better when I'm done, too”. Basically, it's The Six Million Dollar Man but with cars.

You can modify your car to a greater or lesser extent. Some people will settle for a new paint job and perhaps some new wheels and hubcaps. There may be some improvement in the car's performance as a result, but the less modification you do, the less the improvement will be – in theory, at least.

There is, after all, such a thing as too much modification. You can tune up the engine, add things and take them away, and even – if you are inclined towards a daredevil approach – add nitrous oxide to the mix. You can add spoilers and tail fins to the car as well, for better road holding, but sometimes the theory and the practicalities do not match.

The basic message is that modification can be a mixed bag. If you know what to do and how to do it, then you can give a previously staid car a new lease of life, or bring an older car into line with some newer models. Or you might just settle for a cooler interior and a louder sound system. The choice is up to you, but please bear in mind that professionals make big money doing this for a reason – they're good at it and you might not be.

Racing For Sport – Formula One Motor Racing

The single word “car” can be used to describe any one of a number of different kinds of vehicle, from the comfortable family sedan to the armored people carrier, and indeed to the sports cars that are driven around tracks by professional drivers. You'll never see a Formula One car on a public road outside of special circumstances, but it's a car all right.

The Formula One car has little in common with a road legal vehicle. The shape is different – it is much lower and more aerodynamically proportioned. It is as small as it can safely be while containing a driver and the necessary safety features, and it is built for high speeds – faster than any road legal car.

The best Formula One drivers over the years have been the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio, Gilles Villeneuve, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher. Although in many cases, these drivers have been helped by having the best car on the circuit, an uncommon level of skill and determination to win has set these men apart. Senna was tragically killed while competing in the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, but statistically Formula One has had a low level of fatalities for all the speed of the races.

Formula One is similar in many ways to its American cousin, Indycar racing. However, it is felt that the drivers at Formula One level are slightly more technically gifted and the cars more conducive to fast lapping than Indycars. Many young Indycar drivers will make a move to Formula One after succeeding in the States, while few will move the other way.

Road Safety: The Drag Race

There will always be a number of people who enjoy taking their cars on to the open road and seeing just how fast they can go, something which has led to a fairly large number of unofficial “drag races” taking place on public roads. The argument usually made by the drivers in such races is that they only race on quiet roads, usually at times when no-one else is likely to be on the road.

One potential argument against this is that you can never be certain who will be on the road. After all, it is there for a reason – people need to get from one place to another. It is no use saying after you have crashed into another car that you thought the road would be deserted. It wasn't, and what you expected has absolutely no relevance to anyone killed or injured.

Another reason why drag races can be dangerous is in their very unregulated nature. Most car racing is carried out at tracks which have safety features as well as full emergency services – and professional car racers have still been known to die in high-speed crashes. When you are driving in an illegal drag race you have no such security to call on, and you can end up in real trouble as a result.

Although it is often the illegal and unsanctioned nature of drag races that attracts people to drive in them, a certain amount of this bravado is born out of a sense that you'll be lucky. But you only have to be unlucky once to kill or injure yourself, a friend or another road user. Drag races, as fun as they may be, should be kept to race tracks.

Cash For Clunkers: Trading In An Older Car For Cash

Cars are like people, in many ways. They need to have the proper care taken of them and to be treated in a certain way if they are to keep running smoothly. The longer they are in service, the more likely they will be to develop faults. Eventually, they need to be retired before they do some harm to themselves or others.

Numerous governments are now creating schemes whereby an older car can be traded in for money against the purchase of a new one. The thinking behind this is that older cars are both less safe and worse for the environment than newer ones, and the government can save money on future environmental protection by spending a small amount of money up front to ensure cleaner air.

The benefit for the motorist who trades in their car is that they save money on a newer car which they might otherwise not have been able to afford. It is an incentive which works to reduce the amount of pollution in the air and make the roads safer. The cash paid for the older cars, too, can be recouped in scrap costs and recycling.

There is some amount of controversy over such programs, with people arguing that it is a waste of government money that could be better spent elsewhere or not spent at all. In the end, any such program is best judged by its success, and these programs have been judged successful on balance. How often they will be repeated in future will depend on the economic climate.

Trading In For A Younger Model

Some people drive the same car from the day they pass their test to the day that they decide to stop driving, or have that decision made for them. Others, and these are the larger group, will update their car on a more or less regular basis. There is a reason for this, and it is fairly simple. As cars get older, they become more prone to faults and some features may become obsolete.

There is a lot that you can to to keep your car more up to date, especially on the inside of the car. Any car in the world can accommodate a GPS satellite navigation system, although the newer models come with one already installed. Seatbelts were, once upon a time, optional in a car, but now they are compulsory with good reason.

Newer cars are, in the main, cleaner and safer to drive than the older ones. This can be balanced against the fact that a driver may feel more comfortable, more at ease and therefore a better driver in a car they have driven for many years. But many of us will trade in for a newer model simply because it is less prone to faults.

In such cases it may be a good idea to trade your old car in for a small part of the cost of the newer model. There is always something that can be salvaged from an older car, and it may even be modified to make it more up to date.

Road Safety: Kill Your Speed, Not A Person

Laws governing drivers are often controversial, as one driver may be more skilful than others and less likely to make mistakes that will cause danger to other road users. This leads to the situation where a driver will say “I don't see why I should be penalised because I'm a better driver than someone else”. To which the only reaction is: Sit down, shut up and deal with it.

This may be seen as an authoritarian response to a fair point, but the issue here is that a law must apply to everyone (within reason) in order to be in any way enforceable. If you happen to be really good at controlling a car even at high speeds, then pat yourself on the back and enjoy the adulation – but the fact is that in residential areas and other spots with high traffic, it is dangerous to drive above a certain speed.

We all like traveling at higher speeds. For one thing, it gets us where we are going in less time. But it does not take a scientist to recognise that a car traveling at 50 mph will do more damage to anything or anyone it hits than one traveling at 30. You can be as careful and as skilful as you like, but things happen in split seconds, and a line needs to be drawn somewhere.

Some countries have no speed restrictions on their motorways, highways or autobahns, and this can work well in practice, but there is a necessity to keep speeds to a reasonable level on roads that are not designed for high speeds.

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