Basically just boasting

[davidn]

After the two-hour wait for the registry and the final cleanup (where I think they were understaffed - our salesman came past apologizing for the wait, with oil on his shirt and a power screwdriver in his hand), we finally got to take the car home. When we got in, more than ready to have dinner, we found that the chicken that we had in the fridge for our planned dinner had gone off... and then realized that instead of improvising something else, we could now just scoot down to the supermarket and back in about ten minutes, without it being an hour-long planned excursion while wrestling a granny-cart along with us. It was like a huge revelation - is this how normal people live? I hadn't realized the amount of flexibility that I'd been missing since living in Scotland, just in owning a vehicle - I can't wait to go around to see someone back in Brookline (for which the MBTA's site estimates about an hour and a half) and say yes, we'll be there in fifteen minutes.

I've been doing some light reading in the form of the navigation manual (150 pages) and the owner's manual (330 pages), just working out what we can do with it. I've never regularly driven a car that was put together after about 1995 before, so most of the available array of controls except the steering wheel are new to me - like central locking, cruise control and something called "RES ACCEL" that I think might fire rockets. One of my concerns about the navigation system was its ability to understand me - even other humans sometimes have difficulty with that, but on a few test routes, it didn't pick up the name of the destination any worse than I feel it would have for anyone else. We've already been arguing with it in terms of what route to actually take - on the main road rather than through a maze of residential streets - and the speed at which it recalculates the route when you stray from it is very impressive.

In general we've been just getting used to the existence of our newfound transportation - I drove Whitney to work this morning, though we don't plan to use it to replace that walk often, and for my last day at the office I rode the bus of irony one last time because I didn't really want to deal with parking, or the inner city traffic, at this point. We've already had a folding table in the back - with the back seats down flat, it's suddenly like we've rented a van. I'm sure that I'll get used to driving again, even though in America it seems that you need to be a lot more alert in general - here, everything is the Forfar Road roundabout(s).

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Man. I have basically never seriously wanted a car, until you mentioned being able to visit the store on a whim. I have to make do without soy milk until Sunday, unless I feel like scheduling time for it.. :X

I can't speak to how your navigation system is going to work, but it's worth mentioning that my parents had something similar with their standalone GPS at first -- it turns out, there was a setting, "avoid main roads", which defaults to 'on'. (I guess it was designed with cities with serious traffic problems in mind?)

When you gave that Google Maps link as an example of the worst that roads could be, for a moment I was dismissive when I saw it, at how small it all was.... but oh my gosh, how do you actually NAVIGATE something like that?? And is there seriously no simpler way that it could have been designed?

[davidn]

It really is like a whole new concept, after nearly five years - I can't believe that I didn't realize how much I missed it. But I think part of the reason that I put off getting a driving licence here for so long was because we were right next to transportation before... not very good sometimes, but it was there. Where we live now, it's at least a ten-minute walk either way just to get to the nearest bus.

Roundabouts are all over the place in the UK, and while that one really is just a very normal roundabout with another roundabout at the end, it still made me a little nervous every time I approached it. That was just the highlight of my route from my parents' house to university - they can, however, get much worse.

(As you mention it, roads are significantly wider here... it throws my positioning off.)

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

The Roundabout Of Doom (Dundee) is no longer there. It's been replaced by a series of junctions with traffic lights. Nobody mourns its passing.

[davidn]

Oh, good. After seeing American roads - which are not limited to the ground and can sweep over and under each other in multiple layers - I've become less convinced of the necessity of the existence of roundabouts, although the four-way "just watch out" junctions here still make me nervous.

Is Aberdeen's Haudagain still there? They were talking about replacing that before I even started at university...

[shoe--gal.livejournal.com]

That's funny, because I think after driving (well, being a passenger!) in the US, I'm now *more* convinced that roundabouts are a good thing. I dislike the stop/start driving that we get here, where you're always having to stop at a 4-way stop or a traffic light, and in some of those instances a roundabout would help keep traffic flowing better, saving fuel too.

Congrats on getting the car though, I'm very jealous! We don't have one here and just rent occasionally and I really miss the flexibility of just being able to get up and go where I want.

[davidn]

Ah, yes, within the towns they make more sense - peppered on the roads between major cities, not as much! The crossroads here still make me nervous, particularly if I don't have a STOP sign... I feel that Britain had a better distinction between who had right of way and who didn't, and I'm always convinced that if I carry on going someone's going to zoom across the junction and get me anyway.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what the Haudagain is, so I couldn't tell you for sure, but the only part of the road system around Aberdeen that I've noticed a change in is some of the roundabouts between Westhill and the city.

[davidn]

It's an infamous roundabout with too many lanes for its own good - looking at it from the top down now, I'm not sure how you ever get out of the middle once you're in there, if anybody else is using it at the same time.

It'll probably never really be replaced - it's too much of an undesired landmark by now.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I'm not really familiar with that one. I haven't driven in Aberdeen myself, and my parents use a different approach trajectory for the city centre, so I couldn't tell you.

[davidn]

Your question has been answered - news has just come in that it's now a set of traffic lights!

[ms-noone.livejournal.com]

I think you've made the right choice going for the Honda! Regarding the whole choice of manual/automatic transmission thing, myself and shoe__gal had both a manual and an automatic car in the UK, and I would drive both. I wouldn't bother buying a manual transmission car these days, as driving the automatic is so much easier, especially in the stop sign obsessed, and traffic lights on quiet side roads that really don't need them obsessed, US towns and cities. Plus, some automatics these days are electronically controlled rather than full belt systems, so basically they are manual transmission gearboxes but the clutch and gear changes are controlled by little computer operated electronic switches (is this the case with your Honda Fit? It might be given the flappy paddle gear changes). The result is that they are (slightly) more fuel efficient that both the full manual, and the traditional automatic...with the caveat that that is what the manufactures claim.

And on the navigation...my (very least) favourite is the Hertz Neverlost system, or Alwayslost as we call it. Have you ever had the pleasure of trying this? When you put in your destination it then highlight a route, but puts the starting point a few blocks aways from your current position, and announces "Proceed to the highlighted route". Of course, by the time you work out how to get to the highlighted route, it recalculates the route just before you get there, and gives you a new highlighted route. The Hertz Alwayslost system - with inbuilt inability to actually calculate your cars location until you arrive at the predetermined point where it thinks you should be.

[davidn]

And thank you for your part in helping us decide - you and a couple of others recommended the Fit above all else on that list that I put up last week :)

I'm not sure how the gears change, mechanically - though I'm looking forward to obsessing over what fuel consumption I get... it's all been town driving since we got it, and the only thing I'd change is how long it stays in a low gear when starting from a standstill (which will be avoidable in the paddle-only mode).

I've never used a navigation system before this one, so I can't say, but I've been impressed with it so far! I took it to have Bluetooth fitted this morning, and on the rental car I got in exchange, it was really strange suddenly not having a map just there.