PigBlog

Given the poor weather, with heavy snow, recently, it’s not surprising that gritting has come to many people’s attention, and, as BrownhillsBob comments on his 365 tumblr, there’s some real nastiness and misinformation.

I’ve lost count of the number of people insisting every side road is gritted, and that Walsall MBC haven’t gritted main roads, and blaming the council for their own shortcomings as drivers.

Let’s get some things straight:

* Walsall MBC do many things badly. They also so some things well; bin collections and gritting are things they do well most of the time.

* Despite the bullshit perpetrated by some, Walsall MBC’s gritters were out and about on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (18-20 Jan). I saw them around Walsall Wood on several occasions, on one occasion coming by just in time to help free a truck stuck on Walsall Wood canal bridge.

* On Sunday morning, the A461 was slightly slippery, but perfectly passable for a clumsy twat like me to drive a car I drive rarely on summer tyres without hitting anything, or even coming close. I’m no driving god (by a long shot) but the usual technique of leaving a lot of room, maintaining momentum where possible, and using the controls gently seems to work.

* Generally, you have a choice to drive or not. If you’re unable to control a vehicle in slippery conditions, well… don’t. Your 4×4 won’t beat physics, either, as won’t those winter tyres I keep banging on about (but both will help, and having winter tyres on a 4×4 will shock most people). It’s your responsibility to drive safely, within reasonable margins- so if it’s snowy or icy, you should expect slippy roads, and drive to the conditions, expecting others to slide. Alternatively, you could just make up “facts”, accuse the council of “dereliction of duty”, and complain. If it’s life or death, then it’s pretty certain you’ll have had some driver training. If your usual route isn’t gritted, choose an alternative that is.

* Grit isn’t magic. It lowers the freezing point with salt, and aids grip and breaks up ice and snow with the actual gritty bits. To do this, it needs time, and crucially, some traffic to grind it in. Additionally, it can only cope with a certain amount of snow.

* Gritting resources are finite. There are only so many staff and trucks, and a lot of roads.

I’ll gladly lay into Walsall MBC online (and I’ve done so before), but this is just silly. The gritting teams are doing a good job.

Of late, I’ve decided I need more exercise, both to counter the beer/curry/bacon consumption and to help my back out, so after replacing the front light that I managed to somehow knock clean off while ascending the now notorious Black Cock Bridge, I’ve been out in the evening on my bike- something that, excepting one visit to The Swan last year, I’ve not done since I was a teenager: what cycling I do is usually on a Sunday morning, but for the last few weeks I’ve persuaded my lazy self out for an evening spin midweek: Rushallish, Pelsall, Brownhills, usually heading out by canal and back by road.

It’s quite a different experience: for a start, you don’t generally encounter a group of lads smoking cannabis under Black Cock Bridge on a Sunday morning (the smell alerted me first), and the solitary angler appeared very suddenly in my smallish LED light on the canal towpath just past here: a bike approaches quietly and quickly , though not over Brownhills Common, where lack of familiarity with the track and limited light kept the speed down.

One thing that surprised me: most car drivers seem better at seeing and taking notice of me at night: one exception, but most give enough room and have a bit of patience: more than the Sunday daylight drivers. I’m not a terribly confident or capable road cyclist, but getting better. The key is, as Bob says, is to act like traffic: claim road space, without obstructing other traffic, but it’s noticeable that a run through Clayhanger or the Ryders Hayes estate can easily see even a fat, unfit, over-40 bloke on a hybrid bike outrun the traffic through the traffic calming…

I’m after comments on this one, and I’d like to make it clear that you don’t have to agree with me: As usual, I won’t delete comments unless they’re spam, offensive, or commercial in nature.

Speed, it seems, is the new bogeyman of the road. This is prompted by this series of tweets by @SoluhullPolice, but this has been building for a long time:

and it prompted a short debate. I replied:

Now, don’t get me wrong, excessive speed is dangerous. If you’re going too fast for the conditions, you’re way more likely to hit something, and if you do, you’re more likely to cause damage, injury, or death.

What gets me all ranty is current road safety focussing on speed almost enitrely, because:

1) Some now assume that they’re safe purely because they were doing less than the posted limit, and there becomes an expectation that the posted limit is safe for that road at all times, removing the expectation of the driver to judge road conditions.

2) No other aspects are being publicised, with the exception of drink driving.

3) The focus on speed produces cameras. I’m not a fan, mainly because of other drivers reactions to them (brake, no matter what speed you are doing), but they can have a positive effect in the right place (the A90 in Scotland has several junctions protected by well-placed cameras), and this is a solution that works and has saved lives, but re-engineering the junctions is probably better.

Now, this brings forth a quandary: you can detect a few motoring offences with automatic tech: ANPR can detect lack of tax, insurance, or MOT. A Gatso or other speed camera can detect speeding, but provided you have tax, insurance, and MOT, don’t hit anything, and don’t speed past the camera, you’re unlikely to be challenged in any way. As BrownhillsBob pointed out to me, such is the volume of cars on the road that having enough traffic plod on the road to effectively police it is hard.

Now, I do speed. I’m pretty sure most drivers do, and that most people who claim otherwise are lying. It may not be by much, but they do. Some speed limits are too low (and many are too high, like 30mph in crowded residential or shopping areas). I’ve talked about this before, of course.

I’d argue that @SolihullPolice’s bottom tweet in the pic above is the worst: It’s saying that they want to do something about people that sometimes speed. Not the ones that always do, it seems.

I’d also argue that people that speed at times are probably more aware of road conditions. Clearly those that speed always, in all conditions are potentially dangerous, especially if we accept that sometimes the posted limit must be too high- for example, in poor weather. At some point, chance or physics will happen, and they’ll run out of talent and hit something, because poor, antisocial driving and excessive speed often go hand in hand.

So: am I way off mark? I sometimes still enjoy driving, even on roads others hate. I sometimes break the speed limit, but sometimes drive well below it. I try to be reasonably competent and patient at the wheel, but hate to be held up and like to “make progress” where I can. I’ll sometimes make mistakes, but hopefully not serious ones.

Is speed as big a problem as suggested (and you may like to read this post on accident rates on a few local roads to help you consider).

Are other aspects more, less, or equally as important, and how could their standards be enforced?

Is enough done in the engineering of roads to increase passive safety?

Discuss….

Today’s drive to work was humid. Too humid for a car with climate control.

As the screen got foggier, I had to resort to old-fashioned window opening, in pouring rain, on the M5. This didn’t seem good. The aircon was on, but no lovely cold dehumidified air poured forth.

The blower fan wasn’t running, despite the controls saying it should be.

These days, nothing as low-tech as check the fuse. On goes VCDS, and sure enough:


Address 08: Auto HVAC Labels: 1K0-907-044.lbl
Part No: 1P0 907 044
Component: ClimatronicPQ35 001 0302
Shop #: WSC 00000 000 00000
VCID: E9D34898C025335016B

1 Fault Found:
01273 - Fresh Air Blower (V2)
014 - Defective


A bit of googling and an email to the friendly people at Midland VW confirms this is a common failure for Leon, Golf, A3, Altea etc and the replacement unit is an eye-watering (cue laughter from Andy) £240 or so (non-climate control ones have less electronics and weigh in at just over a ton).

OK then: out with the screwdrivers and multimeter. Getting it out is easy when you know how. This cover in the passenger footwell unscrews (3 torx T20 and 2 handscrews).

The cover in the passenger footwell.

Some time ago, I created a web page with the intention of helping out people.

You’ll find it here. It’s a guide on fixing a common problem on the 8L Audi A3, which I originally based on this post on audi-sport.net, re-using some of the photos (with the copyright holder’s permission) and expannding on it based on my own experience. Once in a while, I get a thank-you email from someone, which is nice.

You’ll notice that I released the info under a Creative Commons Licence, meaning, basically, that anyone is allowed to use the original work for any purpose, but they should credit me, and the derivative work should also be released under the the same licence.

Which meant I was a bit miffed to find this site re-using my work, uncredited. The photos are HTC’s from audi-sport.net, creditied in my original article, and mine (of my car and my lawn!), and the words are mostly mine, for the A3 part of the document (check the PDFs).

I sent the site contact an email:


Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 12:34:30 +0100
From: Chris Bartram
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120615 Thunderbird/13.0.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: info@audiclips.co.uk
Subject: A3 window Fix
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Chris Bartram


So far, no response.

So, question for the panel: what next? I originally created the document just to help people. I’m not interested in financial gain, but it annoys me that someone is re-using my work without a credit.

A warning light and:


VCDS Version: Release 11.11.2
Data version: 20120126

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Means a new or rebuilt ABS unit. This is not uncommon, but thankfully no longer costs £1500 to fix. It’s not just VAG either, so I’m guessing Teves OEM’d these MK60 modules for lots of people.

The problem here, I’m reliably informed by BrownhillsBob, is that about 40 quid’s worth of pressure sensor (if you bought the industrial version) breaks because the element tears off. Now it won’t read zero anymore. The sensor is not available seperately….

Time for that electronics in cars discussion again? A car without ABS won’t suffer this.

Now that we’re back to GMT and dark nights, one of my standard complaints comes back to the forefront: the non-use or misuse of lights on the road. Every journey sees at least one problem, ranging from the merely annoying to the very dangerous.

I’ll start with the cyclists, because there’s only one comment to make: if you wear dark clothing, no hi-viz, and have no lights on a dark evening commute when it’s pissing down you are practically invisible. If you’re lucky your rear reflector or pedal reflectors might get picked up in the headlamps. Think about this when you’re on the road surrounded by 1.5 ton metal boxes that might kill you. This means all 3 of you I (just about) saw between Aldridge & Walsall Wood on Friday.

Now the car drivers. Many, many more things here, so we’ll need a list.

1. Sidelights are for parking with. Not for driving. Cars now have electrical systems that can cope with headlights: it is not the 1950s any more. While it is legal to use sidelights on a streetlit road with a speed limit of 30mph or less, it’s stupid to do so. Idiots like you are the reason we ended up with the aptly named Dim-Dip for a while.

2. If it’s dark, misty, rainy, or visibility is otherwise impaired, how about using headlights? That oh-so popular silver colour lots of cars are blends nicely with grey, dark murky mornings otherwise. Idiots like you are why we’re saddled with DRLs on new cars, which are not to be confused with….

3. Front Foglights do not make you look cool, and they glare off wet roads when there isn’t fog. Oh, and rear ones are not neccesary in a traffic queue, or if it’s a bit wet. Both are for when visibility is less than 100m.

4. If you have a blown bulb, fix it. It’s not hard. Halfords ‘technicians’ can do it. Putting your one remaining headlamp on to main beam does not compensate.

Rant over…..

People who know me will know I’m a bit of a petrolhead. I’ve been accused of being a “boy racer“, and in fact, may appear so (in my bog-standard, automatic[ish] diesel hatchback…] given some of the things I’ll say on the subject of speed, speed limits, and speeding.

I’ll come out and say it: everyone speeds sometimes. Anyone that doesn’t is probably dawdling along with a big queue of frustration behind them.

Why? Because some speed limits are set far too low, in the name of safety, when safe does not just mean the number on a stick. Time and time again, the ‘speed kills’ mantra is trotted out, and the words will be uttered ‘but I was only doing 30′ by people who have just had an RTA.
(more…)

It has been a busy week and-a-bit: The Leon’s brakes unexpectedly started making nasty grindy noises- the back ones (I’ve never replaced a set of rear pads before), so that got a visit to the nice people at Midland VW, the Lupo’s front brakes needed a stripdown and clean after just managing an MOT pass, the Leon gained a puncture, probably thanks to the careless buliders at work, and finally, I’ve finished an annual(ish) service on the Lupo. It’s not even over then: the Leon is due a service (so back to Midland VW) and an MOT. Altogether that’s meant a few drives to work in the Lupo (that third pedal and wibbly stick thing is so quaint), a bit of spannering, and a bit of handing over money.

I’ve twattered about this, and blogged on the subject before, but really, isn’t the new Ford Focus taking it a bit far?

This bit kinda scares me. I’ve mentioned car tech several times before, and I’m a firm believer in the theory that as cars insulate the driver from the physics of it all more, the more they rely on the electronics. I do think ABS is a good thing overall- though it can actually *increase* stopping distance in some circumstances- but ESP remains for me something that may stop someone having a big off, but if they get into that situation, they need a physics lesson fast.