driving

Zip-A-De-Do-Car, Zip-A-De-Day

Recently, I wrote about the fact that I’m driving to and from Aylesbury once a week in order to study there. I passed my driving test a year and a half ago, but, of course, I don’t actually own a car. What I’ve been doing is using a car sharing company called Zipcar (technically, Streetcar, when I started, but the latter is merging into the former).

Golf "Eulalia", one of the Oxford Streetcar/Zipcar vehicles, seen here parked at Aylesbury College. — Golf “Eulalia”, one of the Oxford Streetcar/Zipcar vehicles, seen here parked at Aylesbury College.

There are two varieties of car sharing clubs. These are:

Ones like Zipcar, which are companies with a large fleet of vehicles, pre-vetting of customers, and “live”/”on-demand” booking.
Ones like WhipCar, which act as portals to allow members of the public to borrow one another’s privately-owned cars.

I haven’t had the chance to try the latter variety yet, although there are a number in my area. The important things are the things that both types have in common, and that is distinctfrom most traditional car rental companies:

They keep their fleets spread out in disparate locations, meaning that you don’t have to “go somewhere” to pick up a car.
They make heavy use of the Internet, mobile apps, and – in the case of the corporate varieties – remotely-managed engine computers and RFID technology, to give their members access to vehicles.
As a result of the above, they cater in particular to people who want to borrow a car occasionally, conveniently, but only perhaps for a few hours at a time.

The sensor on the top of the dashboard allows the car to be locked and unlocked with your RFID card (assuming that you've made a booking). — The sensor on the top of the dashboard allows the car to be locked and unlocked with your RFID card (assuming that you’ve made a booking).

For me, at least, it’s far cheaper than owning a car – I only make one journey a week, and sometimes not even that. It’s far more convenient for that journey, for me, than public transport (which would involve travelling at awkward times and a longer journey duration). If I were using my own car, I’d have to park it in Oxford city centre on Mondays in order to make my journey possible (which is as challenging as it is expensive). Paying by the half-hour makes it convenient for short hops, and the ability to book, pick up, and return the car without staff intervention means that it doesn’t matter if it’s midnight or a bank holiday or anything: if I ever need access to a car or van in a hurry, there’s almost always one available for me to just “swipe into”.

And it’s far simpler than a conventional car rental company… at least, once you’ve gone through the telephone set-up process: a three-way phone call between you, the DVLA, and the car hire company. If I want a car, I pop up the website or pull out my phone, find a nearby one that’s free when I want it, and go drive.

As you can probably see, this is the iPhone version of the app. The Android one is virtually identical.

The cars are all new and well-kept, and the pricing is reasonable: you get a daily mileage allowance (now 40 miles, which is pretty ideal for me, as my round trip journey is barely more than that), and then pay a mileage rate thereafter (if you need to fuel up, there’s a fuel card in the car). Paying by the mile, rather than the litre, has the unfortunate side-effect of failing to encourage eco-driving, but other than that it’s a sensible policy which allows you to accurately anticipate your costs.

It’s been great, so far. I’ve been doing it for a few months and I’ve only had one niggle: I was on my way to college, as usual, when Zipcar called me to let me know that the previous person booking my car was running late. I’d never had this happen before: I’d never even been lined up back-to-back with another user before; it actually seems to be quite rare. In any case, Zipcar found me another car, which I declined (it was on the wrong side of town, and by the time I’d cycled back to it and driven across to this side again, I might as well have waited). In the end, the other user was fined, and I was given a discount in excess of the “missed” time, which I spent on a tin of biscuits to share with my classmates by way of apology for turning up late and disrupting the lesson. I’ve had a few difficulties with their website, especially when they first started taking over Streetcar’s fleets, but they’ve been pretty good about fixing them promptly.

So there we go: a nod of approval for Zipcar from me. So if you’re based in London (where there’s loads of them), Brighton, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, or – soon – Maidstone, Guildford, or Edinburgh, and occasionally have need for an on-demand car, look into them. And if you sign up using this link or the shiny button below, we’ll each get £25 of free driving credit. Bonus!

Update (2022): Many years later, ZipCar would come to start mis-charging me and then repeatedly fuck up my requests for them to stop doing so and stop processing my personal information (they actually told me twice that they’d done the latter, and I needed to log into my account to produce screenshots for them with which to demonstrate that they were lying to me). As a result, I can’t give them the same level of glowing recommendation as I used to.

Update (2023): Somehow, ZipCar are still fucking-up my personally-identifiable information, despite repeatedly being told to delete it (and on several occasions promising that they would or had). I can no longer in good faith recommend them as a company. Please don’t use them.

Back To School

Next week is half-term. Why does that matter? Because I’m back in education.

Since last month, I’ve been a student again. Not full-time (I’m not falling for that one again), of course, but I currently spend my Monday evenings studying towards a Certificate in Counselling Skills at Aylesbury College.

It’s actually a qualification I’ve been looking at for several years, but it’s only recently that I’ve lived somewhere even remotely close to somewhere that it’s taught: while there’s a lot of counselling theory that can be learned by distance learning, there’s naturally a lot of hands-on counselling practice that demands a classroom or clinical setting, and for that… you really do need to be within reach of a suitable school.

Not that Aylesbury‘s exactly on my doorstep. It’s not even in the same county as me (it’s just barely over the border, in fact, into Buckinghamshire). And this can make things a little challenging: whereas many of my classmates walk or cycle in, I have a special little dance that I have to do every Monday, in order to make my study possible.

I arrive at work early, so that I can get out of the door by 4:30pm. I then leap onto my bike and pedal furiously through Oxford’s crowded afternoon streets to the East side of the city. There, I lock my bike up and hop into a borrowed car (more about that in another blog post), pick my way out between the growing pre-rush-hour traffic, sprawling 20mph zones, and deathwish cyclists, and hammer along the A418 in order to get to class for its 6pm start.

Three hours of theory and roleplay later (as well as a break to eat a packet sandwich), I’m back on the road. It annoys me more than a little that now that I’m not in a hurry, the roads are usually clear and empty, but it’s a good excuse to crank up the volume on Jack FM and enjoy the ride back through the villages of East Oxfordshire. Back in Oxford, I pick up my bike and cycle home: I’m usually back before 10:30. It’s quite a long day, really.

So what’s it all for? Well: ultimately, if I stick with it, it leads to a Certificate in Counselling, then to a Diploma in Counselling. If you take that and couple it with a stack of distance learning modules, it adds up to… well, this Foundation Degree in Counselling, perhaps.

But that’s not what you wanted to know: what you wanted to know was, “What are you doing, Dan? What’s wrong with the degree and career you’ve already got?”

Well firstly, of course, learning doesn’t have to be about qualifications. This is a field that I’ve been interested in for longer than I’ve been blogging. Plus: I’m sure that my various pieces of emotional support work, like my work with Oxford Friend, will benefit from the experience and learning that I bring to it.

But also, it’s about the idea I’ve always had that a good mid-life crisis ought to benefit from planning: it’s too important to leave to chance. And I’ve been thinking that a career switch might be a great mid-life crisis. The social sciences are fun, and while counselling might not be exactly what I’m looking for, there’s some doors opened by studying it. With less than a decade before I’m 40, and with part-time study being an ever-so-slow way to get things done, I’d better pull my finger out.

Doubtless, I’ll have more to say about my course as it progresses, but for now, I’m just glad that it’s half-term week, which means I get a week in which I don’t spend my Monday running around like a headless chicken… and I get twice as long to finish my homework.

Roadspotters

Recently, I learned that the roads in Great Britain are numbered in accordance with a scheme first imagined about ninety years ago, and, as it evolved, these road numbers were grouped into radial zones around London (except for Scotland, whose road numbering only joined the scheme later). I’d often noticed the “clusters” of similarly-numbered roads (living in Aberystwyth, you soon notice that all the A and B roads start with a 4, and I soon noticed that the very same A44 that starts in Aberystwyth seems to have followed me to my home here in Oxford).

Who’d have thought that there was such a plan to it. If you’re aware of any of the many roads which are in the “wrong” zone, you’d be forgiven for not seeing the pattern earlier, though. However, seeing all of this attempt at adding order to what was a chaotic system for the long period between the Romans leaving and the mid-20th century makes me wonder one thing: are there “roadspotters”?

There exist trainspotters, who pursue the more-than-a-little-bit-nerdy hobby of traveling around and looking at different locomotives, marking down their numbers in notepads and crossing them off in reference books. Does the same phenomena exist within road networks?

It turns out that it does; or some close approximation of it does, anyway. One gentleman, for example, writes about “recovering” road signs formerly of the A6144(M), which – until 2006 – was the UK’s only single-carriageway motorway. A site calling itself The Motorway Archive has a thoroughly-researched article on the construction history of the M74/A74(M) from Glasgow to Carlisle. Another website – and one that I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d visited on a number of previous occasions – reviews every motorway service area in Britain. And, perhaps geekiest of all, the Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts (SABRE) maintains a club, meetups, and a thoroughly-researched wiki of everything you never wanted to know about the roads of the British Isles.

From what started as a quick question about British road numbering, I find myself learning about a hobby that’s perhaps even geekier than trainspotting. Thanks, Internet.

Roadworthy

This afternoon, I passed my driving test. This was my second attempt, and I pretty much kicked arse, scoring 2 minor faults (one for undue hesitiation as I pulled out from a roadworks stop on the way up Penglais Hill, and the second for insufficient use of mirrors at some point while moving out of the roundabout near Morrisons). So there we have it: I’m legally allowed on the roads.

All of the best drivers pass on their second attempts. Or so my dad tells me. Why yes, he did pass on his second attempt: why do you ask?

I have so many other things I’m overdue to blog about, but that’ll do, for now. Time for a beer.

A Great Driver, In Theory

Took and passed my driving theory test this lunchtime. 50/50 (pass mark 44) on the multiple choice bit, and 66/75 (pass mark, again, 44) on the silly little hazard perception video, which’ll do.

Not one question about stopping distances, meaning that I’ve committed to memory that most useless of information (I mean, am I really going to spot a child running into the road and start counting the car-lengths between me and him to work out if I need to start braking yet?) for no reason whatsoever. It feels like they’re all stuck in my head, now, so I may have to knock up a quick computer quiz to ask me those “missing” questions so I can release them again.

So yeah; there we are. Suppose I ought to have a practical test sometime.

Parallel Parking For Dummies

Have a go at the parallel parking game – let’s so how good you lot are. I’ve managed to beat the rest of the folks at work with a stunning score of 87.72, parking in 5.7 seconds flat… not bad for the only non-driver!

Speed Camera Clocks Motorist At 406mph

As this article [The Sun] shows, a man was caught speeding in Cheshire this week at 406mph.

Quite impressive, I thought, as he was driving a Peugeot 406, who’s maximum speed is listed as being 129mph.

I suppose it stands to reason that we Brits, the nation who currently hold the land speed record of 766mph [CNN], would be the first people to have a speed safety camera pick one of us up at over half the speed of sound. And such a clear picture, too…

Despite the obvious mistake, a spokesperson for Cheshire Safety Camera Partnership has stated that they will still be taking legal action.

Banned From Driving For Life, Before He’d Even Passed His Test

As this news story from the BBC relates, a certain Alan Shirkey from Aberdeen was this week given a life ban on driving, as well as a £300 fine and a year’s probation.

He’d started learning to drive over a decade ago, but then stopped. Then, on the day in question – 10 years after he’d last been in a car and with only a provisional license – he drove (without L-plates or supervision, and with no insurance whatsoever) towards Perth. He stopped to fill his car up at a petrol station, and then left without paying. Realising his mistake, he began to reverse back down the dual carriageway, colliding with several cars as he went, and injuring several people. When he was arrested, he refused to give a urine sample.

And they only fined him £300?!?

Sand and seawater

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This repost was published in hindsight, on 11 March 2019.

Claire wrote:

Got up late, and spent the day on Ynyslas beach (A small town North of Aberystwyth, on the coast) with Paul, Kit, Fiona (Kit’s new girlfriend, as I’m sure he will relate in his next entry) and Dan. The water was warm, if a little shallow. We went for a swim, had a barbecue and watched the beautiful sunset. Pictures will be online soon enough. We climbed lazily back over the sand dunes to return to the car. Dan ran ahead, stopped at the crescent of a dune, and turned. “Drop your bag, take your keys, your car is underwater!” I thought he was joking.

So i wade into the now several inches deep water, just below the level of the exhaust pipe. Uncaring about getting sand in the car from my soaking shoes, I jump in and start the engine. I rev and rev, but my wheels are spinning and I’m digging myself deeper into the sand. Eventually, as the water continues to rise, some strangers come to my aid. (Dan had gone to get the others.) With about five people pushing and me panicking slightly less, the car was rescued and i drove it away from the water.
As I drove, very relieved indeed and driving cautiously in case the brakes had been damaged, a woman shouts at me. “Your lights are off!” she tells me. The least of my worries on an almost deserted beach after escaping a drowned vehicle! I flipped them on and waited for the rest of the crew.
We returned to aber, and laughed at our stupidity. Ok, my stupidity, I guess. This sort of thing only happens to me. We washed the salt water off the car and went back to the flat for beer and “Cannibal the Musical”. Hooray. A good day all round.

I’m considering giving my car bouyancy aids and an anchor.