Driving is Fun

I've driven in a few countries around the world and, without a doubt, the best was Germany. The courteous, sensible driving at very high speeds was an absolute joy. The BMW I had rented made it to almost 220km/h on a slightly downhill stretch of autobahn. Many US and Australian freeways are built to standards that would allow much higher, or no, speed limits, but it doesn't happen. The revenue from speeding fines is too attractive to our politicians for this to change, so they continue to build high-tech ways to milk taxes from anyone who exceeds an arbitrarily low speed limit, while totally failing to police laws involving common sense, such as ones prohibiting dawdling in the fast lane.

Driving in the USA is usually more pleasant than in Australia. In most of the USA, either the speed limits are higher, or drivers uniformly drive at 20-30km/h above the limit.

While driving is fun, cars are not indestructable, particularly when you T-bone little old ladies' cars at roundabouts. It's even worse when the little old lady is uninsured and on a pension so that there is no hope of successfully suing her. My first car, born Dec 1971, died 25 May 1986.

My second car ended up looking similar to that photo of the first. On Fri 6 Jun, 1997, an idiot in a Commodore ran a red light and ploughed into the front of it while I was making a right turn with a green turn arrow my way.

My current car More recently, I bought a Mitsubshi Starion, a great car for its era.