Young Motorists

Published June 17, 2007

My son is now in his sixteenth year. At age fourteen he obtained his moped license (over my personal objections) because at that time the law allowed the minimum age of entry at fourteen. That law was put in place when Spain was a much different place and the pace of life was much slower and gentler. The law has recognised the danger in allowing people onto the roads at such an early age, so the minimum age is now sixteen.

I pointed out to my son that riding a moped outside of urban areas, (outside of town) carries an especially dangerous risk. Because the moped is engineered to travel at no more than 45 kph riders find themselves riding along the extreme righthand edge of the road. Consequently, impatient vehicle drivers tend to ignore them and push right past often resulting in the moped rider being pushed right off the road.

In some areas moped riders are allowed to use Autovias as there does not exist any other reasonable road for them. The autovia allows for cars and motorcycles to travel at speeds up to 120 kph. So, the moped rider must use the breakdown lane to stay out of the way of speeding cars and trucks. But what happens when the cycle rider wants to go straight on but has to cross an exit or an acceleration lane for vehicles entering the autovia? The potential here is unacceptably high that the cyclist may well be killed by some impatient imbecile, of whom there are far too many on our roads.

When I realised that my son would get his license anyway I at least looked around for a school that would give proper training to him to build the twin skills of bike handling and coping with other road users. There is the world - class racing track at Cheste near us where we thought that such instruction might be available, but no, it simply does not exist.

I did convince my son to wait until he turned sixteen so that he would be able to ride a motorcycle with an engine of 125 cc. A moped of 49cc is insufficiently powered to get its riders out of trouble. It can only get him into trouble by being so slow moving. At least, with 125 cc the rider can get up to the maximum speed of 120 kph, and therefore he can occupy his place in the lane. Here, he now needs to be visible to car drivers, therefore he should follow the example of the police and wear a lime-green reflective jacket, by day as well as by night. Of course, with the additional power the rider can get himself into trouble by riding too fast. But that is something he can control, and what’s more, only he can do so.

It is my intention to train my son thoroughly in defensive riding. He will have the benefit of more than 50 years of my experience. I have been trained to high-priority standards so that when he begins his riding experience he will be well prepared for almost any eventuality. All very well for my son, but what about your son or daughter? I hope the following tips will be of help:
- Does your bike have a side stand that you have to swing down to park. If it does, what happens when you want to ride off? Do you have to remember to flip the stand up again, because if you do, the first (and probably only) time that you forget you will almost surely be killed, or at least suffer severe harm. What would happen if you set off with the stand in the down position, is when you lean to the left the stand will dig into the ground and throw you off like a bucking horse. Other traffic will probably finish you off.

Recommendation: Unless the side stand automatically swings into the up position when you take the weight off it, have it removed as it is a death trap. Please note that some motorcycles have a failsafe mechanism fitted so that if you try to set off with the side stand in the down position, when you put the bike into gear the engine will cut out.

- As part of the visibility factor your bike’s headlight should remain on by day and by night. However, you cannot rely on this to make you as fully visible because if you are coming towards a car driver from out of a background where there are lots of lights, your one little light blends in and could be a street light to the driver. Again, this is where a reflective vest would increase your chances of not being hit by a car that wants to turn left across your path. The sight of a lime-green vest means “human being present”. The situation of your visibility at night is worse from the rear because you only have one tiny little red light to indicate your presence, and even that could be mistaken for a roadside marker. Wear the vest. “Be Seen to be Safe.”
- When applying the brakes on your bike it is very important to apply both the rear brakes and the front brakes together. This gives your bike stability when stopping, but of course, too much pressure of the front brakes and you go flying. Unfortunately, most cycles don’t have their own version of ABS, (anti-lock Braking System), which is a shame.
- When riding with a passenger there seems to be a universal need to show off to give your passenger the thrill of speed while threading between cars. If you really want to impress your passenger, get him or her home safely. That will impress them for all time.
- Wear appropriate bike attire, starting with a good helmet. Also, a good leather jacket, worn both summer and winter acts as a second skin so that if you do go down the leather will save you ugly and painful road rash. Remember that asphalt contains ground glass. Girls, I love to see you ride by wearing the skimpiest of clothes, but I would rather forego that pleasure to know that you are properly protected. Some say that they don’t want to mess up their hair by wearing a helmet. Well, reflect on this: if you get taken to hospital with head injuries your hair gets shaved off!

“Be Seen to Be Safe!” Ride carefully and responsibly. You are too vulnerable otherwise.

Copyright (c) 2007 Eugene Carmichael

What A Crying Shame!

Published Sunday, june 10th, 2007
As reported by newspaper, The Sun’s headline read, “ 3 killed at 125mph”. They were reporting on the tragedy of three young people, 30 years and under who lost their lives in one blinding flash while being conveyed in a top of the line BMW M3 convertible at apparently such a horrendous speed that upon impact with a palm tree the car actually exploded. This occurred at the La Zenia roundabout along the N-332 on the Costa Orihuela, Alicante Provence.

As this is an opinion column I feel compelled to weigh in with my two cents worth. But, this is not going to be a judgemental piece about young people out partying because their families have quite enough to deal with already without someone, such as myself, who didn’t even know any of the three or their families making critical comments. After all, I’m not so old that I don’t remember that I was young once. However, I am reminded that one only gets to be my age if you have a whole lot of luck and a very active guardian angel.

Rather than getting bogged down with the obvious, I would like to give you my impression of how I felt on hearing this news: Firstly, I became aware of what had happened through the Spanish nightly news, which included some rather graphic footage of the crash scene. I could not take in what I was seeing. Later, the Costa Levante News produced the print version of the story, which I have read and re-read many times. The first time I read it completely through, and subsequently I have analysed selected parts and dwelt on them.

One sentence stated “The impact was so great that the car’s engine was hurled 200 YARDS from the wreckage.”

If The Sun and The Costa Levante have their measurements correct, we can make a comparison with the following to get a better idea of just how far the engine was thrown. The width of an American College football field is 160 yards, and the length is 360 yards.

The regulation soccer field length is 130 yards, and the width is 100 yards.

This means that the emergency services would have passed the engine on the way to the scene. If it was in plain sight they would likely have exclaimed, “ What’s that?”

Another sentence stated that the car “ smashed into a palm tree at 125 mph and exploded into pieces.” Using a converter I found on the internet to convert mph to km/h we see that 125 mph is 201.16 km/h. I then proceeded to find something to measure that with, so I looked up the current land speed record held by a road going car, which led me to the strangest discovery. It seems that a young man named Mike Newman, in an effort to raise awareness of the problems of blindness, (as well as raising funds) set the record on October 11th, 2005 at Evington Aerodrome, near York, England, in a BMW M5, by travelling at 178.5 mph, while blindfolded. His previous record was 144. mph, and that is only 19 mph more than 125 mph. If indeed that car was travelling at 125mph, that will surely be the record for the N-332.

Incidentally, I also have a new found respect for palm trees.

I have long held an opinion that a manufacturer who makes a road-going car that can greatly exceed the maximum speed limit is not acting responsibly. In Germany there is no limit on the autobahn, but elsewhere in the civilized world the maximum is 120 km/h. So, why do we have cars in Spain that can top 200 km/h? It is not an isolated case that someone drove a car at such a speed. I have written before of very rich people who have been seen driving along the motorway at top speed in their top-of-the line sports cars. They seem to have been completely oblivious to the fact that they would very quickly catch up with unsuspecting traffic ahead.

Most loss of life on the roads doesn’t involve such dramatically high speed, but death is death. This incident comes on top of so many others we might be tempted to say that we have become numb. That is not the way I feel. Each tragedy weighs upon my psyche. Because my wife and I are parents of a teenaged son I always think of what must it have been like for the parents to have received the initial news, and how do they cope on a day-to-day basis. I think of my own mortality and wonder if it might all end in a flash for me. Most of us think and assume that it will not, but why not? Yes, we can control our own behaviour, but we cannot control the behaviour of others.

Former American President, Bill Clinton was famous for saying that he felt the pain of those who suffered around him. I feel the pain of the three families and their friends. Their loss did not have to be, and that must surely make it worse. It’s one thing to have a family member involved in a high-risk endeavour and to lose them through that, such as was the case of the space shuttle Columbia that disintegrated upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. The three families concerned simply lost their loved ones to a fun night out.

Finally, a police spokesman made the understatement for the year as he said, “it’s a miracle nobody else was injured as there was wreckage all over the road. The car exploded on impact.” That particular roundabout is usually very busy with people even waiting at the impact site for the bus. The fact that it happened at 6am saved many other peoples’ lives.

So, to Emily Scourfield, 24; Jonathan Grafton, 27; and Brian Hill, 30, Rest In Peace.



. Copyright (c) 2007 Eugene Carmichael

MG Car Club BCV8 Championship

Published June 3, 2007

I have stumbled upon a select group of men and women who are having entirely too much fun, and almost in secret. They are MG enthusiasts who have formed themselves into an eclectic club to enjoy themselves by indulging their classic cars in racing competitions.

Of course, I am utterly fascinated by Formula One racing. I am always awed by the presence of that much money, but I just can’t get my head around such an elite class, being as it is so far removed from my own reality. I drive a Volvo and have a mortgage, for goodness sake!

But the MG is another matter. It is a thing of my past, something that I grew up with in my midst. I never actually owned one myself, but a very good friend did and I have fond memories of cruising with the top down. On one such (rare) sunny day we drove out to a small airfield just north of London to where June had her Aeronca two-seater plane located. She had invited me to lunch at a French restaurant, but she didn’t tell me that it would be in Paris. But, I digress.

Of course, the Holland MG competitions take place mainly in Holland, but also in Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg. England has the largest MG centres, and the greatest concentration of MG owners and members with thousands racing on the great circuits at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Mallory Park, and Silverstone, to name but a few. Included among the notables are Rown Atkinson, (Mr. Bean) who races his Aston Martin.

Races might include in the line-up any or all of the following: MGA, MGB, MGB GT, MGB GT V8, or the odd MGC. Most of the cars entered into competition were manufactured many years ago, some going back to the sixties, so, in every sense of the word these are classics that are lovingly restored and maintained. So the one thing you will likely not see much of is the NASCAR-type pile-ups that make for so much excitement. These will be gentlemen racers who want to win, but who try not to get too chummy on the track

Jan de Jonge is from Holland, and he competes in both Holland and England. Driver’s Seat caught up with Jan at his family’s home in Valencia to seek a first-hand view of this sport from a driver’s / owner’s viewpoint.

“ Racing of this type is non-professional, but is done by serious hobbyists. I have two cars, an MGA Coupe that I use for European competitions, and an MGB GTV8 that I use for racing in England.

“Speaking now about the competitions held in England, there are different classes as follows: A-class is standard; B-class are those roadsters that have been modified for racing; C-class are specifically designed for racing with V8, 3.9 litre controlled engines; and the class in which I race, D-class, that use Rover engines of a maximum 4.0 litres that are highly tuned. I have had my engine at 7,200 rpm producing 324 bhp.

“I have been racing since 1981 and I usually finish in the top three places. I have had my share of first-place finishes, but my pride and joy is having finished in the 1999 season, second overall. That involved a lot of hard work and a great deal of good luck to finish in that position after fourteen races. Weekends are taken up with practice on Saturdays and races on Sundays. A full race programme will consist of about nine races during the afternoon, usually by make of car, involving about 30-35 cars at the start of each race. So you get the MGs, the Porsches, the Ferraris, etc. in their individual team races. Very occasionally we get to race in a mixed card where all the different classes and marques compete, but this is just for fun.

“I consider Brands Hatch my home track, but it does involve moving by road my car with trailer from my home in Holland, which is just about my greatest recurring expense. Otherwise, the car is so well made that generally, maintenance is minimal and do-able between my colleague and myself.

Some quick FAQs:

- Top speed attained by Jan on the track in Holland was 260 km/h.
- C and D-class racers use slick-type (without grooves) tyres that need to be carefully assessed after four races. Where money is no object these would be changed at a cost of about 2,000 euros a set. However, with reasonably careful handling, these can be made to last the season. Jan uses eleven-inch surface tyres. Classes A and B are not allowed to use this type, instead they are restricted to commercially normal tyres.
- Attention to detail is important. Tyre inflation could be the difference between winning and second place. To do this even the temperature of the track must be measured. A hotter surface and you need to add air. A cooler track and you need to reduce air pressure. Getting it right is all down to skill and judgement.
- Safety standards are very high, and include a padded cockpit; a roll-cage; special six-point safety belt; and sophisticated fire control system to particularly protect the driver.

“I did crash once while racing at Croft, Scotland. At the time I was driving a C-class when a fellow driver and I got ourselves entangled and I went to the wall. That resulted in the write-off of the car, although much was salvageable, but that’s an experience I would not like to repeat, ever. As testimony to the safety of the car I walked away uninjured, but a little sore.

“Racing is an activity that demands your absolute concentration. There are so many things to be aware of all at once that your every nerve is engaged and your adrenaline is pumping at maximum level. With experience, and knowledge of your car much of what you are engaged in seems like second nature, but all it would take is a lapse of concentration for just a nano-second and things could go horribly wrong. Much like driving in Valencia, you might say.

“My sport, racing the MGB GTV8 is second to none, however, even professional commentators seem to believe that names like Ferrari and Porsche are ahead of us in prestige, when in many cases our cars are actually faster. We will just have to continue to do what we do best. In the meanwhile, we do have fun!

Driver’s Seat wishes Jan all the best in his endeavours!

Copyright (c) 2007 Eugene Carmichael

A Formula One Racing Primer

Published: May 27th, 2007

If Formula One racing is to take place in Valencia for the 2008 season, far more Valencianos will be affected than by the America’s Cup, which is, after all out on the water. Racing in the streets of Valencia will be hard to ignore as it will be in our faces, and it will be loud. It will also be very exciting and that means that many of you who live in the South of Spain will no doubt make the trip for the event. So, unless you are already an aficianado, perhaps it would be a good thing for the rest of us if we all got to know a little about this new event that will galvanize our city, if it happens.

I visited the Wikipedia Encyclopedia on-line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One to gather some facts and figures for us to use as background.

Formula One racing is quite simply the highest form of racing of this kind. The “Formula” is a set of rules that are applied to this class of race. Formula One rules are not quite the same as the rules for Formula Three. As a driver you are at the top of your sport if you are in the starting line-up of the 22 cars in a Formula One race.

Formula One Racing, usually abbreviated as F1, and also known as Grand Prix racing, is said to be the most expensive sport of all. However, when considering the mega-money spent by the America’s Cup teams that seems difficult to believe. We can say for sure that F1 is among the top five in the costliest sports. Budgets are a closely kept secret, but estimates put the figures at between $60 million to $400 million per team for a season’s racing. Such astronomical cost of the competition has caused 28 teams to withdraw since 1990.

F1 racing is regulated by the Federation Internationale de’ Automobile (FIA), which has its headquarters at Place de la Concorde, Paris. The famous face that is most familiar in association with F1 is that of Bernie Ecclstone.

The formalization of the sport began in 1946 with the standardization of rules under the FIA, and interest in the emerging genre grew slowly but steadily throughout the 50,s, 60s, and 70,s. From 1981 the sport came into its own with an explosion of interest, drawing unto itself a multitude of participants and would-be investors.

There soon came about a separation of the boys from the men due to rapidly rising costs. Cars that were built privately were soon outclassed by those built by established motor manufacturers to the extent that today, virtually all racing cars are built by name factories in their special divisions.

As part of the shake-out there are four giants that dominate the sport. They are Teams McLaren, Williams, Renault, and of course Ferrari, who have survived from the start. Since 1984 the world championships have been won by one of these four exclusively. However, for the 2006 season there were eleven teams competing.

During the early 2000 years public interest fell off due to the predictability of the outcome. Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari was unbeatable. During his 15 year racing career, Schumacher won a total of 91 Grand Prix titles. In the 2004 season, he won 13 of the 18 races. Overall, he won a total of seven World Championships, and was undisputed Champion for 1,800 successive days.

Racing is for two titles: The Driver’s Championship, and The Constructor’s Championship. Schumacher won seven Driver’s, and Ferrari has won fourteen Constructor’s championships. Fernando Alonso ended Schumacher’s reign by winning the 2005 Championship and that led to the retirement of one of the greatest drivers who has left an imposing record to beat.

A race covers 305 kilometres and can last not longer than two hours, but usually is over within ninety minutes. Only the first eight finishers of the twenty-two starters receive points on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. First place gains 10 points, second place 8, and third place 6, and so on. These points count toward the end of season result. Rules are somewhat complex, but broadly speaking a participant is allowed two stops for change of tyres and two for fuel during a race.

Currently, engines are standardised at 2.4 litres and V8 cylinder configuration producing 740 bhp and 20,000 rpm. (revolutions per minute). Attainable speeds of 350 km/h have been reached on track, but Honda, in an off-track experiment adhering to FIA rules reached 415 km/h. The fuel that is used is similar to that which is commercially available, although it smells more like aviation fuel.

Also, just so you know, what seems like a fireball from the rear of the car is not from the exhaust, but is in fact a light that is evidence that the traction control is working to keep the car from fishtailing.

Another particularly interesting factoid is that normally, an F1 course runs clockwise, but the course at Cheste runs counter-clockwise. This means that extreme stress will be placed upon drivers by the high G-forces present when they are cornering in mostly left-hand bends, and those G-forces will pull driver’s heads in the opposite direction than normal.

The primary consideration of the FIA in their rule book is that of safety. There were two deaths of drivers while behind the wheel in 1994, but since then there have not been any further such incidents, although two track marshals somehow got themselves killed.

During February there was F1 practising at the track in Cheste. I visited there in the company of a Dutch racing car driver, Jan de Jonge and his family, as they were interested to see how the Dutch team Spyker were getting along. You will immediately recognize the Spyker car as it is a brilliant Orange colour. Jan proved to be a valuable guide, and in a subsequent column we will be talking with him about racing as seen “From the Driver’s Seat.”

Always practice caution when driving. Remember, Care will get you There!

Copyright (c) 2007 Eugene Carmichael