Interesting Facts

26th March 1812 - An earthquake destroyed Caracas, Venezuela. 1827 - German composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna. 1934 - The driving test was introduced in the United Kingdom. 1973 - The London Stock Exchange allowed women on to the trading floor for the first time in the institution's 200 year history. 1979 - President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel ended 30 years of fighting with a handshake, after the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.  Mr. Begin said, "No more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement, peace unto you, shalom, saalam, forever."  ("Shalom" and "salaam" are the Hebrew and Arabic words for "peace.") 1995 - The Schengen Treaty went into effect, creating a borderless zone between many European countries.  (But not the UK - never the UK. Pull up the drawbridge!)

Police forces across the UK will no longer be applying a margin of error for people driving over the speed limit. (For many years British motorists have relied on police allowing a ‘small margin for error’ when the speed dial creeps over the limit. Traditionally, this has been set at 10% plus 2mph of the posted speed limit, so in a 50mph zone, that would be 5mph plus an extra 2mph before the police would have issued a ticket or fine. However, new technology is so accurate that police chiefs are giving the order to crack down on anyone driving over the speed limit, in order to stem the rising number of deaths and serious injuries on British roads. In Scotland, the police force has announced it is abandoning the previous discretionary allowance and will issue any driver exceeding the speed limit by even 1mph with a warning.)

According to a new study conducted at Loughborough University, drivers who are dehydrated can be as dangerous as those who are drunk or on drugs. (The study showed that drivers who drank only 25 ml of water an hour made more than twice the number of mistakes as drivers who had drunk enough water. Professor Maughan, who published the findings, said, “We all deplore drink driving, but we don't usually think about the effects of other things that affect our driving skills, and one of those is not drinking and dehydration. There is no question that driving while incapable through drink or drugs increases the risk of accidents, but our findings highlight an unrecognised danger and suggest that drivers should be encouraged to make sure they are properly hydrated.” I can see it now:- Policeman: "Sir, you are 3 times over the legal limit." Driver: "At least I'm not dehydrated, officer.")

According to researchers at the University of Derby, smartphones are psychologically addictive, and should come with a health warning. (47% of respondents spoke positively of improved social relations, but almost a quarter admitted their smartphones create communication issues in “real life”, and the constant use of smartphones to check your online status on social networks etc, is thought to encourage narcissistic tendencies: 35% of the people studied admitted to using their devices in areas or situations when they were banned (eg while driving).  Their justification was that they knew better than the authorities who created the rules. I guess that's also why some people still drink and drive.  Maybe the two aren't that dissimilar.) Source Post by The Learn English Network .

The minimum driving age in Australia varies between States and Territories. (It is 18 years in Victoria, 16 years and 6 months in the Northern Territory and 17 years in all the other states. I want to know what happens if a 16 year old drives from the Northern Territory to Victoria.)

According to the South African government's Road Traffic Management Corporation, South Africa has one of the world’s highest road fatality rates in the world. (The risk of dying in a car accident in South Africa is 28 people per 100,000, compared to just 3.1 in the UK. Even worse is that almost half of RTAs (road traffic accidents) involve young pedestrians, with three children under the age of 15 dying on the roads every day.)

According to a survey conducted by the AA, 63% of British drivers have used a map in the past six months. (About a third (35%) of drivers in the UK said they use both sat navs, and an atlas as a back-up to plan a route - with just one in six (17%) relying solely on their sat nav. Unsurprisingly, younger drivers, aged 18 to 24, prefer to use just a sat nav. Of course, a sat nav is still a map, really.)

According to a report by traffic information firm Inrix, the average driver in the UK spends 30 hours stuck in traffic jams, every year. (That rises to almost 82 hours in London, which is the second most congested major city in Europe after Brussels. I'm so grateful that I don't have to commute any more, just get up and roll downstairs every morning. There's never a traffic jam, but I sometimes have to fight my way past Laika to turn the computer on.)

The British government has announced that all UK driving licence records will be put online. (The project, called My Licence, is due to be launched by the DVLA in March.  It will allow access to drivers' information through the gov.uk website using an individual's licence number, national insurance number and postcode. I guess that this is the only way they could go as their bid for id cards failed. The good news is that the paper counterpart to the driving licence card will be phased out by 2015.)

According to research into adolescent health, published in the Lancet, our brains are not fully developed until the age of 24. (In the UK, young people can legally smoke and have sex at 16, drive at 17, drink alcohol, vote and are deemed adults at 18, but the brain is ill-equipped before the age of 24 to deal with the effects of all the drinking they do and less able to assess risk. I wish I had known this when I was a bit younger. I'd have had a good excuse for all the crazy things I did: "Hey, give me a break, my brain isn't fully developed yet.")

There are 191 drivers in the UK aged 100 and over. (The oldest is a 107-year-old woman. In Britain, you need to have an eye test just before your 70th birthday, but after turning 70, all you have to do is declare whether or not you are fit to drive, the self-declaration has to be filled in every 3 years, but it is not backed up by any formal medical or driving tests. Some people are calling for a change in the law.  Recently an 84 year old woman died recently after colliding with several cars and then crashing into the central reservation whilst driving the wrong way on the A1 in Northumberland. I'd happily see the old git in a Merc who drove into the side of our camper van in Portugal taken off the road (it is only a little bump, but he didn't even apologise even though we let him go without fussing), but that said, last year the Daily Mail reported on Arthur Whitaker, who at 100 years old had spent 85 years behind the wheel, and clocked up a staggering 2.5 million ...

According to Kevin Delaney, head of road safety at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, human beings are not genetically programmed to go backwards, so reversing in general is really quite difficult when you're learning to drive. (This statement was prompted by the internet video doing the rounds of a woman trying to parallel park (see below). Mr Delaney said, "There are some people who will not parallel park - they would sooner drive the extra half mile to use the supermarket car park." What about you?)

In Bahrain, South Africa and Cyprus, drivers are banned from smoking in cars if children are aboard. (In the UK it's against the law to smoke at work, but you can do what you want to your children's, still growing, lungs.)

To pass your driving test in the UK, you must be able to read (with glasses or contact lenses, if necessary) a car number plate made after 1 September 2001 from 20 metres. (In addition, you must also meet the minimum eyesight standard for driving by having a visual acuity of at least decimal 0.5 (6/12) measured on the Snellen scale (with glasses or contact lenses, if necessary) using both eyes together or, if you have sight in one eye only, in that eye.  But as I mentioned earlier, you don't have to have a regular eye test, which accounts for all the old codgers, driving at 10mph craning over the steering wheel.)

There is no law in the UK that says drivers have to have their eyes tested.

According to research carried out by road safety charity Brake, 1 in 3 visually-impaired drivers make two journeys each week without their glasses or contact lenses. (The excuses given include:- 'I forgot to put glasses on/contacts in' 'I was only planning to drive a short distance' 'It was too sunny so I swapped my glasses for sunglasses' 'My eyes felt dry/tired so I took my lenses out' 'I have broken my glasses and can't afford to replace them' UK law states that, if you need to wear glasses or contact lenses to meet the ‘standards of vision for driving’ you must wear them every time you drive.)

According to research from road safety charity Brake, one in five Brits have not had an eye test in the past two years.

Between 2008 and 2009, 921,840 drivers across Britain admitted crashing because they were distracted by a member of the opposite sex. (According to aA study carried out by Insurance company Direct Line, found 60% of men admitted to being distracted by attractive women whilst driving, and interestingly us ladies aren't completely innocent either; 12% of women said they took their eyes off the road to have an ogle at good looking men.) Time for a song I think:-

According to insurance website Confused.com, over 66% of British motorists are confused by basic road signs. (Even more worrying if you are driving on Britain's roads, 1 in 3 admitted that the signs are so confusing that they just follow whatever the car in front does, 50% said they ignored confusing road signs, and ... it gets worse ... 1 in 20 said they never noticed road signs! Along with the basic signs, there are some great road signs on their website, that to be honest would confuse most people.  )

On average it takes 16 seconds for men to manoeuvre into a parking space, compared with 21 seconds for women. (Scientists from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, found men were better at driving both head-on into the space and reversing into it.  However, the biggest difference was in parallel parking, where men were found to be five per cent better in their handling and positioning of the vehicle. Okay men - you win! (Just in time for the self parking car.)) Source If you need proof - http://youtu.be/bQnP-2ewBpQ