The cars and bikes thread!

[geoffbot]

No graduated motorcycle licensing, either. Take your test on a 250cc standard, your license covers you for that 2300cc Triumph Rocket III.

Really?! Here you do your big test on a bike with at least 600cc and 47bhp I think then you can ride anything.

[tribe125]

It wasn’t always that way here. You could pass your 30-minute test on a Vespa and then ride anything.

[geoffbot]

Friend of mine bought a 2010 Streetfighter 1098 with 6600 miles(!) from a seller in CA in early April. The bike was picked up about 2 weeks ago in CA and arrived at the depot today in Harrisburg, PA. Instead of waiting for another truck to deliver it to his house later this week, we drove up and grabbed it.


[img]https://i.imgur.com/kIjT9MS.jpg[/img

That first ride home...

Both of mine on my brand new bikes with zero mile slippery af tyres were in the wet...

[Raza]

If he’d only driven autos before, would his licence cover him for manuals? It wouldn’t in Britain - if you pass your test in an auto, autos are all you’re licensed to drive.

In the US, drivers’ licenses are issued by class of vehicle, not by transmission. If you have a regular license (Class A, I think it’s called), you can drive any passenger car, Class M gets you motorcycles, Class C is commercial vehicles (usually defined by axle count or weight, I believe). Something like that.

I learned stick after getting my license, seems silly for me to have to retake a license test just because I learned a new skill.

[tribe125]

I learned stick after getting my license, seems silly for me to have to retake a license test just because I learned a new skill.

You learned it, but it looks as though others are too dangerous to be on the road. The bloke who wrapped his car into a tree could just as easily have wrapped it into people.

[Raza]

You learned it, but it looks as though others are too dangerous to be on the road. The bloke who wrapped his car into a tree could just as easily have wrapped it into people.

Car like that, the fogeys that are generally the only ones who can afford them, it’s more the power that’s going to catch them out than anything. Sure, shifting down at the wrong time can exacerbate the issue, but this could easily have happened to anyone not accustomed to controlling that kind of power.

[Samanator]

Car like that, the fogeys that are generally the only ones who can afford them, it’s more the power that’s going to catch them out than anything. Sure, shifting down at the wrong time can exacerbate the issue, but this could easily have happened to anyone not accustomed to controlling that kind of power.

Agree, plus what he claims and what the reality may be are two very different things sometimes. I having just moved from that area after 22 years there I can tell you the drivers there are well in the lower end of the grading curve. In Boca it is more just because you can afford a 600-700 hp car does not mean you can drive it. Since I seen many of these type of wrecks there over the years I seriously doubt a manual transmission had anything to do with it. Plus this was near the tail of snow bird season (people that come to Florida for the winter and leave in the spring). Hang around at the Palm Beach Speedway on open track day and after these owners try a lap or two (during open sessions)and nearly wreck (or do wreck) their new hot cars they looking for the local racers to actually take them for a real hot lap. In the years when I was single I bought myself weeks at various driving schools ( as birthday presents to myself)and enough rides to have my SCCA and IMSA license which then paid off in these cases. I got to drive some pretty amazing things. In some cases the owners do not really understand some of the multi-mode systems in these cars and are unaware that using Race mode on the street removes some or all of the nannies (and requires a different skill set to take advantage of them). Since the picture looks residential most likely as Raza said they got on the throttle too hard with possible traction control defeated and did not have the skill set to keep the car on the road. I saw some statistic a few years ago that something like 8% of the Hellcats sold are wrecked on the drive home from the dealer. I don't know if it's true, but based on some of the stories I've heard from trusted sources I could believe maybe 5%. In South Florida there are only two roads that you can really get any speed on regardless of what was portrayed in Fast and Furious 2. One is a farm road in Parkland that many people based on traffic don't know about (but the police hang out there now on weekends)and the other is Alligator Ally. Alligator Ally is 80 miles of nearly dead straight two lanes that are randomly patrolled by police. I've topped out a few bikes and cars there with spotters and radios. Fairly early on a Sunday is a low traffic time, but you need to be cautious there of various forms of wild life that can hurt the animals and really mess up a car or bike.

In the small PA town I finished grade school in we had to do a week of divers education in a vehicle with a stick. It was one week of the four weeks total of the driving portion to pass the class. In rural areas most farming equipment is generally not bought new every few years like cars. So until recently most would not have automatic transmissions. Thus far more people there that know how to drive a stick and probably still do than in metropolitan areas.

[tribe125]

Car like that, the fogeys that are generally the only ones who can afford them, it’s more the power that’s going to catch them out than anything. Sure, shifting down at the wrong time can exacerbate the issue, but this could easily have happened to anyone not accustomed to controlling that kind of power.

Perfectly true.

[mlcor]

There are those of us fogies who’ve done enough time on tracks and high speed roads to not pretzel a fast car.


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[geoffbot]

There are those of us fogies who’ve done enough time on tracks and high speed roads to not pretzel a fast car.


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Ooh mlcor likes a track does he?!