Mark Carroll's Journal

Many American states have the notion of secondary traffic offenses: the police may not pull one over for committing them but if stopped for some primary reason, like speeding, then secondary charges may follow. It depends on the state but secondary offenses are acts such as using a cellphone or not wearing a seatbelt.

I find the concept bizarre. I don't know if the theory is that being pulled over constitutes some kind of seizure under the Fourth Amendment or if the legislature really did not want to pass, say, a seatbelt law so making it difficult to enforce was the only way to get enough votes at all, or what. I am curious to know what the thinking really is and the degree to which it makes sense. I am not aware of an analog in English or Scottish road traffic law.

On returning to driving in the UK I have noticed an unofficial pattern of behavior that is new to me. A persistent issue for drivers of large trucks is that overtaking car drivers pull back in too close to them so they do not have much clear road to stop in if necessary. So, when I have passed some distance ahead, the truck flashes its lights, then I move back into their lane, then with both my turn signals I give a quick thank-you flash, learned from observing others. It is a simple but pleasing exchange.

In driving around Cardiff we stumbled upon an excellent small diner, Luvly Grub. Their fare may be basic but the staff are nice and the menu offers a good range of freshly made food in decent portions and at low prices. I wish there were more eateries like this.

In navigating South Wales I have enjoyed hearing mst3kmoxie's English-voiced Google Maps app butcher Welsh place names so badly that even my American-voiced maps lady does a better job but I might have hoped that some metadata with the names would have caused alternative pronunciation rules to be applied; now I wonder how it copes with Spanish place names in the US.

In conversation the question was raised of why no banknotes are issued by a Welsh bank and I imagined that the Welsh think that quite a fair question. Perhaps it is simply that they have been less resistant to annexation.

Despite recent Spring-like weather it was below freezing when I left the house this morning; I let the car warm up for a few minutes blowing air to clear its windows. The frost may have surprised the daffodils at least as much as it surprised me.

In Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency mention is made of the possibility of a car with heated side mirrors. To me such a thing seems achievable and desirable for days when those mirrors are obscured by frost: it would save on spraying deicer.

I try to be quite accepting as a driver: part of how I comfortably drove to Cornwall and back was by leaving plenty of time and by not being especially ambitious or expectant about making progress so I could just relax and go with whatever luck or not came my way.

I did experience irritation on my way home today when I slowed behind a bicyclist because I could not judge that I could yet pass safely and the driver behind me clearly thought differently as they honked their horn. Eventually we went our separate ways and rejoined as I passed the side street they had taken as they waited behind a couple of other cars to turn onto the road that I was on: I had taken the longer but faster route. I did take some satisfaction in seeing how fruitless their impatience had been.

I mostly do not like living at higher latitudes. On weekdays I am never at home in the daylight and summer is little recompense because it is then daylight at times I don't care, like when I am asleep. Agreeably it is now far enough from the winter solstice that I am getting to enjoy some daylight on my normal commute. At least having the sunlight back helps me to remember to appreciate it. I just have to also remember next time I move home or job to arrange not to live west of my workplace.

Being back in Cornwall at present it is interesting to be reminded of small details that I had forgotten: for example, at lunch in a restaurant today I was asked Where's your table to? in contrast to the Where's your table at? which fits what I sometimes heard after moving to Ohio.

I realized that driving down yesterday I spanned the extent of the British motorway network from its northeast to its southwest tip: from the A90 I entered westward at one end of the M90 near Perth and exited the end of the M5 at Exeter westward onto the A30. My radio listening included Alice Levine's show on BBC Radio 1. I also enjoyed Vanessa Paradis' Live album: I like Dis-lui toi que je t'aime and she does sound sweetly enthusiastic in covering Les Cactus.

By the mild standards of our current home it is actually rather cold this morning: 23°F. I let the car warm up for a while but probably ought to have tried deicing the side mirrors; I wonder how fancy a car one need buy before it comes with small mirror heaters built in. The prediction is for the day to warm up so my drive home should see rather more usual weather, though also for my drive south tomorrow to include rain. It is nice to see the frost and the fog: I find much winter weather agreeably pretty.

The UK's fastest roads are motorways. Before one passes one's driving test the provisional learner's permit allows driving everywhere but on motorways. The government is considering lifting this restriction.

This seems fine to me but Transport Minister Andrew Jones says that the current ban from motorways is often fatal which piques my curiosity: I wonder, how often? Are we talking, say, a couple of people per week being killed by learners not being allowed onto motorways?

The Scottish Government suggests lower speeds for new drivers which sounds like a bad idea to me: I suspect that the lane changes or overtaking by the traffic moving around the slower cars may cause more problems than are avoided. It was for this reason that in driving on interstates in PA and NY I would exceed 55mph speed limits when the prevailing speed of traffic seemed nearer 70mph: below 55mph I felt like a hazardous obstruction. Focusing effort instead upon strictly enforcing existing limits might be a better move. They also suggest preventing nighttime driving which also seems odd to me because at night the roads are often much quieter.

This fuss about motorways came as something as a surprise to me. It is not as if there is any shortage of divided highways, or dual carriageways, which often also have a 70mph limit for cars: the main differences from motorways that come to my mind are that motorways allow neither slow vehicles nor U-turns. Oh, and the signs are blue. They may be busier on average but that is open to enormous variation by time and place.

When I was learning to drive I would take the A30 to get to the town that had the test center; that segment was partially 70mph dual carriageway and I think is now wholly so. Here we would use a 70mph segment of the A90 to get to either of the local test centers. I am all for learners using dual carriageways and I would hope that driving tests typically include some time on a fast one. I had no idea that people would consider motorways to be an excitingly scary step up from them yet, presumably in the context of this change to learning to drive, a transportation policy guy says how many are so intimidated by the motorway environment; I wonder if those people are even comfortable on dual carriageways.

I have some items to sell, mostly for collection only. I don't really know their value and am not desperate to eke out every dime from each so I am content to auction them; I do at least want there to be an element of competition to ensure that the sale isn't badly mispriced. Having bought on eBay with PayPal for many years without any trouble, they were my first thought. I am using reasonable browsers like Firefox and Chromium but, partly in attempting to adjust my various (all identical) mailing addresses with them (for setting item location), I discover that some parts of their web interface are actually alarmingly buggy and barely usable. I am loath to entrust auction management to such a poor-quality site. While I may complain about Amazon, their site at least typically works properly from a technical point of view.

Looking around, I find eBid, and their website seems at first blush to possibly be quite usable. Their fees are lower but I'm not very sensitive to that. However, without paying a goodly amount I am obligated to accept PPPay payments, and goodness their site is rubbish too. The final straw was it repeatedly not accepting the lower-limit credit card I use for online merchants combined with small details like the way it then flips my billing address' country to Austria for a retry. I am thus loath to trust their technology also.

One has limited choice of online auction sites because the top few take the lion's share of views. This sales effort does seem to be turning into one of those that should be far easier than actually is and I find myself having decreasing tolerance for needless hassle. I am already almost minded to post the items to Gumtree with a sliding scale of dates and declining prices such that the right amount of cash at the right moment secures the item, no haggling. I'll hold off for a while and see what other ideas present themselves.

It seems that life is full of such hassle. (First-world problems, I know.) For example, just this evening I inflated a car tire with a compressor that replaced one that just made a loud noise while letting all the air out. I had my usual garage try to fix the tire's slow leak but they just changed the valve to no useful effect. I told them it hadn't worked and to try again and they replaced the valve again and expressed surprise upon learning that it was the same wheel, not that I'd made any secret of the fact; they then suggested that it now looked to be holding air. I later e-mailed them to ask if it is worth my bringing the car in a third time and never heard back. There's a Halford's Autocentre within a short walk of work, perhaps they will suffice, but then I'd thought something similar about eBid.