6 posts tagged “safety”

One interesting development in Christchurch was the disappearance of the drug addicts who used to populate Latimer Park. It’s actually safe walking through here. I don’t know if these folks have been helped back on their feet, or have simply been moved elsewhere due to police patrols. Props to Christchurch for this positive development—or let’s hope it’s positive!

Although my most recent flight was Air New Zealand, when flying the Virgin affiliate out this way, Pacific Blue, you get to see some cool things. You are not sheltered with those poncy air bridges that the wimps use. It’s down the stairs and out on the tarmac—where I spotted this sign:

   If you run out of aprons at the airport, you need to activate the alarm. Very important. They take cooking really seriously there, even if airline food sucks.
   Or does it? Air New Zealand has heralded the return of the vegetarian chips! These were last served domestically on Qantas flights in 2003 and when I told that to the crew today, I was given three bags! Go Air New Zealand! (Yes, I was bribed with three bags of chips.)
   The distracting thing was that the safety announcements are now done in the nude on this airline. Before you get excited, it’s a video, the crew members are wearing body paint, and there is nothing revealing. The issue is you are getting the same sort of laugh you would with those gags in, say, the Austin Powers movies, where you wonder how they are going to cover various body parts up. It ties in to a campaign they are running: And in fact, you can see this for yourself (the blonde stewardess served us today, clothed): I warned her that if they ever heard the acronym NIFOC from the cockpit, then they might not want to go in. I said it stood for Naked In Front of the Cockpit, which isn’t exactly true—I learned the expression from a nudist I knew many years ago (the C stands for computer).
   But the point is I paid no attention to what they said, which defeats the purpose of the safety video.
   Finally, here’s a curiosity which I think should go on to Font Police: No, it’s not the use of “dumb quotes” that has me concerned, but why is it in quotes anyway? It’s like Christchurch Airport doesn’t mean it, and that they are merely quoting something someone else has said. Disappointingly, it is in Frutiger, which means instant anonymity as far as airports are concerned. Of airport signage, this is actually stranger than the apron emergency.

Since the road works at the end of my street earlier this year, making it look more like a driveway than a proper road, there are now more motorists who treat it as a driveway, parking with inches hanging out into the intersection. Here’s an example:

   Happening with increasing frequency, sadly.
   The street is hard enough to get out of because of the unsafe camber and visibility—these cars make visibility even worse.
   I hope we’ll get it fixed soon as at least four of the fourteen families on the street have expressed their unhappiness and a few of us have contacted the Council. The others have phoned; I have written an email, as readers of this blog have seen.

This news item has been rather popular: ‘More than 1 in 100 American adults is in prison, report finds’. A Pew Center study shows that 1 in 99·1 adults in the US is incarcerated.
   My father pointed out that for every 100 (well, 99·1) adult people we might see Stateside, one is a crim, on the basis that there would be some released into society while others are going in. The statistic, I know, doesn’t quite hold up because we do not know the rate, at least not for the conversational topic. But for every 98·1 it would be fair to know that there is one person in jail.
   We then extrapolated this a little. For every one conviction, there might be a crim who walked free, right? The fuzz didn’t nab him or her? So, we get the possibility that of the 100, there actually might be someone who should be a crim but got away.
   Statistics like this sure make the US sound like an unsafe place.
   I then thought about our own stats. I don’t think we can be smug given that I said one is eight times more likely to be murdered in New Zealand compared with 50 years ago—and that’s accounting for the increase in population.
   A Parliamentary debate reveals that we had 8,457 in September. SPARC reckons that from the 2001 Census, there were 2,728,896 adults in New Zealand. (I couldn’t find more recent figures.) It may be safe to round that up slightly for 2008 and say there are an even 2·8 million.
   That works out to be 0·302 per cent, or 3 in 1,000 adults in New Zealand is incarcerated.
   It is argued in Parliament that 3 in 1,000 is high by our standards, as 8,457 is a figure that we apparently did not expect to reach till 2011.
   I know we cannot compare apples to apples: what is an ‘adult’? What programmes does one country have in place which sees to a lower or higher number? What is classified as ‘incarceration’? There are plenty of holes in this very quick analysis that even an amateur statistician can shoot down.
   In any case, I will be a little more careful when I visit the US later this year as this basic math indicates I am three times more likely to meet a crim on their streets than I am here.

It’s no secret that I hate the Daewoo Tosca (a.k.a. Chevrolet Epica or Holden Epica): a car that may be less safe relative to the competition and utterly outclassed even by a second-hand 2002 Japanese or European car. It has replaced the Australian-market Toyota Avalon in that part of my brain, and comes close to the Ssangyong Rodent Odious (Rodius for short; called Stavic in countries where they can work out the original two words).
  It seems the Irish press, as with the New Zealand Automobile Association, agrees with me, as I read this at RTÉ about the six-cylinder model:

Compared to the new Mondeo, Epica is years behind in the handling stakes. Chevrolet is quick to stress that Epica is targeted at a different buyer. Fans of the old V6 Nissan Maxima are in the sights of the multinational brand—I must rush and dust off the cardigan!
   Prices kick off at €26,995, which is way more than the entry level Ford Mondeo, which is a better car! …
   So is Epica, which was born out of the ashes of the incredibly dull Daewoo Leganza, worth the cash? 
   Eh... no.

   An Australian mechanic writes, saying caveat emptor:

Speaking from a mechanics point of view, nothing that came out of the Daewoo factory before 2005 looked like it would stand the test of time. I am not qualified to offer an opinion on post-2005 cars as I haven’t picked up a spanner in two years due to a back injury and shut-up shop in early 2006. Some of the common problems that we saw were timing belt failure due to a plastic tensioner pulley, twice in 30,000km on one vehicle and Holden refused a warranty claim as the car was older than three years but had travelled only 68,000km when the second belt failed. On both occasions the repairs were done at a Holden dealership yet they wouldn’t honour their repair guarantee. Admitting a design fault was out of the question I guess!
   Horribly soft brake rotors was another issue we encountered. It was not unusual for the rotors to need machining at every service due to being out of round causing pedal and steering wheel vibrations. Holden’s answer to this one—the car must have been driven through water when the discs were hot. More than likely this was the case, so what are you supposed to do? Not drive the car if there is any water on the road?! Disc rotors are not made as well as they used to be, but this is just ridiculous!

   I may be in the market for a Vectra D or a new Laguna, or even the new Mondeo. I now won’t automatically consider renting from Avis in case I get landed with a Tosca, despite being one of its Platinum customers. I just won’t jeopardize my life in a car that might not score better than three stars at NCAP (we don’t know yet, but its immediate predecessors were relatively unsafe cars). It is probably the dullest car on Earth, too, and I might be tempted to smash it to (a) get a thrill or (b) improve its looks.

On my main blog, I have talked about the Holden Epica (née Daewoo Tosca). This is probably, uniformly, the worst mid-sized car on the market in New Zealand. I also happen to think it’s the ugliest.
   Last year, Holden began selling the new Barina. What it neglected to tell you was that the new model scored two stars in various safety tests. The model it replaced scored four.
   The new model is actually the Daewoo Kalos, which was withdrawn from the New Zealand market about three years ago for being, well, crap.
   Now, we have the Tosca. The Tosca is actually derived from the old Daewoo Leganza of the mid-1990s. In fact, the platform is older than the Vectra C’s, the car the Tosca replaces in New Zealand.
   The Leganza, too, was not the safest car in its day. The Australian testers, who gave it two and a half stars, noted, ‘The Leganza did not perform well in the offset crash test (0.9pts out of 16). The passenger compartment was substantially deformed. The driver's contact with the airbag was unstable. The passenger hit the dash, with a moderate risk of life threatening head injury. Protection from serious leg injury was poor for the driver.’
   To be fair, the Tosca, or Epica, is a lot safer than the old Leganza. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t junk.
   Many of the driving impressions that Australian journalists have done indicate that this car is the bottom of the heap. If you must buy a Korean-built car, go over to Hyundai or Kia. Both the Hyundai Sonata and the Kia Magentis fared better in at least one test.
   If you are buying a Holden Vectra—a superior car to the Epica—ask the dealer when the car left the factory. I have nothing to base this on other than an educated opinion, but I believe the New Zealand-market 2007 Vectras left the factory some time in 2005. There should be a way for a buyer to check the chassis and production numbers. My belief is no Vectras have left the German factory with the 2003-model grille for some time.
   I have been on Holden’s back about these cars for over a year, because I think Kiwis are getting a raw deal. Meanwhile, Ford, Toyota and Hyundai will be bracing themselves for extra buyers.