The problem isn't physically holding a phone while driving. The problem is that people talking on the phone while driving are nearly oblivious to what is happening around them. It's the act of concentrating on the phone conversation that is the problem, not physically holding a phone.

Unfortunately....

The old days - car holds together forever, but motor falls apart.

Today - motor runs forever, but the cars fall apart.

I have 23 years experience in driving, much longer experience in driving than many of you posting have in life in general.

I was driving long before I was engaged in racing games.

Here are my thoughts.

Does racing games affect someone with 23 years of driving experience? No

Now for you young ones, who don't have driving experience, I give you this story.....

I was on temporary layoff at work for a short time, about a month. It was the result of a General Motors union strike. GM union strikes, GM shuts down and quits making cars, the company I work for quits shipping out parts for those GM cars, we are laid off.

During that layoff time, I was newly married with no kids, thus my wife was in the workforce as well. We were fine, I patiently awaited the call to come back to work after the GM strike while my wife continued working. I was the house husband, cooked, cleaned, did the laundry. Doesn't take very much time to do all that, so, I also did a lot of sim racing. Most of my day was made up of sim racing. I had nothing else to do and I didn't go anywhere, thus didn't drive for about a month.

As some time wore on, I jumped into the car to run to the store. FAST! I drove REALLY fast! Didn't even realize it. I hadn't been driving much other than really fast on racing sims, and we all know how emmersive that can get when you have a full wheel/pedal setup. Did playing racing games affect my driving at a time that I wasn't driving very often at all? A definite yes to that.

So to you younguns out there, my opinion is, yes, it does affect you if you do not have experience in driving.

As for your poll, I could select 12 out of the 20, including the "passed test on 1 attempt" and "greater than 5 years driving", but will say, all of the 10 detrimental selections I can make on that list came years before there was any racing games on a computer like we have now and all were the result of just being a stupid teenager who recently got his driver's license, just like many of you who are present on this forum.

Last edited by mrodgers, Sat, 5 Feb 2011 00:24.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Yes, because of where I live I got feet of snow, not millimetres. And it rendered the 4Runner useless. Partly because the tyres on it are all seasons and partly because it has open diffs.

So, you're an idiot too? Because Shotglass could climb that no problem in a car with summer tires!

Whoop, sorry, re-read Shotglass' post, you're just stupid, not an idiot....

Quote from Shotglass :

id be willing to bet that i could get up that drive in any hatchback on summer tyres
gravel tends to never give you sheet ice so you always have plenty of traction unless youre stupid

Damn, all I had to do is call you yesterday and you could have just driven my car out of my driveway instead of me chipping away at the ice for 4 hours? You ever see what continuously packed down snow turns to after a couple of months of constant snowfall? My driveway is level, about as level as can be, then it rained and turned everything soft, and there my car sat in 8 inches of semisoft ice not moving forwards and not moving backwards after it sunk down in.

It is getting to be that I need to put my feet up on the desk every time I read this forum because the shit really gets deep around here.

Yes, for the record, my driveway is gravel, and I'm more interested in that gravel staying in my driveway rather than being chucked through my neighbor's window with the snowblower, thus I have to leave an inch or 2 of snow every time I clear it. Get 8 or so good snowstorms and you're talking 8 inches of ice packed down total.

You select folks really need to quit talking out your ass as if you are such superior intelligence over everyone else in the world. You all get 2 cm of snow and can't cope in one thread, then talk how superior you are and how you could drive in snow measured in feet over here. Come on over and show how great you are then.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

1837.80 CDN for a 2001 Jetta 1.8L Turbo. That's also my first car so I only start out with 5% discount.

$900/year full coverage, 03 VW Jetta 1.8turbo and 06 Mazda Tribute S 4WD V6

Some day you'll be of age

It actually is cheaper to fully cover my turbocharged Jetta than it was to have liability only on my Civic.

I could be interested. I haven't loaded up NR2003 forever, and it's about the best and only sim my computer is able to run.

I've heard of off-line leagues way back in the days of dialup where you ran your race against the AI, then submitted the results and the replay file and the league race was tallied from that data. That was more back in the ICR2 and earlier NR days though since NR2002-2003 had multiplayer.

Quote from flymike91 :

just watched the first two episodes, i thought it was really good. I can't compare it to the UK version because i have never seen it andddd no one else in the US has either so it might as well be a whole new show (to us) and therefore incomparable. I don't know if i'd like the UK version, simply because I can't understand what they're saying on law and order: UK so i don't imagine teenage cockney is any more decipherable.

UK Skins was on BBC America. It didn't last long, just a few episodes, so I'm surprised they bothered with this.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Because of course, who wants to gain knowledge and understanding when you could be sat at home, eating Pizza, playing computer games instead.

Sounds good to me about work today. Just about to load up the xBox to play against my daughter, who is also not going to school today.

Pizza sounds like a fine meal for tonight.

I wasn't interested in going the other 18 miles to work after it took me 20 minutes to go 2 miles.

Quote from morpha :

And bumpers ARE primarily designed to hit people. The stuff behind them (strengthening beams, deflector beams, etc.) is for collisions with more rigid objects (other cars, walls, trees, ...)

Beings that I work in the R&D department of one of the leading plastics manufacturer in the world and we produce "bumpers" for 80% of the automotive manufacturers for the North American market, I'll let you know that you are completely wrong here.

They are primarily designed to obtain minimal damage to the vehicle in collisions of 3 mph or less. I would hazard a guess that much is the same in the European market as well.

I'd be using an xBox controller, so I don't care about the driving physics.

I don't know if I'll ever go online with the xBox. It's not mine and I'm not sure how long I'll have it. If I would go online, I'd get the game, but I have priorities over paying for online and buying a game right now.

Quote from spankmeyer :

And the women dress super sexy too.

Please, there are young children who frequent these forums. Let's keep the XXX rated photography for other forums....

Quote from Hotdogxx60 :

Call me old school, but this is the most reliable phone I have. You cant talk face to face with anyone under 30 without an SMS going off or some hip hop ring tone interupting the conversation.

Same here. Not only can you not talk to people face to face, but those who call me over here can't actually talk to me because I have no idea what they are saying with all the breakup on cell phones.

Don't know what it's like over there, but here, cell phone service is far from usable, though everyone thinks it is fine because they all have gotten rid of their home phones and use only cell phones.

I thought I was the only one left in the world who can talk on the phone without the other caller saying, "What?" every other thing said. Apparently, the two of us could talk to each other.

Quote from Bob Smith :

I like to hold my poos in until I'm at work. Then I can be paid to shit and not have no pay to replace the toilet roll either.

Never work on company time and never shit on your own!

Great life philosophy to follow.

Quote from e2mustang :

ye but we have cops here with radars like every mile on major roads like I 95 and 287,78 etc. so instead of getting a picture of ur plate and driver,u just get pulled right over and head to qourt a month later.

This past summer I drove from Pittsburgh to Orlando and home, then 2 months later from Pittsburgh to Ocean City, MD and home. 3000 miles total driven through 8 states in 2 trips. I saw a grand total of...... 2 cops during both of those trips combined.

Man, they are everywhere I tell you.

Quote from flymike91 :

speed cameras sound like the work of the lowest, most despicable filthmonkey in existence, I'm so glad they haven't caught on here. Don't we pay cops billions per year in pensions and salaries to have the decency to catch us in person?

935 speed cameras in the database in the US....

14 in Florida, though none listed for Daytona Beach....

Quote from e2mustang :

ye sure @ 19. when i was 19 i worked 16 hours a day 6 days a week,and baerly could afford a 97 civic

And when I was 19, I was working part time for $3.35/hour, going to school, and had more money than I could dream of having now with a wife, 2 kids, house, cars, utilities, food, medical, etc. Oh, and a 97 Civic hadn't even been on the drawing board yet....

This is hilarious. Last year, you all were about the "we never have snow" excuse, and this year you are all experts about driving in the snow. Very comical.

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

I know that a good camera is not really cheap, but I don't think I should spend a whole lot for something when I don't even know if I like it.?

If you really don't want to spend the money before you know if it's something to get into, then you can just spend a bit of money on one of the superzoom cameras for $200 (whatever equiv. over there.)

They have full manual controls and you learn the same thing. They seem to all do f/2.8 these days as well, which would be a big benefit to me seeing that mine is about 3 years old now and only goes to f/3.5.

The superzoom cameras are a great way to spend very little money just to see if you like it. You will definitely outgrow it very quickly though. I just don't have the cashflow to throw at a dSLR, so I don't take many photos anymore because the camera no longer does what I'm capable of and want. But it did allow me to learn a ton using a camera in manual. You can search back through my posts to see what my little f/3.5 $200 camera is capable with a little bit of photography knowledge behind it.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

And on another note: stop eating fast food every day. Cook your meals with fresh ingredients.
Just don't repeat my mistakes and make it too tasty, or else you will still gain weight.

I was at my healthiest (weight wise) when I was eating two Burger King $0.99 Whoppers every day for both lunch and dinner.

Quote from -NightFly- :

does any of you actually eats real food?

I now eat free-range no antibiotics and no hormone added chicken, many organic foods, most vegetables from the garden, and rotationally grazed, grass fed beef that my children has personally seen born, named each one, has petted and feed everytime they go to visit the grandparents. While everyone else at work is ordering in greasy fried food for lunch, I'm eating the leftovers of the food mentioned.

Last edited by mrodgers, Mon, 13 Dec 2010 01:43.

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

If only petrol was as cheap as it is in the USA. Having a 540i wouldn't be an issue.

If cars were as cheap here as they are over there, everyone could be driving BMWs over here and not having to worry about gas prices rising.

I just think they couldn't have picked 3 worse people to host it.

A pretty boy rich kid, really bad comedian, and some dork that I think comes from some pretty lame car mechanics shows on the weekends. I can't stand any of them.

I guess the dork isn't who I thought he was upon looking on wikipedia. He just looks and sounds like all the other dorks now on the Saturday car shows.

Holy cow, upon more reading on wikipedia, Tanner is really 37? He's a year younger than me? He looks and sounds like he is just barely out of high school. I guess at 37, he isn't exactly the pretty boy rich kid, just looks like he is.

First snow this morning (first that means anything, about 3 inches) and the news this morning was talking 1-1.5 feet over the next couple of days where I live.

Quote from PMD9409 :

I hate this topic.

Thankfully I'm trying to plan a vacation for the end of Decemberish, I might be able to see snow this year!

When I was in your neck of the woods in June, I sure wasn't liking that 103 F temperatures, but they sure would have been nice here today when I was up on the roof pushing snow around trying to find the leak in my roof.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Yes, and I've considered getting mine chipped to change the ECU map... but it's a touch too expensive

Expensive relative to what you are capable or want to pay perhaps (and me as well) but quite cheap relative to modifying a car for more power. $500 each would get us both equal vehicles at I think 215 hp (or is it 230?)