My photo
Auckland, New Zealand
Smurf sized geeky person with a penchant for IT, gaming, music and books. Half of industrial duo 'the craze jones'. Loves data, learning new things, teaching new things and being enthusiastic.

Monday 31 January 2011

Volvo YCC

Did you know, that in 2005 Volvo created a car for women, that was designed by women. What I want to know is, how they managed to find a group of women even more sexist against women drivers than most men are?

The car has:
  • No bonnet or any access to the car's internal workings (women don't need to look at all that scary stuff)
  • An engine that automatically sends a message to the garage when it needs help (because we stupid, stupid women ignore those pretty lights on the dash board)
  • Run flat tyres so you can get to a man to help you fix it (because we wouldn't want to break a nail changing a tyre now would we?)
  • No water filler cap (because women don't like filler caps - something to do with nails again I think) - mind you, I quite like this feature as they put the water filler hole next to the gas filler hole - which is just asking for trouble now isn't it.
  • Gull wing doors (okay, this is cool)
  • Keyless, motorised doors so that when you have your hands full of shopping (sigh!) the car will open for you
  • The interior was maximised for storage space (plenty of room for your make up and hair straighteners)
  • Head rests with pony tail indentations :-|
  • The hand brake and gear stick were removed from the centre console to create more storage space
  • And all the inside panels could be easily removed if you fancied a change of colour scheme on the inside
I'm assuming they only interviewed women dolled up in 3 inches of make up, wearing fake nails, and carrying lots of shopping whilst wearing heels and sporting immaculately straightened hair.

Though I do admit, it does look quite pretty.


Thursday 13 January 2011

It’s drastic, but I bet it would work.

If you tend to only read the local news, you may have missed the news that rhino poachers in South Africa are now being shot dead   This seems to be rather drastic but I bet it helps lower the poaching incidents and I think that this approach would work for recidivist drink drivers. 

Here’s my plan (I’ll put it in place when I’m queen of the World):
  • 1.     You’re caught drink driving.  Naughty, naughty.  You get a fine, a slap on the wrist, a GPS tracker and blood alcohol measuring chip implanted deep in your body where you can’t cut them out yourself.
  • 2.     You don’t learn and/or think the rules don’t apply to you, so you go out for a few beers and drive home, maybe killing a few innocent people and lamp posts en route.
  • 3.     Implanted trackers send signals to police that you are travelling at greater than 5km an hour (avg. walking speed) and your blood alcohol level is above zero.
  • 4.     A chopper, complete with sniper, is launched.
  • 5.     Chopper locates you by your GPS signal and sees that you are driving a vehicle (car, motorcycle, invalid carriage, push bike – all deadly in the hands of a moronic drink driver).
  • 6.     Sniper shoots you dead.
  • 7.     No more drink driving problem.
This is a fair system.  You have one get out death free card with your first drink driving offence, plus the inserted chips should give you a massive hint, even through a drink driving, low IQ fuddled brain, that you are being monitored.  If you then choose to drink drive after your first offence and warning, then you only have yourself to blame when the sniper shoots you.   Bet you anything you like that this would work to reduce the number of drink drivers on our roads.