Turn Indicators

Laverdalothar said:
I wouldn't drive in England at all, they are all on the wrong side of the road... :eek:


;):ROFLMAO:
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Nah, it's the rest of the world that drive on the wrong (right-hand) side.
We also drive on the correct (left) side in Australia.

Countries that drive on the right can blame Napoleon Bonaparte for their affliction. He is believed to have established the right side practice simply to thumb his nose at the mainly English aristocratic convention of walking or riding on the left, ostensibly so a traveller on foot or horseback could wield a weapon in the right hand to defend himself against an on-coming threat. I presume homo-sapiens have been predominantly right-handed since they evolved hands. Bonehead Bonaparte took the right side of the road convention to his conquered territories and it spread to subsequent French colonies around the world.

I dunno what excuse the yanks have.

To me it's a little reminiscent of the choice between VHS vs Betamax video recording technologies in the 1970/80s. Beta's technology was generally acknowledged as superior to VHS, but VHS became dominant because of better marketing. I was pissed off for a number of years because I bought an expensive Sony SL-C7 Betamax when they first hit the market in the 1970's rather than a cheap and crappy VHS machine. It seemed an obvious choice based on Beta's better technical specs. If I'd been a marketing guru rather than an engineer, I might have seen the writing on the wall.
 
Cam,

VHS was a success because JVC licensed their patent to other companies, which Sony apparently didn't.
I too had a Betamax VCR, multi system, and it was far superior in video / audio quality to VHS and Video 2000.

Left hand driving or right hand driving is like shifting on the right or left, you either get it or not.

Gerald
 
I had Sony SL-C9s, bought my first back in 1982. Retail price was £690 then, about £2,500 in today's money.
Fortunately, I didn't pay retail.
They were far superior to contemporary VHS offerings and are still in demand, today.
Sold my last two in September '25.

SL-C9.jpg
 
My late brother was a sound engineer and used the Sony system for high quality sound recording as it used the entire width of the tape (correct me if I'm wrong). I could certainly hear the difference when he used them to record our band live.
 
Dellortoman said:
Nah, it's the rest of the world that drive on the wrong (right-hand) side.
We also drive on the correct (left) side in Australia.

Countries that drive on the right can blame Napoleon Bonaparte for their affliction. He is believed to have established the right side practice simply to thumb his nose at the mainly English aristocratic convention of walking or riding on the left, ostensibly so a traveller on foot or horseback could wield a weapon in the right hand to defend himself against an on-coming threat. I presume homo-sapiens have been predominantly right-handed since they evolved hands. Bonehead Bonaparte took the right side of the road convention to his conquered territories and it spread to subsequent French colonies around the world.

I dunno what excuse the yanks have.

To me it's a little reminiscent of the choice between VHS vs Betamax video recording technologies in the 1970/80s. Beta's technology was generally acknowledged as superior to VHS, but VHS became dominant because of better marketing. I was pissed off for a number of years because I bought an expensive Sony SL-C7 Betamax when they first hit the market in the 1970's rather than a cheap and crappy VHS machine. It seemed an obvious choice based on Beta's better technical specs. If I'd been a marketing guru rather than an engineer, I might have seen the writing on the wall.
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Well - just to refuse something because it comes from the french doesn't mean you are right to be left, it just means you are left (almost) alone... :unsure: :ROFLMAO:

sometimes, the french might have had a better alternative...:


"Honi soit qui mal y pense".


;):cool:
 
Garry said:
When I get on my motorbike, I always remember the words of my instructor (again 47 years ago🫣): "When you get on your motorbike, someone somewhere gets in their car to run you off the road." That one car has now become 10 or more, but keep your wits about you and anticipate the behaviour of others on the road.
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I completed, yet failed (twice) a motorbike cop defensive riding coarse I was invited to be a part.

On the practical test I failed because the test track had a T intersection where I had to turn left. The track from my right was “one way” and signed NO RIGHT TURN, so you couldn’t legally turn right into it, left being the only option

I was failed because I didn’t indicate left 🙄, which I argued the point ….. mainly that if anyone behind me saw no indication left, and the track to my right was marked ‘NO RIGHT TURN’ then clearly I was heading left.

Secondly, if anyone was at the Stop sign was waiting for me, I had right of way no matter my turning direction.

Thirdly, the person on my right couldn’t see my left indicators until l was around the corner anyway.

Suddenly there were about 11 cops and the instructor and I arguing the correct action.

I won the argument in all three cases and the instructor was pissed off at me and I was called a smartarse. 🙄

Then he didn’t like the way I jumped over a log, the aim was to jump it with the front wheel, I did the front and rear wheels at the same time….. smartarse again 🙄

On the last practical test I was failed again, and the cops all said why this time? “Because his helmet strap wasn’t tight enough” 🙄 and all the cops jeered the instructor for being petty and picking on me

That night, my cop car and rally instructor …. and housemate, who offered my free coarse due to a drop out was fuming…. his boss was my instructor 😬
 
The Practical ride test for L plates back in 1973 required you to angle park at the curb, move off to the left, go down the road, do a U-turn, keep your feet up, come back, and angle park. I heard people got failed for using the WROUNG blinker when moving out of the angled parking spot. I passed and cannot remember what I did, but arguably, I still don't know what's correct 53 years later. I guess you're turning left, but people coming down towards you won't see a left blinker, so maybe a right blinker. Hazard lights were not a thing back then. A couple of ex-racer stories, heaps of people back then never got their full license, they just kept extending the L plates. There was some loophole they liked, but I forgot that detail. It might have been that they only got fined and no points, not sure. It bit them in the arse years later when coming back to riding and having to go through the whole license thing at 40, a mate, an ex MX racer, who decided to come trail riding did that. He used his 250 2-stroke Husky Enduro Bike for the test ride. I remember Casey Stoner had won 250 GP races before being old enough to ride bikes on the road also did the L and P plate bike tests.
 
Vince said:
The Practical ride test for L plates back in 1973 required you to angle park at the curb, move off to the left, go down the road, do a U-turn, keep your feet up, come back, and angle park. I heard people got failed for using the WROUNG blinker when moving out of the angled parking spot. I passed and cannot remember what I did, but arguably, I still don't know what's correct 53 years later. I guess you're turning left, but people coming down towards you won't see a left blinker, so maybe a right blinker. Hazard lights were not a thing back then. A couple of ex-racer stories, heaps of people back then never got their full license, they just kept extending the L plates. There was some loophole they liked, but I forgot that detail. It might have been that they only got fined and no points, not sure. It bit them in the arse years later when coming back to riding and having to go through the whole license thing at 40, a mate, an ex MX racer, who decided to come trail riding did that. He used his 250 2-stroke Husky Enduro Bike for the test ride. I remember Casey Stoner had won 250 GP races before being old enough to ride bikes on the road also did the L and P plate bike tests.
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L plates I proudly held for 6 years, my L plate consisted of the black L with a 1mm yellow surround around the L.

You could be caught doing anything wrong ….. 100mph through town, wheelies outside the courthouse, burnouts on the street outside the pizza shop, carrying a pillion …. anything … and all you got was a monetary fine. Onto a Probationary license and you could loose you license in a flash!

Went into P’s and sold my bike until fully licensed 😉
 
Vince, I went to Sydney when I was 16 and 9 months to get my Ls in 1973. It was just a written test and an aye test. No riding involved. My old man cracked it when he saw I was riding a year earlier than legal in Vic - I had to garage the DT2 and wait till I was 17 and 9 months. I ended up going from Melbourne to Darwin on Vic Ls (never fitted them) in 1974 and getting my licence up there - no Ps. And it was a figure 8 feet up in the car park and down the street, a U turn and back. Job done. I guess he saw the Vic plate and assumed i could sorta ride already, being about 6,000km from home. It was a little less nanny and a lot more canny back then.
 
Vince, I was working in NSW (Lake Cargellico) and got my car listence at 17.

The cop jumped into my Mini Cooper, said I am the police when I told him to put on his seatbelt otherwise we’d get a fine, he told me to do a reverse park in the Main Street, hopped out and went into the pub, hopped back in and said, let’s go back to the office and I’ll write out your license… nursing his six pack of KB beer.
 
Someone I knew bought a brand new CB500 Honda 4 just as they arrived on the market; he had an inheritance. Wrote it off riding home from the bike shop. I don't think he had ever ridden anything before buying it. I got my bike Ls immediately when I was old enough. I couldnt ride a manual gearbox bike as I had only ridden Minibikes before that. I taught myself to ride around the local streets with the inevadble lose of skin. And then on weekends, out to the areas where there were some dirt tracks. Narrabeen Lagoon, Red Hill and Terry Hills Brick Pits, they are now either National Parks or Muilt Million Dollar Houses.
 
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Did the same, rode almost around Australia on L plates. Dropped into a cop shop in outback Qld to renew it by getting one for that state and saw the cop looking strangely at me as I rode off. Found out not much later that you had to have a licensed rider with you in Qld, when I asked the local cop if I could book in for a licence test, luckily he let me do it the same day after he got back from the pub. Things are different and far more serious today.
 
I think I mucked it up, maybe the full bike license was down the road, do a U-turn feet up and come back without crashing and not the L test. It was 50-odd years back. I remember my Dad telling me he got his Car Licase some time in the early 1950s and drove by himself to the Cop Shop to do it. The only time he ever confessed to a crime to me. The Traffic Sargent asked him how he got himself and the Car there and laughed when told. He had never ridden a Motobike in his life till I bought my 76 Bonnie. He went around the local Car park on it, and I had to struggle to get it back.
 
It was awful weather when I went for my motorcycle licence in 1968. Strong wind and torrential rain. When I got into the city on the way to the test place, my shitty old hard as wood, ribbed front tyre lost grip on a white painted road marking and I came off the bike. I turned up at the licence office with a smashed headlight and an indicator dangling by its wire. The bloke looked at the damage and said "are you sure you can ride that thing?" I explained what happened and he seemed to sympathise. The rain was so heavy and the wind too strong for an umbrella that he didn't want to come outside to witness the test (feet up slow figure-8 in the car park, etc.), so he just told me to go around the block and if I got back in one piece he'd give me my licence.
 
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Vince said:
Someone I knew bought a brand new CB500 Honda 4 just as they arrived on the market; he had an inheritance. Wrote it off riding home from the bike shop. I don't think he had ever ridden anything before buying it. I got my bike Ls immediately when I was old enough. I couldnt ride a manual gearbox bike as I had only ridden Minibikes before that. I taught myself to ride around the local streets with the inevadble lose of skin. And then on weekends, out to the areas where there were some dirt tracks. Narrabeen Lagoon, Red Hill and Terry Hills Brick Pits, they are now either National Parks or Muilt Million Dollar Houses.
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Bikes haven't had manual gearboxes for a long time. Unless you have a gear lever on the tank.
Paul
 
I had ridden direct drive minibikes or Centrivical clutch minibikes every chance I could from the age of 12 to when I could get L plates on the road at 16 and 9 months. I was fully hooked, my first bike with a proper clutch and gear change was an MT125 Honda. The Foo Foo gutless as hell road registered version of the Elsenor Honda 2 stroke 125cc MX bike, and I had to get it delivered as I had never ridden a proper bike at that time. I taught myself how to ride in the street next to my home. Nobody did any rider training back then; I did all mine in the local shopping centre car park, doing figure 8s on my own using tips from local bike mags.
 
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