While in Estonia this past July, I stumbled upon this Ram 1500 Crew Cab parked in front of St. Nicholas Church, in the middle of Tallinn’s Old Town. It had Estonian registration, but looked so remarkably out of place on those narrow, medieval streets.
Last Call: An American In Tallinn
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11 responses to “Last Call: An American In Tallinn”
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The Norwegian road design agency has found the most dangerous thing that people can drive on: Egg-shaped corners. Sounds ridiculous, but it makes sense: Inside the turn, drivers need to adjust their wheels to turn even a bit more. I have been in some surprising turns like this where an extra bit of rotation felt wacky. There is no road element with, relatively speaking, more crashes than this.
https://gfx.nrk.no/tWxUrTKD2T4jBJxW2MGZagdr1maqGYj8ac0sd6Ni2brg.jpg-
There was a large roundabout near Brisbane Airport that usually had a fresh wreck in nearly the same spot, usually during or after rain. It was hard to spot, but the roundabout had a slight egg shape to it, and drivers would fly around it at the limit of their grip to realise too late that they needed just a little bit more to make it around the pinch.
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I’ve never thought to call them “egg-shaped” (I just thought of them as “decreasing-radius turns”), but my own experience confirms that they really throw you off.
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In the Netherlands, road designers are forbidden from having decreasing radius turns for just that reason. I’m surprised that isn’t a near-global thing: if you need a decreasing radius turn to make the intersection fit, it’s probably time to redesign the intersection. Yes, it might cost more but car crashes cost money too.
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Who would build such a dangerous corner without reason? Well, looking at E6xR706: Norwegians.
https://i.ibb.co/PwvY0WC/20191017-191206.jpg
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See a few of them here in Australia now, they’re converting them locally in a quasi-factory operation (more so than other gray market importers) and sold 266 last month.
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Hello guys, I’m driving a 10yo BMW 118i with 150k kms. It at the moment has some engine issue and only gets 22mpg. I am pondering to buy a 225xe instead. Any idea on how good an idea that is, known problems? I commute 15000km a year mostly country roads. Thanks for any ideas
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I would find out why your 118i’s fuel consumption went up first. Then depending on cost to repair consider a replacement. Also consider buying a Mazda3 instead of another Bavarian money pit.
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Thanks for the replies but over the last years I had only standard maintenance stuff, so not that bad a money pit (yet). Funny enough, OBD doesn’t show any errors although something is obviously wrong.
Had similar problems with the engine when I bought the car. They were solved by BMW during the warranty period (in total parts for 5000€ that I luckily didn’t have to pay). I had two injectors replaced a few months ago (250€ a piece…). I am now worried that with the same symptoms like 10 years ago I would have to replace all the sensors and stuff like BMW did on warranty, but now out of my own pocket 😛
And I honestly can’t justify another 5000€ when that is the market price for the car here…
I’ll have a look into Mazda3s thank’s for the hint!-
Try running some injector cleaner through the fuel system. Given your mileage and the fact that you had to replace injectors, I’d say do it at least twice or even 3 times in a row. It could also be the other 2 injectors are now starting to go…
In my 1997 528i the consumption improved from around 16mpg to nearly 20mpg in mixed driving (I do have a bit of a heavy foot though) with nothing else changed or replaced after 2 rounds of injector cleaner.
YMMV… 😉
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I didn’t get a picture of it, but there was an early ’00’s Ram visible from the metro from Copenhagen Airport into town. Given Copenhagen’s reputation as an urbanist paradise (and frankly, just the huge taxes on cars in Denmark coupled with gas prices), whoever owns that is aggressively iconoclastic,
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