Wednesday 11 July 2012

Vorsprung durch technik bias (2)

I believe this requires a little follow up. Somewhere else, Lorenzo pointed out that VW Golf drivers are probably worse than Audi's. 


It did occur to me that, when I was in Italy (and, evidently, this is still the conventional wisdom), we used to say that the Golfisti were really bad and in particular they do not want to be overtaken, ever.


So this morning on my way to work I tried to have a closer look at the different cars' behaviour. May be all Audi drivers in South West London read this blog (OK: may be not all of them $-$ just those I met this morning, perhaps?) and made an effort to prove me wrong, but I have to say that, of the ones I saw today, none behaved badly. In addition, I tried to keep an eye on Golfs too, but again no bad driving there. In fact, everybody was extremely relaxed and law-abiding this morning!


To explain the phenomenon, Francesco suggested the theory that, when they don't ride a Vespa, Italian ex-pats drive an Audi. The implications of this, I think, are that:
  1. Italians are bad drivers;
  2. Vespa riders (thus including your truly) are also bad.
I can't honestly claim that there isn't some truth to both and in particular, I'm no faultless rider. However, given that: a) in order to legally ride a motorbike in England you have to pass 2000 official tests; and b) I did surprisingly well in mine and nearly aced nearly all of them (well, by my standards, that is), I'd say that this theory has indeed some merits, but cannot explain the incredibly statistically robust empirical evidence against Audi drivers (which by way does not seem to be affected by sex in my recollection).

Finally, Stefano took a completely different route and, inspired by the title of the post, reminded me of this: awesome!

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