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Dollywobbler's Consolidated Tat Thread


dollywobbler

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On 8/7/2021 at 9:29 PM, BorniteIdentity said:

Jesus wept. Is this what happens in the bright new future? 

I ran over my headphone cable the other day. Should there be a crowdfunder? Should my audience be all chucking a few bob in to fund the accident? 

Fucking Nora. Ian has my every sympathy - genuinely - but this is so peculiar. It’s not a charity, he’s a businessman. It’s one thing saying “I’ve got the bits here, I’d like to help” and something completely different to subsidise it. 

Sorry. Just how I feel. I suspect it’s just me. 

 

No it's not just you,  there are lost of people ready to shout down others that want to show kindness in a way they can. Miserable bastards the lot of you! 😁

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On 8/9/2021 at 8:23 AM, dollywobbler said:

Never had an issue in the LS400 and never had an issue in the Fairmont until Friday. You usually know when you've got cheap rubber fitted as things get squirrelly. 

Interesting to discover that today, they are resurfacing that stretch after an oil spill yesterday... Which seemed to happen just after I'd emailed Highways England asking how long that spot had been an issue.

Fresh rubber will be purchased as I'm reminded that one front tyre is a bit low, and has a nail in it. The care package is on its way from Aus - halfshaft, packing plate and the shaft already has a bearing on it. It's so easy to get the halfshafts out that the plan is to just fit it and if the bearing is a bit sloppy, replace it later. In theory, the parts should arrive on Thursday!

Resurfacing after a spiling of fuel or chemicals is normal practise. Asphalt and tarmac are lots of stones held in a adhesive. Spilt petrol and diesel act as solvents and dissolve the tar. Diesel is worse than petrol because petrol evaporates faster.

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First of all Ian, I'm glad you and the car are relatively unscathed.

I do enjoy your content.  I'm also familiar with that bit of road, and I'm not a fan in any way shape or form of either LCC Highways, the portfolio holder Mr R Davies (We've clashed on some local highways issues before), or Highways England who I suspect manage that section of road, but it's not the only bit of road off a roundabout in Lincolnshire at least that's prone to lorries dumping fuel as they come off and therefore suddenly getting a bit sketchy.

Someone else said, that there's probably a combination of events that lead to this, the road surface, the tyres, the car and the driver, and I tend to agree a bit with this view.

I'm not a perfect driver, I've messed up before and nailed my MK2 Scirocco into a Passat and then a central reservation a few years ago in what I deemed at the time something that wasn't really my fault (the Passat was going to quickly and clipped the rear quarter and sent me around into the barrier, I was moving because someone pulled out on me at a slip road just outside Stamford), however on reflection, I was driving the Scirocco, I should have better read the road, perhaps been a bit slower knowing traffic was joining, double checked my blind spot and so on.  

It's absolutely impossible to account for every single thing that'll happen on the road, including the road surface, the car having a mechanical, other road users, which ultimately is why we pay for insurance, but if you keep blaming the road, you'd no nothing differently if it happens again, and the result will ultimately be the same.

And yes, I know Bruce nearly had an off there recently, and I know other cars have gone for a tumble down there, but I also know people sometimes try and play drift hero off that stretch, and it bites them.. I'm not accusing you of this, but just because there are bit of car down there, doesn't mean it's all the roads fault.

I'm glad you're OK, I hope you get the car sorted soon, and I'll keep watching and enjoying the content, and buying the odd keyring :)

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1 hour ago, DaveDorson said:

... I also know people sometimes try and play drift hero off that stretch, and it bites them.. I'm not accusing you of this...

But by mentioning it, you are. By far the worst part of this whole episode is having people question my driving style, as if I was hooning like a twat and got caught out. I've had to block a bloke on Twitter who won't stop having a pop at me. So many experts, who weren't actually there. I've even had folk accusing me of actually having footage of the incident and not posting it deliberately. I don't think I'm perfect. It did take me a fraction too long to realise what was actually going on (though I'm think I'd automatically applied opposite lock anyway), but I do feel the road surface was a key factor.

I mean, Talbot is sort-of right, in that many factors were at work here and the combination was ultimately my undoing, but the road surface has clearly caught a lot of people out at that exact spot. Highways Agency don't say: “Safety is our priority and we’re aware of the issues at this location. We’ve installed signs advising motorists to take extra care  and we’re carrying out a comprehensive resurfacing scheme in the near future.” if they think everything is fine. Would better rubber have prevented the incident? I doubt it, but I may have been able to catch it. We'll never know. Would more respect for the loud pedal have prevented it? Well, it's hard to say but I can confirm I was not accelerating hard. I wasn't in a rush. It's certainly true that the Fairmont generates a lot of torque low down, but remember I have driven this car over 5000 miles, often in very inclement weather, without issue. I actually found it quite hard to provoke the back end out when I deliberately tried. It just did one-tyre fires with extreme provocation - not something I'd be doing on a seriously busy roundabout on a city bypass.

34 minutes ago, Spurious said:

More volatile and I'd have thought it would evaporate before causing too many issues. 

Yes, I think that's true. Diesel spills are the absolute worst.

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On 09/08/2021 at 10:20, Talbot said:

Like all good* accidents, it's undoubtedly a combination of factors:  A section of road with less friction than expected, a RWD car that shoves a significant amount of torque through the rear wheels,  tyres with reduced friction and/or issues with water clearance and a driver who isn't a drift king.

Had any one of these things not been true, the accident *may* not have happened.   The fact that they all came together at that particular point in time meant that it did.

You can make a very good reasoned argument for it being any one of the factors above, but in truth, it's all of them.

The Swiss  cheese model of accidents. 

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47 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

 By far the worst part of this whole episode is having people question my driving style, as if I was hooning like a twat and got caught out. I've had to block a bloke on Twitter who won't stop having a pop at me. So many experts, who weren't actually there. I've even had folk accusing me of actually having footage of the incident and not posting it deliberately. I don't think I'm perfect. It did take me a fraction too long to realise what was actually going on (though I'm think I'd automatically applied opposite lock anyway), but I do feel the road surface was a key factor.

 

An awful lot of bell ends out their Ian and they appear to be multiplying .  I have even had to delete comments off of my Facebook page from one individual  repeatedly insinuating it was your driving that was 100% at fault. If we have learnt anything about your character Ian it is  that your integrity is not something we need to question.   I get the impression that some are just trying to get a rise /reaction out of you.

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51 minutes ago, New POD said:

The Swiss  cheese model of accidents. 

Dafuq?

Very very rarely is an accident entirely due to one factor.  It does happen, but even when one factor is the over-riding reason, other factors are contributory.

Ian's accident is a prime example of that.  The over-riding factor was significantly reduced grip(friction) available from a section of road surface.  However, the car, the tyres and the driver are all factors.  You can prove this:  The car in front of Ian did not spin off, nor did the car behind him, so there has to have been something specific to his car.  However, it has been shown that this location has spat it's fair share of cars into the ditch recently, so the car (be that the driver, the tyres, the torque, the RWD, whatever) has higlighted the lack of grip at that spot, in the same way that many other cars have.  Factors came together to create the incident.  If any one of them hadn't been true, the accident would not have occured.

It's frustrating that some bellends on Twatter/Arsebook are trying to blame the driver 100% for this.  Again, you can prove this isn't the case as said driver has managed countless hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel, sans-incident.  Yes, it's probably true that if you put a drift king / BTCC / F1 driver in the exact same circumstances, they *might* have been able to catch it, but that's just unrealistic for normal road driving.

 

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In other news, had a magnificent morning curing the fuel smell and hydraulic leak on the GSA. No, sorry. We spent two hours achieving sod all. It still stinks of fuel and is still pissing LHM on the floor. I think the nearside rear suspension cylinder is suspect, as there seems to be an awful lot of LHM inside the protective boot.

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3 hours ago, Retr0naut said:

An awful lot of bell ends out their Ian and they appear to be multiplying .  I have even had to delete comments off of my Facebook page from one individual  repeatedly insinuating it was your driving that was 100% at fault. If we have learnt anything about your character Ian it is  that your integrity is not something we need to question.   I get the impression that some are just trying to get a rise /reaction out of you.

I agree. 

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1 hour ago, stuboy said:

@dollywobbler could you not squeeze highways to contribute to repairs?

LOL…….I crashed my car on your road so it’s your fault.

I crashed my car when I fell asleep at the wheel…….I never really thought of the fact it was HA’s fault because that bit of the A1 so boring……I was one my way home from a meeting that had a great buffet lunch and I reckon that was a factor too.

The more I think about it the whole thing was someone else’s fault

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7 hours ago, dollywobbler said:

But by mentioning it, you are. 

For clarification, I explicitly said I wasn't because I'm not.  

There's a lot of debris down there, my point was that other people may have hence the debris, especially that high up the tree line.

 

I hope that clarifies things, you're free to think what you want, but really my point about taking responsibility is that ultimately you are the one in control of the vehicle until the point you aren't anymore, in which case you've exceeded the limit of something. 

 

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10 hours ago, alf892 said:

LOL…….I crashed my car on your road so it’s your fault.

I crashed my car when I fell asleep at the wheel…….I never really thought of the fact it was HA’s fault because that bit of the A1 so boring……I was one my way home from a meeting that had a great buffet lunch and I reckon that was a factor too.

The more I think about it the whole thing was someone else’s fault

It's like that scene from Philadelphia, where Denzel (our lawyer) is going through the story some guy told him that he fell down a man hole cover that was open, even though he ignored all the warning signs around it saying it was open.

@dollywobbler think it's time - given the shit you've got for the accident - to dashcam up. It may even add some B-roll to your videos.

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10 hours ago, DaveDorson said:

ultimately you are the one in control of the vehicle until the point you aren't anymore, in which case you've exceeded the limit of something. 

But, if that limit is unrelistcally reduced due to the condition of the road, is that still the driver's issue?  There's an expectation of at least *some* grip available from the road surface, and if that is sufficiently low, it's fair to say the road surface is not fit for purpose.

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Surely the most important thing for this thread and forum is that the car is repairable? The ins and outs aren't hugely relevant really, I'm just glad we will see more of Betty!

It'd be so hard to blame one single thing for something like this, there are a massive number of factors which could have all played their part. Nobody was hurt and unfortunately these things can happen to anyone.

Bring on the return of Betty, again!

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6 minutes ago, Gman88667733 said:

It'd be so hard to blame one single thing for something like this, there are a massive number of factors which could have all played their part.

If you think back to all the events you would've had in a life of driving, all the near misses, all the "should've been brown bread" moments, for all the times something should've happened but didn't, it's only obvious that there'll be an event that does happen when it shouldn't.

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31 minutes ago, Talbot said:

But, if that limit is unrelistcally reduced due to the condition of the road, is that still the driver's issue?  There's an expectation of at least *some* grip available from the road surface, and if that is sufficiently low, it's fair to say the road surface is not fit for purpose.

You're welcome to form your own opinions on that, but ultimately when you or anyone else gets behind the wheel of a car it's you that's responsible for controlling it on any given road surface.

As said before, I'm not a DW hater as many seem to think I am, I'm not questioning his ability to drive a car as he may think I'm insinuating, but if people want to think that of me I'm a big boy and I won't cry over it.

I put my opinion on the Internet, just as Ian documented the events on his YouTube channel.  Both of us in that situation are responsible for doing so and both of us are then letting others form their opinion of us.  It's how stuff works.

As I also said before, I'll keep watching and supporting where I can, this doesn't make a difference to me, I feel bad for it happening, I just don't think you can blame a road which is a road, and not take responsibility as a driver for the driving bit.. but that's my opinion.  Others have them and I'm sure they vary.

I am most of all glad Ian is OK, no one was hurt other than perhaps a bit of pride, and the car looks for the most to be repairable.

 

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13 hours ago, stuboy said:

@dollywobbler could you not squeeze highways to contribute to repairs?

If Ian so chooses, he could submit a claim to the relevant Highway Authority. However the onus would be to prove that the HA had been negligent, ie by not carrying out Inspections to the correct frequency (I expect this would be a weekly or monthly inspection) and that if any issues had been identified through the inspections process that they had been sorted within an appropriate target time/date which could be as short as 24 hours or as long as 6 months...

If we're really going into the rabbit hole an FOI seeking information on recent SCANNER and SCRIM surveys for the location and lanes where the incident happened might bring something up... 

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1 hour ago, DaveDorson said:

I just don't think you can blame a road which is a road, and not take responsibility as a driver for the driving bit.. but that's my opinion. 

 

But is it still a road if the grip levels on offer are some way below the surrounding area? I've driven around a lot of wet roundabouts, in a fair few powerful rear-wheel drive cars and never had anything like this. I got a tank-slapper in an X300 Jag once, but I was pissing about and it was provoked (which I guess makes it easier to catch because you're already half-expecting it rather than being entirely caught out). 

I am annoyed with myself for not spotting the slippery surface sign (one was missing, the other right on the roundabout about where you're making sure no-one is about to hit you), and more so for what I perceive as a slow response to the slide (we're talking fractions of a second here mind you) and sure, better tyres are always a good idea, but I've driven a lot of miles in this car without issue, so had no reason to doubt its behaviour.

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51 minutes ago, Slappy said:

If Ian so chooses, he could submit a claim to the relevant Highway Authority. However the onus would be to prove that the HA had been negligent, ie by not carrying out Inspections to the correct frequency

 

29 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

I am annoyed with myself for not spotting the slippery surface sign (one was missing, the other right on the roundabout about where you're making sure no-one is about to hit you)

You could argue that the sign being there, and evidently the number of incidents there, would be enough to say that the Highways Agency knew something was up there, and it could be argued that it wasn't sufficiently altered or fixed to remedy the problem.

But I have a vague memory about pot holes, that the council will/can pay out for damage if the pot hole wasn't marked. But if the pot hole was marked (spray painted) they couldn't pay out. This might be the same. 

Surely though, with the number of followers and subscribers, there's going to be a lawyer type person who has an interest in liability things like this who would/could advise pro bono. Not the U2 wanker, btw.

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30 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

But is it still a road if the grip levels on offer are some way below the surrounding area? I've driven around a lot of wet roundabouts, in a fair few powerful rear-wheel drive cars and never had anything like this. I got a tank-slapper in an X300 Jag once, but I was pissing about and it was provoked (which I guess makes it easier to catch because you're already half-expecting it rather than being entirely caught out). 

I am annoyed with myself for not spotting the slippery surface sign (one was missing, the other right on the roundabout about where you're making sure no-one is about to hit you), and more so for what I perceive as a slow response to the slide (we're talking fractions of a second here mind you) and sure, better tyres are always a good idea, but I've driven a lot of miles in this car without issue, so had no reason to doubt its behaviour.

 

 

It's still a road, yes.  Road conditions can and do change, and often when you really don't expect it.  I'm not saying you need to beat yourself up over it Ian, but it should act at least as a lesson learned, otherwise as I said earlier, if it happens again, the outcome will be the same. 

It's a road off a roundabout, there's often diesel spillage in areas like that, it's just how British roads are.   Should we accept that?, no, but is it how things are?, well yeah.

And yeah, you will look back and be annoyed at yourself for what you could have done differently, (as you said, spotted the sign, for example), but the main thing is no real harm was done.  

 

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