h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I frequently travel to Germany. I don't think I have seen so many "minivans" as they are called in N. America. I would assume they are as common as such bad habits as passing on the right - Very common here because of the driving abilities of the typical captain at the helm of such monsters.You are very lucky to have to drive in Germany.

Minivans are cars that have a higher cabin than normal cars, so people cannot see through them from behind unless they are in a heavy vehicle or similar minivan. They normally can seat a sports team and have the handling and sportiness of a double-decker bus. They have a slightly larger footprint than sensible cars.

In Ottawa we have a 4 lane highway. It has 4 lanes because 2 of them are always blocked by minivan drivers and 1 is used for merging from our eingangs. It is never very busy but always full of accidents and slowdowns.

I suspect that 50% of minivan owners are offered a frontal lobotomy after siging the sales contract, and pay for the option.

Most minivans have a governing device that resricts them to 90Km/h and an autopilot system that makes the vehicle move as far to the left as possible without crossing into traffic, or hitting the highway median.

The cheapest models are fitted with a special windscreen glass that makes red traffic lights invisible or appear green. This is so that, the conscientious pilot of the minivan will not feel guilt from driving through a red stop light.

Minivans appear to have a very large turning radius. this means that they need 2 lanes to turn into an intersection, crossing the lane to the right without any warning except that anyone following the highway code should note that the driver to the left is in a minivan and exempt from the highway code and the laws that apply to drivers of other vehicles.

Minivans are always parked in 2 parking spaces. This is so that 1/4 of one space is used to house the left wheels and there is sufficient space for the potential sports team to exit on the right all at once.

Minivans are normally driven by a lone commuter.

Note by "here" I mean in Canada. Not Germany.

I haven't ever noticed any presumptuous or unusual behaviour by minivans or their drivers. Most people are getting them these days - certainly anyone with two children or more. They are a far sight more practical and safer than the old Ford Transits or VW transporters. We have an estate, but may well get a family car like that next time round (Chrysler voyager, Renault espace)

It's Mercedes and BMW drivers who are - without exception - selfish and inconsiderate drivers. This is based on many years of experience driving in Germany (like 20+ years)

Yes - The driving experience in Germany is paradise compared to what we have here. What I mean to say is that you can't complain too much in Germany, people seem to mostly follow the rules, compared to what I have to put up with. Try driving in Ottawa, negotiating herds of these minivan pilots. You will likely want to take the bus instead.

Yes there are idiots here too with sporty BMWs etc. I said only 50% of minivan owners opted for the lobotomy (this accounts for my friends and coworkers), I would doubt the dealers in Germany offer such services for their clients.

I am not into surgery, but I assume 'lobotomy' means surgical brain removal.
Anyway, I thing the function of canadian minivans is taken over by 4wheel-driven cars here. Their average weight of some 2tons compensates anything that Daimlers and BMWs can offer, eg. built-in right of way. The rest is exactly as you describe it, especially parking space consumption.

My point is that, from what I have seen people in Germany drive comparitively quite well, and in general the traffic moves. Do these 4x4 drivers always keep to the passing lane and drive slow so that you cannot pass them on the autobahn unless you pass to the right? And do they ignore traffic lights and markings on the road. Steering a vehicle involves turning the steering wheel so that the vehicle turns at a sharp enough radius to follow the lane into the turn. Minivan drivers have their hands glued to the wheel so that they can only move the steering wheel +/- 180 degrees if they are very nimble (which they are not). This means that the vehicles' drivers need at least 2 lanes to turn left or right, and often have to make a counter turn in the opposite direction first to negotiate the turn without bumping into either edge of a 2-way street, but they may bump into other vehicles.

By Minivans, I mean things that are called names in N. America like "caravans" and were once advertised as they look like the space shuttle. They are not expensive, but can fit three rows of passengers and a sedentary pilot. The European vehicles I have seen are usually what would be reffered here to a sport utility vehicles or 4x4s - a different breed. Driven by show-offs or people who like to drive into abandoned quarries.

I read somewhere that crude lobotomies were once performed by using an instrument much like an ice pick an jamming it into the frontal lobe through the eye socket and mashing it around a bit. This was done, if I am not mistaken for the good of the patient in some earlier psychiatric hospitals.

Drivers of 18 wheel articuled trucks in N. America drive far better than these people and take up less space and have less effect on the flow of traffic.

I am not sure why. But the lobotomy thing is just a theory.

Oh.. a frontal lobotomy is the removal or destruction of the frontal lobe of the brain - behind the forehead. Used to be a treatment for certain conditions. I wouldn't want one.

That's what "One flew over the Cuckoo's nest was all about, as far as I could gather

Minivans are just the same here, maybe somewhat smaller, but we are talking of the same brand.

The 4x4's here are built to _look_ like they were able to negotiate a quarry, but I never saw one with dust all over it. And if they did, they would surely ruin all that chromium finishing.
Oh yes, the 4x4 behave just as you describe. The only reason for them to have indicators at all, in my belief, is for having the four of them switched on simultaneously (don't know the english term for it, but it's used to indicate an emergency) whilst parking in the middle of the road, and shopping.

As to the lobotomy: I doubt whether this treatment serves to improve any misbehaviour. Anyway, I wouldn't volunteer for having one, either.

Having all 4 lights blinking is known as a hazard signal here. Perhaps they should leave it on so that you a warned, and will not assume that they forgot to indicate or turned the indicator the wrong way.

what annoys me most is that they are _never_ caught, nor towed away. But if I have a 35kph reading on the speedometer in a 30kph-zone, police radar will catch me from _right_ behind of them. Once I asked them, and they said this day they were out to catch 'rasers' (speeding people), and not people parking in the wrong places. Nearly blew the top of my skull away.

Someone I know was recently hit in their car by a minivan driver going through a red light. Fortunately no one was hurt. Apparently the perpetrator's excuse was that he was watching the traffic in another lane which appeared to be speeding up (like the sensation you get at a train station sitting in the train while the train on the other tracks moves), indicating that the light was not red, so he drove through the intersection. Fortunately, the minivan driver was steeply fined. Unfortunately this is a common occurence.

That is on the level of the sort of stuff people are talking about in the "Intelligent Life" forums (and, inexplicably) in the Harry Potter forum, too.

Another theory:

Perhaps Minivans are a public serivce conspiracy between the government, the "big three" car makers in N. America and the car dealerships. For public safety certain people are housed in minivans. Tis does not mean all minivan drivers are such people but some proportion of them are.

Some people's mental abilities (alertness, intelligence, etc.) are analogous to black holes. Each such mental black hole has an event horizon, where crossing it would deprive anyone of their own mental abilities. The event horizon is normally about the size of a minvan.

To reduce the chance of someone driving and crossing the event horizon these people are housed in minvans - larger than normal cars. Car salesmen are trained to recognise the symptoms of a mental blackhole and encourage the sale of a minivan - often at an attractive price.

Have you noticed any car salesmen driving minivans?

[...Minivan driver going through a rea light...] Shame on me, one time it was me who nearly did this on an intersection with two lanes bending to the left (and me on the rightmost of them), and two others going straight on and to the right. Being used Munich's to custom of giving _all_ traffic from one side 'green' at the same time, I nearly drove into the car in front of me when I saw 'green' lighting up. Then I discovered that there were 3 traffic lights and 3 different time slots, and I had concentrated on the wrong one.

So the theory is that people's brains stop working when owners are seated in minivans. I'd want to add large BMWs to that (just yesterday one of them cut into my way, without signalling and within 10cm from my front bumper). Maybe we should flag this discovery to DNA Himself, for further research along the lines of bistromathics (ie, the behaviour of numbers depends on where they are dealt with, and numbers add differently within restaurants). This could really open a new field of science.

As I see it, car salesmen always drive those cars that don't sell well, so as to be a living advertisement, and to point out that 'Hey, I am driving one myself, and it's great' to potential customers. But driving minivans is one thing even car sellers won't do. Well, perhaps they just sell. Reminds me of just another theory which stated that intelligence summed over all beings sharing the human gene pool is a constant. Given the increase in population, this would make sense.

you forgot to mention that 4x4 drivers are usually over 50, fat, bearded, short-sighted (but not wearing glasses or lenses), deaf, dumb, unable to turn their heads and unaware of the existence of mirrors. Which means that in addition to not using the indicator they will change lanes unexpectedly and without even being aware of the traffic on the lane they are just switching to.
They buy these really expensive cars because being surrounded by tons and tons of steel gives them a feeling of security. And of superiority. And it probably makes them feel like John Wayne in Hatari.

Well how could they make use of their eyes and mirrors, when all the screens are black? And they don't need to care about smaller cars, at least they might think so -- for the reasons that you already have mentioned. But for me those guys only come second to Fiat Ducatos which do not have any 'natural enemies' in Darwin's sense to keep their population limited.

Similar theories have been applied to Volvo drivers. There's a new small car the Toyota Echo. I think this might be a midget minivan for people who didn't buy a minivan for some reason, or who are very small people who need a minivan to fit them. It looks like a nice car though, and if someone drives it through a red light and hits you it will release less potential energy than a minivan in deforming your vehicle.