Week Ten New Ride Paranoia and Pioneer Passion
Do you recall the massive meteorite that was recorded on so very many Russian in car dashcam recorders? For dash cams are compulsory in Russia. Just as well, when you see the awesome destruction and drunken mayhem of some of the clips of Russian motoring on social media. The biggest wavefront of sound, from the biggest non-nuclear explosion in human living memory since Krakatoa, blew in windows, security shutters and doors as well as blinding the sensors in cameras with its blast of white and orange light.
Now, I have got a lovely new ride. A Volvo with a mess of tech inside. It even has an HDD I have no idea of the size of, nor how you put tunes in it, since like a typical ‘˜Bloke’, I have failed to read the manual. One hilarious thing is that the Adaptive Cruise Control is so much better at driving the car, that I am actually ashamed of myself.
And despite the seeming unassailability of the new car, the Alpine guys were right, there will always be an aftermarket that is ahead of the OEM offering. Only in this case, it is a dashcam technology. For the only thing this car does not have is a drive/park recorder.
Thing is, I have a video clip on Youtube, that I think is cool, that has poor views. It is a LIVE T-Pack traffic stop. Not on ME, I hasten to add, but I was right at the front of the crew of cars that had it happen before their very eyes. If I link it here, it’ll plop a YT window in an odd place, so I won’t. But you can search the title, which is ‘SIX POLICE CARS NICK A CRIM! Rolling roadblock caught on dashcam!’ I made it on a Parksafe product. It was cool, do go see it. However, there is a new thing, way better, from Road Angel, who make the Gem+. It is a system of paired cameras and software to tie them together on one 16GB SDHC chip. It is called the Road Angel HALO, and you can read about it here: Road Angel
I have an issue with a fellow motorist who is driving to the same campus that I take MeJulie to of a morning. They are pushy and aggressive on the street on the way, having tried to undertake me off the lights at the High Street, when parked cars mean a swerve into my path. The other day they all but crashed into me inside the place. I looked, pulled out gently This fool motorist, on a site with a 10mph limit had careened down the internal road as fast as their shitty little engine would scoot. So after this, I shall ping a nice e-mail to the HR department with their numberplate, for they HAVE been identified.
And lastly but by no means leastly today, (well yesterday technically as I am burning the Midnight Oil) it was the day that Pioneer moved their HiFi and DJ equipment business over to Onkyo. The UK arm of Pioneer Europe will now thus be dealing ONLY with car audio. There was a terse press release: ‘Pioneer Europe NV is transferring the Home AV and Headphones-related business to Pioneer & Onkyo Europe GmbH on 2nd March 2015. From this date, Home AV products and Headphones-related products will be distributed by Pioneer & Onkyo Europe GmbH. There was this, as well: ‘Pioneer Europe NV is transferring the DJ business to the newly formed Pioneer DJ Europe Ltd on 2nd March 2015. From this date, DJ products will be distributed by Pioneer DJ Europe Ltd.’
There’s new car stuff coming this month and I am already lined up to go check it out. Watch this space. Oh and if you are driving near my Polestar XC Ovlov, remember to smile, for like the nice lady at Road Angel said, ‘You are on camera!’
I have a JVC Bluetooth headunit on the test bench and will see if I cannot get it written, videoed, uploaded and published ‘˜today’.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor