A subtle note: In Europe we don't differentiate between cars and trucks. They're all cars. What we call trucks, are the big cargo trucks that in the states are referred to as Semi.
Lots of American (pickup) trucks are licenced differently in Europe as they exeed 3,5 tonnes, putting them into the class C1 (small truck) that is the class between 3.5 and 7.5 Tonnes. C1E would be small truck and trailer (total of 12 tonnes), so yeah, we do distinguish between a car (B license) up to 3,5 tonnes, C1, and C (big trucks. D would be big busses). Having a CEDE license gives one the roto drive everything from cars to complex big rigs and busses with trailers.
@@Xirque666 And different than with US CDLs, there is no difference betwen air brakes or not with European licenses. Otherwise they have Classs A above about 4.5 tons ot 10000 lbs, class B above 26000 lbs or about 11.8 tons And class C, which is like Class B but for either hazardous materials or that squishy stuff that moves around on two legs. Oh sorry, 16 or more passengers that is. As extension, there is Class D1, for busses up to 16 passengers. For those wondering, with Class B you are allowed to transport up to 8 passengers besides the driver. But, what initially got Uber kicked in the nuts in Germany, with class B you cannot simply drive passengers, even if less than 8, commercially. In some states in the US this exists as "Chaufffeur License" as well. You need an additioanl license (comming with trainings and exams) to drive passengers commercially. At least in the past part of that was knowing all the roads and streets in your city and being able to tell the shortest or fastest route to any place in the city from where you were. This got somewhat redundant due to Personal navigation devices and I am not sure if it still is a requirement. Some Pickup trucks, the name originates by the way from Ford originally offering a vehicle with only the frame and engine, you could pick it up and have someone else build a cab and truck bed to your needs, or for example Teslas Cybertruck would already require different licenses than the normal ones for Cars. At least in Germany, the old license classes before 1998, where like class 1 for motorcycles (now Class A), Class 2 for trucks above 7.5 tons and trailers (now Class C and CE) and Class 3 for vehicles up to 7.5 tons and a single axle (or twin axle if the axles where at most 1 meter apart) trailer up to 1.5 times the towing vehicles weight with integrated brakes (like air brakes). If you had one of those (like I got) it was transferred to Class BE, Class C1E, and Class CE up to you turning 50 and limited to 3 axles total and 18.5 tons total max gross weight. (after turning 50 you would need a health check every 5 years to extend that license) In Germany there are some, sort of in between classes that got created out of necessity, like B96 and others, that for example allow larger trailers or vehicles up to 4.25 tons, like for example Ambulances (there are multiple varieties, I don´t know all of them) With more and more EVs on the road and those in general getting a lot heavier than regular cars, there are discussions though, to increase the max weight for Class B to 4.25 tons or even 4.5 tons.
@@alexanderkupke920 I'm from Sweden and i am an idiot. I mixed up B96 with an exception for swedish licenses which was introduced in 1996 meaning that people that had gotten a class B license before july 1996 had no weight limit on their license.
Exactly! Very many people (I'd even dare to say that it's vast majority of population, including me only few years ago) often mixes those two totally different but yet very similar things. Roads are designed to cover a section of the route as quickly and efficiently as possible, without unnecessary obstacles such as: intersections, pedestrian crossings, sidewalks, parking lots, etc. Streets, on the other hand, are mainly created in cities and are intended to accommodate everyone who wants to get from point A to point B, regardless of their size (human/bike/truck/tram etc.). This is my simple, original and naive explanation of the difference.
@la-go-xy They were far less common than cars nowadays though. And I don't think that a street on such a slope was initially designed with wheeled vehicles in mind...
A local petrol station tried the pay first, pump after policy. Lasted about 2 weeks. Locals were personally offended by the policy. They went to another station where they weren't considered and treated like criminals (Rural Ireland)
some gas stations do it , in french big cities...maybe because they had "problems" with some clients... i can understand why they do that, and try not to feel offended : it's not a big deal, though... it's certainly a bit too cautious, in rural areas, where people know everybody.
Here in rural northern norway we have 3 unmanned petrol stations in like a big area. you pay first, then tank your car. If you don't want this you have to drive 14km to come to the nearest manned station. Your choice.
Yup, spaniard here. Can confirm thats a glass container. For some reason a decade or so ago, most cities came up with the idea of painting murals on all glass recycling bins to "prevent" graffiti from being painted over them. I imagine it will be similar throughout most of Europe.
Lots round here in Kildare, you might have issues if you meet a tractor or a horse box [or possibly an APC, couple of them regularly on the roads but they generally have nice polite drivers which helps] but the biggest issue are drives who either don't know the width of their own car or - more likely - don't want to go too close to the edge in case the grass/hedge scratches the paint. They can be a nuisance.
no they are not. And I'm telling you this as someone living in Europe. That road is a nuisance - if you meet someone that's towing a semi, some kind of agriculture vehicle, someone who's car has broken or even someone that decided to park there you are in trouble. And even in normal circumstances you might scratch your car on that stupid hedge. Even worse, imagine an ambulance or fire truck trying to use that road
@@ionicafardefricahaving to reverse a short distance to find a passing point is not getting in trouble. And if you're scratching your car you only have yourself to blame
@@TheTomco11 imagine there's a raging fire at the end of that little road. Fire truck will get there after everything is charcoal because it had to stop and wait for people to get out of the way five times. They might also loose equipment that is normally stored on the outside, like ladders, hoses or tool boxes because of the hedge. Making such a narrow road is beyond stupid. There are many countries in the world I would call backwards(including mine), but even we recognize the need to leave a sufficient access way for emergencies
16:35 oh believe me you dont want to steal gas at the gas station, they register your drivers plate and either the cops show up to your home or you get a bill and a fine
I know someone who did that, 3 times at the same gas station no less. She got a letter from the petrol company with the amount to pay (and some extra costs too I believe). The camera catches the numberplate and the driver. Though she lived in another country they had no problems finding her. If she didn't pay she would have ended u in court and it would have cost her way more. Possibly up to 1 year in jail because of a zero tolerance policy towards petrol thieves.
Yeah and sometimes the system just malfunctions. I remember taking fuel at my usual local fuel station... and then being questioned by the police a couple of weeks later for alledgedly stealing fuel. After some searching and checking, it turned out that the payment system of the fuel station was dysfunctional and served fuel without charging the debit or credit card. That really pissed me off, so I wrote back to the police officer: "If those people are stupid enough to deliver fuel without charging the card that I swipe through the payment terminal, they have only themselves to blame. Don't summon me to the police station, summon them for filing a misleading complaint". The public prosecutor of course dropped the case against me and I just had to pay the regular price for the fuel that I had taken but, upon going to the fuel station to pay in person to the attendant, I gave her a piece of my mind: I told her in no uncertain terms that I had other fish to try than lose time and energy just because their payment system doesn't work properly and delivers fuel nonetheless. Needless to say that they've lost a customer: I now go to some other fuel station.
@@JoriDiculous Good luck finding someone who willingly let you borrow their plates. They are bound to both the person and car. Meaning that just placing them on any other car is against the law. You have to transfer them officially first. Even if you just could just borrow someone's plates, that's -1 friend when they receive the fine instead. If you're suggesting using stolen plates, they're gonna be marked as stolen. I don't know if gas companies have access to that info, but you risk getting pulled over by the police for sure.
Watching the video as an European, two main thoughts go through my mind: 1) "Why are these people so afraid? That's a perfectly normal-sized street/road they're going through!" 2) "American vehicles are objectively gargantuan." On the second one, I'm VERY serious. Normal people don't need cars that are 5m+ in length, 2m+ in width, and about 2m tall. You can get from A to B perfectly fine with a family of 5 in a hatchback. Or a wagon, if you frequently need to carry luggage. And I say this as the owner of a Tesla Model S, I often say "this car is like an elephant in these streets". As a Portuguese, I should note that cobble streets are a staple of the oldest streets in Lisbon (and other cities in Portugal), and those streets often predate the invention of the car by over a century (that area of Lisbon was built in the late 1700s, after the 1775 earthquake that leveled the city). You'd at most take a horse through those streets. And lastly, on parallel parking: there's a technique all drivers are taught at driver's school that lets you fit into our parking spots, so it's fairly second-nature for most drivers. As for parking near a wall, you get used to it quickly, it's just practice. Because you either learn to park in tight spaces or you'll need to take public transit.
One technique: Stop with your rear wheel at rearbumper of the car behind the spot. Fro here on it is 'drive slow, steer quickly''. Turn your steering wheel COMPLETELY to the right until your frontwheel is at the bumper. Then turn your steering wheel COMPLETELY to the left an you will and up near the sidewalk. To get into even smaller spots an experienced driver can exchange the rearbumper for the rearwheels. In a really tight spot you won't have the space to drive parallel to the walkway, so stop, turn the steering wheel all to the right and go foreward. I remember an article where they parked with an old VW rabbit and needed less than 50 cm or 20" space more than their car size.
As a Latvian I'm not really put off by the size of RAM1500 or F150. I often drive our work vehicles that are MB Sprinter and Fiat Ducato (both with long wheel base) through Riga with no problem, and they are about the same size. And I live in rural parts of Latvia, so vehicle size is not an issue at all. Weight is the only limiting factor, really. I only have cat B licence.
I’m Swedish and i remember going to Spain with my family, 5 people in the car, 4 adults 1 child, 3 big luggage bags (these big hard case square travel ones) 2 small ones, 2 backpacks, and we crammed that shit into something like a Renault Clio Hatchback (I don’t remember exactly what model but I think it was something similar to that in size at least). So we puzzled like professionals and managed to drive to the apartment 40min away, people crushed by bags, backpacks between the legs. Like 1am at night. If u have never done something like that u have never been on a proper vacation in Europe
40 min away from Sweden to Spain….more like 40h! We always did the same going from West Germany to the Haute Provence in France…taking 4 inflatable boats, 4 bikes and more often than not 4x skiing gear for our Easter vacation…. Took us about 16-18h, too
@@AlvinDema Been there, done that😂😂. We did a trip across Spain in an A-class, four people with all our luggage, crammed in the boot and us rear passengers. I remember getting out of the car and seeing that I accidentally sat on a pack of donuts and they had all converted to a smushed paste of thing😂
21:23 We have such parking discs in Sweden too. You park, set the arrival time, put it visible in the windshield and do your errands. If you come back and have received a parking fine, you have exceeded the time. You usually can park for 2 hours, sometimes 4.
In Finland, we got disc parking sometime in the early 90s. Ian said it has something to do with trust, but it really is just a way to fine us with even a little miss use of the disc. You could run to your car every 2 hours to spin it forward, but the parking attendants learn pretty quickly where that would be probable and take photos to prove you did it. In the early days of the system, way before digital cameras, they had chalcs with them to mark where your tires were.. It's ok to park again in the same place if you move your car. The chalc lines on tires were slightly better for drivers, as if you drive around the block and park in the same spot, it could easily look just the same in a photo. Tires would end up in different orientation and the chalc lines couldn't match even if you tried. Time for disc parking could be anything. There's been 15 min to 12h parking spots. You set the disc to the next full or half hour, so you might get 44 minutes in the 15 min spot etc. 12h spots won't really work like they should, as it does not matter what you set your disc at, as it should be OK to check it any time. Still there are some spots with 12h parking. Most are for 2-4 hours, which is enough for shopping etc, but makes it difficult to hog roadside parking when you sit at your office for a day.
A lot of rural roads in the UK have a speed limit of 60mph, this doesn't mean you're expected to do 60 everywhere, it just means that speed is left up to the driver's discretion. Also, I've noticed its a very American thing to say a pickup truck isn't a car, or an SUV isn't a car, I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but here no one would question them being included in the category of "car".
That is because SUVs are generally classified as light trucks in the United States, not cars. This classification allows SUVs to be regulated less strictly than cars for fuel economy and emissions. Also manufacturers can reduce tax on these vehicles because light trucks are classified as commercial vehicles. It means that light trucks are way more profitable which is why the manufacturers market them so aggressively.
@mxlexrd Here in Dacia/Rumania TOO . EVERYBODY would consider them cars. Most name cars modified to have a box on the back (like Dacia pick-up) as "camionete" (little truck , from french i think) but everybody know they aren't. True "camionete" / small trucks are the type that move those termopan glass diirs and windows on those triunghiular shape shpports , the open bed trucks,for i think 3 or 5 tons like the old small trucks nade by Roman/Dac manufacturer from Dacia/Rumania în the 1950's. They just like HUGE CARS JACKED UP FOR THEIR BIG BELLY AND BIG KG and call them trucks , but they aren't. Also,uts RIDICULOUS to tax them less because they're comercial,when they are USED WAY MOORE ,polute more and are more ineficient. The regulation shouldbl be the same if not even more strict !!!
In the US they legally aren't cars but small trucks, a quirk which doesn't exist in (most of) Europe where even big cars and vans have to abide by the same emissions and safety standards as small cars.
In Europe, the light duty F150 can be imported as a car, but try importing a heavy duty F350 and you'll find out they are trucks requiring all the extra equipments of big rigs and submitted to the same laws and restrictions including the commercial driver license. Everytime I've seen a medium or heavy duty other than in Northern Europe, they've always been illegaly imported as light duty. I used to have a C20 crew cab registered as a C10, my neighbor has a Dodge 2500 V10 and the cops payed him a visit 5 years ago : the company that imported it got busted for illegaly importing this type of vehicle and he is now bared from ever selling it and they warned him that maybe someday they might get the command to seize his truck for destruction.
3:44 By the looks of it this is Germany, and the car is an Audi btw, and this only works in Audis at the moment (I believe) since they are connected with the traffic light control panels. But other manufacturers are trying other cool things too, like BMW working with Vodafone (cellular provider) to provide live info on railroad crossings and how long they take.
Well to be fair, im from Sweden, been living and driving in Paris, driving in Germany and so on but even me have done the same thing that this couple in Spain. I blame the gps!
16:35 Quick "hint" about this.. Tennants will only turn the pump on when the system took a picture of your licence plate (and car) You may steal gas, but we got your plate ! You'll pay WAY more than a refill as fine if you try !
@@charisma-hornum-fries Imagine coming to Denmark, renting a car, driving to Malmö, expecting to see some toll booths, seeing none, thinking it's free, after few days going to the mainland Denmark through another bridge, still no toll booths, when coming back, right after the bridge, realizing you just forgot a pair of cheap-ass sunglasses in a cafe on the other side (I think it was Nyborg), going back through the bridge and then back to Copenhagen again. And, finally, when returning your car, finding out that it was very much not free all that time X_X
@@liul People don't buy their vehicles to satisfy your preferences... I'm sure you also do plenty of stuff others don't like, doesn't mean it should be illegal. Like trying to control other people's lives.
20:00 As Germans, we're also used to narrow streets in rural areas (where I live), but I was once in an extremely narrow street in Düsseldorf behind a 4* or 5* hotel and there were Lamburghini, Porsche, Maybach etc. parked there. and I was driving a small Hyundai i10 at that time and sweating blood and tears because the luxury cars were parked so stupidly that I could hardly get through and was scared to death of damaging one of the expensive luxury cars and I couldn't reverse because an SUV was squeezing through behind me (which in some cases only had two fingers' width of space) 😂The car behind me came from Italy and while they slowly squeezed through, the woman in the passenger seat was constantly screaming in Italian and the man was screaming back and gesticulating wildly and we (my boyfriend and I) had tears in our eyes from laughing. We just managed to find a space in the underground parking garage (the entrance to which was also on this narrow street) and the bickering Italians continued to shout at each other there and the woman kept hitting her poor guy with her Gucci bag 🤣
20:55 Parkscheibe, parking disc. Opposed to the comment you read out there are no sensors underneath. The cities have municipal police officers going round and controlling parked cars and those parking discs. If they see one with overtime they write a ticket, if they see one with time set in the future they will "assume" it's from the day before and write you a ticket... You still are allowed to set the time to the next half hour mark. So arriving at 8:20 you'll set the time to 8:30, even arriving at 8:07 you are allowed to set it to 8:30. Various cities have different time slots for free parking. At parking zones a little bit away from the city center you may get up to 3 or 4 hours of free parking, right next to the city center, adjacent to the pedestrian zone, you may get only half an hour.
19:34 that thing at least in germany is a glass container where you throw your used glass bottles in so it gets picked up and recycled . in germany we usually have three , one for clear , one for green and one for brown glass
There s a dude in my hometown in spain who has an f150 and every time we cross paths I have a jump scare, the proportions are so off in relation with everything else on the street😂
That green thing in Spain is a container for glass recycling. We put our empty bottles or jars there. Here in Valencia we have seven different containers: green for glass blue for paper and cardboard brown for organic matter yellow for plastic and cans orange for used cooking oil, other with assorted colours depending on which charity picks them for shoes and clothing grey for the rest of garbage All of them but the ones for clothing are managed by the municipality. In addition to that, we have several "clean spots" (punto limpio) around the city to dispose of electronics, furniture and construction debris and there's also a "mobile clean spot", a truck which parks in different locations in the city where you can take your electronics or small appliances. Every six weeks or so you can find that truck near your home for 48 hours, always in the same place, and you can check the next date in the municipality web. At supermarkets you find other containers, just buckets with a slot in the cover, for batteries. And also in some places like some supermarkets and wherever you can buy lighting stuff, a box to litter your bulbs, tubes or whatever you use to light your home. We take recycling quite seriously, and have a hell of buckets, boxes and such at home to classify garbage. It was quite confusing when they started with this thing in the nineties, but now we're used to it and it just comes natural
parking is a terrifying part of the driving test in Spain, it's scary and tough at first, but after years you end up pulling into one of those in a single move. You step out of the car with the widest smile and a sense of accomplishment 😂
Can confirm. Just yesterday I parked my car in a tiny space in record time. My old me from when I was practicing for the test drive would be proud of me xD
Parking in old European cities is so terrifying at first. I'd be half pulling in awkwardly so many times, letting traffic go by so I can pull out and try again without holding everyone up.😂 It's so satisfying when you finally squeeze into the space so perfectly though. 😌
@@Blackadder75 Yes. In dense cities you don't pull the parking brake. You leave it in manual 3rd or 5th gear, depending on the angle of the hill. Just so that your car can move a bit when shoved. edit: With automatics you would leave it in neutral and pull the parking brake only halfway. If your car doesn't allow parking in neutral ... find a diffent spot ... or lose your gearbox.
That Irish road is 'wide' compared to where I live and where I was brought up. Remember that these lanes are 100s or in some cases 1000s of years old. The lane outside of my parents' house in Wales dates back to about 200AD and was built by the Romans. So yes they weren't built for cars. Horses and carts!
Because the 200AD roads in central europa were either bombed to oblivion in WW2 or slowly got replaced. The only small ones you really see in germany are those in the inner city, of cities below 500k inhabitants (because the other ones, got bombed to oblivion), where driving is forbidden anyways
2:00 during driving school they taught us that there are some some signs called “green wave” that indicates the speed at which you should go to find the green light at every intersections…but they are pretty rare
@@flitsertheo This also exists here in Spain, but some of those "pedestrian-only streets" let taxis, delivery vans, cleaning vehicles and police cars enter, also some people with a special permissions to enter their garages in some cases. This is easy to find in some parts of the city centre of Málaga at night
the drivers in ibiza are truly legendary. i have seen a dubble decker bus driver squeeze in a road with cars on both sides. literally one mistake and so many cars would be damaged. but the guy pulled it off without any damage
19:33 It's a glass container where you can deposit your glass bottles and such, mostly (at least here in BE) divided in 2 compartments, 1 for clear glass, 1 for coloured glass
@10:45 In Norway the default limit is 80kmh (~50mph) in rural areas if no limit is posted. In built up areas its 50kmh (~30mph). One of the basic rules of driving tells you to drive safely based on the conditions. So it is your responsibility to not go faster than what is needed to stop for something unexpected. Lots of rural roads where only a rally driver would go 80 and many places that is physically impossible.
In the UK residential streets are 20mph, streets in towns and cities are usually 30mph, ring roads are often 40mph, roads in the countryside which have one lane in each direction can be 40mph, 50mph, or 60mph. Depending on the road layout, such as sharp bends, narrowness, etc.
@@susanwestern6434 But do the UK have a default? As in when no limit is posted. Here you'll just see the black and white sign saying a 70, 60 or 50 zone end but no further speed limit signs. Posted limits is different. Residential areas here usually have a 30 zone sign which different than a regular round 30 sign. The regular round sign only applies to the next intersection while the zone sign applies to all roads behind it until it is lifted. Only place with proper ring road in Norway is Oslo and I'm pretty sure its 60-70kmh. They have in the past reduced it to 60 during winter. Not sure if that is still the case. Roads with limit above 80kmh would need very little traffic on average to not get a middle divider. New roads with 90kmh are usually physically divided or quite wide and with less than 1500 vehicles per day on average. There are some narrow roads up in the far north, but those probably have less than 500 vehicles per day on average. Roads above 90kmh are always divided and can not have at grade intersections. They would also be defined as a motorway.
Just to clear any confusion, I don't know where the second clip is taken, but it is definitely not Paris. Tramways there don't look like this. The absurdity of the scene would still be the same in Paris though, which is the main point. 😅
We have the same blue thing at the end of the video in France. It's for certain parking spot only, blue colored on the ground. You put that blue disk on the front visible through your wind shield with your time of arrival and it shows at what time you need to left. It is for short time only. If a police officier come, he will check that blue disk through your wind shield to see if your allowed time is used or not. If it is... You got yourself a parking ticket :p
1:36 there is a thing called "green wave". It meant light were synchronized so when driving at some speed you would have green lights all the way. It is since... 70's? That comunication with car is impresive. Maybe it is somewhat conected with Google Maps?
Nope, This is green wave 2.0, a modern day service and the app is called trafficpilot. That video clip is in an Audi driving in Ingolstadt where that service is available. To day it is available in 11 cities from Germany and Austria (Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hannover, Wien, Salzburg, ...). The traffic lights are connected to the system and will tell you exactly how long they will have red light, when green light will come on and even dynamically tell you what speed you need to drive to get to the next traffic light to catch green. Look it up.
From the UK and I've not seen that traffic light tech before, but maybe it's in more modern cars or I've just not seen the app before. Amazing tech though
@@sebastianmannermaa7523 in Italy in big cities, especially on big avenues with dozens of traffic lights one after the other it is common, there is a sign that indicates the speed to take the "green wave" (usually 40 km/h), if you go faster you take the red. I had never seen the integration with assisted driving though.
I remember seeing some GMC Truck/SUV thingy for the first time in Europe and it was longer and larger than a VW Transporter Van that was sitting next to it. The long version of that was shorter. They are too big, no question about it. @20:45 you drive until it no longer beeps and is a continuous noise. That's is when you are 2-5cm from the car behind, then you go in the other direction until the same thing happens. @21:20 Germany and many other places have (rought translation) "short time parking areas" where you can park for limited time, like 30 to 90min, like when you're going to a farmacy, or a doctor, or some meeting in the city center. For those areas, you use such a clock and the police man knows if you overstayed or not.
Musings from Poland :)) 1) the coordinated green (but also red) lights are called here a "green/red wave" :)) 2) big trucks : the petite streets of Paris can be even a thousand years older than invention of a car, Europe is simply old and respectful about its old parts. Everywhere. In my city we even have the oldest (over 1000 yo) parts of the cities "car free" 3) if you lived in Paris, or any bigger city anywhere in Europe, you wouldn't drive a car ! You'd use the public transport (electric buses or trams = no exhaust, cheaper, not involved in traffic jams). Btw, the bus/tram stops in my city have a screen showing (real time! not the schedule) when your bus is coming, very useful 4) your roads are huge b/c they were built in an empty area, not long ago (not even 150 years ago), our roads have been often there for centuries, weaving in between the private land. 5) that big green container looked like one of recycling bins, however, it had a doggy head on it so it might be for dog poop (not really, too big so recycling glass probably) 6) Poland : American NATO soldiers stationed close to Russia/Belarussia/Lithuania borders (villages/woods) are notorious with getting in the ditch or, worse killing our bisons (they have been brought back from almost extinction and live in that part of the country but mostly with people - the American soldiers have killed almost 10 of them already - while the bisons were simply leaving the fenced gardens). This is nasty, b/c they are very huge and easily visible but also dearly loved and still too few. The word is, American soldiers are inexperienced 'cause never rode narrow, winding roads, every minute a village, people, animals, cars every turn but, worse, simply are reckless. As usual, great video ! Thank you :)
That's right! It is not recommended to drive by car in the interior of most European cities, unless you work there. In many places, you can only drive in with a special permit. Walk, cycle or travel by public transport. We hate cars!
21:53 In Portugal 🇵🇹 we have apps for parking. We activate the parking for the time we want, at it debits the amount from our bank account. We can then remotely extend the parking time if we need to stay more time, and the excess is again debited from our bank account.
19:34 garbage bin only for glass I believe. The yellow one is for paper and the blue for plastic. But it’s different with the colours in various countries.
From Spain. That one is the old style glass one called iglú that also is a countrywide style, more common in pedestrian areas, the new one, at least where I live, is mainly grey with a green stripe for glass. Blue stripe is paper, yellow stripe plastic/packaging/metal (plastic bottles, cans, plastic wrapping/packing, etc). For organic is full gray or with a brown stripe. That are the unified style, exist as well as bigger versions of the plastic (plastic material, half gray half yellow) and of the paper (full blue and metallic) one. Also exist one to donate clothes and other for waste cooking oil, more uncommon to see both of them.
I believe yellow plastic and blue paper is european standard and everyone has to follow. Not so sure about green glass though. We have green for colored glass (green, brown, doesn't matter) and white for clear glass in Czech republic. Then we have orange containers for milk milk/juice cartons (the cartons with plastic layer inside), but sometimes there's just orange sign on the yellow plastic container, so we put it there. Also red containers for electronics and batteries, brown for bio waste, and in my city we experiment with purple containers for cooking oil - it's not supposed to be flushed into the sink, we should put it into some jar/bottle and drive it to the collection centre, but no one does it since it's time consuming - thus the new purple containers.
@@Kalch210in The Netherlands it differs per municipality, for me it is green for garden and vegetables waste, blue for paper and cardboard, orange for plastic, metal and drink cartons and grey for residual waste. But the neighboring municipality it is orange for paper and cardboard.
I am portuguese - from Portugal a right side drive country - and i once drove in Scotland in the UK for 4 days. It was weird at first but after two hours of nonstop driving about in the first day i got accustomed faster that i expected. It helped the cars were brand new KIAs - a Ceed in Shetland and an XCeed in the Highlands - and that i drove mostly in rural areas so that helps a lot by having a low intensity acustomization. Still i did got a few stress moments when i got lost in the center of Inverness at rush hour driving about in heavy traffic or driving in the one lane roads in Shetland where for such a low populated rural region it had quite an unexpected good amount of people driving about. It was fun.
I don't have the in-car traffic light thing, but most intersections have traffic monitoring cameras At low traffic times, the lights will adjust to make sure I almost always have a green 🇨🇭
In the Netherlans also have 'de groen golf/the green wave' . In the evening our trafficlights mostley work like -who is approcing first will get the green light first. During the day it is a normal trafficlight.
11:18 Many mid-sized (by European standards) SUVs don't have especially big luggage compartments. They are big on the outside, but small on the inside. That Volvo XC60 has much less luggage space than my Škoda Octavia station wagon. If you want space, by a wagon, not an SUV. 21:00 Those parking "disks" (that's what we call them) are also common here in Finland (probably in many European countries). Especially smaller cities don't have much paid street parking, but they still want to restrict the parking on many streets to a certain time limit and it is monitored by using that "disk", which tells when the car was parked. The cities have traffic wardens and if they see that you have cheated with the time, you will get a parking ticket.
The small, winding roads are why hatchbacks are so popular, and they're really fun to drive on. Just not the hollow roads as you can't see people coming, but the ones where you can see for miles are amazing. When it comes to parallel parking I need about 2 feet of clearance to get my car into a gap. That said, in some really busy cities like Paris or Rome, you'd leave your emergency brake off, and people push their way into spaces. (also a reason why not to use a car in those cities)
Have you visited Europe or Australia since starting your channel? You have such an affinity with those places now it would be weird if you DIDN’T visit. :)
@ interesting! I wonder why that is the case. Do you think that once a creator visits the country they’ve spent so much time learning about and, potentially, idolizing, the actual reality is a little underwhelming (“never meet your heroes” syndrome) so their content falls away? I watch quite a few YT channels from Americans who dedicate their entire channel to UK TV and culture. As a Brit living abroad it helps with homesickness. But they’re all notable in that they never actually visit, even after 6, 7 or more years of weekly content all about the UK.
I want to but I don’t want to travel alone, I’d rather bring my wife and kids with. That costs a lot more though and it will be more extensive planning for all of us. Trust me.. I want to leave tommorow and spend months abroad
I used to be a driving instructor for cars and motorcycles, so i could teach you how to drive in Europe without looking like an American tourist 😊, but i think you already learned a lot from watching videos like these 😀
9:25 It's built like that because it was built BEFORE cars existed probably. The small streets have been like that for, perhaps, hundreds of years, it's not as if they built the houses and laid cobblestone roads in the 1970s...One love from Scotland. 💙🦄🏴
the "parkscheibe" has very lenient rules so we germans love it because parking can get expensive especially in bigger cities basically you have to put it on the time you arrived but only at the full hour mark or half hour mark depending on which comes after your current time meaning if you arrive at lets say 3:17 pm you can put it at 3:30pm and it will count the "free time" starting from 3:30pm and yes since it counts the mark AFTER you can arrive at 3:01pm you are still allowed to put it legally to 3:30pm and gain an extra 29mins basically You arent allowed to reset the time however that is the only rule it has which you can kinda outsmart by moving your car into another free spot on the same parking lot or drive around the corner and park in the same spot again as you are legally allowed to park there again if you fully moved the car and gave someone an opportunity to use the parking space its free competition again, most of those Parking spaces are free for 30min - 2 Hours, since more and more E-Charging Stations appear in the cities you can also see 4hour Signs now cause thats the Amount of Time an electric car is allowed to charge in a spot without paying a parking fee
Lisbon has several steep hills and we use manual per norm. One thing to remember in fuel stations, diesel is black or yellow. Green, blue or red for petrol
19:30 That's a glass recycling container. So yes, a truck passes through that street to load the glass with a crane and put the container back in its place.
I am from Germany and if you go so much as far in the south of Europe, driving was a another story 😂😂😂 south Italy or Spain, it's a dream 😅 in Italy we were overtake in a roundabout by a guy on a scooter on the right side with an broken arm with a speed feels like 100 miles an hour 😂😂😂 In Spain driving with a taxi is like driving as a copilot in a rally car 😂😂 In Valencia you must go to your cruises, no problem the taxidriver takes a 20 min trip in 5 min 😂😂😂
I'm from Valencia. This is simply not true. In Spain you generally drive very calmly, respecting the traffic rules (there are always people who don't comply with them). In Germany there are highways without speed limits. That is a danger. In fact, the mortality rate in traffic accidents is lower in Spain (3.7 per 100,000 inhabitants) than in Germany (4.3). You have to know what you're talking about...
The green dome container in the street that you asked about in the Spanish street is used to collect glass bottles for recycling. Keep it up with the interesting videos IWRocker great work. Greetings from Madrid.
A similar ancient system we have in the Netherlands. We call it translated the 'green wave'. As long as the green wave is illuminated and you stick to the speed limit, you will have all green lights for as long you meet this system. This one is more advanced than our ancient system 😅
My mum used to complain that if you got stopped at one red light you seemed to get stopped at all the red lights. I pointed out that she never went through a red light so that it was just bad luck, not a thing set up to annoy drivers. This was back in the days before interconnected light controlled systems.
I am from London. My family had a house in Tuscany and we would drive from London stopping twice on the way down. The town was so old and so narrow that you have to park outside. Only Fiat 500s an 125/7s could fit between the houses which looked similar to the clip from Spain. They had metal bars outside to lash a bridle for ones horse - they required folding mirrors in at some spots, even in the Fiat 500s!
@@gabrielesantucci6189 We bought it in 1985 and my last stay was in 1993. I cant remember seeing too many of the old design 500s when I was last in Tuscany in 2010ish. Anyhow, we called them baked beans for obvious reasons. I used to hang out with local lads in town. We would look for 125s and baked beans, pick them up and turn them 90º in their parking spot then wait for the owner to come back. Then we would undo it for them! Good clean fun!
19:25 FYI That is a glass container designed for the disposal of your wine bottles and other glass items. They are available for white glass only and colored glass.
in regards to the last clip where you read the comment from - we got 4, well maybe 5 different parking systems here in germany 1. its a public parking spot and its totally free 2. its a parking spot where its restricted in some ways (usually for certain times) having a sign saying can park between 9am and 4pm for example for various reasons 3. its a parking spot where you have to get a parking pass and pay in advance (for example it costs 1€ per hour to park and if you grab a pass for 3€ you'll get 3 hours of time before you gotta leave or risk gettin a ticket) 4. its a parking spot where you can use that blue parking disc the lady in the video showed where you set your time of arrival (you are allowed to round up to the next half hour) and are free to park there for a certain amount (usually theres a sign nearby that says if you can stay for 60, 90 or 120mins) 5. its a parking spot where they are sensors integrated in the floor that recognize when a car is parked and kinda stops the time. if you keep within the restrictions (caus a sensor wouldnt made any sense if you could park infinitely there) and leave on time, everything is fine. if you overstay you risk gettin a ticket. sadly those sensor parking spots have flaws - some of them sometimes dont register that you left and the time keeps tickin etc.
In the UK number 4 would be ANPR (Automatic numberplate recognition) as you enter and leave. Sometimes this is combined with needing to pay your ticket in order to not receive a fine if you forget to validate it. My local supermarket you can get 3 hours parking free as long as you spend £3 in store. You have to put in your numberplate and scan the receipt.
In France we don't have number 2 (or really rare delivery spots, only allowed at night and bank holidays). The blue disc has to be used when the parking spots are marked in blue When you need a parking pass, it's not the same price everywhere.
You missed the one where you use an app on your phone to start parking, and tell the app when you leave, so you only pay the time you were actually there. Although I was surprised to hear recently that this is a regional thing, since it's everywhere where I live.
In the UK, we have three-lane motorways, A roads (both dual and single-lane), B roads, streets (both ways and one-way), and country lanes/tracks. You are taught to drive to the conditions, not the speed limit. You would not hammer it down a single-lane country lane unless you want to wear a tractor or go sightseeing in a ditch or hedgerow.
This is the point, we are taught to drive the vehicles we have on the roads we have. The driving tests in USA are very easy so drivers don't get to do anything challenging unless out of choice.
Some of the lanes round here are so narrow that the latitude to move left or right is so little that there is a strip of grass down the middle of the road.
Some incredibly nerdy trivia. The word for road in Irish is bothar, which translates as cow path, or cow way. A lot of these little country roads were built so that cows could pass, not cars. And Re: high speed limits (which applies to the UK equally) - we have a "national speed limit" for roads that don't have a specific limit. It doesn't mean you're expected to go 60mph, it just means the road hasn't drawn enough attention to itself to earn a specific speed limit. You'll see boreens - two tracks - in Ireland that are 120kmh. Doesn't mean you can, should, would. Just means no-one's paid enough attention to specify it.
Hi, in towns the lights are " conected " to give straight green to push the traffic flow and reduce emissions noise and exhaust. It s called " grüne Welle " or " green wave. But more and more lights are " sensor " controlled, 20 or 30 meters in front are cable sensors in the pavement who give signals to the lights computer to turn green to you or red to others or the other way. So you have to go close to the lights to engage a function. Some of " gas " keeper slow down or brake way before but it s useless as long you dont cross the sensors. It might be a problem to light cars, bikes or cycles because they might be not " registerred " or detected by sensors or they dont touch them.
19:34 Yup, that is a recycling container, usually for glass or plastic bottles. We have them all across Europe. Regards from Serbia! I love your YT channel.
yes. Kn Spain, the green one is for glass bottles, cups, drinking glasses, jars... (or anything made with glass), and yellow one for plastic bottles and similar
I am from the UK and have hired left hand drive cars in Europe. Surprisingly changing gear in a manual car is easily adjusted to. What I always do is get in the car and reach over my right shoulder for the seat belt!!! The other thing is quickly glancing into the rear view mirror to the left rather than the right. As I come from the UK I am used to narrow, busy roads so that does help.
@@ZerokillerOppel1 Why? You hold the wheel with your dominant hand which is the right for most people and change gear with the other. Are right-handed continentals or yanks crippled in their left hands or something? It isn't difficult to move a gearstick.
Yeah the seatbelt is actually the weirdest part. Driving on the other side isn't really hard, just follow the flow. I find the different traffic signs and infrastructure to be more complicated than just the side of the road. I never drove in the UK but in Australia and NZ and they have a weird way to lead the traffic around roundabouts and construction sites. You can also turn left and right on highways, which is kinda dangerous in my opinion, because you are fast (110km/h).
The two things I found that I did wrong the most were 1) looking over the wrong shoulder when reverse parking every single time and 2) going to the drivers door when getting a ride from someone and having them look at me like "are you expecting to drive my car?". Nope, just on auto and went to the wrong side of the car.
@@Gambit771 dominant hand doesn't equal to strongest hand, for example while you write one hold the paper the other writes, while you are cutting a steak, that one you used to hold the paper, now you are holding the steak and that one you used to write now is cutting. The hand you used to hold the steak now you hold the wheel while the one you used to cut is now changing gear, changing the climate, changing the radio, holding the phone and creating an accident (ok, that's bad...). Now thinking about this point of view instead of dragging the Napoleon conversation, can we agree that there isn't a right way to drive other than be focused, respectful of the law and maintenance of the vehicles?
Most British country roads are National Speed limit which is 60 mph. That's the maximum speed, but you're expected to drive at a speed appropriate to the road conditions. If you drive on British country roads you can always tell the locals because they know every corner and dip. They know exactly how much space they need to get their car through a gap and they'll drive at 60. At night you can go much faster because you can see any car coming from miles away and use the full width of the road and go at 80-90mph if you know the roads.
Yeah…just gives a heart attack to the tourist when you turn off the lights at night instead of slowing down at the intersections to check for other drivers…omg, France!
Same in Germany where we like to go on vacation. I had the pleasure to drive with a local license plate a few times and it's so much fun. Mind you, I do know most of the streets and driving with a local plate enables you to drive like a local - with everyone respecting it (aka U got the right of way now 😂). Seeing tourists freaked out by the narrow roads is fun as well, you can always tell
The city where the first video was taken (with the car telling you when it's gonna be green) is Ingolstadt in Germany. It was the intersection of the streets "Nürnberger Straße" and "Theodor-Heuss Straße".
The thing aboit trusting in Germany is because if you are caught in violation say goodbye to a whole month of salary for the fine. The fines in Germany are not fixed values, they are calculated according to your earnings so that both the poor and the rich feel the same pinch, it is meant to really hurt no matter how wealthy you are.
Still hurts poor people more. Take 50 % of someone's income and a rich person will be fine but a poor person will struggle. The best method I can think of is by doing: (income - base living expense) × value of violation. This way a poor person still has a protected income to pay for important stuff, while it doesn't change much at all for a rich person.
@@Liggliluff I will apologize in advance because it will sound sligtly rude and arrogant, not my intention. The original comment said that fines are calculated based on income, you immediately provided an example with a fixed percentage (not based on income) and then present your solution not knowking it's almost 1 to 1 to how its done? Your comment sounds sweet, in good faith and to me looks like it comes from genuine concern regarding how oppresive fines can be on lower income families and how monetary punishments in most cases are quite ineffective on the rich but while it's an admirable mindset that more people should adopt, it undermines your credibility when you get basic facts wrong about the topic you're trying to raise awareness about! Before writing a comment always double check your informations, it helps a lot... especially online where people are so eager to mock you and attack your arguements in mean ways at the smallest mistake (just look at me). In germany fines are calculated like this: you take a person net income per month divide it by 30, that's the daily rate (your daily income idk why they call it like that), you multiply it for the number of daily rates you're sentenced and the outcome is the total amount you'll pay. You can imagine the number of daily rates how "how many daily incomes you need to pay for the crime you committed" (it's based on the severity of the crime and also up the a judge or whoever gave you the fine).
@@maxis5427 What are you talking about? A fixed percentage of the income is based on the income. If it's "equivalent to 3 days of income" is 10 % of the monthly income if it's based on 30 day months. We use this system in Sweden too. It's better than a fixed sum. But it's still not perfect. But based on the income is a percentage.
@@maxis5427 500 to a person who earns 2000 is more than 1250 to a person who earns 5000. Even if that is percentage wise the same, you can quite safely bet that the higher income person is more likely to have savings whereas the lower income person has to spend everything every month to make ends meet. So even if the fines take into account the income, it doesn't take into account the opportunities for more safety nets for the high income people.
When my mom and my younger brothers were driving in UK, she tasked the boys to remind her periodically "keep left". I guess she got used to it after the first day, she was a very good driver.
some older cities in Europe are narrow , because they date before cars are invented , and at the time animal tracted wagons are narrow . The Old part of Lisbon (Portugal) still haves a lot of stone roads (they last longer) and some have the rails for the "electrico" tram . for the "what's this" in the narrow street in Spain (19:37) it's a glass eco point bin (recycle bin for glass bottles) a specialized truck with a crane arm will pick it up and empty (the bottom opens) and put it back , we find those in different formats across Europe , and there are also for Paper /Packages / batteries or combination . Where I live in France I have a paper/plastic/metal bin , a food leftovers bin (that will be collected to make compost) and a general purpose bin for the things that cannot be recycled (rare nowadays ) .
In reference to the way of parking that can be seen in your video. It is mandatory to learn to park this way to get your driving license. It is very simple, but requires a technique. The most modern cars usually come with an automatic parking system, and the driver relaxes without even touching the steering wheel or the pedals.
As a Dutchman, I have driven a few times in the UK. Coming of the ferry in Harwich it does not take long before you get the first roundabouts. Double lane roundabouts! Cautious in the beginning, but once you get the habit, you will join in and take them with 60kmh too.
21:54 It is not based on trust really. If you set it ahead of when you actually arrived and a meter maid comes along before that, you still get a fine. Everyone adds a little bit but you're in trouble otherwise. People have made automatic ones, with a clockwork behind, so it changes with time. If you get caught with those, you are in real trouble. In Australia, the parking wardens have a stick with a white chalk on it and they mark the tires of parked cars. If the mark hasn't moved within the allowed parking time (starting when it was marked), you get a fine. Trade workers get around this by stopping work every hour (or whatever the allowed time is), get in their cars and the front of the line moves, the rest move one spot and the first parks at the end. The mark moved, so they can't get a fine. European cities don't have parking sensors, we have cars with license plate scanners that check if you paid, as it ia all electronic. You can pay with an app, or at a meter but it all goes to the same system. Very efficient money maker for cities.
I worked in Norway before. And a guy from Texas, and ad guy from south London came for the first time abroad. Texas guy think hi is a gocart in the rental Golf. Never drive stick. Hes car was a f250. English guy know stick, but not right Trafic. I was driving them for 2 weeks, i saved the cluth
In countries like Germany, Netherlands or Denmark there are parking places (usually by supermarkets or groceries) where you're allowed to park free for certain time (1/2 hour, 1 or 2 hours- written on the sign) and you set the time when you start to park on a kind of clock like the one in the clip or a sticker type on the windshield. If you forget to set that clock, you may find a ticket behind the wiper much higher than your shopping bill.
When I went to France last year, I was a bit confused at first at the gas station. I didn't know you had to insert your card. So I just put the nozzle into the tank and tried to fill up, but nothing happened. Then I realized I had to insert the card, but didn't know you had to insert the card before taking the nozzle. So I inserted the card while the nozzle was already in the tank, which didn't work and caused an error. Which meant I had to start over from scratch: remove the card, remove the nozzle from the tank and put it back into the pump, re-insert the card, then finally be able to chose what I wanted, and re-insert the nozzle. In total it took me about five minutes until I finally started pumping gas. It's definitely faster than the German method if you are used to it (as you don't have to go into the store to pay), but since I was not used to it, it was quite confusing. Luckily it was a slow day and I wasn't keeping anyone else from using the pump.
In Germany, they want us inside the shop, as that's where the station owners make their money. The profits from the gas go to the fuel company; what the station owners get barely covers the cost of operating the station. Offering card payments at the pump would go against that way of splitting the profit.
@@HenryLoenwind There have been news articles on the local news here in UK this week. They are about people leaving without paying. They has someone on saying pay at the pump would stop this but that getting people into the shop to buy things was where they made the profit. I always use pay at the pump at the supermarket, usually after I have been shopping there so I don't feel it hurts the supermarket filling station profits. I often buy milk at a filling station nearer my house but do not get fuel there as it is on an A class road so charges more for fuel.
I used to drive stretchen Mercedes limo’s. Had to reverse parallel park in backwards without any modern technology, just mirrors. No sweat, you get used to it using your mirrors propperly
Here in Italy parallel parking is absolutely necessary to live in the city, you havd to get used to the dimentions of your car to be able to eyeball it, sometimes all you have front and rear are 5cm.😅 It is a big part of your exam when you get your driving licence. Keep it up, love the videos❤
Never seen a loose parking disc like that before.. in denmark we use parking discs that are glued onto the inside of the lower right corner of the windshield.. can either be a seethrough physical disc with a pointer you move around when you park or a digital one (what i use) that automattically shows the time that the car stops moving from.. then depending on how long parking is allowed in the area (usually when its time limited its 30 min 1 hour or 2 hours.. though can also be a bunch of other increments but those are the most common) and if im not back at my car before the allowed time passes vs my parking disc i can get a parking fine from a parking guard (which are government employed and not police related)
The other thing is when you're driving fast at night through those narrow country lanes (in my case in N Yorks- Uk) You learn to occasionally flick rapidly, between full beam and dip lights, (to see any cars light in the distance) and especially at corners, so you can see any reflected light from any oncoming vehicle on the corner hedgerow! (because your Full beam will obscure other car lights in the distance and eclipse the reflected light of are other vehicles approaching the corner)
The traffic light signal connections is still a premium feature and usually part high end trims in more premium brands. The guy in the car for example was in a modern Audi. I drive a current Audi A6 estate and I do not have it. The traffic sign recoginition is pretty much standard though. And the really good ones (like in my Audi) also recognize the additional / conditional extra signs. Let's say it's the Autobahn and there is a 130 limit with the extra sign (8 - 20 h) below it, meaning the 130 is only in effect between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. -> It'll show me the 130 limit within this timeframe and stay with the "no restriction" otherwise. Plus the car will do stuff like vibrate the accelerator and show a recommendation to lift off, as a lower speed limit is coming up, or a roundabout, a stop sign etc. The traffic light thing is amazing though. I wonder how many traffic lights are actually compatible with that tech. A massive number of traffic lights (certainly on important roads) have sensors now. So the "main road" always has green, unless a car in one of the side streets triggers the sensor. The traffic light also observes (afaik usually induction loops embedded in the asphalt) how much traffic is on the main road. If it's clear, the side street gets the green within seconds. If there is traffic on all streets, it prioritizes which streets get green for how long. Only 1 car coming? The green phase will be like 5 seconds only, so better not be looking at your phone... 😀
The first clip was taken in Germany. You can see the street names in 3:35 for a sec. Its says "Nürnberger Str." Love your content btw, Im fascinated by you being fascinated about the most basic things here^^
For the 1st video about the synchronisation of traffic lights : you know it has nothing to do with the model of your car, all this comes from Google Maps so as long as you have Android Auto or Apple Car Play you can have it (if the city has got this technology)
I've been living in Lisbon for nearly 3 years. Been trying to avoid driving downtown, because it's just insane and unnecesary, no way you can park anyway :D But Sintra, oh man, definitely smelt some clutch from time to time. There were roads where I had to fold the mirrors and we are talking about a Jetta-sized small Seat
16:35 if everyone would be stealing fuel, everyone would get a ticket. They got your license plate, they know who the car is registered to. And keep in mind that the rating is done different. In Europe it is typically RON, while in North America, AKI, the average of RON and MON is usually listed. So octane ratings on european gas stations are about 5-10 higher. The currently available weakest gas is around 95 RON, which is about 90-91 AKI, (close to american "mid grade") Super Plus is around 97-98 RON, which is about 91-93 AKI. (close to american "premium") The equivalent to american "regular" isn't even sold anymore. But there are some in the range of 100-102 RON (94-95 AKI) (RON and MON are different ways to measure octane rating)
5:36 that road looks like back home. I'm from pomerania(germany's side) and up there most roads between the tiny villages sprinkled all over the place are as wide as this one and used both ways. many of them are more like gravel or dirt roads or long stone plates were placed to act like rails just for wheels and to prevent tractors to not get stuck in the mud. sometimes, when the road hasn't been used by a car or vehicle close to the ground in a while the grassy stripe in the middle will grow really tall. the back end roads that connects villages are often as overgrown on the sides as this one, but they are rarely used and have pouches to tuck your car in so the other one can pass. personally I think it's way more scary on the Landstraßen. the one going right through my village _barely_ fits two cars and when you pass by each other a little faster than you should you can feel how the sudden difference in air pressure shakes the car. that's so close you could basically high five the other driver. there are still some small gravel pouches on those "bigger" roads, because your tiny car will have no other choice, but to yield to the tractors. 100km/h(62mph) or even more(?) is allowed on that road that goes right through my village btw. doesn't really have any speed limit signs anywhere. I had the horrifying pleasure to get a ride home with my dad who drove 140km/h(87mph) and 100km/h through the sharp curves .. with a van. he worked as a newspaper delivery guy and their work demanded them to work in almost every condition, including during an apporaching cyclone+snowstorm. so he is a good driver. still scared the living crap out of me. funny little story about our roads btw. since it's really close to the baltic sea many tourists, who have no idea about the area, but try to be clever and get onto Usedom island via Anklam will inevitably get completely lost on our village road network or end up in a ditch, because they just don't know how to safely drive on such narrow roads. going off road on the Landstraßen is a hit or miss tho, because there are trees on each side, so good luck not crashing into one of those and don't expect guard rails in sharp curves or anywhere else. that's for the cultured city folk. well, I'm part of them now. there's no way I'd have stayed in the sticks with villages that have as little as 7 residences, with fields and and forests and more fields in between. the car dependency up there is really high too, but why would you ever need to upgrade the infrastructure in a place with such a low population density, right? /sarcasm -- my dad literally was heavily involved in bringing our region into the 21st century aka. building out the infrastructure to upgrade from phone line internet to DSL. first time we had usable internet was in 2005.
I have never seen that traffic light thing, not sure what city or car it's in but definitely isn't common. The biggest difference in traffic lights I've seen in US Vs Vs Europe is that there are more in US, and they take a lot longer to change. Here they are maybe 20-30s each way, and there are coils in the road to change it depending on demand, but in the US you can be waiting at a red light for several minutes even when nobody is coming the other way and traffic can really back up before it changes. It's crazy that it can take 10 minutes to get somewhere, +3-5m for every red light you hit.
Reacting to the first video you watched. In The Netherlands the trafficlights have "green" or "environment" features, called the "green wave". It works only if you drive the speedlimit, 1st green light, pull up, drive the speedlimit, all the other intersections with lights also give you green light. Some intersections detect if there are Freighter-trucks coming and the light will jump green to reduce emissions by trucks not having to stop and pull up again, those intersections are mostly outside cities. The green wave intersections are usually inside city-limits. Question: why call cars trucks? How do you call real trucks, the hauling kind?
I'm French, I travel quite a lot, and I have 2 personal stories that came to my mind after watching your video : - I went to North America several times, and I lived in Canada for like 6 months. When I lived there I bought myself a car (a used Saturn Ion) and travelled a bit across Canada and the US. People there drive like mentals especially on the highway, they pass you on the right, don't use indicators etc., but I also remember that as a European I was much more skilled at driving than mose North Americans and even though I had never driven in snow in my entire life, I witnessed many accidents or close calls by locals while I was perfectly fine, even doing 180 with my handbrake on parking lots to avoid the 3-point turn back 👌. But when I came back to Europe, I had a hard time for a few hours when my dad went pick me up at Paris Airport and drove me back home, because we had a 4-hour trip on French highways and each time he passed a car and especially a lorry truck, I thought that we would never fit in our lane. - I went to Japan, and rent a car there. Of course in Japan you drive on the left side of the road and I was a bit worried about this, having never driven on the left side of the road, especially because I had to pick my rental car at Shinjuku Station, right in the middle of Tokyo, which has very heavy traffic and I knew I wouldn't be out of Tokyo before at least a 2-hour drive. Fortunately, I had rent an automatic, even though I've always been used to manual transmissions I was relieved by the fact that I wouldn't havr to shift with my left hand ! Oh I forgot, I don't really know why but my brain refused to acknowledge that the indicators knob and the wipers knob are still located on the same side as a left-hand drive car, so I kept on activating my wipers when I needed to use my indicator and vice versa 😂
A subtle note: In Europe we don't differentiate between cars and trucks. They're all cars. What we call trucks, are the big cargo trucks that in the states are referred to as Semi.
A truck is something you need a commercial licence for.
We might call it a pickup sometimes.
Lots of American (pickup) trucks are licenced differently in Europe as they exeed 3,5 tonnes, putting them into the class C1 (small truck) that is the class between 3.5 and 7.5 Tonnes. C1E would be small truck and trailer (total of 12 tonnes), so yeah, we do distinguish between a car (B license) up to 3,5 tonnes, C1, and C (big trucks. D would be big busses). Having a CEDE license gives one the roto drive everything from cars to complex big rigs and busses with trailers.
In Sweden, a "truck" or "gaffeltruck" is a forklift :p
@@Xirque666 And different than with US CDLs, there is no difference betwen air brakes or not with European licenses. Otherwise they have Classs A above about 4.5 tons ot 10000 lbs, class B above 26000 lbs or about 11.8 tons And class C, which is like Class B but for either hazardous materials or that squishy stuff that moves around on two legs. Oh sorry, 16 or more passengers that is.
As extension, there is Class D1, for busses up to 16 passengers. For those wondering, with Class B you are allowed to transport up to 8 passengers besides the driver.
But, what initially got Uber kicked in the nuts in Germany, with class B you cannot simply drive passengers, even if less than 8, commercially. In some states in the US this exists as "Chaufffeur License" as well. You need an additioanl license (comming with trainings and exams) to drive passengers commercially. At least in the past part of that was knowing all the roads and streets in your city and being able to tell the shortest or fastest route to any place in the city from where you were. This got somewhat redundant due to Personal navigation devices and I am not sure if it still is a requirement.
Some Pickup trucks, the name originates by the way from Ford originally offering a vehicle with only the frame and engine, you could pick it up and have someone else build a cab and truck bed to your needs, or for example Teslas Cybertruck would already require different licenses than the normal ones for Cars.
At least in Germany, the old license classes before 1998, where like class 1 for motorcycles (now Class A), Class 2 for trucks above 7.5 tons and trailers (now Class C and CE) and Class 3 for vehicles up to 7.5 tons and a single axle (or twin axle if the axles where at most 1 meter apart) trailer up to 1.5 times the towing vehicles weight with integrated brakes (like air brakes). If you had one of those (like I got) it was transferred to Class BE, Class C1E, and Class CE up to you turning 50 and limited to 3 axles total and 18.5 tons total max gross weight. (after turning 50 you would need a health check every 5 years to extend that license)
In Germany there are some, sort of in between classes that got created out of necessity, like B96 and others, that for example allow larger trailers or vehicles up to 4.25 tons, like for example Ambulances (there are multiple varieties, I don´t know all of them)
With more and more EVs on the road and those in general getting a lot heavier than regular cars, there are discussions though, to increase the max weight for Class B to 4.25 tons or even 4.5 tons.
@@alexanderkupke920 I'm from Sweden and i am an idiot. I mixed up B96 with an exception for swedish licenses which was introduced in 1996 meaning that people that had gotten a class B license before july 1996 had no weight limit on their license.
11:00 "Tiny little Volvo" Dude that's like an XC60, that's a BIG CAR
Yeah but, when i was searching for a car some years ago i had the feeling, that the boot size of volvos doesn't fit its outer size.
The problem is not the Volvo. 4 men and their luggage would fit comfortably. 🤣🤣
And 7 pieces for 4 people? Are they dumb?
@@peter_althoff 4 men with luggage would if comfortably in Volvo C30.
it IS a big car :D
"This does not look like a road." Because it isn't. It's a street, where cars are mere guests. A street probably built before cars were even an idea.
However, they had carts and carriages and sedan chairs at their time...
Considering the oldest neighborhood is from early 8th century... that seems to be around that area of the city.
Exactly! Very many people (I'd even dare to say that it's vast majority of population, including me only few years ago) often mixes those two totally different but yet very similar things.
Roads are designed to cover a section of the route as quickly and efficiently as possible, without unnecessary obstacles such as: intersections, pedestrian crossings, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.
Streets, on the other hand, are mainly created in cities and are intended to accommodate everyone who wants to get from point A to point B, regardless of their size (human/bike/truck/tram etc.).
This is my simple, original and naive explanation of the difference.
@la-go-xy They were far less common than cars nowadays though. And I don't think that a street on such a slope was initially designed with wheeled vehicles in mind...
@@la-go-xy and they were al much slower than a car
A local petrol station tried the pay first, pump after policy. Lasted about 2 weeks. Locals were personally offended by the policy. They went to another station where they weren't considered and treated like criminals (Rural Ireland)
some gas stations do it , in french big cities...maybe because they had "problems" with some clients...
i can understand why they do that, and try not to feel offended : it's not a big deal, though...
it's certainly a bit too cautious, in rural areas, where people know everybody.
Here in rural northern norway we have 3 unmanned petrol stations in like a big area. you pay first, then tank your car. If you don't want this you have to drive 14km to come to the nearest manned station. Your choice.
Honest people wouldn't mind...
@@jimbotron70Sure they would, it's an inconvenience having to go in first, then pumping gas, then going in again to get their change.
@@MicraHakkinen So it's not about being offended.
19:31 To my Belgian eye that seems like an glass bottle collection/recycling point.
That's what I thought, here in Czechia we have green for colored glass and white for transparent glass.
yup they look the same in italy
Yep, it's a glass container. Normally they're together with the organic, paper and plastic, but seems as this one was the only one that fitted there
To my Dutch eye too...🤣same containers over here...
Yup, spaniard here. Can confirm thats a glass container. For some reason a decade or so ago, most cities came up with the idea of painting murals on all glass recycling bins to "prevent" graffiti from being painted over them. I imagine it will be similar throughout most of Europe.
That 2-lane is perfectly wide enough for NORMAL sized cars (ie not mini tanks).
Lots round here in Kildare, you might have issues if you meet a tractor or a horse box [or possibly an APC, couple of them regularly on the roads but they generally have nice polite drivers which helps] but the biggest issue are drives who either don't know the width of their own car or - more likely - don't want to go too close to the edge in case the grass/hedge scratches the paint. They can be a nuisance.
no they are not. And I'm telling you this as someone living in Europe. That road is a nuisance - if you meet someone that's towing a semi, some kind of agriculture vehicle, someone who's car has broken or even someone that decided to park there you are in trouble. And even in normal circumstances you might scratch your car on that stupid hedge. Even worse, imagine an ambulance or fire truck trying to use that road
@@ionicafardefricahaving to reverse a short distance to find a passing point is not getting in trouble. And if you're scratching your car you only have yourself to blame
@@TheTomco11 imagine there's a raging fire at the end of that little road. Fire truck will get there after everything is charcoal because it had to stop and wait for people to get out of the way five times. They might also loose equipment that is normally stored on the outside, like ladders, hoses or tool boxes because of the hedge. Making such a narrow road is beyond stupid. There are many countries in the world I would call backwards(including mine), but even we recognize the need to leave a sufficient access way for emergencies
16:35 oh believe me you dont want to steal gas at the gas station, they register your drivers plate and either the cops show up to your home or you get a bill and a fine
I know someone who did that, 3 times at the same gas station no less. She got a letter from the petrol company with the amount to pay (and some extra costs too I believe). The camera catches the numberplate and the driver. Though she lived in another country they had no problems finding her.
If she didn't pay she would have ended u in court and it would have cost her way more. Possibly up to 1 year in jail because of a zero tolerance policy towards petrol thieves.
thats why you borrow someone else's plates.
Yeah and sometimes the system just malfunctions. I remember taking fuel at my usual local fuel station... and then being questioned by the police a couple of weeks later for alledgedly stealing fuel. After some searching and checking, it turned out that the payment system of the fuel station was dysfunctional and served fuel without charging the debit or credit card. That really pissed me off, so I wrote back to the police officer: "If those people are stupid enough to deliver fuel without charging the card that I swipe through the payment terminal, they have only themselves to blame. Don't summon me to the police station, summon them for filing a misleading complaint". The public prosecutor of course dropped the case against me and I just had to pay the regular price for the fuel that I had taken but, upon going to the fuel station to pay in person to the attendant, I gave her a piece of my mind: I told her in no uncertain terms that I had other fish to try than lose time and energy just because their payment system doesn't work properly and delivers fuel nonetheless. Needless to say that they've lost a customer: I now go to some other fuel station.
@@JoriDiculous Good luck finding someone who willingly let you borrow their plates. They are bound to both the person and car. Meaning that just placing them on any other car is against the law. You have to transfer them officially first. Even if you just could just borrow someone's plates, that's -1 friend when they receive the fine instead.
If you're suggesting using stolen plates, they're gonna be marked as stolen. I don't know if gas companies have access to that info, but you risk getting pulled over by the police for sure.
Yeah, there's people that steal in europe aswell xD I guess he didn't thought that one deep enought
Watching the video as an European, two main thoughts go through my mind:
1) "Why are these people so afraid? That's a perfectly normal-sized street/road they're going through!"
2) "American vehicles are objectively gargantuan."
On the second one, I'm VERY serious. Normal people don't need cars that are 5m+ in length, 2m+ in width, and about 2m tall. You can get from A to B perfectly fine with a family of 5 in a hatchback. Or a wagon, if you frequently need to carry luggage. And I say this as the owner of a Tesla Model S, I often say "this car is like an elephant in these streets".
As a Portuguese, I should note that cobble streets are a staple of the oldest streets in Lisbon (and other cities in Portugal), and those streets often predate the invention of the car by over a century (that area of Lisbon was built in the late 1700s, after the 1775 earthquake that leveled the city). You'd at most take a horse through those streets.
And lastly, on parallel parking: there's a technique all drivers are taught at driver's school that lets you fit into our parking spots, so it's fairly second-nature for most drivers. As for parking near a wall, you get used to it quickly, it's just practice. Because you either learn to park in tight spaces or you'll need to take public transit.
Seems just like common sense to us non-citizens of Freedomland. 🤷♂😁
One technique: Stop with your rear wheel at rearbumper of the car behind the spot. Fro here on it is 'drive slow, steer quickly''. Turn your steering wheel COMPLETELY to the right until your frontwheel is at the bumper. Then turn your steering wheel COMPLETELY to the left an you will and up near the sidewalk.
To get into even smaller spots an experienced driver can exchange the rearbumper for the rearwheels.
In a really tight spot you won't have the space to drive parallel to the walkway, so stop, turn the steering wheel all to the right and go foreward. I remember an article where they parked with an old VW rabbit and needed less than 50 cm or 20" space more than their car size.
As a Latvian I'm not really put off by the size of RAM1500 or F150. I often drive our work vehicles that are MB Sprinter and Fiat Ducato (both with long wheel base) through Riga with no problem, and they are about the same size. And I live in rural parts of Latvia, so vehicle size is not an issue at all. Weight is the only limiting factor, really. I only have cat B licence.
I’m Swedish and i remember going to Spain with my family, 5 people in the car, 4 adults 1 child, 3 big luggage bags (these big hard case square travel ones) 2 small ones, 2 backpacks, and we crammed that shit into something like a Renault Clio Hatchback (I don’t remember exactly what model but I think it was something similar to that in size at least).
So we puzzled like professionals and managed to drive to the apartment 40min away, people crushed by bags, backpacks between the legs. Like 1am at night.
If u have never done something like that u have never been on a proper vacation in Europe
40 min away from Sweden to Spain….more like 40h!
We always did the same going from West Germany to the Haute Provence in France…taking 4 inflatable boats, 4 bikes and more often than not 4x skiing gear for our Easter vacation….
Took us about 16-18h, too
TRUEEE! Going on a 1200km trip in a 2nd gen Opel Corsa with 5 people and baggage was the best road trip ever.
@@lynnm6413 I assume they went by plane or train and only had to drive the car for the last 40 minutes to their final destination.
@@lynnm6413 he probobly meant from the airport to the motel.
@@AlvinDema Been there, done that😂😂. We did a trip across Spain in an A-class, four people with all our luggage, crammed in the boot and us rear passengers. I remember getting out of the car and seeing that I accidentally sat on a pack of donuts and they had all converted to a smushed paste of thing😂
21:23 We have such parking discs in Sweden too. You park, set the arrival time, put it visible in the windshield and do your errands. If you come back and have received a parking fine, you have exceeded the time. You usually can park for 2 hours, sometimes 4.
So we do in France too. I think the park disc is just normal in EU, many blue zones...
@@galadinthedark9862we don’t have in Poland.
In Finland, we got disc parking sometime in the early 90s.
Ian said it has something to do with trust, but it really is just a way to fine us with even a little miss use of the disc. You could run to your car every 2 hours to spin it forward, but the parking attendants learn pretty quickly where that would be probable and take photos to prove you did it. In the early days of the system, way before digital cameras, they had chalcs with them to mark where your tires were.. It's ok to park again in the same place if you move your car. The chalc lines on tires were slightly better for drivers, as if you drive around the block and park in the same spot, it could easily look just the same in a photo. Tires would end up in different orientation and the chalc lines couldn't match even if you tried.
Time for disc parking could be anything. There's been 15 min to 12h parking spots. You set the disc to the next full or half hour, so you might get 44 minutes in the 15 min spot etc. 12h spots won't really work like they should, as it does not matter what you set your disc at, as it should be OK to check it any time. Still there are some spots with 12h parking. Most are for 2-4 hours, which is enough for shopping etc, but makes it difficult to hog roadside parking when you sit at your office for a day.
Pretty common in Belgium too, even in the city where you live and not just as a visitor or tourist
@@villehietala9677 In Sweden, they note how the valves on the wheels are and check if you have been standing for too long, or simply moved the car.
A lot of rural roads in the UK have a speed limit of 60mph, this doesn't mean you're expected to do 60 everywhere, it just means that speed is left up to the driver's discretion.
Also, I've noticed its a very American thing to say a pickup truck isn't a car, or an SUV isn't a car, I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but here no one would question them being included in the category of "car".
And these are also, perhaps unsurprisingly, also the most dangerous types of roads.
That is because SUVs are generally classified as light trucks in the United States, not cars. This classification allows SUVs to be regulated less strictly than cars for fuel economy and emissions. Also manufacturers can reduce tax on these vehicles because light trucks are classified as commercial vehicles. It means that light trucks are way more profitable which is why the manufacturers market them so aggressively.
@mxlexrd Here in Dacia/Rumania TOO . EVERYBODY would consider them cars.
Most name cars modified to have a box on the back (like Dacia pick-up) as "camionete" (little truck , from french i think) but everybody know they aren't.
True "camionete" / small trucks are the type that move those termopan glass diirs and windows on those triunghiular shape shpports , the open bed trucks,for i think 3 or 5 tons like the old small trucks nade by Roman/Dac manufacturer from Dacia/Rumania în the 1950's.
They just like HUGE CARS JACKED UP FOR THEIR BIG BELLY AND BIG KG and call them trucks , but they aren't.
Also,uts RIDICULOUS to tax them less because they're comercial,when they are USED WAY MOORE ,polute more and are more ineficient.
The regulation shouldbl be the same if not even more strict !!!
In the US they legally aren't cars but small trucks, a quirk which doesn't exist in (most of) Europe where even big cars and vans have to abide by the same emissions and safety standards as small cars.
In Europe, the light duty F150 can be imported as a car, but try importing a heavy duty F350 and you'll find out they are trucks requiring all the extra equipments of big rigs and submitted to the same laws and restrictions including the commercial driver license.
Everytime I've seen a medium or heavy duty other than in Northern Europe, they've always been illegaly imported as light duty.
I used to have a C20 crew cab registered as a C10, my neighbor has a Dodge 2500 V10 and the cops payed him a visit 5 years ago : the company that imported it got busted for illegaly importing this type of vehicle and he is now bared from ever selling it and they warned him that maybe someday they might get the command to seize his truck for destruction.
tbh for the green wave at 00:56 , I'm a bit pissed that you need technology to tell you about green waves, signs that tell you about green waves exist
3:44 By the looks of it this is Germany, and the car is an Audi btw, and this only works in Audis at the moment (I believe) since they are connected with the traffic light control panels. But other manufacturers are trying other cool things too, like BMW working with Vodafone (cellular provider) to provide live info on railroad crossings and how long they take.
Yes, this is definitely not a standard thing in Europe, like the video makes believe.
@@Kyragos And also only in certain cities, to be precise
The speeding up to catch the next traffic light on green could be problematic as possibly you would be exceeding speed limits.
@@flitsertheo This system won't let you do that. The system doesn't recommend a speed of over 50km/h, even if it would mean you'd catch the light.
Well to be fair, im from Sweden, been living and driving in Paris, driving in Germany and so on but even me have done the same thing that this couple in Spain. I blame the gps!
16:35 Quick "hint" about this.. Tennants will only turn the pump on when the system took a picture of your licence plate (and car)
You may steal gas, but we got your plate ! You'll pay WAY more than a refill as fine if you try !
Also, they have the right to not turn on the pump if you look suspicious.
We pay by plate in some places in Denmark. Eg bridges. If only we could pay that way for gas.
@@charisma-hornum-fries Circle K has that feature in Latvia. You do need to be registered with an app, but you can pay with license plate.
@@charisma-hornum-fries Imagine coming to Denmark, renting a car, driving to Malmö, expecting to see some toll booths, seeing none, thinking it's free, after few days going to the mainland Denmark through another bridge, still no toll booths, when coming back, right after the bridge, realizing you just forgot a pair of cheap-ass sunglasses in a cafe on the other side (I think it was Nyborg), going back through the bridge and then back to Copenhagen again. And, finally, when returning your car, finding out that it was very much not free all that time X_X
4:55 that car won't be there when he returns, to be picked up at the police impound along with a fine.
I hope. I hate there are more and more of those in Europe
@@liul Agree. The only ones with pickups should be farmers and road construction. Not shop owners who do it for the tax credits.
@@liul People don't buy their vehicles to satisfy your preferences... I'm sure you also do plenty of stuff others don't like, doesn't mean it should be illegal. Like trying to control other people's lives.
@@liul I'm sure that you also do plenty of stuff others don't like.
Why do people feel like trying to control other people's lives.?
@@Aimless6 That's like saying sedans should only be sold for taxi companies and police department.
20:00 As Germans, we're also used to narrow streets in rural areas (where I live), but I was once in an extremely narrow street in Düsseldorf behind a 4* or 5* hotel and there were Lamburghini, Porsche, Maybach etc. parked there. and I was driving a small Hyundai i10 at that time and sweating blood and tears because the luxury cars were parked so stupidly that I could hardly get through and was scared to death of damaging one of the expensive luxury cars and I couldn't reverse because an SUV was squeezing through behind me (which in some cases only had two fingers' width of space) 😂The car behind me came from Italy and while they slowly squeezed through, the woman in the passenger seat was constantly screaming in Italian and the man was screaming back and gesticulating wildly and we (my boyfriend and I) had tears in our eyes from laughing. We just managed to find a space in the underground parking garage (the entrance to which was also on this narrow street) and the bickering Italians continued to shout at each other there and the woman kept hitting her poor guy with her Gucci bag 🤣
Just a classic day with us italians AHAHAHAH
12:00 To be frank, the trunks of SUV usually are tiny compared to wagons. For four people + luggage, I would always get a wagon.
A Skoda wagon. Interiors designed by Doctor Who
Bigger on the inside? 😂 It should called Škoda Tardis 😂.
SUVs make terrible use of their size. You get as much usable trunk space out of a Renault Twingo despite the car being 3 times as large.
Getting an XC60 with so much luggage is asking for trouble. They would need an XC90 to have more space.
XC60 boot is 500 litres. It's average.
Fiat 127, a car that can fit inside the XC60 has 360l boot.
20:55 Parkscheibe, parking disc. Opposed to the comment you read out there are no sensors underneath. The cities have municipal police officers going round and controlling parked cars and those parking discs. If they see one with overtime they write a ticket, if they see one with time set in the future they will "assume" it's from the day before and write you a ticket... You still are allowed to set the time to the next half hour mark. So arriving at 8:20 you'll set the time to 8:30, even arriving at 8:07 you are allowed to set it to 8:30.
Various cities have different time slots for free parking. At parking zones a little bit away from the city center you may get up to 3 or 4 hours of free parking, right next to the city center, adjacent to the pedestrian zone, you may get only half an hour.
19:34 that thing at least in germany is a glass container
where you throw your used glass bottles in
so it gets picked up and recycled .
in germany we usually have three , one for clear , one for green and one for brown glass
Yes, they are from a time long before we knew the word recycling. But they still function.
In Spain is the same. Glass container for recycle
In Sweden we call them glass igloos
I swear I thought he meant that small Mercedes :D
Here in Spain we only have the green ones for all types of glass.
The thing that Americans don't understand, is that like 30% of our roads were built before cars existed 😂
Standard Pickup in the USA - the RAM? Wow - in Vienna it´s like a Monster Truck ;-)
There s a dude in my hometown in spain who has an f150 and every time we cross paths I have a jump scare, the proportions are so off in relation with everything else on the street😂
Only the smallest engine version are sold in Europe. Else you'd need a CDL to drive them. (>3500 kg loaded)
and have those ugly truck markings.
@@Aimless6 And also lower speed limits, in Italy it’s 70 on highways where car can go 90 and 80 on motorways where cars can go 130.
@@Aimless6 you can get larger ones as well ... can buy a RAM 2500 at the dealership here and I also spotted an F650 in Germany already
@@thekitchenchikens ford F150 in US is a little/standard pick-up (or "truck" in american) ...F350 or F450 is really BIG😅
That green thing in Spain is a container for glass recycling. We put our empty bottles or jars there. Here in Valencia we have seven different containers:
green for glass
blue for paper and cardboard
brown for organic matter
yellow for plastic and cans
orange for used cooking oil,
other with assorted colours depending on which charity picks them for shoes and clothing
grey for the rest of garbage
All of them but the ones for clothing are managed by the municipality.
In addition to that, we have several "clean spots" (punto limpio) around the city to dispose of electronics, furniture and construction debris and there's also a "mobile clean spot", a truck which parks in different locations in the city where you can take your electronics or small appliances. Every six weeks or so you can find that truck near your home for 48 hours, always in the same place, and you can check the next date in the municipality web.
At supermarkets you find other containers, just buckets with a slot in the cover, for batteries. And also in some places like some supermarkets and wherever you can buy lighting stuff, a box to litter your bulbs, tubes or whatever you use to light your home.
We take recycling quite seriously, and have a hell of buckets, boxes and such at home to classify garbage. It was quite confusing when they started with this thing in the nineties, but now we're used to it and it just comes natural
parking is a terrifying part of the driving test in Spain, it's scary and tough at first, but after years you end up pulling into one of those in a single move. You step out of the car with the widest smile and a sense of accomplishment 😂
Can confirm. Just yesterday I parked my car in a tiny space in record time. My old me from when I was practicing for the test drive would be proud of me xD
Parking in old European cities is so terrifying at first. I'd be half pulling in awkwardly so many times, letting traffic go by so I can pull out and try again without holding everyone up.😂
It's so satisfying when you finally squeeze into the space so perfectly though. 😌
Based on the dents in small cars in Paris, but also in Rome or 8n Spanish cities plenty of people just bump the other cars during close parking
@@Blackadder75 Yes. In dense cities you don't pull the parking brake. You leave it in manual 3rd or 5th gear, depending on the angle of the hill. Just so that your car can move a bit when shoved.
edit: With automatics you would leave it in neutral and pull the parking brake only halfway. If your car doesn't allow parking in neutral ... find a diffent spot ... or lose your gearbox.
Either you do or you don't. There's no try.
19:38 that's a glass collector, you put your used bottles inside, and they recycle .
That Irish road is 'wide' compared to where I live and where I was brought up. Remember that these lanes are 100s or in some cases 1000s of years old. The lane outside of my parents' house in Wales dates back to about 200AD and was built by the Romans. So yes they weren't built for cars. Horses and carts!
😂😂 that's what I thought when he said it was small.
Where I live it's a single lane up to my house.
The one in the video would be a luxury.
Oh, really? how is it possible that other European countries have normal roads, but not Ireland, besides, potholes, potholes and potholes...
UK/Ireland have lots of these rural back roads. You're going to find tractors and farmers moving their sheep/cows on these, not high volume traffic.
Because the 200AD roads in central europa were either bombed to oblivion in WW2 or slowly got replaced. The only small ones you really see in germany are those in the inner city, of cities below 500k inhabitants (because the other ones, got bombed to oblivion), where driving is forbidden anyways
@@Afkhh UK has a greater area of potholes than road surface as well.
2:00 during driving school they taught us that there are some some signs called “green wave” that indicates the speed at which you should go to find the green light at every intersections…but they are pretty rare
the couple in spain,went to a "pedestrian zone" by the navigation system.
There is a similar one in Munich 😂
In Belgium the pedestrian zones are blocked by obstacles such as these poles that can sink in the ground.
@@flitsertheo Hasselt and neighboring cities don't have those. I rarely see them, only in big cities
@@flitsertheo and come up under the vehicle if it isn't supposed to be there
@@flitsertheo This also exists here in Spain, but some of those "pedestrian-only streets" let taxis, delivery vans, cleaning vehicles and police cars enter, also some people with a special permissions to enter their garages in some cases. This is easy to find in some parts of the city centre of Málaga at night
the drivers in ibiza are truly legendary. i have seen a dubble decker bus driver squeeze in a road with cars on both sides. literally one mistake and so many cars would be damaged. but the guy pulled it off without any damage
...and in the Canary Islands, the bus drivers are unbelievable.
@@percyprune7548 Just went there for the first time - most twisty roads fun I've ever had!
19:33 It's a glass container where you can deposit your glass bottles and such, mostly (at least here in BE) divided in 2 compartments, 1 for clear glass, 1 for coloured glass
@10:45 In Norway the default limit is 80kmh (~50mph) in rural areas if no limit is posted. In built up areas its 50kmh (~30mph). One of the basic rules of driving tells you to drive safely based on the conditions. So it is your responsibility to not go faster than what is needed to stop for something unexpected. Lots of rural roads where only a rally driver would go 80 and many places that is physically impossible.
In the UK residential streets are 20mph, streets in towns and cities are usually 30mph, ring roads are often 40mph, roads in the countryside which have one lane in each direction can be 40mph, 50mph, or 60mph. Depending on the road layout, such as sharp bends, narrowness, etc.
@@susanwestern6434 But do the UK have a default? As in when no limit is posted.
Here you'll just see the black and white sign saying a 70, 60 or 50 zone end but no further speed limit signs.
Posted limits is different. Residential areas here usually have a 30 zone sign which different than a regular round 30 sign. The regular round sign only applies to the next intersection while the zone sign applies to all roads behind it until it is lifted.
Only place with proper ring road in Norway is Oslo and I'm pretty sure its 60-70kmh. They have in the past reduced it to 60 during winter. Not sure if that is still the case.
Roads with limit above 80kmh would need very little traffic on average to not get a middle divider. New roads with 90kmh are usually physically divided or quite wide and with less than 1500 vehicles per day on average. There are some narrow roads up in the far north, but those probably have less than 500 vehicles per day on average.
Roads above 90kmh are always divided and can not have at grade intersections. They would also be defined as a motorway.
Just to clear any confusion, I don't know where the second clip is taken, but it is definitely not Paris. Tramways there don't look like this. The absurdity of the scene would still be the same in Paris though, which is the main point. 😅
I wouldn't be surprised if that's also in Lisbon -- I seem to remember Lisbon trams that look like that.
It's the Netherlands, probably Amsterdam.
Yeah it’s in Amsterdam
@@twanzwart Thank you both for the correction
We have the same blue thing at the end of the video in France.
It's for certain parking spot only, blue colored on the ground. You put that blue disk on the front visible through your wind shield with your time of arrival and it shows at what time you need to left. It is for short time only. If a police officier come, he will check that blue disk through your wind shield to see if your allowed time is used or not. If it is... You got yourself a parking ticket :p
1:36 there is a thing called "green wave". It meant light were synchronized so when driving at some speed you would have green lights all the way. It is since... 70's? That comunication with car is impresive. Maybe it is somewhat conected with Google Maps?
Yes late 70s first 80s depends on country.
Nope, This is green wave 2.0, a modern day service and the app is called trafficpilot. That video clip is in an Audi driving in Ingolstadt where that service is available. To day it is available in 11 cities from Germany and Austria (Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hannover, Wien, Salzburg, ...). The traffic lights are connected to the system and will tell you exactly how long they will have red light, when green light will come on and even dynamically tell you what speed you need to drive to get to the next traffic light to catch green. Look it up.
In Finland that's a myth. No such thing exists
From the UK and I've not seen that traffic light tech before, but maybe it's in more modern cars or I've just not seen the app before. Amazing tech though
@@sebastianmannermaa7523 in Italy in big cities, especially on big avenues with dozens of traffic lights one after the other it is common, there is a sign that indicates the speed to take the "green wave" (usually 40 km/h), if you go faster you take the red. I had never seen the integration with assisted driving though.
I remember seeing some GMC Truck/SUV thingy for the first time in Europe and it was longer and larger than a VW Transporter Van that was sitting next to it. The long version of that was shorter. They are too big, no question about it.
@20:45 you drive until it no longer beeps and is a continuous noise. That's is when you are 2-5cm from the car behind, then you go in the other direction until the same thing happens.
@21:20 Germany and many other places have (rought translation) "short time parking areas" where you can park for limited time, like 30 to 90min, like when you're going to a farmacy, or a doctor, or some meeting in the city center. For those areas, you use such a clock and the police man knows if you overstayed or not.
Musings from Poland :)) 1) the coordinated green (but also red) lights are called here a "green/red wave" :)) 2) big trucks : the petite streets of Paris can be even a thousand years older than invention of a car, Europe is simply old and respectful about its old parts. Everywhere. In my city we even have the oldest (over 1000 yo) parts of the cities "car free" 3) if you lived in Paris, or any bigger city anywhere in Europe, you wouldn't drive a car ! You'd use the public transport (electric buses or trams = no exhaust, cheaper, not involved in traffic jams). Btw, the bus/tram stops in my city have a screen showing (real time! not the schedule) when your bus is coming, very useful 4) your roads are huge b/c they were built in an empty area, not long ago (not even 150 years ago), our roads have been often there for centuries, weaving in between the private land. 5) that big green container looked like one of recycling bins, however, it had a doggy head on it so it might be for dog poop (not really, too big so recycling glass probably) 6) Poland : American NATO soldiers stationed close to Russia/Belarussia/Lithuania borders (villages/woods) are notorious with getting in the ditch or, worse killing our bisons (they have been brought back from almost extinction and live in that part of the country but mostly with people - the American soldiers have killed almost 10 of them already - while the bisons were simply leaving the fenced gardens). This is nasty, b/c they are very huge and easily visible but also dearly loved and still too few. The word is, American soldiers are inexperienced 'cause never rode narrow, winding roads, every minute a village, people, animals, cars every turn but, worse, simply are reckless. As usual, great video ! Thank you :)
The big green container is for glass recycling. Bins are recycled in yellow containers
big pick-up trucks in cities are useless, dangerous, showy, and pollute more.
Do drive "smarter" cars !
That's right! It is not recommended to drive by car in the interior of most European cities, unless you work there. In many places, you can only drive in with a special permit. Walk, cycle or travel by public transport. We hate cars!
21:53 In Portugal 🇵🇹 we have apps for parking. We activate the parking for the time we want, at it debits the amount from our bank account. We can then remotely extend the parking time if we need to stay more time, and the excess is again debited from our bank account.
19:34 garbage bin only for glass I believe. The yellow one is for paper and the blue for plastic. But it’s different with the colours in various countries.
From Spain.
That one is the old style glass one called iglú that also is a countrywide style, more common in pedestrian areas, the new one, at least where I live, is mainly grey with a green stripe for glass. Blue stripe is paper, yellow stripe plastic/packaging/metal (plastic bottles, cans, plastic wrapping/packing, etc). For organic is full gray or with a brown stripe. That are the unified style, exist as well as bigger versions of the plastic (plastic material, half gray half yellow) and of the paper (full blue and metallic) one. Also exist one to donate clothes and other for waste cooking oil, more uncommon to see both of them.
I believe yellow plastic and blue paper is european standard and everyone has to follow. Not so sure about green glass though. We have green for colored glass (green, brown, doesn't matter) and white for clear glass in Czech republic. Then we have orange containers for milk milk/juice cartons (the cartons with plastic layer inside), but sometimes there's just orange sign on the yellow plastic container, so we put it there. Also red containers for electronics and batteries, brown for bio waste, and in my city we experiment with purple containers for cooking oil - it's not supposed to be flushed into the sink, we should put it into some jar/bottle and drive it to the collection centre, but no one does it since it's time consuming - thus the new purple containers.
@@IQEGO idk. In Bulgaria we have only Green, Yellow and Blue.
@@Kalch210in The Netherlands it differs per municipality, for me it is green for garden and vegetables waste, blue for paper and cardboard, orange for plastic, metal and drink cartons and grey for residual waste. But the neighboring municipality it is orange for paper and cardboard.
I am portuguese - from Portugal a right side drive country - and i once drove in Scotland in the UK for 4 days. It was weird at first but after two hours of nonstop driving about in the first day i got accustomed faster that i expected. It helped the cars were brand new KIAs - a Ceed in Shetland and an XCeed in the Highlands - and that i drove mostly in rural areas so that helps a lot by having a low intensity acustomization. Still i did got a few stress moments when i got lost in the center of Inverness at rush hour driving about in heavy traffic or driving in the one lane roads in Shetland where for such a low populated rural region it had quite an unexpected good amount of people driving about. It was fun.
I don't have the in-car traffic light thing, but most intersections have traffic monitoring cameras
At low traffic times, the lights will adjust to make sure I almost always have a green
🇨🇭
Sensors in the road, on multiple spots, to get more efficiency. They signal when there are queues.
I've never even heard of that system o.O. What car has that and in which countries is it implemented?
an in some places they'll force you to slow down, almost stop before they turn green
In the Netherlans also have 'de groen golf/the green wave' .
In the evening our trafficlights mostley work like -who is approcing first will get the green light first. During the day it is a normal trafficlight.
11:18 Many mid-sized (by European standards) SUVs don't have especially big luggage compartments. They are big on the outside, but small on the inside. That Volvo XC60 has much less luggage space than my Škoda Octavia station wagon. If you want space, by a wagon, not an SUV.
21:00 Those parking "disks" (that's what we call them) are also common here in Finland (probably in many European countries). Especially smaller cities don't have much paid street parking, but they still want to restrict the parking on many streets to a certain time limit and it is monitored by using that "disk", which tells when the car was parked. The cities have traffic wardens and if they see that you have cheated with the time, you will get a parking ticket.
Agree, SUV or Pickup is a waste of space, Wagon/Kombi wins all the time.
most will have a "skybox" on top if they have a lot of luggage
The Octavia wagon interior was designed by Doctor Who.
if you can't help having huge luggage, just rent a small van !
@@helmutkok7833 lfun fact: in Italy we call them porta-suocera (literally mother-in-law-carrier)
The small, winding roads are why hatchbacks are so popular, and they're really fun to drive on. Just not the hollow roads as you can't see people coming, but the ones where you can see for miles are amazing. When it comes to parallel parking I need about 2 feet of clearance to get my car into a gap. That said, in some really busy cities like Paris or Rome, you'd leave your emergency brake off, and people push their way into spaces. (also a reason why not to use a car in those cities)
Have you visited Europe or Australia since starting your channel? You have such an affinity with those places now it would be weird if you DIDN’T visit. :)
I feel like a lot of channels generally seem to have a sudden drop in views once they actually visit the country.
@ interesting! I wonder why that is the case. Do you think that once a creator visits the country they’ve spent so much time learning about and, potentially, idolizing, the actual reality is a little underwhelming (“never meet your heroes” syndrome) so their content falls away? I watch quite a few YT channels from Americans who dedicate their entire channel to UK TV and culture. As a Brit living abroad it helps with homesickness. But they’re all notable in that they never actually visit, even after 6, 7 or more years of weekly content all about the UK.
I want to but I don’t want to travel alone, I’d rather bring my wife and kids with. That costs a lot more though and it will be more extensive planning for all of us.
Trust me.. I want to leave tommorow and spend months abroad
@@IWrocker You'd have a ton of helpful guides ready to help you in all of Europe when (not if) you decide to go. Hit me up for Norway!
I used to be a driving instructor for cars and motorcycles, so i could teach you how to drive in Europe without looking like an American tourist 😊, but i think you already learned a lot from watching videos like these 😀
9:25 It's built like that because it was built BEFORE cars existed probably. The small streets have been like that for, perhaps, hundreds of years, it's not as if they built the houses and laid cobblestone roads in the 1970s...One love from Scotland. 💙🦄🏴
the "parkscheibe" has very lenient rules so we germans love it because parking can get expensive especially in bigger cities basically you have to put it on the time you arrived but only at the full hour mark or half hour mark depending on which comes after your current time meaning if you arrive at lets say 3:17 pm you can put it at 3:30pm and it will count the "free time" starting from 3:30pm and yes since it counts the mark AFTER you can arrive at 3:01pm you are still allowed to put it legally to 3:30pm and gain an extra 29mins basically
You arent allowed to reset the time however that is the only rule it has which you can kinda outsmart by moving your car into another free spot on the same parking lot or drive around the corner and park in the same spot again as you are legally allowed to park there again if you fully moved the car and gave someone an opportunity to use the parking space its free competition again, most of those Parking spaces are free for 30min - 2 Hours, since more and more E-Charging Stations appear in the cities you can also see 4hour Signs now cause thats the Amount of Time an electric car is allowed to charge in a spot without paying a parking fee
Man you really really need to check out Sabine Schmitz taking a van around Nürburgring... Their is a reason she was called Queen of the Nürburgring
RIP Sabine.
She will be greatly missed😔
Lisbon has several steep hills and we use manual per norm.
One thing to remember in fuel stations, diesel is black or yellow. Green, blue or red for petrol
19:30 That's a glass recycling container. So yes, a truck passes through that street to load the glass with a crane and put the container back in its place.
I am from Germany and if you go so much as far in the south of Europe, driving was a another story 😂😂😂 south Italy or Spain, it's a dream 😅 in Italy we were overtake in a roundabout by a guy on a scooter on the right side with an broken arm with a speed feels like 100 miles an hour 😂😂😂
In Spain driving with a taxi is like driving as a copilot in a rally car 😂😂 In Valencia you must go to your cruises, no problem the taxidriver takes a 20 min trip in 5 min 😂😂😂
I'm from Valencia. This is simply not true. In Spain you generally drive very calmly, respecting the traffic rules (there are always people who don't comply with them). In Germany there are highways without speed limits. That is a danger. In fact, the mortality rate in traffic accidents is lower in Spain (3.7 per 100,000 inhabitants) than in Germany (4.3). You have to know what you're talking about...
Driving in Greece will prepare you for a Mad Max post-apocalyptic future. Absolute madness
The green dome container in the street that you asked about in the Spanish street is used to collect glass bottles for recycling. Keep it up with the interesting videos IWRocker great work. Greetings from Madrid.
A similar ancient system we have in the Netherlands. We call it translated the 'green wave'. As long as the green wave is illuminated and you stick to the speed limit, you will have all green lights for as long you meet this system. This one is more advanced than our ancient system 😅
My mum used to complain that if you got stopped at one red light you seemed to get stopped at all the red lights. I pointed out that she never went through a red light so that it was just bad luck, not a thing set up to annoy drivers. This was back in the days before interconnected light controlled systems.
I am from London. My family had a house in Tuscany and we would drive from London stopping twice on the way down. The town was so old and so narrow that you have to park outside. Only Fiat 500s an 125/7s could fit between the houses which looked similar to the clip from Spain. They had metal bars outside to lash a bridle for ones horse - they required folding mirrors in at some spots, even in the Fiat 500s!
I imagine you are talking about the 500 from the 60s, because the modern one is probably too big !!! 😂😂😂🤷♂️ greetings from Tuscany
@@gabrielesantucci6189 We bought it in 1985 and my last stay was in 1993. I cant remember seeing too many of the old design 500s when I was last in Tuscany in 2010ish. Anyhow, we called them baked beans for obvious reasons. I used to hang out with local lads in town. We would look for 125s and baked beans, pick them up and turn them 90º in their parking spot then wait for the owner to come back. Then we would undo it for them! Good clean fun!
Driving 60mph in Scotland down winding roads is normal for us but shè should've had both hands on the wheel for better control
I agree. She should let the gearshift go. The gearbox will not fall out off the car😂
@@remizeeland3505 I wouldn't swear on that. She's probably used to it falling out in her car at home
Not mph , km/h
@@larszenthio1012 it is in miles per hour one little Google search should tell you that Scotland is apart of the UK
@@michaelmckenzie1581 they're not apart. It's a part.
19:25 FYI That is a glass container designed for the disposal of your wine bottles and other glass items. They are available for white glass only and colored glass.
Love that wine specifically was your first example 🙂
That Dodge RAM is parked in Amsterdam, not Paris.
It's almost parked in Amsterdam AND Paris.
I came here to say the same😂
And it shouldn't be on the tram track!
@@lidewijvos same😂 and I did before I saw this.
Yep, no yellow tram in Paris !
In Germany we call it Grüne Welle - green wave. You for sure wanna catch this wave whenever it is possible....
Audis in der Audistadt haben diese anzeige
in regards to the last clip where you read the comment from - we got 4, well maybe 5 different parking systems here in germany
1. its a public parking spot and its totally free
2. its a parking spot where its restricted in some ways (usually for certain times) having a sign saying can park between 9am and 4pm for example for various reasons
3. its a parking spot where you have to get a parking pass and pay in advance (for example it costs 1€ per hour to park and if you grab a pass for 3€ you'll get 3 hours of time before you gotta leave or risk gettin a ticket)
4. its a parking spot where you can use that blue parking disc the lady in the video showed where you set your time of arrival (you are allowed to round up to the next half hour) and are free to park there for a certain amount (usually theres a sign nearby that says if you can stay for 60, 90 or 120mins)
5. its a parking spot where they are sensors integrated in the floor that recognize when a car is parked and kinda stops the time. if you keep within the restrictions (caus a sensor wouldnt made any sense if you could park infinitely there) and leave on time, everything is fine. if you overstay you risk gettin a ticket. sadly those sensor parking spots have flaws - some of them sometimes dont register that you left and the time keeps tickin etc.
In the UK number 4 would be ANPR (Automatic numberplate recognition) as you enter and leave. Sometimes this is combined with needing to pay your ticket in order to not receive a fine if you forget to validate it. My local supermarket you can get 3 hours parking free as long as you spend £3 in store. You have to put in your numberplate and scan the receipt.
In France we don't have number 2 (or really rare delivery spots, only allowed at night and bank holidays).
The blue disc has to be used when the parking spots are marked in blue
When you need a parking pass, it's not the same price everywhere.
You missed the one where you use an app on your phone to start parking, and tell the app when you leave, so you only pay the time you were actually there. Although I was surprised to hear recently that this is a regional thing, since it's everywhere where I live.
@@shpstr I hate these - oftentimes you cannot use them if you're a foreigner because you need a local phone number to register
In the UK, we have three-lane motorways, A roads (both dual and single-lane), B roads, streets (both ways and one-way), and country lanes/tracks. You are taught to drive to the conditions, not the speed limit. You would not hammer it down a single-lane country lane unless you want to wear a tractor or go sightseeing in a ditch or hedgerow.
This is the point, we are taught to drive the vehicles we have on the roads we have. The driving tests in USA are very easy so drivers don't get to do anything challenging unless out of choice.
dummies need clear speed limits, coz they aren't able to adapt their speed...
Some of the lanes round here are so narrow that the latitude to move left or right is so little that there is a strip of grass down the middle of the road.
Some incredibly nerdy trivia. The word for road in Irish is bothar, which translates as cow path, or cow way. A lot of these little country roads were built so that cows could pass, not cars. And Re: high speed limits (which applies to the UK equally) - we have a "national speed limit" for roads that don't have a specific limit. It doesn't mean you're expected to go 60mph, it just means the road hasn't drawn enough attention to itself to earn a specific speed limit. You'll see boreens - two tracks - in Ireland that are 120kmh. Doesn't mean you can, should, would. Just means no-one's paid enough attention to specify it.
Hi, in towns the lights are " conected " to give straight green to push the traffic flow and reduce emissions noise and exhaust. It s called " grüne Welle " or " green wave. But more and more lights are " sensor " controlled, 20 or 30 meters in front are cable sensors in the pavement who give signals to the lights computer to turn green to you or red to others or the other way. So you have to go close to the lights to engage a function. Some of " gas " keeper slow down or brake way before but it s useless as long you dont cross the sensors. It might be a problem to light cars, bikes or cycles because they might be not " registerred " or detected by sensors or they dont touch them.
19:34 Yup, that is a recycling container, usually for glass or plastic bottles. We have them all across Europe. Regards from Serbia! I love your YT channel.
yes. Kn Spain, the green one is for glass bottles, cups, drinking glasses, jars... (or anything made with glass), and yellow one for plastic bottles and similar
20:40 also, while you're doing this, you're holding up traffic on the only lane, so you better get in there fast
I am from the UK and have hired left hand drive cars in Europe. Surprisingly changing gear in a manual car is easily adjusted to. What I always do is get in the car and reach over my right shoulder for the seat belt!!! The other thing is quickly glancing into the rear view mirror to the left rather than the right. As I come from the UK I am used to narrow, busy roads so that does help.
Changing gears in the UK would be weird to me...they assume every Englishman is left handed I suppose?
@@ZerokillerOppel1 Why?
You hold the wheel with your dominant hand which is the right for most people and change gear with the other.
Are right-handed continentals or yanks crippled in their left hands or something?
It isn't difficult to move a gearstick.
Yeah the seatbelt is actually the weirdest part. Driving on the other side isn't really hard, just follow the flow. I find the different traffic signs and infrastructure to be more complicated than just the side of the road. I never drove in the UK but in Australia and NZ and they have a weird way to lead the traffic around roundabouts and construction sites. You can also turn left and right on highways, which is kinda dangerous in my opinion, because you are fast (110km/h).
The two things I found that I did wrong the most were 1) looking over the wrong shoulder when reverse parking every single time and 2) going to the drivers door when getting a ride from someone and having them look at me like "are you expecting to drive my car?". Nope, just on auto and went to the wrong side of the car.
@@Gambit771 dominant hand doesn't equal to strongest hand, for example while you write one hold the paper the other writes, while you are cutting a steak, that one you used to hold the paper, now you are holding the steak and that one you used to write now is cutting. The hand you used to hold the steak now you hold the wheel while the one you used to cut is now changing gear, changing the climate, changing the radio, holding the phone and creating an accident (ok, that's bad...). Now thinking about this point of view instead of dragging the Napoleon conversation, can we agree that there isn't a right way to drive other than be focused, respectful of the law and maintenance of the vehicles?
19.39 it's a glass collector,to recycle glass,same we have here in Italy
Most British country roads are National Speed limit which is 60 mph. That's the maximum speed, but you're expected to drive at a speed appropriate to the road conditions.
If you drive on British country roads you can always tell the locals because they know every corner and dip. They know exactly how much space they need to get their car through a gap and they'll drive at 60.
At night you can go much faster because you can see any car coming from miles away and use the full width of the road and go at 80-90mph if you know the roads.
Yeah…just gives a heart attack to the tourist when you turn off the lights at night instead of slowing down at the intersections to check for other drivers…omg, France!
Same in Germany where we like to go on vacation. I had the pleasure to drive with a local license plate a few times and it's so much fun. Mind you, I do know most of the streets and driving with a local plate enables you to drive like a local - with everyone respecting it (aka U got the right of way now 😂). Seeing tourists freaked out by the narrow roads is fun as well, you can always tell
The city where the first video was taken (with the car telling you when it's gonna be green) is Ingolstadt in Germany. It was the intersection of the streets "Nürnberger Straße" and "Theodor-Heuss Straße".
The thing aboit trusting in Germany is because if you are caught in violation say goodbye to a whole month of salary for the fine. The fines in Germany are not fixed values, they are calculated according to your earnings so that both the poor and the rich feel the same pinch, it is meant to really hurt no matter how wealthy you are.
Still hurts poor people more. Take 50 % of someone's income and a rich person will be fine but a poor person will struggle. The best method I can think of is by doing: (income - base living expense) × value of violation. This way a poor person still has a protected income to pay for important stuff, while it doesn't change much at all for a rich person.
@@Liggliluff I will apologize in advance because it will sound sligtly rude and arrogant, not my intention. The original comment said that fines are calculated based on income, you immediately provided an example with a fixed percentage (not based on income) and then present your solution not knowking it's almost 1 to 1 to how its done? Your comment sounds sweet, in good faith and to me looks like it comes from genuine concern regarding how oppresive fines can be on lower income families and how monetary punishments in most cases are quite ineffective on the rich but while it's an admirable mindset that more people should adopt, it undermines your credibility when you get basic facts wrong about the topic you're trying to raise awareness about! Before writing a comment always double check your informations, it helps a lot... especially online where people are so eager to mock you and attack your arguements in mean ways at the smallest mistake (just look at me). In germany fines are calculated like this: you take a person net income per month divide it by 30, that's the daily rate (your daily income idk why they call it like that), you multiply it for the number of daily rates you're sentenced and the outcome is the total amount you'll pay. You can imagine the number of daily rates how "how many daily incomes you need to pay for the crime you committed" (it's based on the severity of the crime and also up the a judge or whoever gave you the fine).
@@maxis5427 What are you talking about? A fixed percentage of the income is based on the income. If it's "equivalent to 3 days of income" is 10 % of the monthly income if it's based on 30 day months.
We use this system in Sweden too. It's better than a fixed sum. But it's still not perfect. But based on the income is a percentage.
@@maxis5427 500 to a person who earns 2000 is more than 1250 to a person who earns 5000. Even if that is percentage wise the same, you can quite safely bet that the higher income person is more likely to have savings whereas the lower income person has to spend everything every month to make ends meet. So even if the fines take into account the income, it doesn't take into account the opportunities for more safety nets for the high income people.
We also have parking passes in Belgium but they are a bit smaller
When my mom and my younger brothers were driving in UK, she tasked the boys to remind her periodically "keep left". I guess she got used to it after the first day, she was a very good driver.
some older cities in Europe are narrow , because they date before cars are invented , and at the time animal tracted wagons are narrow . The Old part of Lisbon (Portugal) still haves a lot of stone roads (they last longer) and some have the rails for the "electrico" tram . for the "what's this" in the narrow street in Spain (19:37) it's a glass eco point bin (recycle bin for glass bottles) a specialized truck with a crane arm will pick it up and empty (the bottom opens) and put it back , we find those in different formats across Europe , and there are also for Paper /Packages / batteries or combination . Where I live in France I have a paper/plastic/metal bin , a food leftovers bin (that will be collected to make compost) and a general purpose bin for the things that cannot be recycled (rare nowadays ) .
9:00 not a road? My man, if there were not those cones on both sides you would see cars parked on either side and it would still be a road.
In reference to the way of parking that can be seen in your video. It is mandatory to learn to park this way to get your driving license. It is very simple, but requires a technique. The most modern cars usually come with an automatic parking system, and the driver relaxes without even touching the steering wheel or the pedals.
As a Dutchman, I have driven a few times in the UK. Coming of the ferry in Harwich it does not take long before you get the first roundabouts. Double lane roundabouts!
Cautious in the beginning, but once you get the habit, you will join in and take them with 60kmh too.
21:54 It is not based on trust really. If you set it ahead of when you actually arrived and a meter maid comes along before that, you still get a fine. Everyone adds a little bit but you're in trouble otherwise. People have made automatic ones, with a clockwork behind, so it changes with time. If you get caught with those, you are in real trouble.
In Australia, the parking wardens have a stick with a white chalk on it and they mark the tires of parked cars. If the mark hasn't moved within the allowed parking time (starting when it was marked), you get a fine. Trade workers get around this by stopping work every hour (or whatever the allowed time is), get in their cars and the front of the line moves, the rest move one spot and the first parks at the end. The mark moved, so they can't get a fine.
European cities don't have parking sensors, we have cars with license plate scanners that check if you paid, as it ia all electronic. You can pay with an app, or at a meter but it all goes to the same system. Very efficient money maker for cities.
I worked in Norway before. And a guy from Texas, and ad guy from south London came for the first time abroad.
Texas guy think hi is a gocart in the rental Golf. Never drive stick. Hes car was a f250.
English guy know stick, but not right Trafic.
I was driving them for 2 weeks, i saved the cluth
In countries like Germany, Netherlands or Denmark there are parking places (usually by supermarkets or groceries) where you're allowed to park free for certain time (1/2 hour, 1 or 2 hours- written on the sign) and you set the time when you start to park on a kind of clock like the one in the clip or a sticker type on the windshield. If you forget to set that clock, you may find a ticket behind the wiper much higher than your shopping bill.
In the UK on entering a supermarket carpark a camera will take an image of your numberplate to register your arrival time. Also on motorway services.
@@susanwestern6434
In the UK there's more cameras in 1 street than in other countries' entire city blocks...
The cameras at gas stations often have automatic number plate recognition, so you can't just leave
The traffic light thing is in Germany for sure but not everywhere in Germany only in certain states where city are connected
16:20 In France, we insert our credit card and say what kind of fuel we want, then we remove our card and fill up then we leave.
Same with automated tank stations in the Netherlands.
Same in Sweden.
Don't even need to choose fuel or pump, most of the time.
When I went to France last year, I was a bit confused at first at the gas station. I didn't know you had to insert your card. So I just put the nozzle into the tank and tried to fill up, but nothing happened. Then I realized I had to insert the card, but didn't know you had to insert the card before taking the nozzle. So I inserted the card while the nozzle was already in the tank, which didn't work and caused an error. Which meant I had to start over from scratch: remove the card, remove the nozzle from the tank and put it back into the pump, re-insert the card, then finally be able to chose what I wanted, and re-insert the nozzle.
In total it took me about five minutes until I finally started pumping gas.
It's definitely faster than the German method if you are used to it (as you don't have to go into the store to pay), but since I was not used to it, it was quite confusing. Luckily it was a slow day and I wasn't keeping anyone else from using the pump.
In Germany, they want us inside the shop, as that's where the station owners make their money. The profits from the gas go to the fuel company; what the station owners get barely covers the cost of operating the station. Offering card payments at the pump would go against that way of splitting the profit.
@@HenryLoenwind There have been news articles on the local news here in UK this week. They are about people leaving without paying. They has someone on saying pay at the pump would stop this but that getting people into the shop to buy things was where they made the profit. I always use pay at the pump at the supermarket, usually after I have been shopping there so I don't feel it hurts the supermarket filling station profits. I often buy milk at a filling station nearer my house but do not get fuel there as it is on an A class road so charges more for fuel.
I used to drive stretchen Mercedes limo’s. Had to reverse parallel park in backwards without any modern technology, just mirrors. No sweat, you get used to it using your mirrors propperly
Here in Italy parallel parking is absolutely necessary to live in the city, you havd to get used to the dimentions of your car to be able to eyeball it, sometimes all you have front and rear are 5cm.😅
It is a big part of your exam when you get your driving licence.
Keep it up, love the videos❤
Never seen a loose parking disc like that before.. in denmark we use parking discs that are glued onto the inside of the lower right corner of the windshield.. can either be a seethrough physical disc with a pointer you move around when you park or a digital one (what i use) that automattically shows the time that the car stops moving from.. then depending on how long parking is allowed in the area (usually when its time limited its 30 min 1 hour or 2 hours.. though can also be a bunch of other increments but those are the most common) and if im not back at my car before the allowed time passes vs my parking disc i can get a parking fine from a parking guard (which are government employed and not police related)
Pumps in Europe are basically 3 ways
Self service
Pre Pay
Or pay after
Pre pay - stone age countries
The other thing is when you're driving fast at night through those narrow country lanes (in my case in N Yorks- Uk) You learn to occasionally flick rapidly, between full beam and dip lights, (to see any cars light in the distance) and especially at corners, so you can see any reflected light from any oncoming vehicle on the corner hedgerow! (because your Full beam will obscure other car lights in the distance and eclipse the reflected light of are other vehicles approaching the corner)
That thing is for glass bottles.
The traffic light signal connections is still a premium feature and usually part high end trims in more premium brands. The guy in the car for example was in a modern Audi. I drive a current Audi A6 estate and I do not have it. The traffic sign recoginition is pretty much standard though. And the really good ones (like in my Audi) also recognize the additional / conditional extra signs. Let's say it's the Autobahn and there is a 130 limit with the extra sign (8 - 20 h) below it, meaning the 130 is only in effect between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. -> It'll show me the 130 limit within this timeframe and stay with the "no restriction" otherwise. Plus the car will do stuff like vibrate the accelerator and show a recommendation to lift off, as a lower speed limit is coming up, or a roundabout, a stop sign etc.
The traffic light thing is amazing though. I wonder how many traffic lights are actually compatible with that tech.
A massive number of traffic lights (certainly on important roads) have sensors now. So the "main road" always has green, unless a car in one of the side streets triggers the sensor. The traffic light also observes (afaik usually induction loops embedded in the asphalt) how much traffic is on the main road. If it's clear, the side street gets the green within seconds. If there is traffic on all streets, it prioritizes which streets get green for how long. Only 1 car coming? The green phase will be like 5 seconds only, so better not be looking at your phone... 😀
The first clip was taken in Germany. You can see the street names in 3:35 for a sec. Its says "Nürnberger Str."
Love your content btw, Im fascinated by you being fascinated about the most basic things here^^
For the 1st video about the synchronisation of traffic lights : you know it has nothing to do with the model of your car, all this comes from Google Maps so as long as you have Android Auto or Apple Car Play you can have it (if the city has got this technology)
1:30 i live in eu all my life and never seen this shit.
I've been living in Lisbon for nearly 3 years. Been trying to avoid driving downtown, because it's just insane and unnecesary, no way you can park anyway :D
But Sintra, oh man, definitely smelt some clutch from time to time. There were roads where I had to fold the mirrors and we are talking about a Jetta-sized small Seat
The green round thing in Spain is probably a recycle glass container.
16:35 if everyone would be stealing fuel, everyone would get a ticket. They got your license plate, they know who the car is registered to.
And keep in mind that the rating is done different.
In Europe it is typically RON, while in North America, AKI, the average of RON and MON is usually listed. So octane ratings on european gas stations are about 5-10 higher.
The currently available weakest gas is around 95 RON, which is about 90-91 AKI, (close to american "mid grade")
Super Plus is around 97-98 RON, which is about 91-93 AKI. (close to american "premium")
The equivalent to american "regular" isn't even sold anymore.
But there are some in the range of 100-102 RON (94-95 AKI)
(RON and MON are different ways to measure octane rating)
Realize that a lot of European cities were built long before cars were invented
so were most American cities
@@baerssteloroge7023But Americans bulldozed most of their cities for wide roads and huge car parks, while Europeans didn't
are you a Not Just Bikes connoisseur? A men of culture!
5:36 that road looks like back home. I'm from pomerania(germany's side) and up there most roads between the tiny villages sprinkled all over the place are as wide as this one and used both ways. many of them are more like gravel or dirt roads or long stone plates were placed to act like rails just for wheels and to prevent tractors to not get stuck in the mud. sometimes, when the road hasn't been used by a car or vehicle close to the ground in a while the grassy stripe in the middle will grow really tall.
the back end roads that connects villages are often as overgrown on the sides as this one, but they are rarely used and have pouches to tuck your car in so the other one can pass. personally I think it's way more scary on the Landstraßen. the one going right through my village _barely_ fits two cars and when you pass by each other a little faster than you should you can feel how the sudden difference in air pressure shakes the car. that's so close you could basically high five the other driver. there are still some small gravel pouches on those "bigger" roads, because your tiny car will have no other choice, but to yield to the tractors. 100km/h(62mph) or even more(?) is allowed on that road that goes right through my village btw. doesn't really have any speed limit signs anywhere. I had the horrifying pleasure to get a ride home with my dad who drove 140km/h(87mph) and 100km/h through the sharp curves .. with a van. he worked as a newspaper delivery guy and their work demanded them to work in almost every condition, including during an apporaching cyclone+snowstorm. so he is a good driver. still scared the living crap out of me.
funny little story about our roads btw.
since it's really close to the baltic sea many tourists, who have no idea about the area, but try to be clever and get onto Usedom island via Anklam will inevitably get completely lost on our village road network or end up in a ditch, because they just don't know how to safely drive on such narrow roads. going off road on the Landstraßen is a hit or miss tho, because there are trees on each side, so good luck not crashing into one of those and don't expect guard rails in sharp curves or anywhere else. that's for the cultured city folk.
well, I'm part of them now. there's no way I'd have stayed in the sticks with villages that have as little as 7 residences, with fields and and forests and more fields in between. the car dependency up there is really high too, but why would you ever need to upgrade the infrastructure in a place with such a low population density, right? /sarcasm -- my dad literally was heavily involved in bringing our region into the 21st century aka. building out the infrastructure to upgrade from phone line internet to DSL. first time we had usable internet was in 2005.
0:50 What !? Not in Europe entirely, at least not in France 😮💨
I have never seen that traffic light thing, not sure what city or car it's in but definitely isn't common.
The biggest difference in traffic lights I've seen in US Vs Vs Europe is that there are more in US, and they take a lot longer to change. Here they are maybe 20-30s each way, and there are coils in the road to change it depending on demand, but in the US you can be waiting at a red light for several minutes even when nobody is coming the other way and traffic can really back up before it changes. It's crazy that it can take 10 minutes to get somewhere, +3-5m for every red light you hit.
15:22 It's a car, if you are not using it as a truck. Truck should be used for hauling cargo, not like using up road and fuel like crazy.
Reacting to the first video you watched. In The Netherlands the trafficlights have "green" or "environment" features, called the "green wave". It works only if you drive the speedlimit, 1st green light, pull up, drive the speedlimit, all the other intersections with lights also give you green light. Some intersections detect if there are Freighter-trucks coming and the light will jump green to reduce emissions by trucks not having to stop and pull up again, those intersections are mostly outside cities. The green wave intersections are usually inside city-limits.
Question: why call cars trucks? How do you call real trucks, the hauling kind?
18:30 You are definetly not supposed to drive there
Look at the top left of the screen.
No entry sign. I guess there was no "NO ENTRY" text sign so yeah. lol
I'm French, I travel quite a lot, and I have 2 personal stories that came to my mind after watching your video :
- I went to North America several times, and I lived in Canada for like 6 months. When I lived there I bought myself a car (a used Saturn Ion) and travelled a bit across Canada and the US. People there drive like mentals especially on the highway, they pass you on the right, don't use indicators etc., but I also remember that as a European I was much more skilled at driving than mose North Americans and even though I had never driven in snow in my entire life, I witnessed many accidents or close calls by locals while I was perfectly fine, even doing 180 with my handbrake on parking lots to avoid the 3-point turn back 👌.
But when I came back to Europe, I had a hard time for a few hours when my dad went pick me up at Paris Airport and drove me back home, because we had a 4-hour trip on French highways and each time he passed a car and especially a lorry truck, I thought that we would never fit in our lane.
- I went to Japan, and rent a car there. Of course in Japan you drive on the left side of the road and I was a bit worried about this, having never driven on the left side of the road, especially because I had to pick my rental car at Shinjuku Station, right in the middle of Tokyo, which has very heavy traffic and I knew I wouldn't be out of Tokyo before at least a 2-hour drive.
Fortunately, I had rent an automatic, even though I've always been used to manual transmissions I was relieved by the fact that I wouldn't havr to shift with my left hand ! Oh I forgot, I don't really know why but my brain refused to acknowledge that the indicators knob and the wipers knob are still located on the same side as a left-hand drive car, so I kept on activating my wipers when I needed to use my indicator and vice versa 😂