Urban Hacks

For quite a few years I commuted an hour-and-a-half from the NSW Central Coast to Sydney and, in that time, I saw people doing all kinds of reckless, stupid acts on the freeway while driving at 110km.

Is it illegal to drive barefoot? What about without closed shoes?

The rise of connectivity to our phones has seen them integrated to our cars as a major feature. However, this integration has come with a terrible cost thanks to horrendous crashes while using a phone

‘Car sharing’ (or ‘carsharing’, if you’re more the compound word type) may bring about mental images of teenagers on their Ps desperately negotiating with their parents to be granted access to the family car on the weekend, but the truth is it’s something far more harmonious. 

Australia still lags behind the developed world when it comes to the number of electric vehicles on its roads, around 6000 at last count. In Norway, with a population around five times smaller than Australia, more than 62,000 electric vehicles were sold in 2017 alone.

Here's a guide to getting you car driving licence in the various states and territories of Australia

Micros cars have just never had the best of reputations here in Australia. In Europe, for example, they're embraced by people of all ages as the perfect way to navigate cramped cities - and why not? They're small, so they're easy to park, easy to see out of, and they're usually pretty economical on fuel, too.

Before you have children of your own, you kind of imagine that the day you get your driver’s licence is a purely celebratory one. A rite of passage that leads to expanded horizons and a freedom of movement previously unimaginable. And yet, from the parents’ point of view, this is actually a mildly terrifying time. All the statistics tell us that the most endangered and likely to crash drivers on our roads are P-platers (and young men in particular) and the shift from them driving around next to you with L-plates and their best behaviour on to being out there alone is a harrowing one.We all know that teenagers being allowed to drive cars is a recipe for disaster, but that whole rite-of-passage thing means we can’t really justify raising the L-plate age to something sensible, like 25.Teenagers have tricky little attention spans, and in boys, the part of their brains that assesses risk is still not fully functional. Instead, they seek out dumb and dangerous activities, and thus putting a tonne and a half of metal capable of moving through space at high speeds in their hands is, at the very least, foolhardy.There’s also the simple fact that it takes time to become a good driver; experience in different situations and conditions, road craft, wisdom. And this is why choosing one of the safest cars for P platers is such a vital moment for parents, in consultation with their excited teen, of course. So what is the best first car for a teenager in Australia, and are they as affordable as a first car should be? Fortunately, the answer is yes.

Tour the inner-city suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne and you'll see all sorts of jumbo warriors squeezing along tight alleyways, blocking tiny intersections and generally annoying people.

If you're a dog person, then quite often your choice of car comes a long way down the order of priorities.