Oh, oh, oh, I'm making a Ludicrous Claim®! Read the first post!

  • Thread starter Der Alta
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ScouserInExile
Sorry if those is a slight derail, but:
About 10 years ago, the lead artist on a games I was doing some design work on had previously been a test driver for Ford.

Sort of.

He did an engineering degree and got a position at Ford for his year in industry. Evidently, on the first day, they were talking to all the students about the diferent departments they could work in. they asked who had a drivers licence, he put his hand up and they told him to go to testing. He then spent the year being a test driver.

Given that this would have been his third year, he would have been about 20 at the time.

Though he was in his 30s when I knew him, so he would have been in uni in the late 80s - early 90s, so maybe it's different now.
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Graduate placement positions, I won't go into too much detail about the manner in which we used to view them at Renault (the AUP doesn't allow me to use the appropriate words), he would almost certainly have been mentored for the entire time.

Its not common but it does happen and sure as hell beats a placement in parts marketing (the place the graduates they really don't like get sent).


Scaff
 
ScouserInExile
Sorry if those is a slight derail, but:
About 10 years ago, the lead artist on a games I was doing some design work on had previously been a test driver for Ford.

Sort of.

He did an engineering degree and got a position at Ford for his year in industry. Evidently, on the first day, they were talking to all the students about the diferent departments they could work in. they asked who had a drivers licence, he put his hand up and they told him to go to testing. He then spent the year being a test driver.

Given that this would have been his third year, he would have been about 20 at the time.

Though he was in his 30s when I knew him, so he would have been in uni in the late 80s - early 90s, so maybe it's different now.
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The term 'test driver' is thrown around a lot here but the reality is quite often different from the perception. For most on this forum, the term conjures up images of cars being hurled around the Nurburgring or some other race track. I'd say that's about 0.1% of reality for a large OEM (a small volume sports car manufacturer will likely be a lot higher than that). To assess ride and handling, any OEM will utilise experienced engineers and/or race drivers to develop the car against a known and measurable list of parameters. However, every facet of a vehicle's development must be signed off against a known and measurable list of parameters, known as an engineering specification. At a vehicle level, they will do this by following any number of common test procedures. In the case of a major OEM, these test procedures will be applied to all passenger vehicles globally. This ensures that all their vehicles perform to the same standard.

One such test might be to ensure that a vehicle still operates in extreme heat. Your friend who worked for Ford could very well have flown to Las Vegas, taken a two hour drive to Ford's Arizona Proving Ground, and then spent all day driving around the 5km oval in a Ford Transit at 30mph towing a heavy trailer, and then parking it in a heat soak shed whilst the more experienced Engineer sat next to him recorded thermocouple data every minute.

Is this vehicle testing? Yes.
Does this make him a "test driver"? For want of a better term, yes it does.
Is Engineering in the automotive industry a good job? Most of the time, yes.
Is it cool and glamourous? Not really :sly:

Race teams have test drivers. Italian sportscar manufacturers have test drivers. An Engineer working for a major OEM that might on occasion get to hoon around a race track will not be called a test driver. More likely, their job title will be something like 'Vehicle Attribute Engineer - Ride & Handling'.
 
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^That video is so old and still awesome!

race'emhard
You guys got me, I made it up. I'm sorry, I at least admitted to it.
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I knew it since the first claim. Never heard of a Manufacture giving away cars for free. They will lend you some cars over the weekend, sure, but not a 35000€ car as a present for a newbie who just started at said maufacture.
Kudos though for standing up with the truth, not easy after months of denial 👍
 
Carlos Fandango
The term 'test driver' is thrown around a lot here but the reality is quite often different from the perception.
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Yeah, talking to the guy I worked with revealed the job wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. He said one of the highlights of doing three job involved putting one litre of fuel in an Escort and driving it around an oval until it ran out, then changing the wheels and doing it again about ten times a day for a couple of weeks...

Edit:
Meant to say as well - if you look at who are the "thrash it round the 'Ring" test drivers, they are all fairly successful racing drivers. The "nearly but not quite" drivers. The Stig, basically.
 
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ScouserInExile
Yeah, talking to the guy I worked with revealed the job wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. He said one of the highlights of doing three job involved putting one litre of fuel in an Escort and driving it around an oval until it ran out, then changing the wheels and doing it again about ten times a day for a couple of weeks...
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Sounds about right.

I knew a guy who did product testing and part of it involved having to open and close the drivers door four times every time he entered or left the car (wear testing). Always said he felt like a madman with OCD when he had to fuel them in public.


:)

Scaff
 
Scaff
I knew a guy who did product testing and part of it involved having to open and close the drivers door four times every time he entered or left the car (wear testing). Always said he felt like a madman with OCD when he had to fuel them in public.
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:lol:Haha. I know that feeling. I remember on a family holiday many years ago, my sister was injured in the hotel we were staying in. Someone dived into the pool and basically headbutted her. I can remember how embarrassed I was when, in full view of the other guests, my mum was walking about taking pictures of "no diving" signs.
 
daan
It was a bit silly to say you were living the life that most guys here would give their right arm to do.
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If I fall and break every bone in my body I get 80% of my wage and I still don't have to pay for the hospital bill.

I guess this is the American dream.
 
ScouserInExile
Yeah, talking to the guy I worked with revealed the job wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. He said one of the highlights of doing three job involved putting one litre of fuel in an Escort and driving it around an oval until it ran out, then changing the wheels and doing it again about ten times a day for a couple of weeks...
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:lol: by far the worst part of that would be the Escort he was using. They weren't good cars around that era
 
race'emhard
Besides I could have done worse....
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That is a universal attempt to justify any wrong doing.
I'm not saying that you deserve any punishment now that you have admitted that you were telling lies and apologised for it, but as an attempt of justification is doesn't get you anywhere. Just a note for the future.
 
TankAss95
That is a universal attempt to justify any wrong doing.
I'm not saying that you deserve any punishment now that you have admitted that you were telling lies and apologised for it, but as an attempt of justification is doesn't get you anywhere. Just a note for the future.
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Jaysis, get off his case already. He admitted he lied, he called himself an idiot and said he was sorry... don't get onhis case because he apologized in the wrong way now.

This is a message to everyone, not just to the user above.
 
Tom Servo
Jaysis, get off his case already. He admitted he lied, he called himself an idiot and said he was sorry... don't get onhis case because he apologized in the wrong way now.

This is a message to everyone, not just to the user above.
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Hey you get off his case now

LOL

Oh the vicious cycle we could endure.

Lying sucks like bottom feeding fish. It is cowardly. Be proud of who you are. A stand up person with a honest character and integrity is the best attributes one could have tied to themselves.

Screw fame, screw popularity. Just be you and the people you click with you will have deeper more meaningful relationships.

Old analogy I like to use. Trust is the foundation of all relationships. Be it friends or lovers. With out a solid foundation the relation ship will always be unsteady and is sure to crumble apart.

;)
 
Start the way you mean to go on?

I actually couldn't decide whether to vote for you of hfs on that award so I flipped for it and hfs won the toss. You still won the award though, so no hard feelings, eh?
 
Most of this thread is an exercise in ridiculous claims. A user, shmogt, seems to think that he is qualified to make changes to a national education system based on his experiences in a classroom, and his experiences alone. I'm a trained teacher, and yet he repeatedly ignores my prompts to explore some theories of teaching strategy that can only help him make an informed judgement on the subject. He insists that he doesn't need to know any of that, despite his claims that he enjoys learning. It's a bit like claiming you know all about art because you have a painting on your wall, but then ignoring all of the advice provided by an actual artist. shmogt is so wrapped up in the idea that he knows best that it takes him three pages to realise that I am not American and only have limited teaching experience (I realised early on that he wasn't going to listen to reason, so I said nothing to see how long it would take him to work it out). And he still persists with his attitude of "I think there is a problem here, so that makes me an expert". The last time someone started doing that, we nearly got SOPA and PIPA.

Of course, this is the same guy who thought that being a "champion dog fighter" was a good thing.
 
prisonermonkeys
A user, shmogt, seems to think that he is qualified to make changes to a national education system based on his experiences in a classroom, and his experiences alone.
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I would see this as your conclusion.
Where I agree "shmogt" could do some effort in reading about Vygotsky, Piaget and Bloom, before continuing discussion. From the first 2 pages, the user does not claim to know it all, but seems to be misusing a success to push unfounded conclusions repeatedly as his solution.

shmogt
... I non stop have said this is just my opinion and have no idea if it will work here, but it's a different system that works somewhere else so it can't hurt to try. ...
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I fear it happens to many of us and we should read "critically" on the subject discussed to learn better.
 
prisonermonkeys
Most of this thread is an exercise in ridiculous claims. A user, shmogt, seems to think that he is qualified to make changes to a national education system based on his experiences in a classroom, and his experiences alone. I'm a trained teacher, and yet he repeatedly ignores my prompts to explore some theories of teaching strategy that can only help him make an informed judgement on the subject. He insists that he doesn't need to know any of that, despite his claims that he enjoys learning. It's a bit like claiming you know all about art because you have a painting on your wall, but then ignoring all of the advice provided by an actual artist. shmogt is so wrapped up in the idea that he knows best that it takes him three pages to realise that I am not American and only have limited teaching experience (I realised early on that he wasn't going to listen to reason, so I said nothing to see how long it would take him to work it out). And he still persists with his attitude of "I think there is a problem here, so that makes me an expert". The last time someone started doing that, we nearly got SOPA and PIPA.

Of course, this is the same guy who thought that being a "champion dog fighter" was a good thing.
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I think that's more of an opinion. A claim would be "I'm a teacher, I know better." - you, of course, are a teacher, so don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you're making a ludicrous claim. :D
 

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