Eric Thompson: Chilling out easier said than done

Man was shot to the moon and brought back 40-odd years ago. The internet, mobile phones and the rest of the waffle have allegedly changed the way we live our lives.

Today's car is a very distant cousin to that of 50 to 70 years ago and now comes with heated seats, power steering, automatic gearboxes, airbags, reversing sensors and cameras and a whole heap of other things.

So, how come there's no sight nor sound of what everyone wants during our long hot summers? I, and just about everyone else I speak to, want some car manufacturer to produce a car with a built-in chilly bin.

Before you say anything, I don't want to have to go and buy a cool box and plug it into the cigarette lighter that's already overworked with the phone, iPod, Bluetooth etc stuff. First, where am I going to put it and secondly, it should be hardwired into the car.

I've driven a few cars that have under-seat storage compartments - how hard would it be to wire a permanent chilly bin in?

When the weather's warm, getting the meat, fish, ice cream, fruit and veges home from the supermarket can be a real drama, especially if you've more than one errand to run, so it would be sensible to have somewhere cool to put them.

Also, heading to the beach would be easier because you wouldn't have to queue at the petrol station only to find out they've run out of ice. Forget about the reversing camera, fit a cool box.

Talking about summer, one of the biggest burrs in my butt is about to happen - again.

In the past I've had a go at everything from tree-huggers, whale-lovers to women who can't drive big 4x4 off-road vehicles on a school run.

If folk want to place trees and fish above the rights of humans and drive a tank in a city, they have the problem, not me, so good luck to them.

After years of suffering incompetent, dangerous, idiot, unthinking and selfish Richard-heads driving campervans and motorhomes on our roads, I've had enough and want a blanket ban on them.

Over the weekend, I was held up for nearly an hour on a dirt road when some numpty in a huge campervan tried to drive along it. The fool hadn't checked the road on the map and failed to realise there were quite a few one-way sections. He couldn't reverse, although there was no one behind him, so all four of us going the other way had to reverse all the way to a passing bay.

The second incident was on State Highway One where an old fart did a u-turn right in front of me while I was doing 100km/h. The look on his face as I nearly took the front of his house-on-wheels off was almost worth my near heart attack.

It's not only on the open road that people in large vehicles are a menace. On Sunday I was in Ponsonby when I heard a rather loud thump. I turned around to see a great big black 4x4 mounted half way up the kerb.

I watched for the next five minutes as said person tried to parallel-park in a space you could have fitted an aircraft carrier in. In the end, they just drove off - no doubt looking for a football field.