Some friends and I figured that a live snake around your neck was a good way to stop people crowding you on public transport systems- it's safer than wearing a large backpack and praying in Arabic. On the other hand, the solution we settled on (this was during the swine flu scare) was to wear a sombrero and sneeze a…

Do you know why the police wear blue?

And the occasional taking off at autobahn speeds...

Well, this is the Mondeo ST TDCi...

@scottcom36 remembers the Awesomeness Manifesto: Maybe it's a British thing- I have never driven a US-made vehicle with a manual transmission, and, as I've mentioned, in the UK you're supposed to use the handbrake a lot.

@Vavon: I suppose it handles like it's on rails?

@scottcom36 remembers the Awesomeness Manifesto: I have done that a few times on slight inclines, I must confess- but I live in a large city (hence bumper-to-bumper traffic) in a country where you're trained to use the handbrake whenever you're stopped at a light...

@Elhigh: Surely four pedals make traffic on hills "interesting" unless you have three legs or a left calf of steel? How do you hill-start it from stopped in neutral with the parking brake on?

@TheAntiCat is rubbing up against the leg of the real Mr Spiegel: I always thought that the Multipla looked like a small hatchback had been dropped on a larger minivan or wagon from a great height. One UK journalist said it looked like "the offspring of some unholy union between a hippopotamus and a double-decker…

@MM...Food: The Queen's State limousines have cloth seats in the back.

@Roberto G.: It's a different Rolls-Royce- the aero-engine business is still British-owned, and still (in co-operation with other countries) supplying the RAF:

@Hofmeister_kink: I'm fairly sure that Mercedes will never make an ELK:

@vc-10: Oops- should have noticed you were British with a name like VC10! I think the big 4x4s get picked for the ability to carry a lot of stuff at high speed, and may well belong to the firearms unit. I'd still pick an estate for that, though...

@vc-10: Most British police cars aren't expected to engage in high-speed chases, but to radio for backup from a specialist pursuit car if the situation warrants it. It's a smaller country, so it's reasonable to do that.

@TimTim: Of corse, there is ambiguity inherent in using non-scientific notation- your rule 3 means that there is no way to write the number 30 with 2 significant figures without using scientific notation, as 30 according to you is 1 s.f., while 30.0 would be 3.

@Elhigh: And of course the QE2 also served as a troopship in the Falklands War.

@rj-pilot: It looked to me like the box was in the back seat and both officers sat in the front- when they get to the hospital at the end, the passenger runs around to the driver's side rear door (which the driver has opened), reaches in and gets the box out of the back.

@Rx_37: Of course he would make it out to be something you shouldn't do- he's a traffic cop...

@Blast it, Biggs: As the patient is going into theatre for her first transplant operation (the one she rejected the liver from), a man in a long scarf appears in the corridor holding a large cooler.

"Power was routinely cut to nearby neighbourhoods for safety"