Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

Point taken.

I could and should have put it more politely (not that I resile from the
underlying message that we all have a right to choose what transport mode is
best for us and that government has no business in deciding to "discourage"
us).

Apologies to all concerned, especially to HDV.

 

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

[ ... ]

I think the term is normally used to denote *any* avoidance of obstruction
and/or restriction on the "official" route by using a side-road as an
unofficial route, without regard to speed. In normal usage, the speed of the
alleged "rat-runners" is not of importance. But there certainly seems to be
some element of the public authorities resenting drivers' avoidance of their
schemes and plans, especially if those involve planned-in long-waits at
traffic lights.

 

Meanwhile in Germany the introduction of a universal 130 km/h limit is being
seriously discussed. The Greens had a major influence in getting it on the
agenda, but with the primary intention of reducing fuel consumption. The
idea has attracted other supporters for its safety advantages.

 

I'd be fine with that as long as the camera was set up to activate only
when I broke the law.

d.

 

Probably the same number as play "chicken" on busy railway lines. Not
that there has ever been a residantial street such as you describe...

Guy

 

Untrue. 10% of child injuries are due to road traffic crashes, but
half of all injury fatalities. So I don't know about injuries, but
most chlidren who die of injuries, do so at the hands of a driver
probably not related to them.

Guy

 

That we are a lot more tolerant of the death toll on the roads than on
the railways or in aircraft. After Hatfield there was endless
handwringing and calls for total safety on the railways. That is
every bit as impracticable as total safety on the roads, but the
railways are already an order of magnitude safer than the roads -
where are the headlines?

Guy

 

I think that's correct. I've certainly seen it written before.

Guy

 

That certainly worked in France.

Guy

 

Bugger, the Nugentoid of Cager IV has arrived, This thread was quite
good until then.

Guy

 

The major reason the trend has flattened is an increase in deaths
among motorcyclists. The only class of road where deaths has actually
increased, IIRC, is motorways - probably the least likely to have
cameras.

Maybe some people have confused Britain with SmithWorld[tm].

Guy

 

Ok, at the edge of town is the ring road with cinema, car parks,
supermarket etc. then light industrial units and offices, then a long way
further out is our cul de sac. We have open country views from our
upstairs windows.
Typical of houses these days we average three cars per house.

By 8am most of the workers have left and the cars have been shuttled
around ready for the school runs, shopping trips etc, and the night
workers are coming home.
By 8.30 there are cars queuing on the main road to enter the cul de sac.
The first two cars are parked in peoples drives with their engines running
waiting for the first mum to leave on the school run. They fight for her
space and having left the drive the next two come in off the main road,
park in the open drive, engine running and on the phone. We presume
he's phoning the boss to say he's delayed on the motorway and will
be in soon as he can.
Meanwhile the lucky guy has parked and sets off running to his office
well over a mile away.

I followed one guy on my bike. 150 yards on from his office entrance
is a Council car park. Closely beyond that are all the other car parks
as you get nearer to town.
So when I wrote about morons I was referring to the drivers who take a
job where there is car parking facilites nearby, where the Company
confirm their pay settlements over the years have included a provision
for car parking fees on nearby council car parks and these drivers make
a decision not to pay for parking their cars.

We live out of town, I'm not writing about city living where for 365 days
a year you may not get a nightly park anywhere near your house.
Our Council are not interested in restrictive parking rules here and nor
should they be.

So, being British we formed a committee. We take digi photos of these guys
hanging around waiting for spaces, these are timed and dated, we follow
the morons to their building and then send the photos to the MD or Human
Resources Manager with our explanation of the facts.
Sure one can park anywhere you like if you are taxed and insured for
the road, provided you dont cause an obstruction. But if you are contracted
to start work at a specific time or paid to use a public car park, how long
will it be before your Manager gets pissed off with our photos and letters
and penalises you.
Then we can get back to the normal routine car parking problems you might
find in a cul de sac where each house has one car in a garage, one in the
road
in front of the house and the others cars any where they can park.
Thats life.

 

Tens of billions, actually.

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Still misssing the point. Congestion in towns is largely the result
of more people driving more and shorter journies, combined with
constraints on the growth of the road network due to property
boundaries. The latter is not a new problem - Hooke noted it in 1667,
and I don't think it's going to change any time soon.

Everything else is tinkering around the edges, largely in response to
local people demanding that other, less local people don't treat their
residential road as a rat-run. And quite right, too.

Consider Milton Keynes (if we must), where the road network was
specifically designed around mass car ownership. One result is that
the town is more geographically dispersed, so that fewer journies can
be accomplished using anything other than a car (allowing for people's
well-known aversion to travelling for more than a few minutes under
their own steam). Result? The town is congested anyway.

Guy

 

As said elsewhere, the EFi was a 2.0 and went like shit off a stick.
Massive torque-steer, mind, and woeful brakes. Not a car for the
faint-hearted or weak-armed.

Guy

 

I dont understand, they park in your drive?

Ever watch Brookside? The last episode to be exact. Drug dealer moves in,
general bastard to everyone, beats up some of the close, then along comes
barry with the tale of the stranger in the field or something (perhaps
JNugent can remember)

Anyway, they all gang together and kill him. As everybody did it noone can
tell the cops.

Cars get scratched dont they?

Of course, if I were rich, wheel clamps are only £30. If one strangely
arrived on a car wheel, I wonder what would happen. Naturally you wouldn't
know anything about it

 

What's the difference? Both are viewable from public property. If he

One could see into the house, the other couldn't. AFAIK cameras aren't
allowed to be able to see into peoples' houses.

 

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 15:09:14 +0100, "AndrewR"

True - but we could put some greater effort towards lowering the level
of horror.

If we're willing to spend tens of billions of pounds to prevent a
dozen or so rail deaths every few years, surely spending money and
attnetion on the thousands of road deaths we have every single year is
sensible?

At one of the Opens, a great golfer hit the ball from a bunker and it
sailed gloriously over the fairway to teh green, where it promptly
disappeared into the hole.

A bystander said 'That was lucky!' and without missing a beat the
golfer replied, "And you know? The more I practice, the luckier I
get."

Just because something is not an absolutely certainty, and nothing is
absolutely safe, does not mean we can to nothing to change the odds.

Earlier, you discuss 28mph and 32mph as if they were pointlessly
indistinguishable.

They are not.

32mph is over 14% faster - so you've just lost one part in 7 of the
reaction time you had available at 28mph, and you'll travel one part
in seven further before you hit the brake pedal.

Once you hit the brake pedal, you'll travel more than 30% further,
i.e. almost a third again as far, to come to a standstill than you
would have to stop from 28mph.

Or if you hit without braking, you'll hit 30% harder.

These factors, taken together, mean that the risk of
fatility-in-accident is over / 70% / higher at 32mph than at 28mph.

i.e. that extra 4mph almost doubles the chance of a death should
anything happen.


In other words, anyone who reckons that teh difference between 28mph
and 32mph "doesn't matter" is the one who "is simply in denial"

Except it's currently around the 4,000 mark. We're willing to spend
tens of billions to lower the rail death rate by an average of about 5
people a year, so surely we should be willing to do more than just
shrug our shoulders and demand to be allowed to keep driving fast when
there are nearly 4,000 deaths on the roads every year.

No, it's there to lower the number of deaths.

I certainly care enough to want drivers in urban areas to be held to
the speed limits, be caught when they run red lights against green
men, be stopped when they are driving without insurance, or without a
licence to drive, or a road-worthy car, or driving on the wrong side
of the road with alcohol in their bloodstream on a mobile phone at 35%
over the speed limit.

The fine for which is, according to the court judging that last case
(who killed four people) was IIRC less than £1000 pounds.


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Because of this there'll be no more rail deaths? Ever?

As I said, we _know_ that trains will crash.

The only way to stop train crashes is to stop trains, which was my point ...
it doesn't matter who pays how much for what, it still doesn't end the
fatalities.


--
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Kawasaki ZX-6R J1
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BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, TEAR#3 (and KotL), DS#5, COSOC#9, KotTFSTR#
The speccy Geordie twat.

 

Why? The motorways are our safest roads. Why would we want to limit
them to 20mph?

Equally, why would I want to turn every residential street into a
motorway, when a motorway isn't suitable to meet the needs of a
residential street?

But what's worst is to allow a sizable minority of folk to drive on
urban roads at speeds nearer motorway speeds than your posited 20mph.

This, of course, assumes they have not already changed their ways
beforehand...


--
Cheers,
Euan
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