Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

Let's take a wild analogy; say a new drug is invented that is very

Wouldn't a better analogy be that nearly all of them do their best not to
take the drug once? And that many attempt to prevent others taking the
drug, to the extent that it has been made illegal, even when the drug was
ingested accidentally? And that the only excuse for taking the drug is if
the children voluntarily mash their brains, make themselves into pills and
leap at the victims throat when he has no chance to react?




Of course the penalty for taking the pill is about £20 but hey.

 

If you read my orriginal post then I was actually talking about
parking at train stations. I live out side of London and commute into
London (as do quite a few others). I would be over the moon if I could
use the station car park, but unfortunately these are all full and I
am now looking at alternative ways of getting to the station. Some
'ideas' that have been posed in this thread are...

Pogo stick.
Jet pack
Roller blades toed behind cars
etc etc

....so I dont think the suggestion of parking in a residential street
is quite so moronic do you?

....oh yeah, "when a mum does the school run" - would that be to the
school thats only half a mile away? I hope its not in a residential
street as the residents might get upset about all the cars and traffic
etc!

David Bevan
http://www.davidbevan.co.uk

 

Ah, so it's alright to pretend that inconvenient laws don't exist so long as
they are only patchily enforced? Personally I am quite happy for speed, red
light and bus lane offences, for example, to be automatically enforced; even
if the roads were crawling with plod it still makes far more sense to police
such things automatically.

The AA was set up specifically to undermine speed traps, long after the
repeal of the red flag act. There was also a lot of opposition to
drink-driving laws from the motoring groups, and a large drop in fatalities
when the drink-drive laws started being enforced via evidential breath
testing. The largest drop in road fatalities in any country in Europe in
recent years has been in France, where they have started to enforce traffic
laws much more rigorously (including speed cameras).

Why do you think there was a need to pass traffic laws in the first place?
If everybody drove carefully and considerately there would be no need for
them.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

Oh, believe me, I was way ahead of you on that one - where do you think the
bit about "popular" came from ;-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

Anything which makes the driver feel safer, and which the driver knows
about, is likely to result in balancing behaviour which wipes out the
benefit. Or shifts the risk onto someody else.

When seat belts became compulsory the road death rate remained unchanged,
although there was a significant switch from drivers to pedestrians,
cyclists and rear passengers. There is no country where seat belt
legislation produced a measurable reduction in road deaths.

Studies of taxi fleets in Copenhagen and Munich showed that drivers in ABS
equipped cars responded by following more closely and braking later, leading
to no change in overall crash rates.

The steel spike idea has definite merit.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

It's only empirical evience but I've noticed that when traffic lights go
out at a junction the traffic manages to self-organise fairly
efficiently, and the whole system doesn't collapse into a mass of
selfish confusion.

Indeed, I would suggest that sometimes these examples of 'failures'
actually result in a smoother, more effective flow through these junctions.

In particular traffic light controls on/close to roundabouts are
particularly guilty in this regard.

 

Great idea. If there are proper links between DVLA and the insurers this
offers real scope for reducing the number of uninsured drivers on the roads.
Quite possibly it would help to reduce driving while disqualified as well,
although in that case the system could do no more than give the police a
"heads-up" that the offender's car was being driven - which they may know
anyway.

Solution: don't break the law.

Ah, so Mr Smith was lying, was he? Naughty Mr Smith.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

But who decides? And if it's decided that it's not going to be enforced
then should it be removed from the statute book?

Obviously a number of road users have decided that some of the laws do
not generally apply to them; speed limits, red lights, insurance, etc.

And they'd all be made in sweat shops in south east Asia

 

"Involve" doesn't mean 'caused by'. Judging by the road behaviour of
many drivers with kids in the car, there are arguments that the presence
of kids does not necessarily make a driver more thoughtful - indeed,
they're quite offputting, aren't they, perhaps a driver is *more*
dangerous with kids in the back.

 

And this is a bad thing?

 

"But I've never killed or injured anyone while driving, so me driving
more carefully wouldn't make any difference" - isn't that what the
majority of drivers will think?

I've no idea whether we can even answer this question but what sort of
percentages of accidents are caused by first-time 'offenders' (for want
of a better word) and how many by repeats?

 

Legality and safety doesn't have to be related. You can drive legally
and very badly (you see if every day), yet you can break the laws left,
right and centre and still be safe. (While legal and safe, illegal and
unsafe are the more likely combinations.)

Attentive, though. That I think is the key - and that is what an
alarming percentage of road users seem to lack.

 

Of course, no "real cyclist" would be seen anywhere near the inside of a
Halfords store.

(I'm not sure whether I should smiley or not - it seems to need one, but
the presence of a would make it look as if I knew it to actually be
wrong, which it isn't.)

 

Yeah but you get the investment back when they pay for your nursing home
care ;-^)

The line between allowing them freedom to explore their surroundings and
learn and protecting them from harm does get crossed sometimes.
Interestingly the risk is much higher for children from the lower
socio-economic groups - about five times higher IIRC.

That doesn't mean that others are absolved from responsibility to
mitigate the consequences when it does happen even if it was a parental
mistake in the first place.

Tony

 

Accepted. I've been on Usenet long enough to have a thick skin anyway ;-)

I *don't* interfere with my neighbours and their choice of transport,
unless the 5 cars around their house restrict access to my drive. (I
have car-borne visitors and partner needs to get in & out by bicycle).

I believe there is freedom of speech in this country so I am free to
comment on things which bother me, whether they are my business or not.
Everything in this list has some relation to people's transport choice.

Traffic noise disturbs my rest. I have double glazing but will not open
the windows in summer because of noise.

Congestion on my street is such that traffic grinds to a halt during the
rush hour.

When walking on the street, I seldom see the people who live next door
as they go everywhere by car. By contrast, I frequently see the
(80-year-old) chap who lives on the other side of my house. He walks
everywhere.

One of the kids next door is seriously overweight. There is diabetes in
the family. I am a doctor and a tax-payer.

-------------

We all have our bit to play in trying to ease the problems of this
imperfect world. I'm trying as hard as I practically can in my own
little way. I think many of those who contribute to the problems do not
see them as having anything to do with their choices. I'd like to think
I'm not an ostrich

 

I don't think that is where all illegal immigrants are made ;-)

Tony

 

Mr Smith could have had his number plate cloned. The instances of
that will rise the more things like ANPR are used.

 

Ben () gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying :

Ding!

Last summer, a motorbike was nicked from outside the office I was working
in. Broad daylight, plenty of witnesses took the registration from the
white Renault Master.

The registration belonged to a blue Kia.

If they'd had a little more nouse, and nicked the plate off a white Master,
somebody innocent would have had a lot of explanations to make. What if the
innocent party had been in that area at the time genuinely?

 

Tony Raven () gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

You hope.

The little shits will probably abandon you to eating cat food in your
twilight years. At least if you've not spent the vast sums on dragging
them up, you might be able to save enough to afford to choose your own
fogey farm.

I'm sure it's a very difficult balancing act.

True. However, the pendulum seems to be WAY too far the other way at the
moment. It's the driver's fault. Even if the little darling sprinted out
from behind a parked van right in front of you.

 

Just zis Guy, you know? () gurgled happily,
sounding much like they were saying :

You're forgetting one small fact.

In public transport - railways, air - the public are being transported as
paying passengers, with the control in the hands of paid professionals.

With private road transport, the public are responsible for their own fate.