Earliest four?

*Nice*

 

The Wiki source is the International Road Traffic and Accident Database
(IRTAD). That's good enough for me.

If you can present data showing that the US accident rate is lower, I
shall of course be interested to see it. But I think you'll find it
hard.

Let me remind you that your assertions were off the cuff and backed by
no references whatsoever. I at least took the trouble to search, and
when I found two sites that presented different estimates of US mileage,
took care to present them both. If you call that foolish, well....

Look up "UK + Immigration" on Google. People like this country too. And
what has this to do with vehicle casualty rates anyway?

Nope. I'm just someone who can argue a point rather more coherently than
you can.

<Thinks>

You're a troll, aren't you? Dammit, I've been trolled. And at my age,
too.

 

I hate to point this out, because arguing with you is like shooting fish
in a barrel, given your limited powers of ratiocination.

*But* - all the time, right from the start, I have referred to the
accident *rate*, and the figures I quoted above were for million
vehicle/km. Go back and re-read the postings.

No, don't bother. Just look at my quote, which you have taken above.
Wow! It is for an accident *rate*, not mere accident *numbers*.

OK, you've chosen 100 million vehicle/miles, but the point is the same.
I quoted a rate.

So, in your own words, apples for apples.

You should now be feeling embarrassed (but I doubt you are, since you
don't seem to have the machinery for working out that you've made a
complete fool of yourself).

Do you intend to continue making an arse of yourself? Because it's
amusing to watch.

 

I've had my fun. He's lost. I'll throw him back and wait for another
fish.

 

No surprise there in my opinion. Society in the US has always had
a terrible time dealing with alcohol. Look at the statistics in the US
and the UK on alcohol involvement in vehicle accidents and I think
you will find the US is much higher. The US is in a permenent
state of denial that alcohol is a drug.

In the US if you get caught driving drunk it's a misdemeanor and
you get to keep your license, although you may be limited in
your driving, and required to attend alcohol counseling. If you get
caught doing it again, same thing, over and over, the fines just get
bigger.

In the UK if you get caught driving drunk you lose your license for
a year, and even if you attend counseling and all that you will only
get a few months knocked off of that. If it happens again your
most likely going to prison. The UK understands that repeat
drunk drivers will just continue to drive until they end up killing
someone, and so they take away their license a lot earlier. The US
by contrast doesen't do much of anything to repeat drunk drivers
until they do actually kill someone.

There's been many attempts in the past in the US to change this
and to stiffen the laws, but the beer and wine lobby is just too
powerful.

Ted

 

That is very correct. What always happens in the US is that when
the government gets done with the research work it hands it over
to the private industry, which throws away everything that cannot
be made into a profitable product within a year.

This is great when the government has been researching crap like
underwater basket weaving. (which it has done at times)

It's terrible when the research has been on stuff like lightweight
high energy batteries, solar powered generators, stuff like that. You
know, stuff that we don't need right now, but any fool can see
we most likely will need sometime in the future.

Eventually the future comes around and those same US businesses
that ashcanned the research work then go scrabbling around
trying to duplicate it all over again, while in the meantime businesses
in Japan and Korea which went dumpster-diving 10 years earlier
in the research dumpsters, have gone on and developed working
products that now people need to buy.

Look at General Motor's EV1 program for a textbook example of
this. Who is the largest seller of electric vehicles today? It's not GM,
it's Toyota. And if you don't think that Toyota obtained one of
those EV1's while they were being leased out and took it apart down
to it's bolts to see how it worked, I have a bridge to sell you.

And so yet another industry that the US kicked off and was
a leader in once, ends up going off to somewhere else in the
world.

The situation will never change as long as the US business funding
economy is wired up the way it is. The US capitalists only know
how to fund startup companies that return a profit within 5 years.
The US is a fantastic place for starting companies. But what the US
capitalists are unable to do is use common sense to look at the
products in any company, unprofitable or profitable, and determine
which ones will have a long term future and which ones won't.
The employees, the critics and outside observers of the company
are all able to do this, but the owners of those companies simply
are unable to. Most likely it is because all they know about is
stock options and balance sheets, and not how to actually put
anything together, and they simply don't trust the word of anyone
who does know.

And the Japanese are going to actually end up doing it. See:

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Japan_Plans_Moon_Base_By_2030_999.html

In 2020 the Japanese will be on the Moon and we in the US will be
sittiing around saying "Yep, we got there 50 years earlier" and NASA
will be back at about the Gemini level of space technology.

Ted

 

This isn't quite true. The penalty for drink/driving is an automatic
one-year (minimum), and you can't get it reduced by counselling or
attending remedial classes. No way. They do offer that as an
alternative to some speeding tickets, though - a ukrm poster reported
on his experiences, a few weeks ago.

Depends. Generally, if you get caught a second time (and a d/d
conviction stays recorded on your licence for 10 years!), you're
looking at a ban of three to five years, maybe even longer. If you
injure or kill someone on your second offence, though, a prison
sentence is a distinct possibility, yes.

If you get caught driving while on a d/d ban, same applies - you may
find yourself inside. If you kill or injure someone while on a d/d ban,
it's a probability.

If you get caught a *third* time, then a prison sentence is almost a
certainty.

Yes, this is the thinking. Over the last 30 years, the message has been
repeated that drinking and driving is just unacceptable, and the
message has sunk in. They're trying to make people feel the same way
about speeding, but with little success.

Now that's interesting. I always thought that it was because having a
car is almost a necessity in the US, whereas plenty of people here
manage without one. Take away your car in the US (apart from in some
major cities), and how do you exist?

And people think the UK has an alcohol problem.... Generally, we do
drink a lot more, and more frequently, than you do in the US (this is
my observation, anyway), but we try not to mix it with vehicles. I can
honestly say that I know nobody who drinks and drives, and everyone I
know drinks.

 

OK, that raises another question. Insurance. Here, if you're injured or
your property/car is damaged by a drunk driver, you simply claim on
their insurance. [1]

A d/d conviction is taken as automatic proof of liability. The only
argument then is over the amount of damages paid.

Doesn't the same apply in the US? I mean, this is what insurance is
*for*.

Please forgive all the questions - only I find this very interesting.

[1] There's a problem if they have no insurance, of course. This is
something else the UK courts and police take a dim view of. But if the
d/d is uninsured, there's a fund called the Motor Insurers Bureau which
pays out the damages. This is financed by the insurance cos. So if you
have a nasty episode with a d/d, in the UK, the plain fact is that you
*will* get compensated.

 

(The Older Gentleman) wrote in

Not much use if you're dead.

 

I don't know if a d/d conviction is taken as proof of liability, but the
above is more-or-less how it works in the states as well. I have no idea
how the proportion of licensed to unlicensed drivers stacks up in the
two countries, but it's a real issue over here.

An interesting twist to the system is that some states didn't (still
don't?) require one to carry insurance for a motorcycle on the road.
That means that it was perfectly legal for someone to ride without
insurance, provided that they were willing to face the personal
liability ("willing" certainly didn't imply "able" however).

Rather than a universal fund, we carry _additional_ insurance against
uninsured/underinsured drivers, so that if one damages me or my
property, my own insurance company pays out (neat trick on the part of
the insurance companies, really). I suppose that the insurance company
would then go after the uninsured driver (drunk or not) for the funds,
but I suspect that as a practical matter it's just written off. There's
very few people with the sort of liquid assets to make such a course of
action worthwhile, and a fair chunk of those carrying no insurance don't
have hard assets to speak of.

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

Mebbe not much use to you but your dependants might find it very useful.
Precious little consolation to them (or you) but useful nonetheless.

 

Here, the phenomenon of people staging accidents exists, but it's
relatively rare and it doesn't extend to people leaping out in front of
drunk drivers. People have too much of a sense of self-preservation.

The issue of bartenders and publicans being liable is a joke. Here, it
is actually technically an offence to serve alcohol to someone who is
already visibly drunk, but the idea of tacing liability for the crash
back down to the pub that served the booze is alien to our system.

Thank God. I mean, the compensation culutre has crossed the Atlantic,
but we still have a system that assumes a certain amount of common
sense and responsibility for one's own actions.

Now that is fascinating. Many years ago I did a feature on an police
Accident Investigation Unit. They only get called out in fatals. I
remember asking the guy who was showing me around about the
drink/driving factor, and he said that of all the motorcycle fatalities
he'd ever attended (a depressing nuber) *not one* had been due to the
rider being drunk.

His conclusion was that car drivers can drive even if they can't stand
up, but drink impairs your sense of balance and it's very, very hard to
ride a bike when completely steamed. Plus, of course, most
motorcyclists know that if you fall off a bike it *will* hurt.

I've just looked at our official government stats. In 2005, 3201 people
were killed on our roads (1% down on 2004). D/d accounted for 560
deaths. Interestingly, this is very similar to the total number of
motorcyclist deaths (569).

D/d stats for motorcyclists are almost non-existent, suggesting that
the problem is indeed very small. The closest I could get was from
"In-depth Study of Motorcycle Accidents", an official pamphlet from
2004 which said this:

"When accidents in our sample are analysed for the involvement of
alcohol or drugs, it is found that 3.4% of accidents for which the
rider is fully or partly to blame involve alcohol (or much less
commonly, drugs, which account for under 0.25% of contributory
factors). This does not seem to be significantly different to the
percentage figure of people failing breath tests at the roadside after
injury accidents in the UK as a whole (3.7%, according to Department
for Transport figures for the year 2000)

So yes, fewer people here ride bikes drunk than drive cars drunk. Note
that the report says "involve alcohol" for motorcycle accidents and
"fail breath tests" for the general percentage. This strongly suggests
that not all the motorcyclists who crash were actually drunk - merely
that alcohol "was involved".

 

In this case, let them. Electric vehicles are a blind alley, a waste of
resources, and nowhere near as environmentally friendly as their
supporters would have one believe.

Same goes for hybrids. They're a stop-gap, a sop to the eco-weenies,
and a triumph of marketing over common sense in that they make the
buyers feel good and green and cuddly.

Electric vehicles will be useless until someone invents a battery that
can hold as much energy, volume for volume, as petrol. Fuel cell cars
*may* be a working alternative.

If it's fuel economy and low emissions (and we're talking total
emissions, including those expended in the building of the vehicle) you
want, then nothing comes close to a good electronically controlled
common rail diesel engine. These things run on injection pressures of
over 1000 bar: amazing.

What's more, if you add a continuously recirculating particulate trap
(CRT) and a catalytic convertor, their emissions are even lower than an
engine fuelled by compressed natural gas or propane. Fact.

Diesel cars in Europe now routinely achieve over 50mpg. The smaller
ones get 60-70mpg. My own car, which admittedly doesn't use the best
diesel lump out there, combines 130mph top speed with 45mpg economy and
low emissions.

Hell, a friend has one of the new diesel Jaguars. That's a 145mph car
that manages 40mpg.

If there's another thing that bemuses me about the USA and its wheels,
it's this: if you're that concerned about fuel costs and emissions, why
don't you guys build or buy diesel cars? Serious question. Answers?

 

Gene Cash wrote:

Here, as a rather keen historian (and a Brit), I have to put you right.

Germany got a working jet aircraft into the skies before Britain. Von
Ohain's engine powered a special Heinkel jet in 1939. Gloster didn't
get their first jet (the E28/39) into the sky until 1941. And Germany
got several jet aircraft into combat, including the Me262, which was
*years* ahead of its time. We managed the Meteor, which only saw action
against the flying bombs.

To be fair, our jet engine tech was definitely better than Germany's,
while their airframe and aeronautics tech was decades ahead of
*anyone's*. But we definitely didn't invent the jet engine and then
"kick it to the Germans".

It was (like radar) a case of parallel development - both countries
were working on it. The US was nowhere, incidentally.

You *may* be thinking of the extraordinary move by our Government in
1945, when it literally gave away examples, no strings attached, of the
then-new Nene jet engine to both Russia and the US, as a bizarre
goodwill gesture. Guess what engine (or a copy thereof) powered the
MiG-15?

Steam catapult, etc, yes, all true, although we're building two new
conventional carriers right now. It was decided that with our lessened
strategic commitments (read: no empire) air support could be adequately
provided by Harrier-carriers which were far cheaper. They did a damn
good job - witness the Falklands war and the fact that the Harrier is
one of the few Brit warplanes that the US has acquired for its own air
force. The Canberra bomber was another.

Who invented submarines? Well, people had working subs in the 19th
century. The Hunley sank a warship in your own Civil War. The first
modern submarines were the Holland boats, built... in the US. The
depredations of the U-Boats in 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 have nothing
whatsoever to do with British submarine technology.

 

Heh. It costs m 30 bucks equivalent to fill my BMW bike. The Triumph I
sold recently cost around 40-45.

Got to say I do *like* this sig.

 

I work in a publishing company where the editors on the next desk to me
write about biofuels!

OK, basically you've got plants whose oil can be used as a fuel rather
than food (rapeseed being the classic example) and plants that can be
turned into a mash, fermented, and then the resultant alcohol
distilled. That's corn and, increasingly, sugarcane, for obvious
reasons.

Oil can be burned in diesel engines (indeed, the first diesels ran on
vegetable oil) while the ethanol (alcohol) can be mixed with etrol
(gasohol) or even burned on its own. It contains less energy than pure
petrol, so a pure ethanol engine will produce less power, cc for cc.

You've also got gas given off during decay - methane, which can be
burned as a fuel. Cow farts produce *a lot* of methane, and this is a
Bad Thing because methane is a very nasty greenhouse gas, so the more
that can be burned the better.

 

(Google just went blooey so this may be a repeat)

This is all true. Whittle reckoned that with backing, he could have had
jet fighters flying in 1940 for the Battle of Britain.

Well, disagree. Swings and roundabouts. We had better jet engines, but
didn't apply ourselves properly. They had better radar equipment, but
didn't apply that properly either.

Our Government must have been mad. The Russians thought it was a
disinformation ploy, initially.

Agree on every count. And then they cancelled TSR-2.

It wasn't. It was decommissioned in 1978. All we had were the two
Harrier-carriers.

See above. We'll just have to give the credit to Hawker, then.
Fantastic aircraft, the Harrier, and really very low-tech. A simple
solution.

Drowned? The Hunley sank three times, with all hands, IIRC. Or was it
four?

 

<snip>

I've posted the link before, but if you want to see how far ahead
Germany wa sin aerospace and aerodynamic technology:

www.luft46.com

That's neat.

I had a collection of die-cast bikes. Everything from tiny little old
ones from the 1950s to big modern die-casts, including several examples
of bikes I'd owned (Ducati, BMW, etc).

Got burgled a couple of years ago and the bastards took the lot.

 

Best place for it ;-)

We've got this glass display cabinet that we fill with the usual
knick-knacks. I had all my die-cast bikes in there.

A year or two ago, I bought on Ebay a brand new Ducati tachometer that
nobody else seemed to want to pay much for. As it happens, it's the same
one that my Duke uses, but I bought it because it's beautiful. Simple,
unadorned, white face, little red dash at 9000rpm.

It's a little piece of industrial art. And that's in the glass cabinet,
too. It doesn't look out of place.

 

*Lovely* expression )

We never got the cruiser version of the 450 - we just got the stock
CB450DX roadster.

On the Continent, they got the CB450S - same engine in a replica Harris
Magnum chassis, believe it or not. We got that bike, but with a 350cc
luimp (for some reason).

Look down the bottom of this page and you'll see a pic of the 450S

http://tinyurl.com/w3k5s

The frame was incredible: a perfect replica of a Magnum, only smaller.
Suspension was a bit soft, mind. The 350 was fun (I tested one when they
first came out, in the mid-1980s), but the 450 was supposed to be a real
laugh.