Almost every accident and near miss I've seen lately have been involving old people.
Just the other day an old man in a mini pulled out on a roundabout without looking, he was just looking dead ahead. Not sure if he'd even seen the roundabout.
When I was walking to town the other day as well there was an old bloke who'd rolled his yaris. Firemen had cut the roof off to get him out. (He was alive though)
Between 06:30 on Saturday and 00:30 on Monday, in other words during a time of less than 48 hours I had to deal with two crashes on the same road at the same place under near identical circumstances. Both cars were travelling in the same direction and skidded on the same bend, crossed onto the opposite side of the road, hit the kerb less than 15' apart, spun through 180 degrees and ended up in the same ditch. The cars in question were an '05 Mondeo and '06 Golf. The drivers were 32 and 40 years of age. The first thing both drivers said was "I wasn't going fast." Which almost certainly means they were. Neither were old, or particularly young. Both are employees at the same place which means, bearing in mind where they llive, means they use that road every day before and after work. Both cars have ABS and both had good tyres. Just bad driving as far as I can see. No proceedings were taken against either driver but that was only becuse there were no vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians coming the other way.
I think common sense has raised it's head through out this thread, kind of veered off the original topic though. Personally what I would like to see is a similar way they do things in Canada. For instance Speeding, depending on situation, no fine or points on a deserted road late at night....You get the idea.
I simplify somewhat but every now & again, out come the feds with the speed guns up here, it's so easy to get caught out, without going that fast either. Now I'm not suggesting for one second that some drivers should be let off, but a few miles over the limit can cost.
Post code lottery plays a big part in all of this obviously. Having not the density of traffic is not always a bonus.....
OK rant over.
What you say is very logical but would require more humans, generally known as Police Officers. Unfortunately, His Tonyness and The Idiot Brown and their cronies increased Gatsos and their "cousins" but failed to put more Cops out.
i agree that it is bloody annoying when lorry's overtake but i dont think banning them will do any good, at the end of the day their just doing their job and if there stuck behind a lorry going slower then they are they are gonna be late for the pick up/drop of
We have that wonderful organisation the EU to blame for this. Way back before the "Thatcher years" we had a 60 limit for HGVs (over 7.5t GVW) and the Police to enforce the law. Drivers' hours were recorded in log books. Then came Tachographs and then the speed limit was lowered. The EC came to the decision that HGVs in every country in the Community should be limited electronically to between 80 and 90 km/h. The British, after some prodding of Margaret Thatcher by the transport lobby opted for 90, or 56 mph. During the '70s and '80s the EC also issued a number of dictats for minimum power that resulted in slightly mad engines like IVECOs 17 litre V8 or MAN's bonkers 18 litre V10, both with around 550 bhp. This resulted in a power race between the big players, Cummins, Volvo, Scania, IVECO and MAN. Even GM through Bedford had a go with V6 and V8 turbocharged and supercharged
2-strokes. If the EC had left well alone we'd still probably have Sid plodding along in his old Atkinson at 45 and Richy flying in his Scania.
you would think that they would build some sort of system with metal erm, lengths going down the country to carry good on going city to city, down the uk
That's such a brilliant and inspirational idea that it'd never catch on. We could call it a railway.
It would be even better if it was restricted to a certain type of vehicle, and that not just anyone could drive on it, thus eliminating traffic
We have one of those in Manchester. It's brilliant, so far it's cost hundreds of millions of £, has taken 3 years to build (and isn't finished yet) and has removed thousands of cars off the road. That's because they're all using other roads to avoid the congestion. People along the route can't sleep or sell their houses, businesses have closed down and residents have to park several hundred yards away and have been broken into an stolen. Ah the Metrolink, don't you just love it.
i dont see how banning buses and coaches from overtaking trucks is a good idea
HGV (Trucks):- limited to 90km/h
PSV (coaches/buses):- limited to 120km/h
what other restricted vehicles are their? anything over 7.5 tonnes legally requires a Tacho. iirc post vans aren't tacho'd nor is there any legal requirement for them to be they're basically privately owned couriers.
Tacho law and driving hours is properly complicated with different vehicles being eligible and others that are exempt. it all depends on what work the vehicle is doing and the legal requirement to log either hours and speed, or just speed.
the reason you will get HGVs doing different speeds is dependant on what the operating company decides what speed they want to run their vehicles (upto a maximum of 90km/h) and the tyre wear when the vehicle was calibrated.
for instance you can send a unit for tacho calibration with legal minimum re-cut drive axle tyres on, then when it comes out of the tacho station put brand new tyres on. (the vehicle equipment will still be legally calibrated to 90km/h, regarless of tyre wear, as long as its of legal depth)
knackered tyres can be recut (ONCE) to a depth of 7mm
there is 20mm tread on a new drive axle michelin tyre
taking into account the HGV 1mm legal minimum wear depth it is possible to achieve 25mm extra on the radius of the tyre (50mm over the diameter)
lets do MATH!!!
295/85 22.5 is the tyre size of most common trucks drive axles
85% of 295 is 250.75 so lets call it 251mm
half the rim size is 11.25 inches so thats 285.75mm lets call it 286mm
251+286= 537mm RADIUS
Double it for Diameter = 1074 mm
rolling radius is = 3374mm ('Truck A' with new tyres)
now do it for a recut tyre at legal minimum. we have established that between a worn recut and new tyre is 50mm over the diameter so diameter would be 1024mm
rolling radius of that is 3217mm ('Truck B' with worn re-cut tyres)
Now theres a massive 157mm difference in rolling radius so for every drive wheel rotation 'Truck A' is travelling 157mm FURTHER than 'Truck B'
im bored now but you can imagine how much faster Truck A will be travelling even though both the tachos are limited to 90km/h
STOP! STOP! My brain hurts. In the last few years the 56/90 limit now applies to those from 3.5 to 7.5t
if coaches are limited to 75 how come they overtake me when i am doing 80?
Coaches are limited to 65mph and are forbidden from using the outside lane of a 3 or 4 lane motorway.
Surely in an ideal world you'd take the heavy goods between major conurbations by train...then use light vehicles for final delivery or is that madness?
As recently as the '80s you could go past British Leyland/Rover/LDV factories on the train and see dozens of huge rolls of sheet steel. These used to arrive by train, in fact they were the only cargo on an entire train. They came direct from the steel mill. Perhaps a 1000 tons at a time. Unfortunately, after the Japanese brought in "Just in Time" operating whereby the manufacturers were the stock holders not the customers. That meant your steel was more likely to arrive on three or four trucks a day rather two trains a month. You couldn't really send perishable goods by train because the system just takes too long, although after talk of Royal Mail earlier, one loss to the road system might have been when they did away with the mail train where the sorting was done on board.
Is this the same mongister who said this about winter tyres? "Winter tyres wear out very quickly on normal road surfaces and cause significant damage to those surfaces, so they would not be appropriate in the UK situation,"
http://uk.autoblog.com/2010/12/03/transport-minister-slammed-over-confused-winter-tyre-message/
The timing of this is odd. Only today someone at work was talking about this. He was saying that he'd been told that winter tyres wore better than normal ones, that the car would give better fuel returns and more grip than the usual tyres you might fit. He was told this by the tyre company he uses. No bias there then.
inorite!?
Bloody plebs with their ridiculous ideas, full of common sense and realism. *scoff*
Can't believe they don't all have their own chauffeurs. Backwards nincompoops.
"inorite!?" eh? I have enough difficulty being a normal nincompoop without re-training to be a backwards version. Can I do a course at the local college?
