Safe Speed Forums

...up to the point where the oil runs out, then they'll start selling the alternatives. (worst-case scenario)

Kinda blows a hole in your argument about screwing things up for the next generation, doesn't it?

Cheers
Peter

I think he has gone to read the T2000 hand book again.......

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Speed camera policy Kills

Equal opportunity, yes.
How do you equate everyone being forced out of their cars with equal opportunity for all?



Cheers
Peter

People like SafeSpeed and the ABD are starting to get somewhere in counteracting the anti-car lobby, so they switch to the next mode - targeting individual sub groups...

4x4s are an apparently easy target group - and the class war is definitely part of it: 4x4 drivers are those obnoxious rich idiots driving chelsea tractors... except that the vast majority are not and are the only practical choice for many people. Of course there are some that get them because they think others will think that they use them to go to their country estate at the week-end, and there are many that are only used for the school run and the supermarket, but every argument against them can be invalidated.

They are certainly very suited to the dreadful condition of our roads, and cope very well with the inevitable chaos caused by an inch of snow these days. They barely notice most speed humps - ah perhaps this might be a reason against them!

As Gizmo says there are bio alternatives to Oil which will have zero net carbon effect, and the only reason why they haven't been developed is an alliance between Goverments and the Oil Companies where they both make loads of money out of oil thank-you. If Tony and the rest really believed in Global Warming they would have been forcing the implementation of bio-deisel, and the UK CO2 emmissions would have been slashed by .... not a lot really because most of it has nothing to do with motor vehicles in the first place. Anyway oil has been "going to run out in 50 years time" for the last 30 years, except somehow it is still 50 years away.

High vehicles with hard metal fronts that take up lots of room and have poor braking etc, they also kill more pedestrians per mile that any other type of vehicle... but it isn't the 4x4 is it? No it is the bus. When I was at school we never heard about anybody killed by a 4x4, but we did hear over several run over by busses. Gory stories too about how the child had slipped under the front wheels and when the driver was alerted he stopped and backed up until he was stopped on the childs crushed legs (he couldn't see and thought he was backing off not back on again).

Lie after Lie after Lie, you gullible people are being manipulated by the same fanatics that successfully opposed the road building projects that Tony slashed when Labour got into power...

Dude....I think you need to cut down on the cafeine...

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Speed camera policy Kills

I remember doing a school project about alternative energy, where all the readily available research material (or at least, readily available to a 15-year old schoolkid in the late 1980's) suggested we only had, at best, 30 years of oil left. 17 years later, we're now worried about having only 50 years of oil left... the maths doesn't add up, does it.


OK, sure, I know at some point we will run out of oil - it is after all a finite resource. But I've spent my entire life being scared silly by one "future energy scare" scenario after another, and they've all been proven false. Who's to say this 50 year figure is any more reliable than the others we've been misled by in the past? And even if it is, and we really do only have 50 years of oil left, what makes you think by then we won't have switched to using something else? Are all the energy companies (can't really call them "oil" companies these days, given the way they've got their fingers in more than just the pie decorated with little pastry "o" "i" and "l" letters on top...), ship, aircraft and vehicle builders just going to shrug their shoulders and quietly close their doors once the oil is gone? I don't think so.




So how would you classify something like the Mercedes A-Class? It's not a great hulking 4x4, yet I'm sure we all remember how well the original version fared in the "managing to stay upright following an evasive maneouvre" test And BTW, I've seen plenty of 4x4's being driven by complete numpties pulling stupid maneouvres that would place the vehicle under at least as much stress as a "relatively mild evasive maneouvre" without them overturning, falling off the road or doing anything other than continuing on their way. Yep, vehicles with high CofG's have a greater potential for toppling over, but you're making it sound as if they're going to go sideways at the merest flick of the steering wheel.

Your argument there could just as easily be applied to plenty of other vehicles - would you want a novice driver with experience only of Micra/Escort-class cars to then get behind the wheel of something with a touch more power, or that had a significantly larger footprint, or which handled rather differently in certain conditions, or which was fitted with fewer safety systems than the cars they'd been used to?

_Tc_ has not come back yet .....maybe he has had to go and read his "activist briefing" document again. It did not prepare him for rational arguments.

Ah well....another one bites the dust.....

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Speed camera policy Kills

Just had a thought....

4x4's are more prone to overturning during high speed turns....therefore perfectly safe on the low speed school run! Magic.

Another way to flush out the anti car greenhouse lobby is nuclear energy. The obvious and possibly only low carbon, mass energy producing process. But mention it to any of our eco friends and they have a fit! Trouble is that even though it answers their current bandwagon it contracdicts their CND/Ban the bomb roots!

Another point, if carbon fuels will be used up in my life time then why worry about setting targets for carbon emission reductions now? Surely it'll sort itself out? Or am I missing something here?

Not quite - I tend to be absurdly busy on the weekends.

I'm actually absurdly busy at work at the moment, but will try to continue the debate sometime in the next day or two.

Quick point though - 'forcing' everyone out of their cars eventually (I say it's getting real with the amount of resources we have) is something to aim for, so that those in the third world who barely have enough to eat through no fault of their own can have some kind of quality of life. Our exceptional quality of life in the West is down to unequal distribution of resources. We've wasted billions on weapons systems to control the flow of oil. We should be using these resources to improve the lot of as many as possible, if not all.

I'm of the Bill Hicks school of thought - in that we should be using that money to shoot food at hungry people, so that we can get off this planet and explore space as one species.

Equal distribution of resources is the first step towards that, and if that means I have to get public transport everywhere, then so be it.

Tc.

A few points:

1) If you want to improve the quality of life for third-world people, a good start would be to get rid of all the despotic dictators who squander every bit of wealth in, and aid to, their countries and leave their people to starve.

2) How is forcing people out of their cars onto (virtually nonexistent in most parts of the country) public transport going to save money, when public transport is inherently more expensive than private transport - even with the skewing effects of subsidies and fuel tax?

3) The motor, and ancillary, industries are a major source of employment and wealth worldwide. How is doing away with this going to help anyone?

4) If you have one millionaire for every ten thousand poor people, if you then take the million away from the millionaire and share it out amongst the ten thousand, that'll be £100 each, and you will have achieved nothing other than making one more person poor. Even more if that million was originally invested and creating jobs for others.

5) You complain about billions being wasted on weapons systems (I don't like the idea myself BTW) but are quite happy to see trillions squandered because of the Kyoto treaty.

Cheers
Peter

Welcome to the twilight zone......

This has got to be a kid...

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Speed camera policy Kills

Question : Who put the dictators in charge in the first place?

Answer : In most cases, the US Government, in order to preserve the status quo that puts the priorities of western nations above those of everyone else. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, their government did the same.



I'll look up the figures. There is no way that public transport can be more expensive in environmental terms than everyone having a car (or heaven forbid, an SUV).



That's not going to be the case for too much longer. Most manufacturing is being outsourced to China, most IT infrastructure to India. We're going to get a taste of our own medicine in the next thirty years unless we try to be a little fairer.



How much opportunity would it give to those poorer people to have the money to better themselves. The US has the most undeserving leader in modern history, and he got it all through inherited privilege - he never worked a day in his life. How many minimum-wagers have brilliant ideas that will never come to fruition because of this inherent inequality?

Note : I'm no rabid supporter of extreme wealth redistribution, but I do believe that the majority of people with excessive wealth don't deserve it.



How is buying our children a little extra time on this planet while we figure out how to get off it squandering the money? I'f the billions spent developing weapons to arm ourselves were diverted into more worthwhile causes, then maybe inequality would not be so much an issue.

Gizmo - I'll admit that I'm a bit of a pie-in-the-sky Utopianist at times, but a fair world for all is something that I fervently hope for. If we can have private transport without making an enemy of our own futures, then all well and good - but the vested interest seem to be going out of their way to prevent it.

Tc.

In Africa most were put in place by the Soviet Union, and people like Mugabe were put in place by, er, us.



More expensive in monentary terms, you know, cash - the stuff that could buy food for the starving millions.
What do you mean by environmental terms anyway? Public transport is vastly more polluting than private transport in terms of pollutants that are actually harmful - I'm not talking about plant food (CO2) and even there, trains produce more of the stuff per passenger-mile than do cars.
I don't see what you're so worried about anyway - according to you oil's going to run out in a few years time and so there's going to be no more 'pollution'.



I guess you missed the 'worldwide' bit in my post.



Less than five years, by anybody's estimate - and that's assuming that disaster is going to overcome us., which is in all probability not going to happen.
So why don't we impoverish the world before that, and create even more starving millions then? Is that what you subscribe to?

Cheers
Peter