greenv8s wrote:
TheMakel wrote:
These bollards are in no way "Booby trapped", and to say so is ignorant and does your otherwise worthy cause no favours. The barriers drop when a bus or authorised vehicle approaches them, and then raise when it has passed, in the same way as a car park barrier rises and falls on payment. But you'd hardly call that "Booby trapped"
It's reasonably obvious that some people are going to drive into the bollards. Some will do it because they're stupid and think they can sneak through while they're down. Some will do it because they don't understand that the bollards go up and down between vehicles. Some will do it because they're so unobservant that they don't realize they're there at all. Whatever the reason, people will do it.
Given that the bollards themselves are pretty inconspicuous while they're down and likely to be hidden from view by the bonnet of your car if they rise in front of view, anyone stupid/unlucky enough to try to drive through will have very little chance to realize their mistake. In this respect it's completely unlike any normal barrier which drops in front of the driver's line of sight.
So it seems to me more or less inevitable that from time to time people will drive into the barriers. Presumably the people who installed the barriers think so too otherwise they wouldn't have spent all that money making them so strong they could stop a tank in its tracks.
It's obvious that anyone vehicle that does drive into the bollards is likely to be severely damaged and the occupants risk injury.
If the benefit of keeping people out outweighed this harm, then the bollards would be justified. I'd still want to know whether there is a better way to achieve this goal, but if there wasn't then I'd accept that it was reasonable to put the bollards there. But it isn't clear to me that there is *any* significant benefit, and certainly none that seems to justify this degree of damage and injury.
This isn't a case of stupid people with nobody to blame but themselves. The council has installed a device reasonably likely to catch people out and do them substantial harm. I'm astonished that some people seem to think that it's a good laugh seeing stupid people get hurt and feel no remorse at having allowed it to happen. Once we accept the principle that we don't care what happens to people who make mistakes, anything is possible. I was being facetious when I suggested rocket launchers wired up to speed cameras but the difference to this is only a matter of degree, not of kind.
I certainly don't think it's a "good laugh" to see those people getting hurt, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that 4x4 driver, for example, made a "mistake"; he made a deliberate attempt to cross the bollards "at speed", he failed, and paid the price. The bollards come up pretty quick after the bus has passed , so the only real way to hit them is if you are xtreme-tailgating or are driving at an "inappropriate" speed (notice I didn't say "speeding") in an effort to beat them, in which case you're just as likely to stack-it into the back of the bus as you are to hit the bollards.
I'm afraid I really fail to see the difference between a car-park barrier and these bollards. I might disagree with charging at a certain car-park, and therefore the associted barrier which has been newly installed, but I'm certainly not going to try and charge my way through it, risking my vehicle and personal safety just to prove my point. I don't know the ins and outs of Manchester City Centre, but likewise, even if the placing of a bus route is unecessary IMHO, I'm definelty not going to try and gun the bollards cause I don't agree with it, and then cry when my car gets damaged.
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