Safe Speed Forums

There is no difference at all between the messages 'Speed Kills' and 'Safe Speed'. 'Speed Kills' implies that some speeds are dangerous and some speeds are less so, and 'Safe Speed' implies that some speeds are dangerous and some speeds are less so!

Inappropriate speed is speed, so if inappropriate speed sometimes kills, then speed sometimes kills too. I concede that this is not complete, but almost any simple message looses something in the "dumbing down" process. In any case, any speed over the limit is "inappropriate" by law.

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Is that including the "inappropriate" law

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Steve

Nonsense! Is a Boeing airliner cruising at 400mph travelling at an "inappropriate" speed? By what you say that would be far more ten times more dangerous than a car travelling at 40mph down a crowded street!


Unfortunately, the "speed kills" message is so simple as to be banal, and what truth it does carry is so self-evident that it has zero value in terms of advancing road safety.

"Speed" alone means nothing - we can't remove it from the equation - travelling means using speed. But we can eradicate "inappropriate" speed whilst still performing the function of travelling from A to B. That is the difference.


No. It is illegal, that does not mean it is implicitly dangerous.

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That class relationship does not reverse, i.e. all inappropriate speed is speed, but all speed is not inappropriate. If it did reverse, then there would be a one-to-one relationship between speed and inappropriate speed. I didn't assert that at all.



Please demonstrate the logic behind what you say. I have not mentioned planes, cars, ratios or even mph. I said that all inappropriate speed is speed, which is true. How have you drawn different conclusions from that?



Can anything different be said about the "safe speed " message?



Indeed, but we also know that even "appropriate" speed can kill, although it is less likely. So can I assume that, to you, ‘appropriate’ means less likely to kill, to some degree? What is that degree?



Inappropriate AND appropriate speed can both kill, with different likelihoods. So perhaps appropriateness is also an ambiguous message? I believe that the word “appropriate” is highly ambiguous and subject to interpretation, hence the need for a defined limit.

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Steve,
Good to see your wife drives an American car, not too sure which gearbox it has but if it is associated with GM then I presume it has come out of the Muncie facility, once part of NVG the jointly owned DC/GM gearbox company. This (NVG) was released to DC in late 02 as I recall with GM retaining Muncie but getting Borg Warner to manage it.

That GM are into lean is accepted, who do you think got there first?

I have no illusions about the incestuous nature of the Auto industry, having played my part in it for 35 years, and yes I do compare figures on auto sales usually Wards, or the SMMT summary. Ford is third behind Totota with GM just ahead.

The Fiat issue is clear, if GM buy Fiat they will add up to 1.5 million units to their headline manufactured count. This will present a higher total for Toyota to overtake, hence the two year delay before they become no. 1 worldwide in volume manufactures.

As for Co2 being higher prior to man's arrival it has no bearing on our current situation, we have to achieve a neutral balance if we want the future conditions to be benign for our children to enjoy.

As for the Bible being unfactual or hearsay as you put it I agree with you.

The global warming issue though is not hearsay and is backed up by real testable facts, many of which are uncomfortable. Some people want to ignore or deny them for their own particular reasons. These range from vested ecconomic interest, or ignorance, or simply an inability to face up to the truth because it is painful.
Reducing Co2 does not mean we have to give up the quality of life we currently enjoy, it simply requires us to be more conscious of Co2 creating activity and where possible reduce them, such as better urban traffic flow systems, or find ways of generating power that does not involve burning fossil fuels the key word being fossil.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

The problem is, who decides appropriate speed, a certain speed may be appropriate for safety, however inappropriate for the Revenue gains from a camera. Which is why councils will reduce the limit

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Steve

If you don't like it, you can change it at the ballot box.

PS - good article on Radio 4 this morning, explaining how men drive with a 'hunter gatherer' aggression. One view was that women get better insurance deals than men because they are less risky, i.e. the roads would be safer if men could learn to drive as well as women do.

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You are somewhat mis-guided, if you believe you can change a law, that has a net profit for the Government



Irrelevant source of information, unless radio 4 have started advising the dft




More a fact, there are less woman drivers on the road, hence less accidents woman are involved in, it is all equal in the scheme of things.

I of coarse, do benifit from this scheme, as all Insurance is in my wifes name.

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Steve

Careful with that mate, I did that, then my wife left me and it cost me £450 to insure a £100 Volvo. Bugger!

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Human hydrocarbon consumption has raised the C02 ppm count 20% in our lives! The climate is far from being an inanimate system - we are part of it and our part in it has changed it, like changing the set point on a PID controller.



All that makes no odds to a 3-term controller, just the total increase over nature. The 20% ppm increase in C02 due to fuel consumption has moved the needle off full scale. I fear that even if we stopped emissions and moved the set point back, momentum might continue to disturb the climate's steady state for many years.

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Sorry to hear about your misfurtune. A ploy to avoid this in future is to build up no-claims bonus on a non-existent, very cheap to insure vehicle, such as a moped. This can be insured for £20 per year, then, when you need a polcy, you have a nice length of no-claims bonus to fall back on. No need for fraud either, if you buy a real, cheapo moped but just don't ride it!

BTW: nice choice of jallopy, there, Serge! I have a '90 Sierra myself, which is also near the top of the dirt-cheap-big-boot league. Put it this way - I don't need to park slowly and carefully in the narrow slots at Tescos!

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Yes, I have to admit there are certain advantages to driving a nail. I never have to worry about locking it for one, I think the best anti-theft device is a s**t car.

Also, I've recently doubled it's value by fitting a new exhaust. If I fill it up with petrol I could make a tidy profit.

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

I can't find anywhere that says it's even gone up by that much in such a short time, let alone due solely to hydrocarbon usage. 20% across the whole industrial age, maybe, but even then 6/7th of that is natural.

What's a PID controller? Sounds like something electronic? Doesn't matter really, as it's come up through my own poor wording. Inanimate was completley the wrong word to use, and you're right to have pulled me up on it. I should have said something like non-sentient. Please reconsider my point with that in mind.

Nature has shown itself to be capable of that sort of increase without human intervention. So the question remains, how does it know the difference between it's own innocuous CO2 increases and our nasty ones? After all, CO2 is CO2 is CO2. So why was there no feedback in the past when CO2 has been high?

See above about the 20%.

As for the three term controller, if it's another elctronic thingywidget it's quite inadequate. There are millions of variables to deal with, many of which are poorly understood and some of which may not even be known. To tinker with one of them (if that's even possible to any great extent) and expect the whole shooting match to tamely do what we like, is just a non-starter. We simply do not know how the bloody thing works, and lacking such knowledge predictions are iffy. Let me repeat that quote I made much earlier:I think it's really worth knowing where that comes from if you don't already. Honest.

AAAAHHH! How many times? The climate doesn't have a steady state, never has and almost certainly never will. We will continue to affect the climate even if we all dropped dead right now, obviously, though whether the effects are even strong enough to measure is another thing. But then locusts affect it too, and not by respiration but in another way (also shared with us). Hmmm, now I'm wondering if we cut down more trees than termites do. Who said something about it being time for the insects to take over?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Check it out on observation at Mauna Loa.



It can be implemented electronically, pneumatically, hydraulically, digitally or in anything else ending in -ly! It is a from of feedback control system, which models natural and artificial processes. It is used to control levels in tanks, voltages in wires, spacecraft orbits, nuclear reactor temperatures etc. Check it out PID Loops. The climate is a system with lots of variables and a few important ones. C02 is an important one, and can be used to change and/or control the system. The system seems to be in a steady state of feedback control over a long period, and we are ending that state at present.



The levels of C02 are unknown in human history and I am not aware that nature has shown itself capable, in human history, of adjusting to a 20% rise, let alone a much bigger one.



It doesn’t need to. It was in a steady state carbon cycle. Now we have changed that steady state by releasing a billion years of carbon from coal and oil reserves in a few decades. Nature could deal with a steady state carbon cycle, but to find a new state with the new (40%+ ?) increase over historical levels, it will take centuries and the sea will rise if the WAIS breaks up.



I'm talking about carbon and oxygen - the most basic parameters of all. Please explain what other variables are more important than carbon - are there really any?



We are already tinkering with them now.



That being the case (as it may be) I'd like to leave things like they were, i.e. in the steady state of last centuries. That may not be possible, alas.

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As far back as I can recall, the climate has been steady enough to grow food! It doesn't matter if, in principle, over 100,000 years, it is open loop -it is not apparent open loop now. It was not in the state of repetition it is (undeniably) in at present for ever, but it is in it long enough for humans to evolve. That is all that metters, and keeping it like that is more important than you can possibly conceive.

PS do you think we can sustain rapid climate change with 6 billion on the planet? Previous periods, if there have been any, have involved far fewer people. Do we need a rapid kill off? Should we depend on the yanks to nuke China and India back to the stone age, so that we can continue to drive our children to school in SUVs?

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You may wish to go back a bit further

In History, England, has been a green fertile land to a sea bed, entirely submerged, then a desert, then a winter wonderland, and as now back to a green fertile land.

Seems it is just going through natures cycle, all without any of man's interventions

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Steve

Oh, excuse me! I have just realised how selfish I have been for wanting to keep the world inhabitable for MYSELF! I see what you selfless guys are saying. It's all OK because, without US, things will get back to normal, and all the fish and birds will live happily ever after, until the sun runs out of gas and turn the solar system into dust.

Yes, I was quite selfish before, please accept my agologies. It's quite all right to keep ruining the air because, the sooner we are all killed off, the better it is for the planet!

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You can want, Nature will decide how habitable it will be.



Very possible, after all, the Sun's surface tempature is increasing, which as a direct result, earth's tempature will increase.



1st of all, we have to understand, what has a detrimental effect on the Climate, as we are miles from that, it seems you are jumping the Gun, don't you think

Nature can do far worse things to the climate, than our cars

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Steve

Our Solar system, is packed to the gunnels, with burned out stars.

The Sun is no differant.

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Steve

Your noble respect for nature masks the fact that, for thousands of years, it hasn't done far worse things to the climate than our cars and industry are doing now. The data tells the story. We have caused air pollution that is worse now than at any time during the past 20 million years! Read that again, bmwk12 - 20 million years worth of damage in a few decades.

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