Safe Speed Forums

Indeed we have but without reaching any real conclusions. Perhaps I was a little remiss in not challenging this at the time I know of no statutory obligation on central government to "pay for roads". There is a statutory obligation, under the Highway Act, on Highway Authorities (or their agents) to keep existing highways in good order and unobstructed - an obligation, incidentally, which they fulfil only with reluctance. But there is, as far as I know, no obligation upon them to create new highways. Indeed, in my work with the footpath society I find that they usually strenuously resist any attempt to do so. But if you or Peter have better information I will glady study it.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I must say, when debating with motor car fundamentalist types on the issue of pollution I am left wondering what they are defending; the motor car or the petrol engine, neigh even fossil fuels?

I mean I think the car is a great invention, and indeed with four people in one it's a particularly efficient way of moving people around, but it still pumps out lots of crap due to its power source.

And the stuff it's burning in the main comes from underground sources that are probably best left alone. I mean what's going to happen when we get around to injecting the entire stored carbon reserve into the atmosphere (presuming carbon sequestration doesn't take off in a big way)?

Would be interesting to have a debate from the perspective of the future where vehicles may well be zero emission (probably at point of use if not full stop).

I hope I can put your mind at rest on this one.

The bulk of the carbon sequested from the earths primative atmosphere is actually "stored" as carbonate rock. Now, it is true that there must be very considerable quantities of fossilised "free" carbon in the earths crust it is also likly that what we think of as "Fossil Fuels" probabally only accounts for less than 0.1% of it and only a tiny %age of that will ever be exploitable.

even if every exploitable reserve of fossil fuel is consumed it is extreemly unlikly that the atmosphere will revert even to that of the carbonifferous era (Which was not a venus like hell hole, otherwise there would have been no plants)

It is completly impossible for it to revert to the primative atmosphere of the Archean

It would take planet wide volcanisim to do that! (Which is not in itself impossible but it is beyond any human controll or influance)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I'm sure car-haters will still find plenty of reasons to complain about them. After all, surely it is the destiny of the working class to catch the tram to their job at the tractor factory. All this freedom of movement will do them no good at all...

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Mmmm. To believe an internet poster or an established and very large section of the scientific community.

Difficult one that!

Not difficultat all. The internet poster has no vested interest in the matter whereas the entire scientific community relies on continuing t0 propagate a fiction in order to obtain research grants and thus make a living.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Well, that depends what you're attacking! - The motor car, the petrol engine, or fossil fuels? I can only imagine that as you seemed to be attacking the car based on particulate emissions "causing" loads of extra deaths, you were having a go at the diesel engine? If so, I thought it might help to mention that particular emissions levels were set to fall dramatically (albeit at the expense of even more cost, complexity, and slightly higher CO2 emissions) due to the forthcoming "Euro V" level of emission requirements.

The issue of burning the remaining fosil fuel reserves, however, DOES bother me. It's not so much the "Climate Change" thing (on which I have little knowledge and remain fairly agnostic), but the "sustainability" thing that troubles me. In the years before we actually run out of the stuff, I fear wars and all manner of human suffering as a result of its scarcity. I don't fancy that much! Now, like DCB's climate change scienists, I too must declare an interest - I'm an engineer working in the automotive industry. Everything I say, therefore, needs to be read in that context. That said, I like to think of myself as not completely devoid of moral principles!

As for the future, well, zero emissions at the point of use is a limited reality (in my view) and not one that will solve any problems other than local air quality (which I think is already largely being addressed even with conventional vehicles). "Zero emissions full stop" is not, in my view, achieveable as yet. Not unless we're prepared to put up with cars that only very infrequently, move very small distances, very slowly! However, switching to electrically powered vehicles, does give us a lot more choice as to how we get the energy in the first place. That's our best hope in the short term, I think.

Have you any thoughts on hydrogen powered vehicles, Mole - the hydrogen being produced by sustainable power stations? I still think that chemical fuels are so much more attractive in terms of power density and recharge rate. I don't think that a car with a fuel tank weighing 250kG for a range of a hundred miles can ever be viable as a general purpose vehicle.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Just to add a further dimension to the debate on pollution aspects of motor vehicles (in their current form at least). The question of non-exhaust emissions is likely to become more important as exhaust emissions become cleaner.

http://www.ies-uk.org.uk/non-exhaust/nonexhaustemissions.html

Of course, similar charges could be levelled against cyclists and any other vehicle that uses rotating parts and friction brakes. Thankfully most of the latter no longer contains asbestos...

OH FOR PITY'S SAKE!!!!!

They really are scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to moan about now! Perhaps we DO need to go back to horses so that when they're buried under 9' of horse sh1te they can do some more research and come up with the motor car all over again!

Anyway, they've missed out the main non-exhaust emission - evaporation of solvents from new cars. They can be bad enough to fail the emissions test, without even starting the engine! (although water-based paints have helped in that respect). There are still, however, evaporative emissions from al lthe plastics and elastomers used...

I confess to little actual, detailed knowledge in this field (just opinions!) but for what it's worth, I would like to see the future vehicle fleet powered by clean hydrogen burned in the internal combustion engine. Some of that is because I'm just a petrolhead who doesn't like a car to sound like a milk float though! I would love to see all those offshore windmills with hydrogen tanks round their bases, electrolyising seawater (which we keep getting told we've got too much of) and sending it ashore for us to run our vehicles on. It would mitigate the problem of there being no electricity when it wsn't windy. Whether or not we could ever get anywhere near meeting demand is a different matter! The internal combustion engine isn't especially efficient, despite a century of development. It is expensive to make too, having a lot of bits in it. Although great work has been done (largely by BMW), it's still pretty hard to get the hydrogen squeezed into a small enough space to give a decent range. And then, of course, there was the Hindenburg!! I don't know whether there is much development left in fuel cells. Currently very simple things but about £1k per kW, I think. Yes, I think that ultimately, battery-electric is doomed. 250kg is pretty light. I have some limited involvement in battery-electric vehicles (albeit fairly big ones) and 500kg plus is the sort of weight we're talking. I think that at best, they could provide a useful stop-gap measure until something better comes along. Most of the "smart thinking" seems to be on diversification, so that we don't have any one fuel source. I'm sure this is a god idea until something so good comes along that it gets universally adopted (in which case we'll probably run out of whatever that is too)!

It's a bitter pill to swallow (especially for us Westerners), but I think the most significant initial contributions can probably be made by simply "going without". We need to devote (I believe) much more energy to facilitating remote working and reducing the need to travel in the first place. I mean, why did I have to travel for 6 hours, about 500 miles, for a 2 hour meeting in London the other week?! Should I do the decent thing and give up my nice, spacious, rural home and move closer to where the meetings are? (What? and submit my kids to all those nasty fumes, non-exhaust emissions and danger that the vile motor car spreads like pestilence?! Not bloody likely)!

Yeah, I admit it. I'm part of the problem, not the solution!

I am not a big fan of hydrogen on its own. There are a number of problems (and not ones that can be easily got around by fancy technology)

However. I am in full aggreement that the internal combustion engine using a liquid chemical fuel at room temeperature (and at atmospheric pressure or thereabouts) is a pretty unbeatable combination for personal transporters.

Personally I favour LPG and here is how I would do it.

Hydrogen can be produced using non-fossil sources personally I like this one http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2003/pdf/schultz.pdf However Hydrogen can be produced from many sources and is well suited to "Intermittant" sources that might not be so good for reliable direct electricity production.

Initially I would use this hydrogen to platform oil and even coal into LPG for use in road vehicles. While this isnt "Carbon/fossil fuel free" it would achive two things. Firstly it would reduce the carbon intensity of road transport (if you are worried about such things ) seccondly it would streach out and extend the life of fossil fuel reserves (IYSWIM) giving us more of a breathing space before depetion issues really get to bite.

Secondly LPG can be easily used in existing vehicles, so it will be possible to introduce this "New" semi-synthetic fuel without having to replace the existing vehicle fleet. (Though I imagine that there are various vested interests that would specifically dislike this aspect of the idea)

In the longer term I would hope to be able to use non fossil carbon extracted from the atmosphere/from biomass maybe to manufacture the LPG rather than coal and oil thus retaining the chemical fuel/ICE combination but breaking the link with fossil fuels.

The beauty of this is that we could start the program now. It doesnt require any new technolgy and only a minimum of new infrastructure to start the ball rolling. It doesnt require the mass of the people to change any aspect of how to go about their day to day lives. there are plently of vehicles out there now that can use the "New" fuel now!. In due course as production ramps up people will have the option of either converting older vehicles or gradually introducing dual fual vehicles in the mainstreem of new vehicles.

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

The RFL on horse boxes is quite resonable @ £165 IIRC.

The horse isn't taxed though, nor is the hay, they're not insured, have nor registration plates and the rider is often under the age at which one could legaly ride a moped on the road.

As I do quite a bit of work for horses, directly and indirectly, I don't think they can be heavily taxed enough. A million Pounds Sterling a day, per horse is what I will levy it at once I sweep to power as President. Of the World.

I recommend a read of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Except for those owned by farmers of course

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

They will have to pay more, they should know better.

If you can't eat it or milk it, it shouldn't eat grass

You don't have dogs and cats. Unusual farm. And could you tell my local Indian take away about not been able to eat horses.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Dogs and cats don't eat grass in any noticeable amounts. There is something like 3,000,0000 acres in the Uk down to amenity horses. And the world is short of food. Still, we had the best harvest ever, got a good price for it and hay is 6 quid a bale. Keep riding girls.