Rant Self balancing Boards now ''illegal'' to use in public

Well I think it would add a certain bias to your view point.

 

More broadly, what's missing in our current outlook is a recognition that we have three forms of transport, not two:

- pedestrians (~1-5mph)
- slow vehicles (mobility scooters, horses, normal consumer bicycles, scooters, rollerblades, boards) (~10-20mph)
- fast vehicles (racing bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, cars) (25mph+)

These three broad categories of speed require separate spaces. That's just obvious if you watch them trying to interact and share the same space; it's a total cluster**** and nobody enjoys it or feels safe. If you were designing a town/city from the ground up now, you'd consider these as separate categories, all with a relevant, useful and valid place in peoples' lives, but all basically incompatible.

Some places do kind of acknowledge it. Around Lac d'Annecy in France there's a huge network of cycle paths specifically designed for roller blades and bikes. You can't walk on them; you get yelled at. Nor can you rollerblade on the road; you get beeped at. Nor can you cycle on the pavements; you get told to **** off and use a cycle path.

Logic!

 

Tell you what, I install PC's, severs, and other hardware all over the country often at odd hours - If you want to foot the bill for private hire, professionally drive, vehicles I'm more than happy to sell my daily driver!

On topic: I nearly ran one of those balanceboard using ****wits over the other day. they were pratting around in a carpark zapping behind cars as they reversed out of their parking space, since I'm an arrogant ****er I didn't stop like they expected me to.

 

Nope. I insure my personal car for business use.

Just try and take my RS away from me and I might have you hung drawn and quartered ;P

And yeah, taxi's become wildly unreasonable when you're doing a 300+ mile round trip. Although it might be nice to look at the scenery sometimes.

 

Company cars are so dull, though, you can'd mod the damned things because you have to give them back as you got them!

And noonono, I volunteered to get rid of the daily - The Mondeo. The RS, however, entirely different car!

 

I'd like a company car, it'd cost me less. But it is boring. I've not modified my Mondeo because there's no need. It has four wheels and a boot big enough for an entire family of corpses. It does long haul drives without me being an achy wreck. However, company cars are boring and kind of inconvenient. Find that something doesn't quite do what you want, but a factory part does? Can't really change that until your next car comes around.

I modified my RS, and continue to do so because yeah, that's fun. I'd be pissed if someone said "You can't use that on the road" given how much road tax I pay for the pleasure.

I concur that cars and guns are similar arguments - Both are excellent at killing people, but you can't exactly sneak a car into a movie theatre, school, or crowded shopping centre. Also, the car wasn't exclusively designed to kill people (despite its excellent people-killing powers), and is pretty reasonably licensed here in the UK - Kinda like guns!

Although I'm pretty sure more people should lose their licenses for cars. I'm still pissed off that people who get convicted of drink-driving offences more than once get to keep their license.

 

Oh come on, even that wiki article you link says "Known as car tax, road tax". You know exactly what I meant.

And yeah. That'd be fun. Let's get the WRC teams and other motorsports using electrics. Although an all-tesla saloon car series might be funny for about three races. Not sure what their batteries look like in high-speed collisions, but if they're anything like phone batteries, that should be spectacular (Incidentally, don't try and mistake that as me saying petrol is safer..).

No idea, but since your entire viewpoint so far is "omgbancarsthey'reworsethanguns" I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say you're thinking of either massive pedestrianised zones in cities, or super low power cars being unable to kill rabbits let alone people?

 

Oh, I'm sorry, did you not compare cars to guns and how car deaths are higher than gun deaths not a few posts ago?

I apologise, I must have hallucinated that.

And since you're not a car chap, RS - Rallye Sport. They're models that're sold either derived from their motorsport version. For a while, certain classes of motorsport required that the car used by teams had to have been sold for general road use. Can't exactly sell a car that no one can use, and no, leasing firms don't deal in RS models. So certain motorsports would need rule changes, and that'd very much change the sport itself.

You outlaw cars that aren't business use cars, and I'm sure a lot of the enthusiast clubs would take issue with you suddenly removing the sole reason to attend their shows - looking at cars that people own and drive down there. Unless the government, under your proposal, is going to foot the bill for transporting those cars, or subsidise the entry ticket prices to those events to allow for a transport service for the cars that are no longer road legal?

 

These threads are always fun.

And can sometimes escalate quickly.

However I'm going to add my view point here about cyclists. They are in my opinion a danger on the road. 2 weeks ago I crashed into one when I was turning out of a junction onto a main road. I looked couldn't see anyone (both directions) and then the next thing I know I heard a clang and a shout.

I admit I obviously didn't look hard enough but it was coming up for 7pm at night when it starts to get darker.

I stopped got out the car, went to check to see the bloke was ok and offered to take him to hospital bu thankfully I hadn't swiped him off his bike but what I did notice was he had no lights, no his vis clothing no nothing. He was wearing dark clothing - I didn't stand a chance in seeing him and pointed this out - I even offered to call the police but he declined that offer as I was prepared to be breathalyzed to prove I hadn't been drinking.

My point however is cyclists should have a minimum level of insurance - we as car drivers have to, so why should they be any different ?

 

IMO, Cyclists need greater culpability on the roads. I can't count how many times I've seen one do something dodgy like running a red light and giving zero shits.

Or, like your example, making no effort to be seen on the road especially at night. Insurance and registration plates are needed, IMO.

While we're on the subject, if there's a cycle path next to a road, clearly marked, why is it okay for a cyclist to be in the road at that stage? It drives me mental around here, as the pavements have been bisected for cyclists and pedestrians, but no cyclist ever uses the designed cycling area..

 

Yes, I read the word "gun" and started mouthing off. Clearly.

Actually, I say that because I haven't followed motorsport for the last couple of years, and am not up on the current rules - I didn't want to state something as definite and then have to backpeddle because I don't know the latest motorsport rules for the classes I like. I believe there's still some element of "It must be a mass produced model", as M-Sport are quite busy modifying cars for rally stages when new models of the Fiesta come out. But, like I say, not followed the sport closely for a few years so not certain enough to say "defo this mate".

Guns and cars are, despite their person-killing potential, not on the same page.

You can, for example, carry a gun in a securely locked case on public transport if pushed (Although, that might be illegal, I don't know). You can also, fairly easily, put said case in the boot of a taxi if that isn't legal.

It's slightly harder to pack a car into the boot of a taxi, though, to take it to a track day or motor show.

I'm getting a feeling of dejavu, here, but. I'm pretty sure it's harder to hide a car under your jacket and sneak it into a public place with the express intention of killing people. In fact, if you managed to kill as many people with a car as with a hand gun in a "I've had a breakdown, let's murder the **** out of people"-spree I'd be absolutely astounded.

As for my summation of your viewpoint, "The difference, of course, is that motor vehicles are responsible for far, far more deaths every day" is the source. I was posting it in a mocking way, because the notion that cars and guns are equidistant in their murder-power was, and is, absolutely hilarious to me.

Guns = They're cool. But, in my estimations, private individuals have no business having them in the same place as the ammunition. Ammo at the club, gun at home. Ideally, bolt at the club too, so your gun at home is as useful as a bat. They're designed, primarily, to kill things. Or hit targets. You can't carry a server to a customers site on a gun, you can't take kids to school on a gun (Although, if you do some grim mathematics, you can solve the problem of the school run with a gun), and you sure as **** can hide them under coats for nefarious purposes later on! Speaking from experience, I carried several air rifles under my coat many years ago going to a friends house for some group target shooting in the back garden. Yes, it was a trench coat, yes I could have been arrested/shot by police. Whoops.

Cars = Also cool. But significantly more practical than a gun, and most people could make a legitimate case for owning one. Slightly harder to commit mass murder with. Much harder to hide under a coat (I also tried that, still owning my trench coat, when I bought the RS and hadn't quite told the girlfriend at the time). They tend not to like being run into things repeatedly, so mass murder isn't quite so achievable.

Yes, the enthusiast clubs would survive I've no doubt, but since you're also apparently a bit of an environmentalist, where do you propose we force car clubs to build their private race tracks for people to take and store the massive number of cars that would need to be taken and stored there? I suspect a good deal of NIMBY-ism and greenbelt protection would put paid to that concept pretty quickly. My local "track" is a little sprint course, and has no storage facilities, planning permission gets denied for structures there thanks to a dose of NIMBY-ism of the near-by home owners.