20mph zones
WHAT IS THE BLOODY POINT?!
Back "when I were a lad" (started school in 1990) we were told to "stop, look, listen" and later "stop, look, listen, Live!".
You stop, look both ways to make sure it's safe to cross, listen for traffic you might not have seen and if it's safe you cross. Good advice that's probably saved millions of lives more than just letting them mill about in the road with traffic doing 20mph.
20mph zones just let the little shits learn that they can safely run over roads without looking- which is a bloody dangerous mindset to get into!

As for speed bumps, these are car-damaging devilspawn even at the speed limit. You try doing 20 over a 20mphs area's speed bump- your car will be in the garage sans suspension within a week.

It pisses me off even more to hear them as "slowing cars down- so it's greener". So you've got the extra power required and hot air generated during the planning meetings. Then the diesel to move all that tarmac (and a crew of 200, none of who you'll ever see doing any work) from a depot to the spot where they want a speed bump. Lay tarmac.
You're then making cars last for a shorter time- and for that shorter time forcing them to accellerate and brake far more often. So it's as green as forcing everyone to buy a Cayenne.

Oh, and buying a bottle of single malt or other "buy it for the taste/smell/etc" drinks shouldn't require ID. You're not going to just down it by the bottle at that price- and if you waste a good single malt like that you should be shot anyway...

*coughs* Sorry for the rant. I just get wound up.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 9:37, 2 replies)

Is it me?
But I thought cars were more fuel efficient at higher speeds in high gears (looking at the urban and extra urban consumption figures). So 20mph limits surely make cars perform worse? Especially those with speed bumps as slowing down and speeding up all the time uses more fuel than keeping at a constant speed. I may be wrong on this, please correct me if so.

And personally anyone stupid enough to mill around in the road deserves to get run over. I believe this should come under 'natural selection'.

And yes! Let's melt all the Chelsea tractors down! (Unless you are a farmer or such like that actually does need a 4x4). Force all the mums to drive their offspring to school in metros (hey, it worked for my mum and dad) or matizs or something else hugely underpowered.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 9:48, closed)

Re: car engines...
I believe so. They have a sort of "optimum" speed, which is usually around motorway speeds, where the engine runs most efficiently. So it is actually less efficient to drive at 20mph.

However, I don't know how much difference there is in efficiency between driving at 20mph and driving at 30mph. There's probably a way of working it out but that would require me to start trawling wikipedia.

I'm also with y'all on melting down the Chelsea tractors (vulgar, fuel-hungry totems to narcissistic excess that they are). But let's force the flabby little to walk to school. Or, if it's really that far, would it kill them to have to share a bus with all those "common" folk?

Grrrrr
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:29, closed)

Good point
I hasten to add, I used to walk to school. The metro was for long journeys (the joys of a family of four plus a sodding huge tent going to Norfolk in a tiny car ^_^)

Can you imagine all those little kids trying to *walk* to school? Surely their little limbs will be atrophied with all the carting around and no exercise.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:55, closed)

It's not so much
a difference in efficiency between 30mph and 20mph- that's probably negligable.

It's between doing 20 and having to slow to 5mph EVERY FREAKING 50 FEET! You can't sit at 5mph or you get honked at- and don't really get anywhere anyway.

Increasing 1 tonne (1000kg) from 5 to 20mph means 20kJ of energy is burnt. Now given a 20% efficiency of engine that means about 100kJ of energy is wasted for every speed bump. So on a 10 speed bump road, each trip of each car wastes 0.02kWh of energy. Think how many cars go down your road, multiply the 0.02 by that number, then double that as they'll come home at the end of the day too. The speed bumps on a long residential street could waste as much energy just in use- never mind extra maintanence etc- as a whole other car doing 20.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 15:47, closed)

The Green Cross Code Man
Some of you may remember that the mega-entity that is David Prowse, as well as being the figure but not the voice behind Darth Vader was also an even bigger star as the Green Cross Code Man on British telly during the seventies and eighties. Indeed, it was he himself who coined the phrase "Stop, look, listen" that was drummed into the children of my epoch on a daily basis.

A few months ago, I heard him in interview on Radio 4 talking about how road safety campaigns had changed over the last 15 years or so. I say talking, but more like ranting loudly, and I agreed with everything he had to say.

In general, his point was that the emphasis on road safety had shifted in a none-too-subtle way that was indicative of 'childrens' (see: Hoodie Scumbags) changing attitudes, and possible a fundamental cause of said change.

In His Mighty Era as GCCM, he had tutored children all over the country (he and Tufty the Squirrel, who never had the same appeal), telling them to stop,look and listen, but NOW the campaign was aimed at the DRIVERS - "Kill your speed, not a child!" - this was effectively telling the kids "If you get hit by a car, it's not YOUR fault for being a twunt* and not paying attention, it's the drivers fault!"

In my not-so-humble-opinion this coddling** of children is *exactly* the problem with our so-called society. We tell them that they have all of the rights but none of the responsibility and they simply believe us.

All hail to GCCM and his ineffable wisdom!

*He probably didn't use the word 'twunt', but this was radio 4 and he might've got away with it.

**I won't say 'molly-coddling' as that would be most offensive to the MrsEffinDoubt.
(EffinDoubt is breaking glass on, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 17:09, closed)