Very happy - the £100 fine isn't the problem, it's the points/day-wasted-on-useless-course that is the real deterrent to speeding.
And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determined to make cars as slow as buses, and is more than happy to "set aside" any suggestions that they do not do this).
Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour.
It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.
If this were true, the papers wouldn't have run an article yesterday bitching about the lords sending back the workers rights bill again.
The commons may _eventually_ overrule them, but it takes time and costs political capital.
The majority of our population want more law, more rules, more restrictions : they don't see the value or enjoyment in doing something, so they don't think anyone should be able to do it.
Ask the average joe whether or not cars should prevent drivers from being able to "chose" to break the speed limit: You'll get a resounding "yes" 8/10 times - the value of freewill seems to be increasing lost on my country men.
I actually dont think your comment invalidates mine. The house of lords cannot really do anything than be a pain in the ass by sending the bill 3 times. The commons will eventually outrule them if they have sufficient political capital.
My comment on elective tyranny comes from the fact that if a trifecta of: leader/party mps/house of lords are aligned there is little to stop them.
This done I think all of the debates around authoritarianism and censorship put too much blame on the government which seems to represent the views of the majority of people rather well. I think it also comes from the fact that the median age is older and older people are more conservative in their choices and thus more willing to put limitations on everything (and also the fucking boomers vote as a 25% bloc which imposes their choices on the remaining poplation i.e the infamous triple lock of retirements)
The lights are too bright and poorly aligned. I walk regularly, and its more than just the tesla's and mini's at fault (Teslas are definitely some of the worst in my experience though, along with Rivian)
> On a recent episode of the Carmudgeon Show podcast, auto journalist Jason Cammisa described a phenomenon occurring with some LED headlights in which there are observable minor spots of dimness among an otherwise bright field of light. “With complex arrays of LEDs and of optics,” he said, “car companies realized they can engineer in a dark spot where it’s being measured, but the rest of the field is vastly over-illuminated. And I’ve had now two car companies’ engineers, when I played stupid and said, ‘What’s the dark spot?’ … And the lighting engineers are all fucking proud of themselves: ‘That’s where they measure the fucking thing!’ And I’m like, ‘You assholes, you’re the reason that every fucking new car is blinding the shit out of everyone.’”
Teslas are the worst. I try not to speculate without evidence but I cannot shake the intuition that it is intentional to aid the driver assist and self driving stuff, and reflective of a generally sociopathic company.
I've heard it alleged that Tesla simply does not have a QA check for headlight alignment at the factory. Based on my experience on the road, that's entirely believable.
Fuel duty works out at about 5p/mile. Slightly more for thirstier vehicles, slightly less for lighter vehicles.
There is zero need to implement anything for petrol or diesel vehicles, which nicely eliminates the "pre-2016" problem (How many 10 year old electric vehicles are there? Not enough to worry about). I'd be inclined to provide a government API, and require the manufacturers to provide the data in a specified format. Make it part of type approval for use on the UK roads.
Not impossible, nor should a VIN + Mileage number be particularly risky for privacy concerns - the number should be pushed regularly, to prevent wind-back tricks.
15p/mile has got to be a joke though. That'd be the equivalent of setting fuel duty to £1.50/litre - it would immediately shag what's left of the economy.
> I'd be inclined to provide a government API, and require the manufacturers to provide the data in a specified format. Make it part of type approval for use on the UK roads.
Knowing how this industry works, good luck making something like this a reality, especially in a single country. Even if the EU tried enforcing something like that (with the UK piggybacking on it), it is still a small portion of the market.
Sadly, this is not a technical problem, but a political one. That said, I agree with you, and we can always dream.
I have a horrible feeling that 3 traffic is being prioritised over Vodafone MVNO traffic, leading to service deg.
End of the day, I was on Vodafone's network for a reason - it was the least congested in my area. 3 was crap. If I’m suddenly fighting for bandwidth with 3 customers because of this merger I will have to try EE (o2 is known garbage around here; 2 mbps at most thanks to traffic management).
Ofcom should never have allowed it - the UK does not need reduced competition in this space.
and that's without considering the lost production capacity.
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