31–40 of 97 posts
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I'm not sure narrow roads in old cities are due to lack of planning, they didn't have crystal balls
Narrow roads are not only found in old cities... They are everywhere.
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This is a great idea and would handily deal with the escalating “momentum war” between selfish drivers who buy the biggest, heaviest vehicle they can afford in order to be safer than their counterparts in a collision. I’d propose we make the tax highly non-linear too…
As a friend od mine recently discovered, Range Rovers have an airbag under the bonnet that pops up in case of frontal collision, presumably to protect pedestrians. They hit a deer on a country road and that airbag caused £6,000 of damage to the car... Who's laughing now? ;)
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Building wider roads in the UK is going to be tricky. A lot of roads have no room to grow without knocking down the houses lining them. Maybe the UK needs less roads?
Of course it's very difficult to impossible to widen existing roads. But nothing prevent building wider new roads... which isn't done because priority is actually to save as much money as possible instead of delivering good, future-proof, infrastructure. You can't have fewer roads in a country whose population grows by hundreds of thousands every year...
> Car designer Chris Longmore... blames safety legislation for the dramatic increase in size since the 1990s. This doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For example, the 2022 Toyota Aygo X has a 4 star NCAP safety rating (out of a possible 5) [1], and is about the same size as the original 1970s VW Golf [2]. [1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/Toyota/Aygo%20X/46259 [2] https://www.automobiledimension.com/model/toyota/ayg…
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An article shared recently said that road damage is weight^4. Make a car tax based on vehicle weight and the market takes care of itself. For the right classes (such as wheelchair accessible) it can be a tax write-off.
This is a great idea and would handily deal with the escalating “momentum war” between selfish drivers who buy the biggest, heaviest vehicle they can afford in order to be safer than their counterparts in a collision. I’d propose we make the tax highly non-linear too…
You can also notice how pushy all these Range Rover drivers are on our very narrow roads.
Car size should be regulated and a maximum should be enforced. Pavement parking (and other antisocial forms of parking) should also be banned. In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!
Car size should be regulated and a maximum should be enforced. Pavement parking (and other antisocial forms of parking) should also be banned. In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!
An article shared recently said that road damage is weight^4. Make a car tax based on vehicle weight and the market takes care of itself. For the right classes (such as wheelchair accessible) it can be a tax write-off.
Deleted for personal safety reasons.
My region's water company has paid huge fines for dumping sewage, which are invested in improving natural water quality...
The current annual car tax in the UK is a freaky thing. For cars registered before March 2001, it's a payment based on engine size (smaller or larger than 1.55 litres); couldn't tell if that's aimed at perceived wealth, pollution, or just leftover because that's how it was back when those cars were new. March 2001 to March 2017, it's a payment based on CO2 emissions. Pollution based. April 2017 to present day, it's a…
The main cause of heavier new cars is the weight of the batteries in EVs. If we're all going to get EVs, we're all going to put heavier cars on the road... Regarding size, my experience of UK roads and parking spaces is that the biggest issue is indeed the increased width of cars. In any case wider roads should be built if only to accomodate decent cycle lanes, which is also something touted as the way forward.
All cars have got bigger, some are just monsters in size that are the size of an older van.