Awful petition about "road tax", "insurance" and "roads built for motor vehicles.
Loads of cyclists have signed so they can then lambast the petitioner for his ignorance, illiteracy etc.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Full house - road tax, insurance, roads builts for motor vehicles
(16 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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I still think a cycling proficiency test pass should be a pre-requisite for obtaining a driving license... (with a few obvious exceptions)
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wonder how this would be debated should it hit the threshold. Would the minister simply read out the original petition or would the various "shut up you muppet" comments be given weight.
Posted 8 years ago # -
The threshold only applies to petitions on the government's own website
Change.org and most of the web petition sites are glorified guestbooks given the ease of making fraudulent entries
Posted 8 years ago # -
Signatures for a petition that is going to be debated should be gathered by hand. Any lazy oik can click.
Similarly drop all postal voting except for those who really can't leave the house and make voters turn up in person.
If we are to governed by minorities at least they should be interested minorities who put a bit of graft into it.
Posted 8 years ago # -
This comment is a cracker:
I have seen people walk out into the middle of the road, then to the other side, this is dangerous. These people use the roads but don't pay tax or insured, not a helmit in sight. Joggers, pushchairs, wheelchairs, dogs cat squirrels all on our sacred public roads all for free ! Tax them tax them number them feel loaders using our roads. Rain leaves dirt (foreign dirt I bet!) use our public roads for nothing ! Tax them ! Number them make them wear helmets eps. the dogs. So that we might all be free !
Paul Mazonowicz, London, United Kingdom
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wouldn't be surprised if this became law.
But I take it this is a devolved issue, so it would only happen in England?
Posted 8 years ago # -
I liked this one:
Quote:"I've said for years that cyclist should hold insurance to ride on the road they can cause as much damage and accidents as cars"
According to the laws of physics, this is scientifically possible.
However a typical family car is designed to withstand a front or rear impact of 5mph without suffering damage.
Therefore for a cyclist to impart the same destructive energy as a car whose impact speed would minimally damage itself, a typical cyclist would need to be travelling at a minimum of 78mph.
If we're talking about matching the destructive potential of an SUV, then the cyclist would need to travel at around 100mph.
Perhaps someone versed in the ratio of energy delivered in a collision to the cost of the corresponding repair work could comment.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Was this not always a spoof? It is now.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I can't find it now but the Torygraph ran an article based on it and pretty much ignored all the points and just went with the petitioners points. Hardly surprising really.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Perhaps someone versed in the ratio of energy delivered in a collision to the cost of the corresponding repair work could comment.
The lead emerging from a shotgun carries about 1.3kJ of kinetic energy. A small motor car can produce 75kJ per second. That's fifty shotgun blasts with the pedal to the metal. Body armour anyone?
Posted 8 years ago # -
Is there a reason you're comparing the shot's kinetic energy to the car's power?
A Mini Cooper weighs over 1000 kg. Travelling at even just 20 mph, that's a kinetic energy of 40 kJ. Of course, the shotgun can be more damaging because that 1.3 kJ is transferred to a much smaller region.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Frenchy
Fifty shotgun blasts per second. Bang bang bang bang bang.
The comparison is rhetorical, but you are correct. Shotguns are designed to damage things, cars not.
Posted 8 years ago # -
The Torygraph has been infected by the Daily Mail. It used to be responsible-conservative, now it's gone shrieky. Still employs Andrew Gilligan though (I think).
Posted 8 years ago # -
There's a fair bit of playing fast and loose with physics here, in particular you need to consider momentum which is always conserved.
Very few collisions will result in everything coming to a complete stop as a direct result of the collision itself, in most case things will fly off in different directions so a fair bit of the original kinetic energy remains kinetic energy until other external factors (friction mainly) dissipate it.
What does the damage is not how much energy is transferred, but how quickly it is transferred, which roughly translates into acceleration. A sudden jolt forward can do a lot of damage to a human. A long slow push can transfer way more energy with no damage.
Posted 8 years ago # -
There's a fair bit of playing fast and loose with physics here
Not just physics to be fair.
Posted 8 years ago #
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