Driving standards

[Reorte]

As I've already indicated I think not lighting up everything as well as the street is a good move, but the missing patches there highlights a common issue with LED lights - useful things but often badly applied.

 

Should go back to gas.

 

[johnofwessex]

6 hours ago, Reorte said:

As I've already indicated I think not lighting up everything as well as the street is a good move, but the missing patches there highlights a common issue with LED lights - useful things but often badly applied.

 

Should go back to gas.

 

 

I remember seeing a comedy set in about 1900 with a rather dubious showman who filled his gas powered car up from the streetlights 

 

So if we could fit a gasbag to our cars WW2 style an excellent idea

[Compound2632]

Now that reminds me of a tale about the Clarendon (physics) Laboratory in Oxford - we laughed thirty years ago but now things have come full circle:

 

Back in the 20s, most research work was done by gentlemen physicists of independent means; what laboratory general funds there were available were very tightly controlled by a fearsome official called the Senior Demonstrator. Mr So-and-so had a ground floor lab for his electrical experiments. He couldn't face going to the Senior Demonstrator to request purchase of new batteries, so he drove his car up to the lab window and ran his experiments via jump leads off his car battery.

 

The next day he was summoned to the Senior Demonstrator's office: "Now, Mr So-and-so, you're a very wealthy man. There's no call for you to go charging your car battery from the laboratory's electricity supply..."

[stewartingram]

3 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

I remember seeing a comedy set in about 1900 with a rather dubious showman who filled his gas powered car up from the streetlights 

 

So if we could fit a gasbag to our cars WW2 style an excellent idea

Pah! That's old hat - I've been running my car(s) on gas since 2000. At 20k miles per year until I retired 2 years ago, that's a fortune saved at 1/2 price (or less) fuel. Even today my local Morrisons is chatging 55.9p/litre.

 

Stewart

[PhilJ W]

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ellie-goulding-rushes-rescue-driver-21110619

Edited December 17, 2019 by PhilJ W

[SM42]

6 hours ago, stewartingram said:

Pah! That's old hat - I've been running my car(s) on gas since 2000. At 20k miles per year until I retired 2 years ago, that's a fortune saved at 1/2 price (or less) fuel. Even today my local Morrisons is chatging 55.9p/litre.

 

Stewart

 

Why is the dirtiest fuel the cheapest? Huge CO2 impact not to mention the oxides of nitrogen.

 

Andy

[stewartingram]

LPG is promoted as much cleaner than petrol, so clean in fact that at MoT test the emissions test is officially ignored. And I'm told that whilst running a normal car inside a garage will kill you if you stay there, a converted one won't - not that I am willing to try it!

 

Stewart

[Titan]

16 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

Why is the dirtiest fuel the cheapest? Huge CO2 impact not to mention the oxides of nitrogen.

 

Andy

 

Have you got your lines crossed? Sounds like you are talking about diesel.  LPG is the cleanest fossil fuel it is practical to use in a car, because there is very little carbon in it in the first place, it has the highest proportion of hydrogen in a usable hydrocarbon, which means more water in the exhaust from burning the hydrogen and much less carbon, compared to petrol or diesel.  There is a reason why forklifts that spend a lot of time in warehouses that aren't electric are LPG powered, it is so the workers don't suffer as they would any other fuel...

[PhilJ W]

The dirtiest fossil fuel is coal.

[jcm@gwr]

5 hours ago, stewartingram said:

LPG is promoted as much cleaner than petrol, so clean in fact that at MoT test the emissions test is officially ignored. And I'm told that whilst running a normal car inside a garage will kill you if you stay there, a converted one won't - not that I am willing to try it!

 

Stewart

 

Also, if you register it with TFL, you can go into the Congestion Zone without being charged for the privilege!

[stewartingram]

Actually I can't! One big con from TfL & the Government. I forget the precise details, but basically, if you had a new car (or nearly new) converted, the Government would pay (some?) of the cost, and you got a large reduction in the car tax. However, there was a limited pot of money to hand back, and if it was all used, you didn't get the handout.

If you converted an older car you didn't qualify for the handout anyway, but you got a miserly refund on the car tax. My car tax is over £300, with a £15 refund off that.

If you were one of the newer conversions, then you were able to apply for the TfL concession; older ones are not allowed.

Add to this, there are no "legal" conversion standards, though there is a trade body (the LPGA?). Obviously I use the "legal" term in a generic sense, and I'm sure a total bodge of a fit, if discovered in some way, would ensure a prosecution!

My first conversion, in 2000, was a DIY fit of a kit of parts from a trade supplier that was inspected by them before use. (I've always done all my work on my cars). There was a certificate from them, but what it actually stood for I have no idea, I informed my insurance but they didn't want any proof. This kit was transferred about 3 times to identical cars but not retested, and the insurance companies never wanted proof.

In 2007 I changed to a Rover 75. Again I did a diy kit conversion of a later type, and had it inspected by the same place, but no certificate at this time. I kept that car for 11 years; changes of insurance company saw occasional requests for proof of conversion so I went back and he gave me a certificate. The irony is now that he will give me a certificate only if I pay for another inspection; the insurance companies often request one, but it is only accepted if it is the trade one which has no "legal" standard! Also this year I noted that the DVLA has joined the bandwagon; DIY kits are not specifically banned, but a trade conversion proof is now requested for new fits. My supplier has said that if I require an newer certificate he will inspect and produce one.

I don't disagree with proper standards, but this "cartel" of certificates to non-approved standards ranks as a con in the same way as the TfL/Govt stance on enviromentally friendly fuel such as lpg.

Also, the enviromental issue of cars is not just the fuel The manufacture - and scrapping - of the car is far greater. Keeping an older car going (in effect "recycling" by keeping it in use) is far greener than replacing it. But by doing that I lose out on the "benefits".

 

Stewart

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎17‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 07:34, Compound2632 said:

...what laboratory general funds there were available were very tightly controlled by a fearsome official called the Senior Demonstrator...

That's the way to do it, treat them mean, keep them keen.  Great minds like Rutherford, Dirac, Turing, didn't need much cash, they had brain power. (While you are howling along the A1 some day, take the time to turn off for Woolsthorpe, and see just how basic was Newton's laboratory - from which he changed the world. It's usually packed with Japanese, Chinese, Indian and continental European visitors of course...)

[Compound2632]

8 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

That's the way to do it, treat them mean, keep them keen.  Great minds like Rutherford, Dirac, Turing, didn't need much cash, they had brain power. 

 

That was still pretty much the assumption when I was still in research up to five years ago: British brains could achieve with a bit of sealing-wax and string what our German counterparts were doing with laboratories stuffed full of state-of-the art equipment. Not true, of course, as the literature amply demonstrates. Any cutting-edge progress that was actually being made in our lab was down to the talents of our Italian, Polish, Russian, American, and even German co-workers.

 

I well recall a tour of the Max Planck Institute in Munich one very warm August evening many years ago, after a long day of conference talks. We had been promised beer at the end, after we'd been shown innumerable labs full of equipment, each with a post-doc and phd student, both with impeccable English. At last we met one whose English wasn't quite so good; at the end of a very detailed explanation of his experiment, he said:

 

You vill ask qvestions now!

 

We broke and ran, only to discover that the senior members of our group had been in the bar all along...

Edited December 18, 2019 by Compound2632

[jcm@gwr]

Wasn't sure whether to post this in 'Whacky Signs' or 'Things That Make You :)'

It's ended up here because I heard it on a Radio London traffic report.

"Rotherhithe Tunnel will be closed for tree cutting" !!!!!!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

27 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That was still pretty much the assumption when I was still in research up to five years ago: British brains could achieve with a bit of sealing-wax and string what our German counterparts were doing with laboratories stuffed full of state-of-the art equipment...

I always forget to add a smiley - come to that is there one for 'with satirical intent'?

[royaloak]

On 17/12/2019 at 10:08, PhilJ W said:

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ellie-goulding-rushes-rescue-driver-21110619

Good move stopping and blocking lane 4 when the incident is in lane 2.

Edited December 18, 2019 by royaloak

[Hobby]

(Self) Publicity is everything...

[Enterprisingwestern]

21 minutes ago, Hobby said:

(Self) Publicity is everything...

 

Should be good for a few thousand sales on her next release, what would they have done without her, such a hero.

 

Mike.

[Titan]

I think the celeb was in the Range Rover in Lane 3, which did need to have the traffic stopped.  Doubt she asked anyone to film it...

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, royaloak said:

Good move stopping and blocking lane 4 when the incident is in lane 2.

Isn't the real villain the truck driver who apparently had NFI?

[royaloak]

3 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Isn't the real villain the truck driver who apparently had NFI?

How did the car get there in the first place?

[kevinlms]

1 minute ago, royaloak said:

How did the car get there in the first place?

Does it matter, even if the car driver had made a stupid move - always a possibility, the truck driver ought to have noticed something amiss.

[Guest Jack Benson]

Pensioners in Kia Rios..........that's all I have to say.

 

JP

[royaloak]

2 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Does it matter, even if the car driver had made a stupid move - always a possibility, the truck driver ought to have noticed something amiss.

Actually yes it does, piss off the truck driver and you get whats coming, not hard to fathom out is it!

Maybe the trucker did know he was there but wanted to teach him a lesson!

 

But then some people think its okay for them to act the ar-e to others but not alright for the others to repay in kind!

[kevinlms]

7 minutes ago, royaloak said:

Actually yes it does, piss off the truck driver and you get whats coming, not hard to fathom out is it!

Maybe the trucker did know he was there but wanted to teach him a lesson!

 

But then some people think its okay for them to act the ar-e to others but not alright for the others to repay in kind!

So if there was no other traffic in the other lanes, the truck would have continued for how much further? Piss poor attitude if that was the case, doesn't matter how much of a fool the car driver was.

 

After all, if the truck driver WAS AWARE as you suggest, he would have no idea on whether or not the extent of any injuries. The fact that the car driver had no injuries, was no thanks to thetruck driver.