Category - ADI

Another Autoblog article reports that its readers have criticised the use of HID headlights.

HID stands for high intensity discharge. HID (or xenon) lamps are more efficient than other types and can be made smaller. They require a high-voltage pulse to “ignite” and they run typically with an 85 volt supply, so that means a power pack – or “ballast”.

The companies who make them, and those who fit them, claim that they are more eco-friendly than halogen or tungsten bulbs. The bulbs themselves may well be – but the additional electronics will have a carbon footprint which simply doesn’t occur with the other types. I wish people would tell the whole story when they start talking eco-babble.

The only problem I have with HID bulbs is that out of the corner of your eye they frequently appear blue (they have a bluish tinge anyway, but sometimes it can be reddish depending on the angle you’re seeing them from), and I sometimes have to do a double-take to make sure it isn’t an emergency vehicle. Personally, I feel that something which takes peoples eyes off the road like that could have safety implications.

The report quotes the AA, who think that people may be getting “dangerous” mixed up with “don’t like”. After all, HIDs are most commonly fitted to high-end cars (or retro-fitted to pratmobiles). I think they’re probably right – Autoblog simply ran a survey, and these are notorious for producing opinion- instead of fact-based results. Just because people “think” something is dangerous doesn’t mean it is.

The article also deals with the issue of daytime running lights. Again, I don’t have a personal gripe, but I think the EU argument about them being safer is flawed. When only a few people drive around with their lights on (motorcyclists and cyclists) you tend to see them. When everyone rides around with them on then you just get used to lots of lights.

A report in This Is Grimsby says that 2,000 speeding motorists were caught in 2009/10 by North East Lincolnshire’s 13 speed cameras.

My view on speed cameras has always been:

• speeding is illegal
• if you don’t speed you don’t get in trouble

This is irrespective of any separate opinions I might periodically hold about where they are situated or what their true purpose is based on various stories that crop up.

The point here is that the number of road deaths has decreased significantly.

No one is saying the cameras are the only contributor to reduced deaths. However, there is evidence that they definitely reduce speed – at least near them.

This is exactly what I mean about idiot councils being entirely responsible for idiotic policies. In that last post I pointed out how Derbyshire – a hilly, high snow-risk county – is cutting its road repair budget by apportioning over 60% of overall cuts to that specific area.

Warwickshire, on the other hand, is behaving in a far more enlightened way according to this BBC story.

Evening bus services could cease in Warwickshire to help protect the county council’s road maintenance budget, a councillor has said.

It’s not easy to believe that this commonsense attitude, and the one demonstrated by Derbyshire County Council, come from the same species, is it?

Some strange maths involved in this BBC story, which reports that the repair budget for Derbyshire’s roads is being cut.

…the county council said repair funds had been cut by £1m to £15m next year as part of wider savings.

Repair funds cut by £1m. OK so far.

The city council said its current £2.2m roads maintenance budget was being cut to £1.58m for 2011/12.

Now, let me see… 2.2 minus 1.58… carry the one… comes to 0.62. So of the £1m total cut, over 60% of it will be on the road repair jobs.

This is just typical of these idiot councils we have managing affairs for us. Derbyshire, of all places (it’s high and gets very snowy when it is not even close to being snowy anywhere else), needs urgent road repairs. The Council, meanwhile, is far more concerned about idiot projects to widen pavements, repair pavements, put pavements in where there wasn’t one before, replace pavements which aren’t even damaged, raise kerbstones, lower kerbstones, replace bus stops needlessly, and so on.

The initial cut might be led by Mickey and Minnie in Downing Street, but the choice of where it hits hardest is down to the clowns in local government.

I saw this article in the Mail Online today. It claims the government is considering raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph “to shorten journey times and help the economy”.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a direct problem with an 80mph speed limit. However, if this Mickey Mouse government thinks it will shorten journey times then it needs its head looking at.

When I’m doing the signals briefing with my pupils, one of the things I cover is the use of the hazard lights. As well as using them to show you are stopped or causing a hazard, you can also use them to show you are slowing down rapidly – as a reinforcement signal to people that something other than just normal braking is taking place.

Most commonly, rapid slowing down is encountered on the motorways. You’ll be driving along quite happily at 70mph, when all of a sudden the traffic is at a total standstill. You might think that there’s an accident, but there isn’t. All it is is a bottleneck effect, and it is caused by people going too fast having to suddenly slow down. Sometimes, you will not move more than a few car lengths for 10 minutes or more – but then everything gets going again and it’s like nothing happened.

What happens is that even if you’re doing 70mph, a huge number of people will be doing 80, 90, even 100mph if they can in the outside lane(s). Conversely, a huge number of other people will be doing 60 or even 50mph in the inside or middle lanes.

Apart from the daily accidents caused by this – and it isn’t necessarily the speeders who are to blame, even if the law considers them guilty of a crime – it means that inevitably someone going faster is going to have to slow down. This cascades down the whole line, and eventually – after all the lane changing to get round it has run out of steam – someone has to stop. Then, this too cascades down the line, and everyone else has to stop, and the further back they are, the longer the wait to get going again.

I call it the caterpillar effect.

It was to get round this very problem that variable speed limits were introduced on some of the busiest motorways. By varying (and enforcing, of course) the speed limit, hold ups due to the caterpillar effect can be minimised.

And now, the imbeciles in Office are going to make things a whole lot worse. The article also says there will be MORE variable speed limits, but quite how they think anyone is going to be able to do 80mph on any of these (except at night) is anyone’s guess.

I saw this story today in the Northumberland Gazette.

It’s a tragic story, to be sure, but I can’t quite work out what the campaigners are campaigning for. All it seems to amount to is “improved road safety”.

A woman was killed whilst riding a bicycle to London. She was hit by a lorry, which hadn’t seen her.

In March 2010 I posted this story about a lorry which didn’t see a car that was stuck in its front grille on the A1 near Wetherby. I must confess that I was a little surprised that the lorry driver wasn’t prosecuted, as it was accepted that it was quite possible to have a car stuck in your front grille whilst driving a lorry at 60mph and not notice.

Bearing that in mind, a cyclist is a mere speck when compared to a whole car.

Cyclists can be a bloody nuisance. I don’t know what the woman who was killed was doing – the phrase “riding to London” from a newspaper located 300 miles away suggests some sort of special event – but travelling to a lesson this morning on country lanes, I encountered at least a dozen spandex boys riding fast and two-abreast. They don’t do themselves any favours when it comes to gambling with their lives.

I’ve also mentioned how the spandex brigade make a regular habit of deliberately not using adjacent (or dedicated) cycle routes and causing major hold-ups on fast roads. They do it on the A453 towards the Nottingham Knight – though I have to say not many: there are only a few who are so totally stupid as to ride on a 70mph dual carriageway when there are dozens of dedicated cycle routes built especially for them in order to avoid doing that. They do it on the Colwick Loop Road – and that one has a cycle lane on the pavement all the way down it (of course, once the speed limit drops from 60mph to 30mph, they nip on to the pavement to avoid the traffic lights).

Lorry and car drivers don’t deliberately aim to kill cyclists. Unfortunately, cyclists often seem to do everything possible to increase the chances of being hit. One minor deviation by a vehicle at 70mph to avoid another car and a cyclist could be history. One major deviation by the spandex boy to avoid all the crap at the side of the road and he probably will be.

There IS a solution. Keep cyclists off the roads wherever possible. Soft human flesh and hard metallic machinery simply do not mix.