Craggers - a new acronym for our times

[Flyfisher]

Last week I drove into London for a concert (Ray Davies at the RAH - I think he's old enough to qualify for a mention on PPUK) and was surprised to see that the CCZ has pretty much doubled in size. Normally I don't get anywhere near it when going to the RAH but this time I was lucky to hit the unexpectedly enlarged zone at 6:10pm, so didn't have to bother registering and paying.

Still, I didn't really notice too much congestion and was able to park right outside the RAH. Easy peasy.

 

[Nemesis]

What - you missed the cries of national outrage when it was extended to include Islington?

 

[Flyfisher]

'fraid so - I rarely go into London these days, so I don't pay much attention. Why would there be 'national' outrage for something affecting Islington? And, why the complaints anyway? They've got their own mayor, what more could they ask for!

 

[Nemesis]

Well it reached here - possibly cos the Islington chattering classes are big in the meeja?

 

[Penners]

Why would there be 'national' outrage for something affecting Islington?

Oh, we were livid, here in darkest Suffolk. :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

In a similar vein concerning disproportionate reporting, I though this article was interesting

 

[Nemesis]

Well, we do get a large number of (immaculate) 4x4's at times in this area with London Borough (often Kensington and Chelsea) stickers (residents' parking) on them, the owners sporting the obligatory green wellies.

Up for the shooting and Christmas, although I supect they actually travel by private plane and have the chap drive the thing here.

So of course what happens in London boroughs is of great importance, and reported in the pages of Country Life in order that when one is at one's country seat one can keep up.

 

[Penners]

The 4x4 has been ignorantly demonised - largely drummed up by the press, if course. This created a bandwagon effect, and because politicians live to jump on bandwagons, they started making please-the-man-on-the-Clapham-omnibus promises to sting 4x4 drivers in the wallet.

In fact the drive-train arrangement of the vehicle is totally irrelevant. What is relevant is its (forgive the mantra) carbon footprint. Its consumption of energy and creation of CO2 from the first mining of the iron ore, through the years of gulping down combustible oil, to the last flake of its rust.

If a vehicle sits low on this scale, then I don't care if it's driven by four-wheel-drive, tracks, linear magnets or flippin' telekinesis. It's still preferable to a high consumption vehicle.

Rant over. And no, I don't drive a 4x4.

 

[Nemesis]

I think much of the vilification was that in Lunnon they were taking up a great deal of space, and also fitted with bull bars - used on the school run it was all considered rather OTT and dangerous to pedestrians!

 

[Penners]

If I had to spend my life driving around London, I'd want bull bars.
And front and rear buffers.
And armour-plating.
And an 80mm howitzer.

 

[AMc]

If I had to spend my life driving around London, I'd want bull bars...

I appreciate you're joking but that is the core of the problem. Not the risk of collision but peoples' disproportionate assumption of risk which creates a demand for 'safer' vehicles. Feeling 'safer' for the occupants by being more poisonous and dangerous for the rest of us. My personal experience is that people who feel 'safe' in their volvos and 4x4s seem to pay less attention. I believe there is a correlation between the perception of safety and an increase in taking risks. There is a serious irony that the data shows you're more likely to die in a 4x4 than almost any other form of passenger car.

The purpose of 'bull bars' is supposed to be to protect the vehicle & occupants from collisions with livestock - the practice of fitting them on passenger cars in an urban enviroment and tacit implication about the pecking order of everyone else can't need much more signposting can it?

You'll note no one ever fitted bull bars to a London cab or a Routemaster bus.

People believe it's dangerous to drive in London. Having lived and driven there for 10 mostly accident free years I disagree. I had one smash when a lorry aquaplaned into the back while I was waiting at the lights which could have happened almost anywhere in that weather. I never hit anything nor was I hit in 5 years of daily cycling 10 miles across Zone 1 & 2.

It seems to me that any unfamilar enviroment carries a greater perception of risk. Having recently moved out to the sticks I'm amazed at how badly people drive and how discourteous they are. In London I found you got let out (and let off mistakes) all the time. I'm sick of being tail gated when I'm doing the speed limit and stuck at turnings because no one will give an inch to let you out.

I remember an entertaining Jeremy Clarkson(?) argument that the roads would be a hell of a lot safer if every car had a 6" spike on the steering wheel.

I do feel a bit sorry for 4x4 drivers who actually need their vehicles but there are way too many gleaming brand new 4 seater pickups covered in chrome appearing on the road. In my humble opinion if a 4x4 has dirt on it a business name or a towbar then there is a chance it has a purpose other than being a rolling "up yours" to everyone else sharing the road.

 

[Flyfisher]

There is a serious irony that the data shows you're more likely to die in a 4x4 than almost any other form of passenger car.

Is there a source for this statistic?

I remember an entertaining Jeremy Clarkson(?) argument that the roads would be a hell of a lot safer if every car had a 6" spike on the steering wheel.

This is in the same vein as the old anti-seat-belt argument that the introduction of seat-belts would make people feel safer and therefore take more risks. Same with ABS and all the other safety features I guess.

I used to have a 4x4. I used it off-road when shooting or fishing and also for towing a heavy boat. It only did around 6-7,000 miles per year as it was our second car. I drove to work in our 'normal' car during the week. We lived in a village with no public transport and my son went to school about 5 miles away. Guess how my wife used to get him to school?

Maybe we should have bought a third car just for the school run?

Incidentally, much of the size of a typical 4x4 is related to their height, not their ground area, so I don't see how they contribute to traffic congestion. Just compare a typical 4x4 parked next to one of those other classic 'family' cars, a volvo or merc estate. There's precious little difference in their footprint.

 

[AMc]

Is there a source for this statistic?

A few minutes on Google reinforced what I'd remembered. Unfortunately UK accident statistics aren't measured that way but there was plenty of investigation in the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4900000.stm

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/testimony/SUVtestimony02-26-03.htm

"There are now over 79 million light trucks on the road – including pickups, minivans, and SUVs – representing about 36 percent of registered passenger vehicles in the United States. With light trucks now accounting for nearly 50 percent of new vehicle sales, their share of the total fleet is growing steadily.

While the overall fleet is safer, the new fleet composition presents new safety issues. Two issues stand out. Rollover is one issue. Pickups and SUVs are involved in a higher percentage of rollovers than passenger cars – the rate of fatal rollovers for pickups is twice that for passenger cars and the rate for SUVs is almost three times the passenger car rate. Overall, rollover affects about three percent of passenger vehicles involved in crashes but accounts for 32 percent of passenger vehicle occupant fatalities. Single vehicle rollover crashes accounted for 8,400 fatalities in 2001. Rollover crashes involving more than one vehicle accounted for another 1,700 fatalities, bringing the total fatality count to more than 10,000.

Compatibility is the other issue. While light trucks represent 36 percent of all registered vehicles, they are already involved in about half of all fatal two-vehicle crashes with passenger cars. In these crashes, over 80 percent of the resulting fatalities are to occupants of the passenger cars. This problem will continue to grow as the percentage of light trucks in the fleet increases. SUVs account for about 35 percent of light truck sales."

http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/suv/index.html

SUV rollovers are almost three times more likely to occur than the average passenger car, and government tests indicate the most stable SUV is still more unstable than the most unstable car.

http://www.suv.org/safety.html

Light trucks crashing into cars accounts for the majority of fatalities in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions
2,000 people would still be alive if their vehicles had been hit by a heavy car instead of an SUV
80 percent of car and SUV owners strongly that automakers should make safety changes to SUVs that would make the roads safer for car occupants/

I don't care about their contribution to congestion as I agree the size of vehicle has little to do with it. I do care about the contribution to pollution - bigger, heavier cars (regardless of their drive train arrangement) puke more fumes and when the traffic is stationary then that is an even bigger problem for everyone they share space with.

As I said, I do feel a bit sorry for 4x4 drivers who actually need their vehicles I understand that there are reasons for using these vehicles - farming, access and towing for instance.

 

[plumbers mate]

I don't drive so may not be au fait with the rules but I thought bull bars had been banned from vehicles because if a vehicle with them hit someone it caused mega damage whereas the damage was less severe if the vehicle was without bull bars (Didn't they used to be called kangaroo bars or some antipedean thing?)

 

[AMc]

Bullbars had not been fitted, by manufacturers, to new cars of any type since 2002 but they're still freely available to legally fit.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=bull+bars&meta=

Interesting they're mostly chrome, such a practical farming finish - durable and hard to damage.

 

[Craig]

PS - they didnt extend the congestion charging zone to cover Islington - it went West...

 

[Flyfisher]

There is a serious irony that the data shows you're more likely to die in a 4x4 than almost any other form of passenger car.

The trouble with the web is that there is always something, somewhere, to support either side of an argument. For example, according to this article "Drivers of 4x4s and multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) are less likely to be killed or seriously injured than those in other types of car, according to new research by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL)."

As I said, I do feel a bit sorry for 4x4 drivers who actually need their vehicles I understand that there are reasons for using these vehicles - farming, access and towing for instance.

At the time my wife 'needed' to drive my son to school, the 4x4 was the only option, other than buying a third car. I would bet that is not entirely uncommon, but I also bet it would cut no ice with the rabidly anti-4x4 brigade who like to picket the school gates with their blinkers on these days. Maybe we should all have 3 or 4 cars each so we can use the one most appropriate for the journey or task in hand? Or would one car that can do everything you need be the more sensible, and dare I say it, 'green' option?

I think the problem is that everyone seems too keen to tell other people what they 'need' these days. Whatever happened to our freedom and tolerance?

What next? Big estate cars? Anything with an engine bigger than 1000cc? Why not demonise 40-ton lorries instead and get more goods conveyed by train instead of clogging up our motorways? And why stop at cars? What about only allowing one TV per household? After all, who 'needs' two or more TVs burning all that electricity. Or dishwashers - think how much fossil fuel could be saved if those were banned and we all went back to washing the dishes by hand.

Society has (IMHO) to run on certain freedoms and tolerance. Inevitably, some people will abuse their freedom and behave antisocially, but it's a balancing act. In 2005, around 3200 people paid with their lives and about 270,000 were injured for our freedom to zoom around in motorised vehicles of all types (details here). Banning cars would save all those lives and injuries or limiting speeds to 30mph would probably save most of them. But the social cost would be disproportionate and completely unacceptable. Sad, but true.

Also from the same source:
Key points from the accompanying article on contributory factors to road accidents are:

Failed to look properly was the most frequently reported contributory factor and was involved in 32 per cent of all accidents. Five of the six most frequently reported contributory factors were some kind of driver or rider error or reaction. For fatal accidents the most frequently reported contributory factor was loss of control, which was involved in 35 per cent of fatal accidents.

Exceeding the speed limit or going too fast for conditions were reported as a contributory factor in 15 per cent of all accidents. However, the factor became more significant with the severity of the accident; it was reported as contributory factor in 26 per cent of fatal accidents and these accidents accounted for 28 per cent of all fatalities (793 deaths).

So that's about 50% of all accidents (more for fatal accidents) caused, basically, by careless driving - which really has nothing to do with the type of car being driven, so wouldn't it be more productive to start demonising bad driving than a specific type of vehicle.

Of course, really dealing with these road 'problems' is far too difficult and not terribly 'tabloid' friendly, so it's far easier to just pick on an easy target. But don't be surprised that even when 4x4s have been hounded off the roads people will still be killed and injured by plain old bad driving.

 

[skier-hughes]

I do care about the contribution to pollution - bigger, heavier cars (regardless of their drive train arrangement) puke more fumes and when the traffic is stationary then that is an even bigger problem for everyone they share space with.

What about Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lambougini, Aston Martin, TVR, and numerous other big fast cars which pollute at the same rate or more than 4x4's?

Take the land rover diesel, combined rate 30.7mpg
What about this car?
206cc?
What do you think it does?
2 litre petrol only does 32.8mpg.
Mondeo?
2 litre auto..... 30.7mpg.
Mercedes S Class, also popular in London, 28mpg.

Ok, Land rover is diesel, but diesel is popular in 4x4, and the others are petrol, but who is going to decry the use of a petrol 2 litre automatic mondeo?

I'm not saying we should drive polluting cars, but I really don't see what the problem with driving a 4x4 car has to do with pollution? Most of the big 4x4's you see are expensive adn their owners would no doubt buy equallly as expensive and polluting cars?

 

[Flyfisher]

From my earlier link to a BBC website article:

"The bulletin then compared statistics over a supposed journey from London to Edinburgh. Naturally the 4x4 they'd picked came off worst - it would have produced 135kg of carbon emissions, compared to the 95kg produced by a smaller car.

Were these figures representative?
A diesel Land Rover would have come in at 106kg, while a 1.6 Mini Cooper S would have generated 107 kg. That tells a different story, doesn't it?

But it doesn't seem to fit the BBC's agenda. Whenever there's a story about petrol or about vehicle emissions, they seem to reach for the easy targets."

 

[skier-hughes]

Then of course there is driving style, is a 4x4 driver who motors round carefully, not accelerating away fast and watching the road conditions so doesn't have to brake so much, worse than a person who races away from the lights and brakes heavily when they get to the next set a few hundred yeards away?