1 hour ago, J.R. said:

You should not need a law to tell you to stop rather than run over a pedestrian even if they should not be crossing where they are, - not you personally Nick, people in general.

 

it’s not so much about not running over people, it’s about who has priority, which helps maintain an orderly flow of traffic. In the past, pedestrians would wait before crossing a side road, if a car was turning into it. The car kept going, the pedestrian waited, no-one got run over. What should happen now is the car waits, the pedestrian crosses. But in reality my experience is that 99% of both car drivers and pedestrians don’t know that things have changed. If I am turning into a side road and a pedestrian wants to cross, they stop and wait. I could stop and try to encourage them to cross but often they are not paying attention beyond waiting for the car to pass - on phones, chatting, looking elsewhere. So the consequence is either a prolonged delay, or I just keep going. Pragmatically it tends to be the latter.

 

There is a junction near our house where most cars turn off the mainer road into the side road. If I walk across the side road, 99% of drivers will object, try to run me over, sound horn etc. One time I nearly got run over by a bus - would have done if I hadn’t broken into a run. A professional bus driver really should know the rules, but this one certainly didn’t.
 

One should bear in mind this is Aberdeen where most drivers would rather have a crash than allow someone to change lanes - and pedestrians are beneath contempt.

7 hours ago, nicknorman said:

it’s not so much about not running over people, it’s about who has priority, which helps maintain an orderly flow of traffic. In the past, pedestrians would wait before crossing a side road, if a car was turning into it. The car kept going, the pedestrian waited, no-one got run over. What should happen now is the car waits, the pedestrian crosses. But in reality my experience is that 99% of both car drivers and pedestrians don’t know that things have changed. If I am turning into a side road and a pedestrian wants to cross, they stop and wait. I could stop and try to encourage them to cross but often they are not paying attention beyond waiting for the car to pass - on phones, chatting, looking elsewhere. So the consequence is either a prolonged delay, or I just keep going. Pragmatically it tends to be the latter.

The trouble with this "new law" (I don't know the associated statute) is that the usual view is "if you have stopped then you have ceded priority" irrespective of any individual statute.

On 20/12/2024 at 13:33, nicknorman said:

Ah yes this is exactly the old and bold pilot in you coming out! We must always drive manually, the computer is the enemy!
 

Absolute tosh.

I am NOT an old and bold 'pilot, I just in the main, DON'T trust computerised systems. They have their uses, such as ABS, and possibly a few other 'driver aids, that actually do help. Most are for nuggets however, that clearly need to go back to a driving nursery school

Oh yes, another example of a total waste of time and money, and for something else to go wrong....automatic parking, for idiots that shouldn't actually be on the road if they haven't got the skill to do it themselves.

Yes, an expensive and totally unecesssary novelty item ...(to go wrong) ...., to make you passengers chuckle....I know, I've done just that once or twice, I admit it.

 

You sound like the sort of person that advocates driverless computer loaded cars btw...DON'T get me started.

Edited 24 December, 20241 yr by Adenuf

11 hours ago, Adenuf said:

Absolute tosh.

I am NOT an old and bold 'pilot, I just in the main, DON'T trust computerised systems. They have their uses, such as ABS, and possibly a few other 'driver aids, that actually do help. Most are for nuggets however, that clearly need to go back to a driving nursery school

Oh yes, another example of a total waste of time and money, and for something else to go wrong....automatic parking, for idiots that shouldn't actually be on the road if they haven't got the skill to do it themselves.

Yes, an expensive and totally unecesssary novelty item ...(to go wrong) ...., to make you passengers chuckle....I know, I've done just that once or twice, I admit it.

 

You sound like the sort of person that advocates driverless computer loaded cars btw...DON'T get me started.

As I said…

 

I use automatic parking sometimes. It’s a gimmick, obviously, but a cheap gimmick since all the hardware to do it is already there - the parking sensors, the computer controlled steering, the display, the individual wheel speed sensors. The only additional cost is writing the software to make it work and once that is done there is virtually no extra cost to deploy it, meanwhile you can charge the customer lots of money.

 

I cannot see driverless cars working other than on main roads/motorways. Negotiating a supermarket car park on Christmas Eve would be far too difficult!

On 20/12/2024 at 11:54, Adenuf said:

It does make us 'older ones' wonder sometimes, just how the hell did we survive back in the 1960's/70's 80's.

Well, back in the times there were much fewer cars, speeds were much slower, and so on. Look at how many cars were on the roads then and now – it's a completely different story.

On 24/12/2024 at 20:29, Adenuf said:

Oh yes, another example of a total waste of time and money, and for something else to go wrong....automatic parking, for idiots that shouldn't actually be on the road if they haven't got the skill to do it themselves.

Yes, an expensive and totally unecesssary novelty item ...(to go wrong) ...., to make you passengers chuckle....I know, I've done just that once or twice, I admit it.

 

On 25/12/2024 at 08:18, nicknorman said:

I use automatic parking sometimes. It’s a gimmick, obviously, but a cheap gimmick since all the hardware to do it is already there - the parking sensors, the computer controlled steering, the display, the individual wheel speed sensors. The only additional cost is writing the software to make it work and once that is done there is virtually no extra cost to deploy it, meanwhile you can charge the customer lots of money.

 

 

There are a lot of mature or disabled drivers out there that are forced to drive around in huge cars they are not fully comfortable in driving due to accessability requirements, wheelchairs, scooters etc.. do you not think this might of been the use case for designing these systems?

 

Pretty common cars top speeds might be higher now than 40 or 50 years and further back in the UK but many are still only doing 75-80 mph at the highest on roads with a 70 limit and occasionally doing that with overtakes in NSL,s, or risking it for a biscuit. 

As to older cars on UK roads, yes there are ones used occasionally, taken out for tuns.  Really the number of cars used as dailies are few and far between from the 1970,s / 80,s.