Anti 4x4

Or 10mph on a motorway

Although to be fair, the M32 is just an extended slip road in to the city centre - more of a three lane dual carriageway than a "proper" motorway.

Stuart (Bristolian who suffered that road too often)

Have I? Sorry, I thought it was retards telling 4x4 owners that they'd made poor vehicle choices without bothering to find out whether they were right or not? Since I've missed it, why not tell us what this 'point' was?

You can see more from a 4x4 *other than* when the little buggers are creeping round the back and refusing to move when you are reversing. Depends on how often that happens compared to you driving forwards I suppose..

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate snipped-for-privacy@null.null, managed to produce the following words of wisdom

I suspect "null" was commenting at the Eco-Warriors and other nutters telling people what they have the right to own without wanting to listen to the full argument. If you listen to the Eco-nutters they'll tell you that you should drive either some insanely unsafe electric thing like the G-Whiz or something highly unrecyclable like the "eco-friendly" Toyota Pious.

The point was that Dave doesn't like people driving things he doesn't think they should drive.

Thats a shame. He's never struck me before as the judgemental type. It irks me greatly that some people seem to feel the need to tell me how bad my choices are, and especially so when they're not in receipt of info that guided my choices. Fair enough, you could say that if I give that info then maybe treelickers wouldn't single me out but WTF should I have to justify myself to anyone else?

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate snipped-for-privacy@null.null, managed to produce the following words of wisdom

Dave doesn't strike me as judgmental normally, but with this and Red Kens Congestion Charge I think his mind is set.

Jesus! He _approves_ of the CC Zone??! Damn, its worse than I thought!

That's right, it's the drop off / car park area where the school complaints come from, not driving down the road. Similarly (though worse) with buses when the kids appear from around the corner and cars don't see them until it's too late - that's a well recognised problem. You didn't cause it, you might even avoid it better than a car, but it can happen because of the high vehicle.

How often does this sort of accident happen? All vehicles, not just

4x4s.

........

Toyota Pious - good one. lol

Not much sense condemning a vehicle type because it's worse when it comes to the exception but better when it comes to the everyday.

Was it condemned - I thought it was just about suitability for driving kids to school? My range rover wouldn't be much good for driving to work either because it uses too much fuel specially in traffic. I really enjoy driving it, but I understand (big) 4WD's are not the most appropriate vehicle for some of the reasons people use them.

On or around Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:21:33 +0100, Stuart Gray enlightened us thusly:

AA bloke talking through his arse, mind:

"We know that there are lots of times when the weight of traffic, for example on a motorway, means that you can get nowhere near the proper speed limit, you may even have to stop, and obviously if there was a minimum speed limit there would be a lot of confusion when that happens."

There's no "proper speed limit", there's a MAXIMUM speed, which it might well be neither safe nor possible to drive at. Just because the law allows you to do 70 doesn't mean you have to at all times.

That's exactly the point of the current road safety campaign here - "It's not a target". It absolutely bloody bucketed down yesterday (middle of summer LOL) to the point where 40kph was probably a safe open road speed which pretty much reinforces that idea.

It's quite common in home driveways as accidents go. I don't know the proportion involving 4WD's. The common accident at schools is kids stepping out from the obscurity of one vehicle (specially big ones) into the path of traffic - buses and ice cream vans are required to have caution signs. I've seen it happen, don't know often it does, but it's widely regarded as a danger.

On or around Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:36:06 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

it's fine if you're driving past, the argument is about people doing school runs and reversing outside school. I have the same problem with the minibus, but a) it's got a reverse beeper and b) I reverse in such places, if I have to, at very much sub walking pace. I alos try to avoid reversing anywhere near the school - and I wouldn't bet that hassled school-run-mum does any of those. You've only to watch the way some of them take off, it's like the old days at Le Mans.

On or around Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:19:43 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@null.null enlightened us thusly:

granted, but 99% of the population never tow anything, and for on-road style towing like a caravan, as Rich B has pointed out, the mondeo does it better than the disco.

The one that gets my goat is that most of the arguments used against 4x4s, especially urban 4x4s, can equally well be applied to big people carriers of the non-4x4 persuasion, yet somehow, the people carrier attracts no attention.

Then there was the thing that top gear did, with the sod-off sports saloons, all of which use more petrol than a small-medium 4x4, and which the tree huggers completely ignored. Now, I don't expect tree huggers to have Einstein-esque brains, but I do expect them to produce a credible platform if they want me to support it, and so far they haven't, and I don't.

On or around Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:31:39 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@null.null enlightened us thusly:

Frankly, as one who used to live, work and drive in London, the only sensible transport is a small motorbike or a pushbike. On the occasions when I had to take a car into central London rather than the bike, it took about 3 times as long, minimum. And that's 20 years or more ago.

You'll get better visibility both from your point of view and that of others (the car's easier to see) other than in the isolated and rare case of you reversing when some dope kid of just the right height is standing right behind you in a blind spot without the sense to move.

Concentrating on a car's deficiency in an exceptional circumstance while ignoring its advantages in the everyday situation isn't a good idea IMHO, I personally don't think there's anything significant in it, i.e. saloon cars and 4x4s aren't significantly better or worse on the school run, too much is made of all this.