c***s on the road

[2426255]

46 minutes ago, Soapy FFC said:

I read an article many years ago, so not sure if it will still be valid, that said when living in a city centre it costs less to use taxis, public transport, and the occasional hire of a car, than it does to own a car given insurance costs, road tax, parking charges, depreciation, etc.

I don't find that surprising, although it wasn't the main reason for giving up the car I found it cheaper to do a mix of all of the above depending on circumstances (where I'm going, weather etc). Cars are a luxury item in my view, basically non-essential. Everyone will have their point where it isn't worth having one anymore and I reached mine probably earlier than most.

The councils are wanting reduced car usage or at least less cars in the city so we're seeing roads pedestrianized, more cycle lanes, the LEZ in Glasgow, 30mph speed limits reduced to 20 in Wales etc. It's just a matter of time, kind of like smoking - it's being disincentivized. Cars are obviously a bit of a problem which goes to the point you raised about 6 or 8 flats in a block with each resident having a car - never going to work - or even in suburban areas where a household have two or three cars and cars end up being parked in turning areas etc.

Edited November 12, 2023 by 2426255

[alta-pete]

2 hours ago, Soapy FFC said:

I read an article many years ago, so not sure if it will still be valid, that said when living in a city centre it costs less to use taxis, public transport, and the occasional hire of a car, than it does to own a car given insurance costs, road tax, parking charges, depreciation, etc.

^^^ is the correct answer. 
 

Spoiler

I live rural.

 

[Florentine_Pogen]

12 minutes ago, alta-pete said:

^^^ is the correct answer. 
 

  Hide contents

I live rural.

 

And that's why you drive a pimptractor.

[alta-pete]

10 minutes ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

And that's why you drive a pimptractor.

 

[strichener]

8 hours ago, 101 said:

If parking your car causes an obstruction then it's pretty obvious not to park there

Only if you are considerate of others.

5 hours ago, eez-eh said:

Park somewhere else then. Pretty simple.

I don't stay anywhere near Edinburgh thankfully.

[Wacky]

Why do some people (mostly women that I’ve seen) load/unload their children in/out their cars on the road side of their vehicles?
IMO, there’s absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. 

I’ve had instances where parents have walked onto the road and opened the car door to allow their children to step on to the road, forcing me and others to stop.
They selfishly feel that this practice is fine, and clearly feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. 
 

[Soapy FFC]

1 hour ago, Wacky said:

Why do some people (mostly women that I’ve seen) load/unload their children in/out their cars on the road side of their vehicles?
IMO, there’s absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. 

I’ve had instances where parents have walked onto the road and opened the car door to allow their children to step on to the road, forcing me and others to stop.
They selfishly feel that this practice is fine, and clearly feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. 
 

No doubt in their driveway they will put the kids into the car on the driver's side as that's the side that they themselves are going to get in. So come parking at the side of the road the kids are then at the road side. No forward thought about what's best, all about what's easiest. 

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, Wacky said:

Why do some people (mostly women that I’ve seen) load/unload their children in/out their cars on the road side of their vehicles?
IMO, there’s absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. 

I’ve had instances where parents have walked onto the road and opened the car door to allow their children to step on to the road, forcing me and others to stop.
They selfishly feel that this practice is fine, and clearly feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. 
 

I insist they exit the car on the pavement side, even if there are 3 in the back, they can just get out one at a time.

[TxRover]

1 hour ago, Soapy FFC said:

No doubt in their driveway they will put the kids into the car on the driver's side as that's the side that they themselves are going to get in. So come parking at the side of the road the kids are then at the road side. No forward thought about what's best, all about what's easiest. 

There is actually some messaging confusion on the correct location of a wean strapped into a seat or in a booster. The people (properly) encouraging the use of proper safety seats recommend placing them diagonally behind the driver, so the driver can more easily check on the wean. Meanwhile, the accident people say it’s better to have the wean behind the driver, because most drivers reactions in accidents tend toward moving the drivers side of the car to safety first, and thus taking the impact more on the passenger side. Recently they teamed up to suggest putting the wean in the middle, until they realized some vehicles only have proper outboard LATCH and tether fittings, and people using the lap portion only of a middle belt weren’t installing it correctly most of the time because of that.

[coprolite]

3 hours ago, Wacky said:

Why do some people (mostly women that I’ve seen) load/unload their children in/out their cars on the road side of their vehicles?
IMO, there’s absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. 

I’ve had instances where parents have walked onto the road and opened the car door to allow their children to step on to the road, forcing me and others to stop.
They selfishly feel that this practice is fine, and clearly feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. 
 

It is fine. Unless it's on a motorway or they're being careless. 

Stopping your car to wait for a minute won't hurt you. 

I wouldn’t do it unless 

4 hours ago, Wacky said:

Why do some people (mostly women that I’ve seen) load/unload their children in/out their cars on the road side of their vehicles?
IMO, there’s absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. 

I’ve had instances where parents have walked onto the road and opened the car door to allow their children to step on to the road, forcing me and others to stop.
They selfishly feel that this practice is fine, and clearly feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. 
 

I can't believe you were forced to stop. The heartless beasts. Thoughts and prayers. 

X

[Wacky]

16 minutes ago, coprolite said:

It is fine. Unless it's on a motorway or they're being careless. 

Stopping your car to wait for a minute won't hurt you. 

I wouldn’t do it unless 

I can't believe you were forced to stop. The heartless beasts. Thoughts and prayers. 

X

In the flip side tho, wouldn’t you say they could wait until you passed them? 

[coprolite]

13 minutes ago, Wacky said:

In the flip side tho, wouldn’t you say they could wait until you passed them? 

If there's only one car, sure. 

People just need to chill out when using the road and be a bit kinder. 

Apart from when some bellend overtook me when i stopped at the end of a row of double parked cars to let a taxi come through the other way. Fuckwit had the cheek to shake his head at me as he reversed back past me. I laughed at him, which was not kind. 

[Bairnardo]

22 minutes ago, coprolite said:

If there's only one car, sure. 

People just need to chill out when using the road and be a bit kinder. 

Apart from when some bellend overtook me when i stopped at the end of a row of double parked cars to let a taxi come through the other way. Fuckwit had the cheek to shake his head at me as he reversed back past me. I laughed at him, which was not kind. 

Twice in recent times this has happened to me when pulled in to let emergency services through. Incredible lack of awareness. 

 

Ah'll tell ye another thing that I think based on my own observation has exploded recently.... Use of phones when driving. I can recall.in the years after the ban always being impressed that basically overnight you stopped seeing it. Perhaps now it's cos there is a huge proportion of drivers who don't remember the time when it got banned, but for me Clive, it's become hugely prevalent over a short space of time.

[Wacky]

28 minutes ago, coprolite said:

If there's only one car, sure. 

People just need to chill out when using the road and be a bit kinder. 

Apart from when some bellend overtook me when i stopped at the end of a row of double parked cars to let a taxi come through the other way. Fuckwit had the cheek to shake his head at me as he reversed back past me. I laughed at him, which was not kind. 

A scenario that brings me nicely to another point, impatience, many drivers and especially bus drivers are guilty of this. 
I  have a friend that lives on a bus route in Dunfermline, and it’s one of those streets where many people park along one side. It actually frightening the amount of drivers that won’t yield to vehicles with right of way. Bus drivers will pull out from the bus stop into oncoming traffic and expect you to move out the way for them. I along with many others have been caught behind cars and vans that buses have simply pulled out on. I appreciate that they have timetables to keep etc, but that is just not cricket. I had a car pull out on me on said street, and granted I was on the side of the road where I don’t have right of way, but the guy pulled out and drove right up to my bumper and started motioning for me to reverse. My flabber was gasted, but I had to stay calm as I had my granddaughter and her friend in the car, otherwise I would have got out and had a word. He mounted the pavement and came up alongside me, put his window down and shouted about having right of way. I calmly pointed out that he pulled into on coming traffic, bet he still felt vindicated in his actions.  Every fibre of my being wanted to smash his pus in, but I had the kids in the car. Since then I’ve made a point of driving with the right of way on my side, but you still get total bellends not giving way. 

[Wacky]

4 minutes ago, Wacky said:

A scenario that brings me nicely to another point, impatience, many drivers and especially bus drivers are guilty of this. 
I  have a friend that lives on a bus route in Dunfermline, and it’s one of those streets where many people park along one side. It actually frightening the amount of drivers that won’t yield to vehicles with right of way. Bus drivers will pull out from the bus stop into oncoming traffic and expect you to move out the way for them. I along with many others have been caught behind cars and vans that buses have simply pulled out on. I appreciate that they have timetables to keep etc, but that is just not cricket. I had a car pull out on me on said street, and granted I was on the side of the road where I don’t have right of way, but the guy pulled out and drove right up to my bumper and started motioning for me to reverse. My flabber was gasted, but I had to stay calm as I had my granddaughter and her friend in the car, otherwise I would have got out and had a word. He mounted the pavement and came up alongside me, put his window down and shouted about having right of way. I calmly pointed out that he pulled into on coming traffic, bet he still felt vindicated in his actions.  Every fibre of my being wanted to smash his pus in, but I had the kids in the car. Since then I’ve made a point of driving with the right of way on my side, but you still get total bellends not giving way. 

ETA for the locals, the street is Wedderburn crescent. 
 

baws, I quoted myself instead of editing. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Wacky

[thistledo]

3 hours ago, TxRover said:

There is actually some messaging confusion on the correct location of a wean strapped into a seat or in a booster. The people (properly) encouraging the use of proper safety seats recommend placing them diagonally behind the driver, so the driver can more easily check on the wean. Meanwhile, the accident people say it’s better to have the wean behind the driver, because most drivers reactions in accidents tend toward moving the drivers side of the car to safety first, and thus taking the impact more on the passenger side. Recently they teamed up to suggest putting the wean in the middle, until they realized some vehicles only have proper outboard LATCH and tether fittings, and people using the lap portion only of a middle belt weren’t installing it correctly most of the time because of that.

Car seats and child safety in cars these days is quite incredible compared to how it was when I was younger (and I'm not even that old, I think) I don't really remember having a car seat or a booster as a kid, just always remember my mum or dad saying to tuck the part of the seatbelt that was more or less at neck height under my arm and away we go. 

Nowadays you can get rear facing kids seats up to 7 year old, although I really can't see either of my kids able to fit into a car seat at that age. While rear facing seats are great, drastically reduces decapitation (which is a horrible thought) my missus always mentions it the moment I mention forward facing seats, but they take up a ridiculous amount of room, we've got a big car and even then the front passenger still has to compromise on space. 

Anyway, c***s with kids in cars seats thread for this pish etc... 

[MEADOWXI]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

Twice in recent times this has happened to me when pulled in to let emergency services through. Incredible lack of awareness. 

 

Ah'll tell ye another thing that I think based on my own observation has exploded recently.... Use of phones when driving. I can recall.in the years after the ban always being impressed that basically overnight you stopped seeing it. Perhaps now it's cos there is a huge proportion of drivers who don't remember the time when it got banned, but for me Clive, it's become hugely prevalent over a short space of time.

The phone thing I find amazing,

 

I am old enough that as a kid there were no seatbelts in the back (my folks always bought Volvo or actually paid extra to have belts fitted). So I can understand older people who struggled when compulsory wearing came in, similar with phones. You used to get away with it but not anymore. But I struggle to understand when it younger ones that must have had lessons and exams where seatbelts and no phones were mandatory yet, now feel they can.

 The number of younger folk on phones when driving is scary, but to be fair they can't walk down the street, eat, shop (pay at tills in shops), talk with friends, go for shit or breathe without being on their phones so probably as much the fucked up world we live in as anything else.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

I quite often walk past the long queue of traffic stretching from Ness Bridge to Glenurquhart Road in Inverness and every time you'll see folk edging forwards without looking up from their phone, sometimes even going through red lights. There are a lot of schools in that area and no lollipop person, so some poor kid is going end up being flattened by one of these dimwits.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Sherrif John Bunnell

[Ekhibee88]

Amazing the amount of people on their phone. I seen a guy on his phone held up against his ear old school style. People in my work are nightmare for it, always answering calls on the road, work culture has created that.

[TxRover]