WHY!!!!!!!!

[Woodface]

If you want to kill someone & get away with it select a car as your weapon.

 

[richardg]

No seat belt and that crash looked quite severe.

I always knew it. No need to clunk click for every trip.

 

[Stuart Frazer]

Why should these arseholes be given three chances to kill someone?

I'm not saying they should. However, the criminal justice system we have seems to give offenders many many chances to repeat their offences.

 

[Monitor Gold 10]

There are some pretty fundamental privacy, human rights and data protection issues around CCTV in the cab. Not by any means an obvious solution, and likely to be heavily disproportionate. More road police would help, but that was scaled back in favour of speed cameras. Many of us argued this was dumb, at the time. We were often derided as selfish speed freaks.

And successive Tory governments have cut police funding. Go figure.

I'm afraid not. This system:

https://www.seeingmachines.com/guardian/guardian/

...records and monitors the driver. This means a driver in the UK will be watched by an observer in the US.

Any 'Events' are then recorded and alerts sent to the driver's base and 'appropriate' action is taken.

These have been fitted in lots of London Buses. And trams as well after the Croydon tragedy.

Now as regards driver fatigue, I believe this is best solved by addressing the cause rather than the symptoms...

I contributed to a Private Eye article about this some time ago.

Also, Operators need to acknowledge that fatigue is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Within this article:

https://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/news/croydon-news/go-ahead-bus-driver-claims-1455789

...fatigue seems to be something that is denied.

Go figure.

As for the lorry driver, I believe he is in the minority. Most are diligent and extremely helpful. As always, the few spoil it for the many.

Then some undesirable elements of the press choose to politicise the incident.

 

[Monitor Gold 10]

The lap belt makes it difficult to masturbate whilst watching porn at 56mph?

Do you speak from experience?

 

[davidsrsb]

I don't like the way most cars have abandoned built in GPS and now depend on a mounted smartphone, often two of them for the eHailing and delivery drivers.

Even worse are the motorcycle delivery riders often to be seen operating a phone in one hand while racing down the road the wrong way.

 

[Spraggons Den]

I initially thought his sentence was a bit stiff but I imagine the prosecution had context- his multiple actions leading up to the crash and deliberately circumventing the seat belt alarm. Surprising it didn’t happen earlier given his attitude to road use.

Four years ago I had a young driver persistently less than one car length from my rear bumper for 2 miles through an urban area, head down both thumbs going on the phone. She must have had very good peripheral vision because every time I touched the brake, her head would come up and she would brake. Quite impressive.

I am lucky to work with a lot of young people (early 20s) and they argue their phone skills are so good that using them does not impair their driving; in the case of old duffers like me they quite agree it should be prohibited.

 

[Spraggons Den]

No seat belt and that crash looked quite severe.

I always knew it. No need to clunk click for every trip.

Quite right, no decent person would want to be on the same side of the argument as Jimmy Saville.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I am lucky to work with a lot of young people (early 20s) and they argue their phone skills are so good that using them does not impair their driving; in the case of old duffers like me they quite agree it should be prohibited.

The alternative take is that driving standards in the young are so poor that any further impairment from phone use is not noticeable.

 

[Minio]

No seat belt and that crash looked quite severe.

I always knew it. No need to clunk click for every trip.

It looks as if his lorry was heavier and tougher than the van he hit so the impact on him was less severe.

 

[gintonic]

I don't like the way most cars have abandoned built in GPS

all that i have looked at recently seem to use built in GPS

 

[richardg]

It looks as if his lorry was heavier and tougher than the van he hit so the impact on him was less severe.

The faceful of windscreen glass alone looks pretty grim.

 

[davidsrsb]

all that i have looked at recently seem to use built in GPS

Cars are worldwide, the ICE tends to be fairly local.
In Asia casting from the phone is the main method now.

 

[stairpost]

I wonder if this thread will make us a little less sympathetic to the plight of the lorry driver, as discussed in the other recent thread.

 

[Mike Reed]

I am lucky to work with a lot of young people (early 20s) and they argue their phone skills are so good that using them does not impair their driving; in the case of old duffers like me they quite agree it should be prohibited.

They have a point, albeit skewed by an exaggeration of their prowess, but they're bang on target about us duffers !

I don't know how people drive having to resort to a screen, some of which, according to some reviews, are hardly intuitive. When I come to buy my next car (and prob. an EV), I'd be thrown if my attention is distracted by screen info. Think I might have to revert to a bygone vehicle with everything tactile and manual. My 12 y.o. Fabia is almost one such, but it still has electronic gizmos that I've never investigated.

T.b.h., I've yet to try a CD in the thing (my previous one had cassette).

 

[Minio]

My car uses a multi purpose touch screen for everything including navigation, air con, entertainment and screen dimming and all sorts.
It takes forever to change the radio station over to another. That's after you've navigated the menu system to find the radio. It's not like the old push button radios you got in cars back in the days of Morris Marinas.
It's best to stop at a services to play with it, before you get too wrapped up in it's complexities and forget you're driving on the road.

 

[PhilofCas]

I initially thought his sentence was a bit stiff but I imagine the prosecution had context- his multiple actions leading up to the crash and deliberately circumventing the seat belt alarm. Surprising it didn’t happen earlier given his attitude to road use.

Four years ago I had a young driver persistently less than one car length from my rear bumper for 2 miles through an urban area, head down both thumbs going on the phone. She must have had very good peripheral vision because every time I touched the brake, her head would come up and she would brake. Quite impressive.

Reminds me of the time I’d seen a women texting away on her phone, thinking no one could see her, I picked a perfect opportunity to give her a blast of my horn, she jumped a mile!