Age Is Just A Number- Just Like Braking Distances.

Yesterday I was in a crash on the A14, I was stationary in a line of traffic when someone went into the back of me at high speed writing off my car and his. No one was seriously hurt. The driver of the other vehicle somehow hadn't seen me until he was about 30 metres away despite it being a clear day on a straightish road, for reasons which soon became obvious.

He was born in 1921 and like most 92 year olds he could hardly see past the end of his car.

Had he seen me five metres later I could have been badly injured or killed which brings me to my point- people past a certain age should have to undergo medicals once in a while to make sure they are still physically capable of driving.

A ninety two year old might well have taken his test seventy five years ago- it is senseless for someone to be assumed to be competent in handling a powerful piece of machinery on the basis that they could control a much less powerful machine some time before World War 2.

High Speed Rail

The projected cost of building the London to Birmingham section is estimated at £17 Billion.

The time saved on a journey from London to Birmingham is 23 minutes.

Obviously when Manchester and Leeds are incorporated the time saved will be greated but it seems like a lot of money for the times involved.

Besides which I've always believed that the UK's biggest transport problem isn't between cities but within them.

Getting Out Of A Jam

After watching this video on how to break up traffic jams:

The thought occurs to me, if one vehicle driving sensibly can really have that much of an impact, wouldn't it be useful just to pay a handful of people to drive like that in the rush hours everyday, if a dozen drivers on one motorway could unblock the major congestion points then they would save tens or even hundreds of thousands of people a significant amount of time and fuel. Say one blockage causes 50000 commuters to lose 30 minutes of workplace productivity a day at a rate of 10 pounds an hour then that would cost the country 1.25 million pounds a week or roughly 60 million a year. Whereas it would only cost a couple of hundred thousand to pay people to keep the traffic moving.

When Bob Crow Is The Voice Of Reason....

... it probably means that the End Times are upon us, but he is quite right here:

"It defies belief that any individual who has been convicted of manslaughter for the killing of a woman could be even considered as an acceptable candidate for the knowledge and allowed out on to the London streets in a black cab.

I can't really add much to that.

I Might Be Insane.

George Monbiot attracts a fair bit of ridicule from some quarters, mostly because he's nuts. His latest big idea seems to have inspired yet more ridicule, we should replace planes with airships.

The thing is though I've been thinking that it's time for airships to make a comeback as well. At the back of my head there was a feeling that the idea was insane and the fact that George Monbiot is on board doesn't exactly reassure me that I'm not.

Okay, his idea of bringing them back for passenger transport is very unlikely to happen because they are too slow and unpredictable, no one is going to be willing to spend two or three days crossing the Atlantic. However the potential for transporting large cargo to looks perfectly realistic to me. Some area of the world are simply inaccessible to large cargo planes, such as mountainous areas, jungles or the polar regions so there is a potential use there. Similarly sometimes transporting abnormal loads by road causes a great deal of inconvenience to traffic as the roads need to be closed and police escorts provided so why not simply lift the load with an airship?

Like I say, there is a vague tingling feeling that the idea is insane but it looks pretty good to me.