Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
I wave the 'white flag' of surrender remembering @HYUFD is never wrong [in his view]
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
Being able to navigate the road in your sleep doesn't allow you to see things in the road around the corner.
I remember one vaguely amusing incident on the A889, which is a narrow (and quite dangerous) road in the Highlands with lots of bends.
I was going too slowly for someone and complained to Mrs Flatlander that he had no idea whether or not there was, say, a big milk tanker round the next corner, at which point I went round the next corner and found a big milk tanker occupying most of the road space.
I've never seen one on that road before or since, and it wasn't something I was in the habit of saying.
I’ve heard it suggested that driving “in auto-pilot” is a big cause of accidents - the driver has a massive lag in “re engage brain” when something unexpected happens.
There was an interesting experiment in following Dutch practise and removing road signs and markings - some drivers became extremely angry because “I had to think hard what I was doing, all the time”
Indeed. It is very easy to do a familiar journey on autopilot.
I'm sure we've all had journeys where you get home and can't remember much about what happened.
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
obviously. If you hit someone at a bend you should have been driving slower.
No, a jury may well disagree. If you hit someone at 30mph on a 60mph limit road many juries would acquit, see the Gibbs case
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
The answer to the lawyer would usually be something along the lines of "if the driver was unable to keep the car on the read, that is clear evidence of inappropriate speed". And that is then a judgement for the Jury Magistrates or Judge.
No, what happened if the driver kept the car on the road but killed a cyclist round a bend or in heavy rain driving at 35mph on a rural road?
It would usually be the drivers fault. He is either driving too fast for the bend and weather or inattentive in not seeing the bike. Only excuse would be a lack of lights or dark clothes of the cyclist if conditions were really bad or the cyclist doing something very erratic. The driver should have left ample space. Note the 1.5 metres is a minimum not the expected distance when passing a bike. I leave much more or I won't pass.
OT - Something tells me that might be the ICO default position when not themselves investigating.
However, it seems clear infighting and sub-optimal ability have pretty much strangled Your Party at birth. It will help the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform (in that order) - I'm not sure it will do Lab much good (under the current leader at least)
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
I also can't stand driving on country roads. Any road that requires you to put two wheels on the grass to pass someone coming the other way is my idea of hell.
At least in Scotland there are proper passing places, rather than a bit where there is an extra six inches between the road and the dry stone wall.
This is why it is such a bad idea to rely on the satnav when you're in somewhere like Cornwall. You will inevitably end up on some country track where you will have to reverse 100 metres to let a combine harvester pass you. Always best to check your route and stay on an A road until the latest possible point. This is a lesson I have learned the hard way!
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
Private Eye has made its special report on Teesside shenanigans available for download:-
As Tees Valley mayor Lord Houchen's defence of his deal with local businessmen crumbles, here's the Eye's recent eight-page special report on how Britain's flagship regeneration scheme secretly turned into one of the biggest giveaways of public money on record. https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx0aBmBX5CxJvyEMmiwItJni2ij_VNs4mL
The Electoral Commission said: “Having considered all the evidence in this case, we have concluded that 5th Avenue Partners Limited met the requirements to be a permissible donor. The Electoral Commission will be taking no further action in this case”
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
The Highway Code is an exceptionally well written book. Very clear and seems to cover everything. Having read it last year for the first time in 50 years I was exceptionally impressed.
It doesn't teach driving skills. For that go to Roadcraft.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
Road Traffic Act 1988, s38 '(7)A failure on the part of a person to observe a provision of the Highway Code shall not of itself render that person liable to criminal proceedings of any kind but any such failure may in any proceedings (whether civil or criminal, and including proceedings for an offence under the Traffic Acts, the M1Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981 or sections 18 to 23 of the M2Transport Act 1985) be relied upon by any party to the proceedings as tending to establish or negative any liability which is in question in those proceedings.' https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/38
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
I also can't stand driving on country roads. Any road that requires you to put two wheels on the grass to pass someone coming the other way is my idea of hell.
At least in Scotland there are proper passing places, rather than a bit where there is an extra six inches between the road and the dry stone wall.
This is why it is such a bad idea to rely on the satnav when you're in somewhere like Cornwall. You will inevitably end up on some country track where you will have to reverse 100 metres to let a combine harvester pass you. Always best to check your route and stay on an A road until the latest possible point. This is a lesson I have learned the hard way!
Hear, hear to that.
Last year the satnav took us a most extraordinary route into Boscastle. Like a bobsleigh run between high banks and hedges with grass growing along the centre of the "road". Popped out disconcertingly just above the village. Interesting, all the same.
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
Yes of course. If 35mph was too high for the bend and conditions and I caused the accident. This isn't rocket science.
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Aside from the fact that 80% of people “wiping bums” are British, there is also the small issue that letting companies freely recruit abroad just led to fraud, not extra migrants in the care sector.
And if high immigration = high economic performance, where has our high economic performance been?
That last paragraph is key. We’ve had historically , very high levels of immigration, for 25 years, without seeing high growth.
Proof is in the pudding, as said many years of immigration and we are circling the drain. Perhaps there may be a connection
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
obviously. If you hit someone at a bend you should have been driving slower.
No, a jury may well disagree. If you hit someone at 30mph on a 60mph limit road many juries would acquit, see the Gibbs case
you want to ban jury trials then - go join Labour
No I don't, even judges and magistrates will have different opinions on what counts as 'careless driving' on a rural road
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
The answer to the lawyer would usually be something along the lines of "if the driver was unable to keep the car on the read, that is clear evidence of inappropriate speed". And that is then a judgement for the Jury Magistrates or Judge.
No, what happened if the driver kept the car on the road but killed a cyclist round a bend or in heavy rain driving at 35mph on a rural road?
It would usually be the drivers fault. He is either driving too fast for the bend and weather or inattentive in not seeing the bike. Only excuse would be a lack of lights or dark clothes of the cyclist if conditions were really bad or the cyclist doing something very erratic. The driver should have left ample space. Note the 1.5 metres is a minimum not the expected distance when passing a bike. I leave much more or I won't pass.
Even then usually but NOT always, so again one jury or magistrate or judge may reach a different verdict to another on that scenario
1.5m gap applies to overtaking cyclists, not to oncoming cyclists
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
Yes of course. If 35mph was too high for the bend and conditions and I caused the accident. This isn't rocket science.
You could...but then again you could not, depends on what the jury or judge on the day decided
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Aside from the fact that 80% of people “wiping bums” are British, there is also the small issue that letting companies freely recruit abroad just led to fraud, not extra migrants in the care sector.
And if high immigration = high economic performance, where has our high economic performance been?
I thought that was a pretty poor thing to say myself, and quite revealing.
"I'm far too good to be wiping arses but its fine for someone from Nigeria to be doing it".
"I'm far too good to be wiping arses but it’s excellent for someone from Nigeria to be doing it, below minimum wage.".
Fixed that for you. No charge.
And it's quite fascinating how the leader of the Green Party essentially makes that argument and think it will have resonance with his middle-class graduate base.
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
Surely that's madness. The guts of a high end gaming rig today is probably going to be close to what's in a mid-range phone in 10 years time.
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
The Highway Code is an exceptionally well written book. Very clear and seems to cover everything. Having read it last year for the first time in 50 years I was exceptionally impressed.
It doesn't teach driving skills. For that go to Roadcraft.
Most of it, plenty of gaps and vagueness in it still though
The only extra line that the Highway Code needs on speeds around bends, and stopping distances etc, is “Try to drive so that you don’t need to use your brakes”
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
Good for you.
Any half decent lawyer though could easily query whether 'reduce your speed' means to 50, 40, 30 or even 20mph when approaching a bend, when driving at night, in poor weather conditions or whether 20 or 30mph is appropriate when approaching cyclists, horse riders etc in any court case following an accident or collision
The appropriate speed is the one where your car stays on the road and doesn't hit another road user. You should be able to figure this out ex ante through the application of experience and common sense. Personally I hate driving on country roads but luckily I hardly ever have to do it. My problem is that by definition as I don't live in the country every country road is an unknown quality to me so I drive as if I don't know what's around the next bend, and I usually end up with some local boy racer on my tail who no doubt could navigate the road in his sleep and doesn't appreciate this cautious city dweller holding him up.
The answer to the lawyer would usually be something along the lines of "if the driver was unable to keep the car on the read, that is clear evidence of inappropriate speed". And that is then a judgement for the Jury Magistrates or Judge.
No, what happened if the driver kept the car on the road but killed a cyclist round a bend or in heavy rain driving at 35mph on a rural road?
It would usually be the drivers fault. He is either driving too fast for the bend and weather or inattentive in not seeing the bike. Only excuse would be a lack of lights or dark clothes of the cyclist if conditions were really bad or the cyclist doing something very erratic. The driver should have left ample space. Note the 1.5 metres is a minimum not the expected distance when passing a bike. I leave much more or I won't pass.
Even then usually but NOT always, so again one jury or magistrate or judge may reach a different verdict to another on that scenario/
1.5m gap applies to overtaking cyclists, not to oncoming cyclists
If you're choosing to swan around with a tonne or so of metal in your close company then taking very great care would seem to be the right thing. Cars simply would never be legal if they were invented today.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Not at all. I was quoting analysis including by the OBR. You reject that analysis in its entirety without explaining why in empirical terms. I don't have a "belief" one way or the other on this - I certainly haven't done the analysis myself - except to note it accords with other analysis I have seen.
I do "believe" however that people in general aren't interested in analysis, including it appears yourself.
You seem incapable of engaging with the point I've made, or perhaps don't want to as this is pure cognitive dissonance.
If that is the case, then further discussion with you is also a waste of my time.
I don't think so but I was discourteous and I apologise for it.
I would make two observations. First. If most immigrants are of working age, it's unlikely that GDP will do anything other than increase because of it. GDP per head could also increase. It would only not do this if Lump of Labour really isn't a fallacy. Total GDP matters for much public spending. For example you have mentioned you want more spending on defence. Total GDP drives that affordability.
Second observation. Governments up to this one have been very happy to allow high immigration, including after Brexit, which was partly sold on reduced immigration. The current government is actually reducing immigration. They won't be thanked for it. Based on this analysis they could also be damaging the economy as a result and creating a fiscal headache for themselves.
Elon says that turning off his exploitative porn generator (formerly known as Twitter) would be unjustified censorship
"I disapprove of people generating abusive porn featuring unconsenting adults and children at the push of a button but I will defend to the death their right to do so ... if it makes me money"
Does it make Musk money? Perhaps it does if it's a subscriber-only feature.
Otherwise, the only explanation that makes sense is the "you're not my dad/mum, you can't tell me what to do" thing that most boys grow out of at age 16.
Or maybe there are a lot of Epstein images needing a dose of whataboutery, denial and deflection soon to be published. ?
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
The best place to drive: A Motorway with light traffic and a 50 mph speed limit. No hassle whatsoever.
i find driving at 50 mph on motorways so tedious my focus wanders
Ditto. I hate motorway driving. I loose concentration. I struggle over 150 miles. I love driving around the countryside.
I do the 8 hour run to Aberdeen from Lincolnshire every Monday night and back again every Thursday. I have come to really like that time as I am forced to relax - listen to books, podcasts and music - which I can never do at home when there are always a million and one other calls on my time. Once I realised (fairly quickly) that speeding and agressive manouveres wouldn't actually save me much time, I just use cruise control and enjoy the ride.
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
'Commonsense' ie basically exactly what a jury or magistrates on the day are persuaded by lawyers to believe it to mean when accidents or collisions occurred under the standard speed limit on that road and with no drink or drug driving or mobile phone use.
Even if you only ever drove at 40mph on a country lane could you be done if you only slowed down to 35mph at a bend or in heavy rain and a collision occured?
I wave the 'white flag' of surrender remembering @HYUFD is never wrong [in his view]
Still not skipped far enough. I’ll be back. Later.
Very interesting by Jimmy Carr here. Fascinating insights on young men, isolation in society, identity and personal purpose.
I'm not sure I've heard these expressed as well anywhere else. Two conclusions: (1) he's very intelligent, and, (2) it feels like he's ever so slightly politicising now, possibly because he's concerned and feels he has to.
Carr is extremely intelligent and well read. Not just the Cambridge degree, but he has done a lot of podcasts and is able to display breath of knowledge and understanding. For me at a surface level comedy doesn't do justice to actually how smart he is, 100 knob gags and your fat / ugly munter seems like shooting fish in a barrel for him (although keeping that going year after year with new material is impressive, most comedians like musicians have a few greatest hits).
In the past couple of years he has started filming his audience work and putting it on YouTube. Again its dominated by your a moron / your a slag etc, but in there he drops 2-3 serious moments and they are often really interesting.
His explanation is that he is genuinely very curious individual and driven to work hard. So he does an insane number of gigs, but that requires huge amount of travel and sitting around, so he is constantly educating himself via books, podcasts, etc.
Yes, quite, and he's all the more interesting for it. He describes himself as a traditional liberal (in other words, a classical liberal, driven by his belief in freedom - and anti-authoritarianism; be it of the Left or Right) but he also gets the importance of civic society, pubs, clubs and institutions. He is proud of Britain, its values and its legacy. He understands all societies have hierarchies, and thinks solving inequality is impossible, but absolute poverty and isolation is - and tax needs to be low in your 20s and in retirement.
If I were Kemi, I'd be privately consulting with him all the time.
A lot of people tak about lower taxes but to be fair to Jimmy Carr he actually put his money where his mouth was.
I’m a little surprised that a thoughtful, long-form interview generated less interest than a throwaway line. It does sometimes feel as though online discussion tends to reward punchlines and sentiment over substance. Few seem to be interested in the deep-dive.
For what it’s worth, the tax issue is now over 13 years old. Is he to be forever defined by it? He addressed it openly, learned from it, and changed his approach. He also donates very substantial sums to charity, something he’s never made a point of advertising.
In reality, most people with significant incomes will take advice on how to manage their tax affairs efficiently. So would you.
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Not at all. I was quoting analysis including by the OBR. You reject that analysis in its entirety without explaining why in empirical terms. I don't have a "belief" one way or the other on this - I certainly haven't done the analysis myself - except to note it accords with other analysis I have seen.
I do "believe" however that people in general aren't interested in analysis, including it appears yourself.
You seem incapable of engaging with the point I've made, or perhaps don't want to as this is pure cognitive dissonance.
If that is the case, then further discussion with you is also a waste of my time.
I don't think so but I was discourteous and I apologise for it.
I would make two observations. First. If most immigrants are of working age, it's unlikely that GDP will do anything other than increase because of it. GDP per head could also increase. It would only not do this if Lump of Labour really isn't a fallacy. Total GDP matters for much public spending. For example you have mentioned you want more spending on defence. Total GDP drives that affordability.
Second observation. Governments up to this one have been very happy to allow high immigration, including after Brexit, which was partly sold on reduced immigration. The current government is actually reducing immigration. They won't be thanked for it. Based on this analysis they could also be damaging the economy as a result and creating a fiscal headache for themselves.
My point is that the high immigration = higher growth = higher (net) tax revenue may be shown up to be false, or at least not quite as significant as the OBR model thinks it its.
Personally, having looked at growth rates over the last 20-30 years, I'm not convinced of the link; I suspect it's much more nuanced to skilled workers in particular sectors at particular times.
The best place to drive: A Motorway with light traffic and a 50 mph speed limit. No hassle whatsoever.
i find driving at 50 mph on motorways so tedious my focus wanders
Ditto. I hate motorway driving. I loose concentration. I struggle over 150 miles. I love driving around the countryside.
I do the 8 hour run to Aberdeen from Lincolnshire every Monday night and back again every Thursday. I have come to really like that time as I am forced to relax - listen to books, podcasts and music - which I can never do at home when there are always a million and one other calls on my time. Once I realised (fairly quickly) that speeding and agressive manouveres wouldn't actually save me much time, I just use cruise control and enjoy the ride.
I miss the days of long commutes. There is a zen in steady state driving, 1km cruise clicks are quietly satisfying
Private Eye has made its special report on Teesside shenanigans available for download:-
As Tees Valley mayor Lord Houchen's defence of his deal with local businessmen crumbles, here's the Eye's recent eight-page special report on how Britain's flagship regeneration scheme secretly turned into one of the biggest giveaways of public money on record. https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx0aBmBX5CxJvyEMmiwItJni2ij_VNs4mL
The Electoral Commission said: “Having considered all the evidence in this case, we have concluded that 5th Avenue Partners Limited met the requirements to be a permissible donor. The Electoral Commission will be taking no further action in this case”
There’s a difference between morality and law
See the other conversations happening here today.
"Don't drive dangerously" is moral, but you can't encode it in law.
"Don't download pictures of people and turn them into porn" is moral, but what Ken Shabby does in his basement on his laptop is probably impossible to police. (What probably is enforceable is doing it in public. If you want to be the World's Town Square, you can't have the nastiest sort of sex shop with an outdoor licence... you just can't.)
As long as there is a competitive advantage in working in the gap between legal and moral, it's not easy to see what to do.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
There should be an overriding common sense law that overrides all other laws. It should be based on what a sensible person would do, not what a reckless or stupid person would do.
We complain about why we no longer have serious deep-dive interview anymore on television, or interesting conversations to really explore politicians views anymore, rather than going for the quick soundbite.
This thread, and people's behaviour shows why: the cheap gag gets 7+ likes. The more insightful discussion on the subject gets none, or at best one like.
So, MSM responds to that. Cheap, facile and superficial is what the public want.
Given the talk of roads and safe/dangerous activities, curious what people think of an incident I had a few weeks ago.
Picking my daughter up from after school club at her school, after work. School is on a residential road and is 20mph with houses and the school on the road.
I had parked on the road where it is safe and legal to do so. Due to time of day, road was clear, no other kids or moving people about. I pulled off and started a 3-point turn to turn around, when a cyclist entered the road and approached. I was already mid turn by this point. The cyclist then swerved rapidly into the oncoming traffics lane and clearly intended to ride around me while I was turning and I could have hit him.
I hit my brakes and horn simultaneously and stopped, effectively at right angles to the flow of traffic blocking both lanes. Thankfully still nobody other than me and the cyclist on the road.
He came up to my window and shouted "I have right of way!" I yelled back "not when I am already in the middle of a manoeuver!" He was now stationary and back in the right lane blocked by me so I finished the turn and drove off. Nobody hurt.
Any time I have ever approached someone doing a 3 point turn I have always stopped and waited for them to finish and would never think to swerve around them while they are moving, that seems incredibly dangerous and stupud. Obviously if I had not pulled out yet he would have right of way, but I was halfway through before he approached (and he was not on the road when I started) so I was very surprised by his indignation.
Dealing with other vehicles The manoeuvre should not be started until the road is clear of traffic in both directions. Once you have completed the first leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass behind you if they wanted to, before commencing the second leg. Similarly before commencing the third leg you would allow any traffic that had accumulated to pass in front of you if they wanted to. The same would apply if it took further movements forwards and backwards to complete the manoeuvre.
Looks like Bart may need a Highway Code check then!
It's a tricky one. Away from the theory I have come across drivers who wait after each leg of the turn and those who consider it one manoeuvre so assume they have right of way throughout, I didn't know the answer without looking it up. Imagine it does create the odd low speed crash.
Might be both then. I'm almost certain the Code will advise to give someone doing a manoeuvre loads of room, patience etc
HIghway Code Rules 179 and 180 ' Rule 179 'Well before you turn right you should use your mirrors to make sure you know the position and movement of traffic behind you give a right-turn signal take up a position just left of the middle of the road or in the space marked for traffic turning right leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left, if possible.
Rule 180 Wait until there is a safe gap between you and any oncoming vehicle. Watch out for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and other road users. Check your mirrors and blind spot again to make sure you are not being overtaken, then make the turn. Do not cut the corner. Take great care when turning into a main road; you will need to watch for traffic in both directions and wait for a safe gap.' https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-159-to-203
Rule 160,163.
(Glad you're suddenly taking such an interesting though - check out 125)
Rule 160
'be aware of other road users, especially cycles and motorcycles who may be filtering through the traffic. These are more difficult to see than larger vehicles and their riders are particularly vulnerable. Give them plenty of room, especially if you are driving a long vehicle or towing a trailer. You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them.'
Rule 163 says cyclists should proceed with caution when passing slow moving or stationary traffic but not that they have to give way completely to cars doing u turns
Rule 125 'The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Unsafe speed increases the chances of causing a collision (or being unable to avoid one), as well as its severity. Inappropriate speeds are also intimidating, deterring people from walking, cycling or riding horses. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends sharing the road with pedestrians, particularly children, older adults or disabled people, cyclists and horse riders, horse drawn vehicles and motorcyclists weather conditions make it safer to do so driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.'
So again very vague as to how far to slow down in poor weather conditions, or when facing bends
Well of course it is vague. It has to be. It depends upon so much, but the police and common sense can usually distinguish between bad luck, careless driving or dangerous driving. You don't need a number. There is a thing called a limit point. It is explained on page 182 to 190 of Roadcraft. You should be adjusting your speed to stop by this ever changing point. It isn't rocket science. Much of this is commonsense.
Again you seem to be implying you only need to slow down for bends, poor weather, etc. On most country lanes, although the speed limit is 60mph it is not safe to travel at 60 mph. The nature of country roads generally makes that impossible. Even straight roads will have small drops or humps in them in which a car or cyclist can be hidden. Also it may have driveways or farm tracks. This is a default speed limit because it isn't a motorway, it doesn't have street lights and there are no marked speed limits. It is known as an unrestricted speed limit for which a national limit applies depending upon the road type (single carriageway, no street lights).
I really can't think of a single occasion where I would actually travel at 60 mph on a proper country lane.
Country lanes vary a lot. There's a alternative route back from work which has a single track straight about a mile long, with a curved gradient profile so you can see easily from one end to the other. I quite often touch 80 in the middle. The same route also has a tight single track blind bend that it's prudent to coast round at less than 20mph. The important thing for the prevention of accidents is that you drive appropriately for the road and conditions - I did the fast straight the other night, not at 80mph but 20mph - because it was very foggy, dark, and covered in ice.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
There should be an overriding common sense law that overrides all other laws. It should be based on what a sensible person would do, not what a reckless or stupid person would do.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
There should be an overriding common sense law that overrides all other laws. It should be based on what a sensible person would do, not what a reckless or stupid person would do.
There is, it is called jury trial. Labour don't like common sense law though so want to reduce it
We complain about why we no longer have serious deep-dive interview anymore on television, or interesting conversations to really explore politicians views anymore, rather than going for the quick soundbite.
This thread, and people's behaviour shows why: the cheap gag gets 7+ likes. The more insightful discussion on the subject gets none, or at best one like.
So, MSM responds to that. Cheap, facile and superficial is what the public want.
Despite my many piercing insights, finely crafted aperçus, gusset stainingly funny anecdotes and sublime prose style, my most liked post is a "Philip Thompson" joke.
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Not at all. I was quoting analysis including by the OBR. You reject that analysis in its entirety without explaining why in empirical terms. I don't have a "belief" one way or the other on this - I certainly haven't done the analysis myself - except to note it accords with other analysis I have seen.
I do "believe" however that people in general aren't interested in analysis, including it appears yourself.
You seem incapable of engaging with the point I've made, or perhaps don't want to as this is pure cognitive dissonance.
If that is the case, then further discussion with you is also a waste of my time.
I don't think so but I was discourteous and I apologise for it.
I would make two observations. First. If most immigrants are of working age, it's unlikely that GDP will do anything other than increase because of it. GDP per head could also increase. It would only not do this if Lump of Labour really isn't a fallacy. Total GDP matters for much public spending. For example you have mentioned you want more spending on defence. Total GDP drives that affordability.
Second observation. Governments up to this one have been very happy to allow high immigration, including after Brexit, which was partly sold on reduced immigration. The current government is actually reducing immigration. They won't be thanked for it. Based on this analysis they could also be damaging the economy as a result and creating a fiscal headache for themselves.
My point is that the high immigration = higher growth = higher (net) tax revenue may be shown up to be false, or at least not quite as significant as the OBR model thinks it its.
Personally, having looked at growth rates over the last 20-30 years, I'm not convinced of the link; I suspect it's much more nuanced to skilled workers in particular sectors at particular times.
There’s a different trade-off here though, where we have placed GDP on the growth altar and infrastructure investment has trailed decades behind.
Real progress, aka sustainable profitability is where productivity is built on a depth of skills and quality infrastructure.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Rachel Reeves faces tax rise dilemma over immigration forecast. Chancellor could be forced to make up for a shortfall of billions of pounds as figures predict a collapse in net migration would have consequences for the economy
The OBR have included possibly overestimated immigration numbers in their fiscal forecast. If immigration does drop it will lead to a relative underperformance of the economy and a possible £20 billion hole in public finances.
Or, this will shown up to be a fantasy figure.
Doubt it. People aren't interested in analysis. Zach Polanski had a point when he asked, do you want to stop immigration or do you want your bum wiped? (aimed at broadly the same demographic). Hardly anyone is prepared to make trade-offs, and certainly not that one.
That post is fascinating, because you've pushed aside the point to reassert your belief.
We might find out high immigration actually isn't the key driver of growth. People will be very interested in that analysis.
Not at all. I was quoting analysis including by the OBR. You reject that analysis in its entirety without explaining why in empirical terms. I don't have a "belief" one way or the other on this - I certainly haven't done the analysis myself - except to note it accords with other analysis I have seen.
I do "believe" however that people in general aren't interested in analysis, including it appears yourself.
You seem incapable of engaging with the point I've made, or perhaps don't want to as this is pure cognitive dissonance.
If that is the case, then further discussion with you is also a waste of my time.
I don't think so but I was discourteous and I apologise for it.
I would make two observations. First. If most immigrants are of working age, it's unlikely that GDP will do anything other than increase because of it. GDP per head could also increase. It would only not do this if Lump of Labour really isn't a fallacy. Total GDP matters for much public spending. For example you have mentioned you want more spending on defence. Total GDP drives that affordability.
Second observation. Governments up to this one have been very happy to allow high immigration, including after Brexit, which was partly sold on reduced immigration. The current government is actually reducing immigration. They won't be thanked for it. Based on this analysis they could also be damaging the economy as a result and creating a fiscal headache for themselves.
My point is that the high immigration = higher growth = higher (net) tax revenue may be shown up to be false, or at least not quite as significant as the OBR model thinks it its.
Personally, having looked at growth rates over the last 20-30 years, I'm not convinced of the link; I suspect it's much more nuanced to skilled workers in particular sectors at particular times.
What is interesting with regards to public finances is there are two sides to the coin.
Rising population levels need infrastructure growth to keep up, with both up front costs and long term investment costs on that.
Models always seem to count the taxes for migrants, but have no infrastructure costs assigned.
That is either a broken model that will not see the figure come true as the costs will be paid, or a recipe for disaster as the costs are not paid so infrastructure collapses.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Well you will have missed the updates to it then
So
You may not keep your blameless driving record BigG if you haven't kept up with the latest Code recommendations
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
There should be an overriding common sense law that overrides all other laws. It should be based on what a sensible person would do, not what a reckless or stupid person would do.
That's what juries are there for.
Though Labour and HYUFD are keen to abolish them.
I am not particularly, though in cases like the Colston statue a judge would likely have convicted of criminal damage unlike the jury
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
I've been driving for over 30 years and not a single fault accident, I am the best.
I started driving on the road (illegally) when I was 12 so I've been driving for 46 years. In that time I reckon I have written off 10+ cars and 10+ motorbikes in crashes from driving too fast. I have never hit another car or person. The crown is mine.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Well you will have missed the updates to it then
So
You may not keep your blameless driving record BigG if you haven't kept up with the latest Code recommendations
How many drivers do you think read the code
I am aware of most of the important changes especially in regard to cyclists and pedestrians which I give way to and act courtesly
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
For licensing to be anything but pointless it would have to be accompanied with a compulsory system that monitors everything being done on the computer. And given the rate of progress 'a certain capacity' would mean pretty much every PC and laptop in a few years.
That would be the most intrusive surveillance system in existence outside of North Korea. I may be an optimist, but I firmly believe no British government would propose such a scheme and the people wouldn’t tolerate it if they did.
Give how easy even kernel level DRM and anti-cheat software gets cracked open, the system would need support at hardware, firmware and OS levels to be effective. The privacy and security issues would be legion, and to be honest I don't see Microsoft, Apple, Intel or AMD touching it with a bargepole. The UK market isn't worth the enormous reputation hit they'd take from building a blatant back-door into their systems.
Well, they are moving forward on the VPN licensing.
Why not, in their view, limit access to “dangerous” computers?
Windows 11 will record everything you do and look at, and upload it to Microsoft.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Well you will have missed the updates to it then
So
You may not keep your blameless driving record BigG if you haven't kept up with the latest Code recommendations
How many drivers do you think read the code
I am aware of most of the important changes especially in regard to cyclists and pedestrians which I give way to and act courtesly
How many drivers do you think read the code? Probably about 10% since their theory test, if that and there in summary is why we still have so many accidents
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Well you will have missed the updates to it then
So
You may not keep your blameless driving record BigG if you haven't kept up with the latest Code recommendations
How many drivers do you think read the code
I am aware of most of the important changes especially in regard to cyclists and pedestrians which I give way to and act courtesly
How many drivers do you think read the code? Probably about 10% since their theory test, if that dnd there in summary is why we have so many accidents
Absurd.
If anything, there will be a strongly inverse correlation between how recently someone has read the Code and the risk of an accident.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
It always will be no matter you want a highway code as long as 'war and peace'
I have never read the highway code.
Well I would start now if you are drive or cycle or ride on main roads
I last read it in 1961 and I have no intention of reading it now
Well you will have missed the updates to it then
So
You may not keep your blameless driving record BigG if you haven't kept up with the latest Code recommendations
How many drivers do you think read the code
I am aware of most of the important changes especially in regard to cyclists and pedestrians which I give way to and act courtesly
How many drivers do you think read the code? Probably about 10% since their theory test, if that and there in summary is why we still have so many accidents
I've been driving for over 30 years and not a single fault accident, I am the best.
I started driving on the road (illegally) when I was 12 so I've been driving for 46 years. In that time I reckon I have written off 10+ cars and 10+ motorbikes in crashes from driving too fast. I have never hit another car or person. The crown is mine.
I've written off one car (other guy was overtaking and hit me head on).
The less said about the circa 20 odd speeding points I picked up between 2005 and 2012.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
I've been driving for over 30 years and not a single fault accident, I am the best.
I started driving on the road (illegally) when I was 12 so I've been driving for 46 years. In that time I reckon I have written off 10+ cars and 10+ motorbikes in crashes from driving too fast. I have never hit another car or person. The crown is mine.
"The crown is mine."
Only because Leon is banned. He will have written off at least twenty cars mostly whilst also having sex with a Provencal nun or similar.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Sorry HYUFD. You are right and everyone else is wrong. This is yet another subject on which you are clearly the authority and I was foolish to doubt that. I trust you will let us know in due course when DVLA launches the new HYUFD-approved 10TB online version of the Highway Code Map of the UK complete with clickable bends and roundabout entry points and associated tables"
The Highway Code needs to be more detailed and lower speed limits set on many rural roads, it is hardly a very contentious point
I haven't read the highway code since 1961 when I took my test, since when I have driven tens of thousands of miles both here, across Europe, and in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa without needing to be told in a booklet how to take bends and at what speeds
Ultimately you cannot teach driving in a book, but by experience, awareness of your surroundings, anticipation and courtesy to other road users
That is my highway code and as I haven't had an accident or any road conviction it speaks for itself
When I went on my speed awareness course last year. First speeding ticket in a million and a half miles it was surprising how much new stuff since 1979 I was unaware of.
I've been driving for over 30 years and not a single fault accident, I am the best.
I started driving on the road (illegally) when I was 12 so I've been driving for 46 years. In that time I reckon I have written off 10+ cars and 10+ motorbikes in crashes from driving too fast. I have never hit another car or person. The crown is mine.
"The crown is mine."
Only because Leon is banned. He will have written off at least twenty cars mostly whilst also having sex with a Provencal nun or similar.
I don't think he was familiar with Provençal nuns. They had no Thais for him.
The best place to drive: A Motorway with light traffic and a 50 mph speed limit. No hassle whatsoever.
i find driving at 50 mph on motorways so tedious my focus wanders
Ditto. I hate motorway driving. I loose concentration. I struggle over 150 miles. I love driving around the countryside.
I do the 8 hour run to Aberdeen from Lincolnshire every Monday night and back again every Thursday. I have come to really like that time as I am forced to relax - listen to books, podcasts and music - which I can never do at home when there are always a million and one other calls on my time. Once I realised (fairly quickly) that speeding and agressive manouveres wouldn't actually save me much time, I just use cruise control and enjoy the ride.
I'm envious. I just can't do that. I can't keep my concentration on a multi lane road.
Unlike many I also don't get road rage. I find it odd people get angry in cars.
I do like driving though. I have 3 cars. A top of the range Sportage for long journeys. It pretty much drives itself. A bottom of the range Picanto for local trips and a Cobra 427 for fun..
Only the Sportage is suitable for motorways. The other two are dire.
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
Surely that's madness. The guts of a high end gaming rig today is probably going to be close to what's in a mid-range phone in 10 years time.
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
The porn industry, at least in its traditional forms, is dead already. The Rest is Entertainment:-
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Reasonable doubt" is pretty subjective too - I remember a judge getting quite exasperated when a jury asked what it meant.
Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
Not when the driver is trying to determine whether their actions on the road could be careless or not and they need to amend them.
Also you need to follow the case law to determine precisely what you need to do to drive legally subject to the circumstances
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
it means not driving like a muppet. When you drive you see many drivers driving like muppets. Don't do what they do.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Reasonable doubt" is pretty subjective too. Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
On the law though a jury had more reason for the former than the latter verdict, even if both were debateable
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
Surely that's madness. The guts of a high end gaming rig today is probably going to be close to what's in a mid-range phone in 10 years time.
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
The porn industry, at least in its traditional forms, is dead already. The Rest is Entertainment:-
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
it means not driving like a muppet. When you drive you see many drivers driving like muppets. Don't do what they do.
What is 'not driving like a muppet?' A muppet could be driving at the speed limit, not drunk, have no drugs in his system and not be on his phone and not clearly in breach of the highway code but still be charged with careless driving and you would need to follow the case verdict to see if the muppet was convicted and you needed to avoid similar actions
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Reasonable doubt" is pretty subjective too - I remember a judge getting quite exasperated when a jury asked what it meant.
Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
Interesting to have a driving related discussion where you and I completely agree.
We do not need a table of rules and data for every circumstance.
We do need people to pay attention and not be dicks.
Very interesting by Jimmy Carr here. Fascinating insights on young men, isolation in society, identity and personal purpose.
I'm not sure I've heard these expressed as well anywhere else. Two conclusions: (1) he's very intelligent, and, (2) it feels like he's ever so slightly politicising now, possibly because he's concerned and feels he has to.
Carr is extremely intelligent and well read. Not just the Cambridge degree, but he has done a lot of podcasts and is able to display breath of knowledge and understanding. For me at a surface level comedy doesn't do justice to actually how smart he is, 100 knob gags and your fat / ugly munter seems like shooting fish in a barrel for him (although keeping that going year after year with new material is impressive, most comedians like musicians have a few greatest hits).
In the past couple of years he has started filming his audience work and putting it on YouTube. Again its dominated by your a moron / your a slag etc, but in there he drops 2-3 serious moments and they are often really interesting.
His explanation is that he is genuinely very curious individual and driven to work hard. So he does an insane number of gigs, but that requires huge amount of travel and sitting around, so he is constantly educating himself via books, podcasts, etc.
I am a huge fan of Jimmy Carr, I've been to his live shows dozens of times, yet people still heckle him, his responses are a thing of beauty.
He said he learned a lot about the human condition from working at Shell's marketing department, and also a lot due to the breakdown in his relationship with his father. I don't think they've spoken for over 20 years.
Can you imagine a Cambridge educated guy making knob jokes and innuendos?
I am another massive Jimmy Carr fan but only a recent convert. I find his stand up amusing but can take it or leave it But I love his interviews and commentaries. Obviously on part because I agree with so much he says but more because he is so articulate and able to crystallise an argument. There is a huge amount of humanity and good will underpinning it all.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
it means not driving like a muppet. When you drive you see many drivers driving like muppets. Don't do what they do.
What is 'not driving like a muppet?' A muppet could be driving at the speed limit, not drunk, have no drugs in his system and not be on his phone and not clearly in breach of the highway code but still be charged with careless driving and you would need to follow the case verdict to see if the muppet was convicted and you needed to avoid similar actions
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
Surely that's madness. The guts of a high end gaming rig today is probably going to be close to what's in a mid-range phone in 10 years time.
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
The porn industry, at least in its traditional forms, is dead already. The Rest is Entertainment:-
We complain about why we no longer have serious deep-dive interview anymore on television, or interesting conversations to really explore politicians views anymore, rather than going for the quick soundbite.
This thread, and people's behaviour shows why: the cheap gag gets 7+ likes. The more insightful discussion on the subject gets none, or at best one like.
So, MSM responds to that. Cheap, facile and superficial is what the public want.
I've given you a like for pointing out how funny people thought my joke was.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
it means not driving like a muppet. When you drive you see many drivers driving like muppets. Don't do what they do.
What is 'not driving like a muppet?' A muppet could be driving at the speed limit, not drunk, have no drugs in his system and not be on his phone and not clearly in breach of the highway code but still be charged with careless driving and you would need to follow the case verdict to see if the muppet was convicted and you needed to avoid similar actions
It's also known as driving with care.
What is 'driving with care' and 'driving not with care'? Again, if no drink, drugs or phone or speeding involved will often be open to judge or jury interpretation if not an act expressly forbidden by the highway code
As we are talking about driving, stopping distances, and unexpected hazards, this is an excellent 10 minute video on the subject from Ashley Neal, out today.
I see Musk is once again being living empirical proof that money doesn't make you happy.
I still don’t know why Starmer shifted Lammy from Foreign Sec as he clearly has a relationship with Vance (as exemplified by the below article) which is important - whatever anyone thinks of Vance he is VP of the US and it could be very useful to have that relationship. I cannot see any benefit Cooper has brought to the role.
Very interesting by Jimmy Carr here. Fascinating insights on young men, isolation in society, identity and personal purpose.
I'm not sure I've heard these expressed as well anywhere else. Two conclusions: (1) he's very intelligent, and, (2) it feels like he's ever so slightly politicising now, possibly because he's concerned and feels he has to.
Carr is extremely intelligent and well read. Not just the Cambridge degree, but he has done a lot of podcasts and is able to display breath of knowledge and understanding. For me at a surface level comedy doesn't do justice to actually how smart he is, 100 knob gags and your fat / ugly munter seems like shooting fish in a barrel for him (although keeping that going year after year with new material is impressive, most comedians like musicians have a few greatest hits).
In the past couple of years he has started filming his audience work and putting it on YouTube. Again its dominated by your a moron / your a slag etc, but in there he drops 2-3 serious moments and they are often really interesting.
His explanation is that he is genuinely very curious individual and driven to work hard. So he does an insane number of gigs, but that requires huge amount of travel and sitting around, so he is constantly educating himself via books, podcasts, etc.
I am a huge fan of Jimmy Carr, I've been to his live shows dozens of times, yet people still heckle him, his responses are a thing of beauty.
He said he learned a lot about the human condition from working at Shell's marketing department, and also a lot due to the breakdown in his relationship with his father. I don't think they've spoken for over 20 years.
Can you imagine a Cambridge educated guy making knob jokes and innuendos?
I am another massive Jimmy Carr fan but only a recent convert. I find his stand up amusing but can take it or leave it But I love his interviews and commentaries. Obviously on part because I agree with so much he says but more because he is so articulate and able to crystallise an argument. There is a huge amount of humanity and good will underpinning it all.
I saw Carr at Up the Creek in Greenwich many years ago before he became a fixture on the TV. And he still uses some of those jokes from way back then. Notice no one has actually mentioned what these fascinating insights on young men were.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Reasonable doubt" is pretty subjective too - I remember a judge getting quite exasperated when a jury asked what it meant.
Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
Interesting to have a driving related discussion where you and I completely agree.
We do not need a table of rules and data for every circumstance.
We do need people to pay attention and not be dicks.
There is definitely a disconnect between careless/dangerous driving prosecutions and convictions though. Assuming that the HW code is sensible (I think it is), we do need a public information campaign making it clear to jurors and road users what the minimum standard is.
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
So?
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
"Reasonable doubt" is pretty subjective too - I remember a judge getting quite exasperated when a jury asked what it meant.
Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
Interesting to have a driving related discussion where you and I completely agree.
We do not need a table of rules and data for every circumstance.
We do need people to pay attention and not be dicks.
There is definitely a disconnect between careless/dangerous driving prosecutions and convictions though. Assuming that the HW code is sensible (I think it is), we do need a public information campaign making it clear to jurors and road users what the minimum standard is.
Not naming anyone...
Yes but as I have pointed out in some cases the HW code is vague on what the minimum standard is eg how much to slow down when approaching a bend or in heavy rain
This argument over Grok can produce dodgy images....this same week an Israeli company open sourced a state of the art text to video model, but not as usual just the weights of the model, the whole system, training code, etc. So anybody can take off guardrails and fine tune and even runs on a (higher end) macbook. Its already been widely adopted in cloud system. The reality is with particular text to image, there is no moat, no super secret special sauce. Can't put the genie back in the box.
Agreed, there's no route back from here. There have been open source T2I models for quite some time, and now T2V ones too, and people inevitably train them to produce specific images. There's not much the authorities can do. The models are there and people can run them locally on fairly common hardware.
Same with deepfakes. T2I and I2V models are so good now it's possible to produce videos of famous people that are very difficult to distinguish from reality. No more odd eyes and nine fingers. That genie is well out if its particular box, too.
Ofcom can run around banning sites that host these models in the cloud, but there's nothing they can do about local hosting. Anyone with a gaming PC or a high end Mac can produce all the dodgy images they want.
There have already been suggestions of a licensing system for computers over a certain capacity.
Don’t think they won’t go there.
Surely that's madness. The guts of a high end gaming rig today is probably going to be close to what's in a mid-range phone in 10 years time.
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
The porn industry, at least in its traditional forms, is dead already. The Rest is Entertainment:-
The idea that the Highway Code needs to be made as big as the tax code, in order to cover every possible eventuality, all to stop lawyers lawyering, is one of the most preposterous arguments I’ve read on here. I hope that it’s heroic trolling
Fine, expect the law on careless driving causing injury or death then to continue to be often decided by what the judge, jury or magistrate of the day decides it in court to mean then
Literally the very purpose of our legal system.
What's the problem?
You have to keenly follow the significant cases then to see what the law actually is in terms of interpretation of the statutory offence of driving carelessly if no drink or drugs or mobile phone use involved and the Highway Code is not very specific about the action
no you don't, you just have to take care while driving
Yes but what is 'taking care' is a subjective opinion beyond not drink or drug driving, not using your phone when driving and not driving over the speed limit and not clearly breaching the terms of the Highway Code.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
it means not driving like a muppet. When you drive you see many drivers driving like muppets. Don't do what they do.
What is 'not driving like a muppet?' A muppet could be driving at the speed limit, not drunk, have no drugs in his system and not be on his phone and not clearly in breach of the highway code but still be charged with careless driving and you would need to follow the case verdict to see if the muppet was convicted and you needed to avoid similar actions
It's also known as driving with care.
What is 'driving with care' and 'driving not with care'? Again, if no drink, drugs or phone or speeding involved will often be open to judge or jury interpretation if not an act expressly forbidden by the highway code
I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept for you to grasp. Is there a particular aspect of your driving you are concerned about?
Comments
But so far there's no sign I can see of the IRGC or Artesh abandoning the regime. Until that changes I'm assuming it will survive, unfortunately.
Sounds as though a lot of the protestors may not judging from the reports on Iranian hospitals.
I'm sure we've all had journeys where you get home and can't remember much about what happened.
However, it seems clear infighting and sub-optimal ability have pretty much strangled Your Party at birth. It will help the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform (in that order) - I'm not sure it will do Lab much good (under the current leader at least)
It doesn't teach driving skills. For that go to Roadcraft.
'(7)A failure on the part of a person to observe a provision of the Highway Code shall not of itself render that person liable to criminal proceedings of any kind but any such failure may in any proceedings (whether civil or criminal, and including proceedings for an offence under the Traffic Acts, the M1Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981 or sections 18 to 23 of the M2Transport Act 1985) be relied upon by any party to the proceedings as tending to establish or negative any liability which is in question in those proceedings.'
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/38
Hopefully it will be ***** having a debilitating stroke but anything will do.
Last year the satnav took us a most extraordinary route into Boscastle. Like a bobsleigh run between high banks and hedges with grass growing along the centre of the "road". Popped out disconcertingly just above the village. Interesting, all the same.
1.5m gap applies to overtaking cyclists, not to oncoming cyclists
Of at a slight tangent,in amoungst the various ways in which this tech will act as massive disrupter, presumably it's about to kill the porn industry dead - once videos can be made that are indistinguishable from the "real thing", why bother with paying for girls to get their kit off on camera? And once that tech will run on a phone, why visit a pornsite, when you can have an app capable of creating every sort of depravity for you on demand?
And trying to legislate for guard rails will be going nowhere, because of the way open source variants will pop up sans guardrails, no matter how little the government likes the idea.
I can't say it's a vision of a future I find very appealing, but I fear it's going to happen whether I like it or not.
I would make two observations. First. If most immigrants are of working age, it's unlikely that GDP will do anything other than increase because of it. GDP per head could also increase. It would only not do this if Lump of Labour really isn't a fallacy. Total GDP matters for much public spending. For example you have mentioned you want more spending on defence. Total GDP drives that affordability.
Second observation. Governments up to this one have been very happy to allow high immigration, including after Brexit, which was partly sold on reduced immigration. The current government is actually reducing immigration. They won't be thanked for it. Based on this analysis they could also be damaging the economy as a result and creating a fiscal headache for themselves.
Would that suit?
What's the problem?
For what it’s worth, the tax issue is now over 13 years old. Is he to be forever defined by it? He addressed it openly, learned from it, and changed his approach. He also donates very substantial sums to charity, something he’s never made a point of advertising.
In reality, most people with significant incomes will take advice on how to manage their tax affairs efficiently. So would you.
Personally, having looked at growth rates over the last 20-30 years, I'm not convinced of the link; I suspect it's much more nuanced to skilled workers in particular sectors at particular times.
"Don't drive dangerously" is moral, but you can't encode it in law.
"Don't download pictures of people and turn them into porn" is moral, but what Ken Shabby does in his basement on his laptop is probably impossible to police. (What probably is enforceable is doing it in public. If you want to be the World's Town Square, you can't have the nastiest sort of sex shop with an outdoor licence... you just can't.)
As long as there is a competitive advantage in working in the gap between legal and moral, it's not easy to see what to do.
This thread, and people's behaviour shows why: the cheap gag gets 7+ likes. The more insightful discussion on the subject gets none, or at best one like.
So, MSM responds to that. Cheap, facile and superficial is what the public want.
Though Labour and HYUFD are keen to abolish them.
That usually attracts a lot of comments.
Real progress, aka sustainable profitability is where productivity is built on a depth of skills and quality infrastructure.
We have been foolishly distracted by immigration.
The Highway Code is a more interesting read than much of this thread.
Rising population levels need infrastructure growth to keep up, with both up front costs and long term investment costs on that.
Models always seem to count the taxes for migrants, but have no infrastructure costs assigned.
That is either a broken model that will not see the figure come true as the costs will be paid, or a recipe for disaster as the costs are not paid so infrastructure collapses.
I am aware of most of the important changes especially in regard to cyclists and pedestrians which I give way to and act courtesly
If anything, there will be a strongly inverse correlation between how recently someone has read the Code and the risk of an accident.
The less said about the circa 20 odd speeding points I picked up between 2005 and 2012.
So what judges and juries decide it to be needs to be followed in other driving cases charged with careless driving
Only because Leon is banned. He will have written off at least twenty cars mostly whilst also having sex with a Provencal nun or similar.
Subjectivity is important and valuable, not problematic.
Driving subject to the circumstances is precisely what you are supposed to do.
Juries determining if people have acted reasonably or not are doing what they are supposed to do.
Unlike many I also don't get road rage. I find it odd people get angry in cars.
I do like driving though. I have 3 cars. A top of the range Sportage for long journeys. It pretty much drives itself. A bottom of the range Picanto for local trips and a Cobra 427 for fun..
Only the Sportage is suitable for motorways. The other two are dire.
What Do Nigel Farage & Pornstars Have In Common?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMscjlfGTDQ
Juries make weird decisions, whether it's this guy hitting the cyclists head on or that Labour councillor. But it's the least worst system IMO.
Also you need to follow the case law to determine precisely what you need to do to drive legally subject to the circumstances
We do not need a table of rules and data for every circumstance.
We do need people to pay attention and not be dicks.
Driving Fail | Poor Weather
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phTIDMDNh3c
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/10/ai-generated-sexualised-images-x-jd-vance-grok
Not naming anyone...