Drivers and their problems

David9694 wrote:

Campaigners enlist highways expert to fight seafront changes

"The SOS group is to now submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request"

"This is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship." - welcome to our world, guys.

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/campaigners-enlist-hig...

Quote:

The news comes as North Somerset MP Liam Fox announced he will meet campaigners to see the work carried out so far later this month. Dr Fox is due to meet campaigners at the site on November 26, where he will walk the route.

Liam Fox can't see a bandwagon without attempting to jump on it 

I don't understand why a 30 mph limit and having to wiggle between the parked cars to get onto the seafront is better than a 20mph limit and a cycle lane.

Oh yeah - "cyclists" 

Just keep driving!  The hated cycle scheme will be sub-aqua in a generation!

David9694 wrote:

non-story alert here, but welcome to our world, guys. I admire the courage of whoever went out of their way to intervene here as this article would follow as surely as a burnt mouth from biting into an apple pie too fast: 

'Humiliated' pensioners on mobility scooters turned away from Lincoln McDonald's drive-thru

"I felt as if I was discriminated against because of my age"

"I am 71 and I have had a stroke. That’s why I find it difficult standing and walking around sometimes." 

"I felt really upset about it all. I have got a license plate on the front of mine. It’s all registered."

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/humiliated-pensione...

If i were the individuals here, I would take a different approach (and I'm banking it for when I end up on a scooter cos a dickhead driver has wiped me out)

I'd be demanding the name of the name of the insurers and the wording of the exclusion.

Next steps depend on the response (insurers have more options to go after them) but either way, this is questionable legally.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't this sad, but complaints like this are my hobby. Gonna have to change my name to CyclingKaren.

David9694 wrote:

Demand whatever you like. You must want that cheeseburger real bad. 

The menu is dire and beside the point (exception made for cheese bites when I am pissed)

What gets my goat is firms making up rules under false risks. Whether lazy or discrimination, when firms do this you cannot rely on them to get the big stuff right. Discrimination against protected characteristics, using data protection to be lazy, denying service because of an incorrect application of anti-money laundering etc, well worth my time in challenge.

In this case, it appears people with a protected characteristic are denied a service, because they have a protected characteristic. It may be OK, but there would need to be a rigorous and documented thought process underpinning it. I would bet my next pay packet there isn't.

I'm not about to suggest that cycling becomes a protected characteristic... but when firms start thinking rather blindly denying, the world will be better for cyclists.

David9694 wrote:

It's one of those "why can't scooters use the drive-thru?", which when there's a shunt will turn into "why was there a scooter in the drive thru?"

Not sure what liability would fall on the landowner there. 

In my view, because that's a risk anywhere yet scooters are not banned. However, in this case, a business has chosen to deny a service to someone because if a protected characteristic. Unless they are saying that they are offering a service that is more dangerous than other similar environments which in it self is a concern.

Personally I think it's a risky position to take under the Equality Act. I might be wrong, but it's not unreasonable to ask for their consideration under the Equality Act.

David9694 wrote:

We were very badly let down 5 years ago when it came to activating a funeral plan my parents had taken out.

These days, you're on you're own with this stuff  - the old Equal Opportunties Commission seemed to be little more than a vaguely sympathetic a call centre.

The funeral company were evasive when I complained.  I'd have had to have gone to court to get anywhere, the moment had passed and who's got the time? 

The potential disability discrimination problem here is not the drive thru, but that for whatever reason they didn't/couldn't enter the restaurant for service. 

 

I'm really sorry to hear this.
It might not come as much comfort now, but the dire approach of Funeral Plan companies towards consumers means that Funeral Plans have recently been brought under new regulations. Consumers going forward are more likely to be treated better and I'm pretty sure people can go to the ombudsman service now as an alternative to court.. It probably means some Funeral Plan providers will go bust... though to be honest, they probably should. I have some familiarity with the change in rules and what went before... I can only imagine what you went through at a horrible time.

We probably have differing views on this, but I'm firmly in the camp that business showing a poor understanding of protection laws means that their practices are poor for everyone... and it benefits everyone to challenge them.

David9694 wrote:

Tesco shoppers threaten boycott as 28p electric car charge branded 'disgusting'

It was previously free to charge electric vehicles at the supermarket

but my free charge-up

Another shopper said: "I was using the free charging as an incentive to shop at Tesco, the only supermarket around my way to offer free charging. Now I'll spread my wings a bit and shop at other places too."

https://www.devonlive.com/news/uk-world-news/tesco-shoppers-threaten-boy...

I wonder: did those people expect free petrol from Tesco when they were shopping there (before they bought an EV)? If not, why do they expect free charging?

Free charging, it's like free parking - it's a basic human right!  Or at least, I'll boycott them that don't provide it.  (Unfortunately I'm not able to extend this analogy to McDonalds and drive-thrus as it'd be a cold day in hell that would see me cycling there specially).

A perspective from a neighbouring country shows that - if there are alternatives - even free parking just ain't that big of a draw.  So presumably with a slight change in direction now we could avoid having to take up sizeable chunks of the streetscape / trip up pedestrians by putting charging facilities everywhere.

Indeed.  Several good articles knocking around on this one, Carlton Reid said it best IMO: "where cycling and driving are convenient, Brits drive".  More detail argues that even in Stevenage / Milton Keynes (the most often-cited new towns with cycling provision) things were stacked in favour of the car from the get-go.

In the UK the genie is more than half a century gone from the bottle there is often very substantial resistance to any change.  A lot of people see changes affecting their car travel as an existential threat.  So much so that even making something else available and making driving both more expensive and slightly less convenient won't cause most people to change.

I do believe lot of people can be persuaded to change - and will find that it didn't ruin their life in retrospect, rather the opposite.  That's because it has happened both elsewhere and here.

Yes - if only more people had cars (or there were more roads into town) that would restore their trade, surely? 🤔

Never mind, there are still a few people with cargo bikes about to make up for others who are no longer popping in for an entire pig or a side of beef.

Does make me think of how sometimes the time AND place must be right (minds open, basically):

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/the-demonstration-cycle-ro...

Bay Em Vay not bee em vee

Try for the proper pronunciation of VW while we are at it.

David9694 wrote:

I think we'd all rather live in a world where trams were a thing then not.

Seems a bit wasteful to me. Either install them, or not, but make your mind up.

To save the city we had to destroy it... Shurely we all know the only way to solve Bath's traffic woes is with bigger, electric cars?  Or start removing cycle facilites, pavements and opening up all possible routes to ease the congestion?  Or make the cars self-aware? (That might do it but maybe via them running over all the drivers though).

I don't know whether Edinburgh's initial tram plan was complete utopian fantasy or just wildly optimistic financially.  It was at least trams (plural) rather than the single model railway version we have now.  Equally I don't know whether the outcome would have been brilliant had the council actually taken advice / employed suitable folks to actually manage this.  What I can say is that the Dutch - who know a thing or two - recommend that you avoid mixing cycling and trams and manage interactions carefully.  Edinburgh certainly didn't, with serious injuries and a fatality as the result.

I like public transport and trams can sometimes be a useful part of that, but the claim "avoiding a tram rail is no harder than not cycling into a kerb" is so obviously ludicrous and demonstrably false that I find it difficult to take anything Mr Tram Fantasist says seriously if that's the sort of nonsense he spouts. 

There are things that can be done to mitigate the risks associated with tram tracks for cyclists, but if your starting point is that there is no danger and you ignore the issue, then you are undoubtedly going to encounter problems.

There have been well documented problems in both Edinburgh (http://www.spokes.org.uk/documents/public-transport/tram/) and Sheffield (https://www.cyclesheffield.org.uk/2015/11/08/tram-crash-cyclist-tram-acc...)