otherwise much earlier he would have said something like “ooops, that’s not what i meant”

TJ? Admit he is wrong?

So half that for a premature death by pollution? so average out around a million?

Hmmm… so if my old man dies of lung cancer who should I send the bill for £1 million to then? Sorry TJ but I don’t agree with you on this point. An RTA fatality can involve ambulances, fire crews, helicopters, lengthy hospital stays, road closures, large amounts of damage, fatal accident enquiries and so on.

Somebody popping off with a respiratory infection won’t involve any of that, except maybe a hospital stay.

You just don’t want to face up to how expensive wasteful and harmful the car addiction is

Yeah, right. Actually the Lancaster link showed that owning a car may confer 2 kinds of health benefits, which increase longevity, so having a car increases lifespan, those folks not owning cars die early and cost us billions!!! 🙄

linky

Driving makes you fat.

linky

And cycling makes you live longer

Not if one of the car driving grannies of death runs you over 😀

So, if you drive and cycle you get fat and live longer?

Owners and those with car access were
more likely to be male, to be married or
cohabiting, less likely to be living in a oneperson
household, and were younger than
were renters. They also had greater monthly
household incomes adjusted for family size,
were less likely to receive all household
income from benefits, and were more likely
to be in non-manual social classes. Given
these characteristics, which are all positively
associated with health, it is not surprising
that those living in owner occupied homes
and with car access had significantly better
health on all eight health measures.

yes it proved if you were rich you live longer.What causal relationship did it suggest or demonstrate for cars helping you live longer besides wealth?

The overall conclusion of our study is that it
is not that owner occupation or access to
private transport have any intrinsic benefits
for health, but that public renting and
public transport as currently configured in
the UK can have health damaging effects
through both physical and psychosocial
pathways

I think bith you and TJ have misrepresented here tbh. Yours was much more reasonable and interesting though and helped the debate along

So, if you drive and cycle you get fat and live longer?

You can do both at the same time? My, that’s quite a trick.

P.S Cycling’s good for the economy.

linky

This bit

Having money and a good job enhance
one’s ability to gain access to socially
desirable assets such as owner occupation
and access to private transport. These
assets may then confer two types of health
promoting benefits; psychosocial ones
relating to control, status, security etc., and
more practical ones relating to protection
from health damaging features of the
immediate environment such as damp or
cold in the home

The question was answered by the first reply – how on earth is there 6 pages of this rubbish?

The question was answered by the first reply – how on earth is there 6 pages of this rubbish?

Are you new here? 😉

how on earth is there 6 pages of this rubbish?

It’s only about 3 pages if you take out the bits where people have just quoted each other. Three pages of crap is about average I’d say.

It’s only about 3 pages if you take out the bits where people have just quoted each other. Three pages of crap is about average I’d say.

Yeah, but the other three pages of quoting is also crap, because they were oringinally crap, they’re just quoted crap. So really six pages of crap is what we’ve got.

Either way though it’s nothing out of the ordinary!

It’s only about 3 pages if you take out the bits where people have just quoted each other. Three pages of crap is about average I’d say.

Yeah, but the other three pages of quoting is also crap, because they were oringinally crap, they’re just quoted crap. So really six pages of crap is what we’ve got.

Either way though it’s nothing out of the ordinary!

I disagree the quoting was useful

I get your point CM that wealth allows you to buy things that confer advantages health wise. I am not convinced that the powerful psychoscial beneftits of car wonership above can actually be quantified into anything meanigful tbh

You can do both at the same time? My, that’s quite a trick.

You’d be surprised at the kinds of tricks people in here try

powerful psychoscial beneftits of car wonership above can actually be quantified into anything meanigful tbh

but it does seem to indicate that they result in health benefits and longevity

but it does seem to indicate that they result in health benefits and longevity

Do you really think so? I suggest you re-read it.

on refelection I would say the reverse actually [tempted to leave it at that 😉

Poor housing reduces your life span rather than good housing increases it.
Again the “benefits ” of car ownership seem somewhat wolly and I cannot see anything particualrily casual there tbh. they dont claim it either tbh hence “may”

Poor housing reduces your life span rather than good housing increases it.

Well, much of a muchness when you compare one to the other, I’m happy with either.

Again the “benefits ” of car ownership seem somewhat wolly and I cannot see anything particualrily casual there tbh. they dont claim it either tbh hence “may

Yup, pretty much the nature of Social Science research, proof is a rare thing. But a plausible underlying story might be that if life is shit, then having access to a car which gets you out of it once in a while has positive health benefits.

So shall we leave it at that then?

Car owners are nice clean healthy wealthy people.
Non owners are impoverished and doomed to premature death.

😀

Non owners are impoverished and doomed to premature death.

– which costs the economy billions

– which costs the economy billions

….but is paid for by car owners who have all the money! (And the non-owners are all povo or dead).

I might start a workhouse for non-drivers in my barn. Give them a bit of porridge and stuff, let them clean and wax my motors every day. Might chuck in a bail of straw to sleep on.

how on earth is there 6 pages of this rubbish?

Much of it was really a means for TJ to assuage his guilt of many years as a polluter of the atmosphere.

I might start a workhouse for non-drivers in my barn. Give them a bit of porridge and stuff, let them clean and wax my motors every day. Might chuck in a bail of straw to sleep on

Please don’t leave when you go back to work 🙂

GrahamS – Member

Where’s my breakdown of your fabled £1m cost per RTA death please?

Well… “Article 2 – A valuation of road accidents and casualties in Great Britain in 2009 data tables” from the DfT puts the annual cost of all road fatalities as £3,680 million and there were 2,222 people killed in road accidents in 2009 – so that would put the official DfT figure at £1.6 million per fatality.

Incidentally, the same article puts the cost of all road accidents in 2009 at £15,820 million – which is a fair chunk of that Fuel Duty revenue!

Errr, the keyword ‘breakdown’. That links to a five line xls table that has summary costs in it. I want to know:

1. What the net costs are (i.e. after netting off the benefits)
2. What the incremental costs are (not the theroetical maxiums pretending services need to be purchased for every incident when in fact they are sunk costs)

I simply don’t believe the numbers are anything other than guesswork and are heavily weighted to make the Govts point. Govts talk bowlox all the time and can’t be trusted to provide meaningful data.

You lot should know that, you’ll be shouting ‘speed kills next’ 🙂

speed does kill.

Point of order, it’s rapid deceleration that kills 😉

so does no speed. In fact it is more commonly the transition from speed to no speed which is the killiest

Point of order, it’s rapid deceleration that kills

and rapid acceleration too

we could get very pedantic on this one

Just for a change 🙂

One man’s pedantry is another man’s essential detail….

we could get very pedantic on this one

see, you say that, but I think, in reality, you lack the skillz

the motivation, but nice goad.

ok, one more try…

the motivation, but nice goad.

Thanks, you can be a gonad too.

There is actually some decent research on the stress. Car commuters are more stressed than cycle or public transport commuter – significantly so.

How was this quantified? Were people who drove generally in higher paid, more stressful jobs with greater responsibility? Just a thought….

Anyway, I’d say I was least stressed when I drive to work compared to riding or public transport, and here’s why:

1) Nice warm (or cool, as required) car, radio, leave when I want, return when I want.

2) Public transport now impossible as the bus has been rerouted. If I wanted to get to work by public transport I’d now be very stressed, as I wouldn’t get there

3) By bike, usually fine, but occasionally one near death experience (they make trucks VERY big down here), and usual fights for space at traffic islands. Also, to avoid the main roads I’m left with two crossings across main roads, which at commuting time take about 5 minutes of standing watching traffic. In the car, I can use the main road without fear of being squashed by a road train.

So despite the fact I usually cycle to work, I’m definitely less stressed when I drive. As for public transport, unilateral changes to routing and timetabling make reliance on it a somewhat tedious exercise.

I might start a workhouse for non-drivers in my barn. Give them a bit of porridge and stuff, let them clean and wax my motors every day. Might chuck in a bail of straw to sleep on.

Gissa job Mista!

Peyote <non-car owner>

Errr, the keyword ‘breakdown’. That links to a five line xls table that has summary costs in it. I want to know:

Well you have the same Google I do – if the official Dept of Transport figures aren’t good enough then feel free to dig deeper and I’m sure you’ll find more detailed breakdowns from the DfT and the Audit Office.

Or show me some figures that say it is actually much cheaper than that.

1. What the net costs are (i.e. after netting off the benefits)

I’m not sure there are any “benefits” in a fatal RTA??

2. What the incremental costs are (not the theroetical maxiums pretending services need to be purchased for every incident when in fact they are sunk costs)

They would only be “sunk costs” because experience determines the overall level of emergency cover they require. Just because they are paid for up front doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be substantially cheaper if there were no RTAs.

(i.e. an area may have 100 ambulances covering it. But that doesn’t mean that calling an ambulance to an RTA is free, because without any RTAs they might only need 70 ambulances for that area).

What tyres for crossing narrow bridges and avoiding angry elderly ladies?

GrahamS – Member

Errr, the keyword ‘breakdown’. That links to a five line xls table that has summary costs in it. I want to know:

Well you have the same Google I do – if the official Dept of Transport figures aren’t good enough then feel free to dig deeper and I’m sure you’ll find more detailed breakdowns from the DfT and the Audit Office.

Or show me some figures that say it is actually much cheaper than that.

Errr, shant. If you blithely quote, you substantiate. I’m not saying they are lower or higher, I just don’t believe they are not largely made up. ‘Official’ cuts no ice. The ‘official’ dossier on WMD’s strike a chord?

1. What the net costs are (i.e. after netting off the benefits)

I’m not sure there are any “benefits” in a fatal RTA??

🙂 I think that was the direct/indirect benefits of the transport industry not the RTA.

2. What the incremental costs are (not the theroetical maxiums pretending services need to be purchased for every incident when in fact they are sunk costs)

They would only be “sunk costs” because experience determines the overall level of emergency cover they require. Just because they are paid for up front doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be substantially cheaper if there were no RTAs.

(i.e. an area may have 100 ambulances covering it. But that doesn’t mean that calling an ambulance to an RTA is free, because without any RTAs they might only need 70 ambulances for that area).

No it doesn’t and it also doesn’t mean total service provision costs/number of RTA’s. We don’t know what costs are included in the numbers (incremental, direct, totals etc) as we don’t have a breakdown hence the fabled £1m is largely made up though officially so that’s alright.

Best not quote numbers if you’re not too sure of them. The ‘it must be true cos so and so says so’ defence is a bit lame even in Primary school 🙂

Errr, shant. If you blithely quote, you substantiate… Best not quote numbers if you’re not too sure of them.

I’m sure those are the numbers published by the Department Of Transport and that seems like pretty good substantiation to me.

The table I linked was just the figures, the full thing is Article 2 of this document, which explains a little more summary detail about the figures and cites the methodology used:
Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2009: Articles 1-7 (PDF 672 kb)

Feel free to go as deep into that rabbit hole as you like.