[Closed] Angry commuter - justified??

OP-IMO: You had right of way, should have ripped her wing mirror off, and dropped it on her lap, she sounds like a right Bag.

a million pounds a death.

You managed to put a price on death? How did you arrive at that monetary value?

Damage to buildings.

I have to send some money to Swansea every year to drive my car.

No you don't. You could choose to drive one of the Band A cars which have emissions of less than 100g/km and pay zero VED.

Or should they not be allowed on the road, since they don't pay "road tax" either?

I have to send some money to Swansea every year to drive my car.

Charlie - thats the generally accepted cost of a premature death - averaged out. 3000 ish a year - thats 3 billion. Then all the premature deaths from pollution related disease and stress and inactivity - so double or triple that.

Then all the costs of serious injuries - another few billion.

Then all the chronic illhealth - how much there?

Charlie - thats the generally accepted cost of a premature death - averaged out

How is this calculated? What is it based on? Whom does it cost?

Then all the premature deaths from pollution related disease and stress and inactivity

Cars don't cause stress and inactivity

I have to send some money to Swansea every year to drive my car. Exactly what bucket the gov puts that in or what they call it is completely irrelevant.

Actually when it comes down to it TJ, as a non car owner has a greater right to ask what his tax £ are doing for him being spent on roads seeing as he's excluded from things like motorways (which he helps to pay for).

I've had this on my commute in one particular place - it's quite a long one way stretch and can be hard to see traffic at either end. Generally I adopt primary just before entering the narrow bit. It helps cars to see you and stops people from overtaking. Personally I'll hold primary until forced to do otherwise, but wouldn't play chicken with a motor vehicle 🙂

WRT the tax argument, generally people pay what they're asked to. The glaring omission from the figures above is exactly how much it costs to [i]build[/i] roads. Particularly relevant since this is an mtb forum I'd say.

Actually when it comes down to it TJ, as a non car owner has a greater right to ask what his tax £ are doing for him being spent on roads seeing as he's excluded from things like motorways (which he helps to pay for)

sure but it appears he's happy for people to move the stuff he buys, on those very motorways. After all, they won't let me go and play on those tanks and aeroplanes which I went and bought. Anyway ultimately, the amount of direct tax TJ pays over his life, won't buy much of anything at all.

"primary"?

"primary"?

Given the context

Generally I adopt primary just before entering the narrow bit.

I'd assume it means much the same as missionary

Blue Peugot, and angry old lady,

Dont you think that sums it all up, everyone should know that peugot owners have a bigger chip on their shoulders than german car drivers.

Theres a nice bridge in LLanwrst , nerar penmachno, single track bridge with a serious hump in the middle, oh what fun it is on a sunny sunday afternoon watching as motorists cant reverse backwards, to let another car come towards them, sometimes quite heated arguments.

Then in chester the old dee bridge, the council have put an advanced stop line in front of the stop line for us cyclists, the road is not wide enough to overtake, but by mounting the pavement, and scaring tourist they do sometimes overtake, then suddenly see a large traffic light column in front of them in the middle of the pavement.

I pays me taxes I'll have you know

I'm constantly shocked by the pro-motoring comments of some people on here. I mean, I know this gwj72 person is a troll, but it still shocks me.

A while back my Granda (just turned 80) had another heart attack while driving. He's had about half a dozen heart attacks before, has reactions like a slug and drives everywhere faster than is safe. So he has this heart attack, goes straight over a roundabout, literally, and ploughs into a car, over a pavement and into a wall. Luckily, no one was hurt. About 1 minute before the heart attack, he told me he was doing 60 down one 30mph street, so he said he was glad it happened that bit later when he was going slower!

While talking about it with him, he said outright that he didn't care if he hurt other people, he was going to get another car and drive. Thankfully he had his licence taken away from him. But really, that was about 10yrs too late.

The tax paid by the motorist pays for the roads many times over. Until you start adding externals, the fuel duty alone covers it easily. But I don't mind you biking on them 😉

Public transport is a burden on every tax payer due to huge subsidy. You don't whine on them because it doesn't fit the anti-car agenda.

Adding externals suits you nicely, but its asynchronous. You conveniently don't include the additional input to the economy that many of these journeys add. Like tourism, employment and transport. When you add the net benefit of car travel, including direct motoring taxation and additional support to the economy - then your figures look like utter pish.

I pay my car tax (you can call it VED if you like) for the vehicles I chose to drive. I don't mind paying it. I think I should get a discount for the fact that 2 of the 3 are stationary at any time but I'm not going to campaign about it. For the record 2 of them are on v.low milage policies and have covered less than 2000m in 12 months. The other is for work, but due to working at home and using the train - I've only done 3000m in that. So I've probably polluted less than someone using a prius to commute every day. And because I'm keeping older cars on the road, I have had zero manufacturing impact on my conscious too.

Legally you had priority, common sensically and life preservationally might be a bit different though.

1) You had right of way.
2) If you are not sure of the right of way then its fair to assume that a fair proportion of car drivers will also not be sure enough to make the split second correct decision - play safe.
3) If you want to drive on the roads you probably need to learn not to get too wound up by drivers (the fact you are posting it here means you are).

Interestingly I made the opposite error of judgement with a car recently (I misjudged his speed and thought I would get through without him having to stop). I waved an apology and when he wound down his window and I apologised again and said "still, nobody died" I thought he was about to have a coronary.

Charlie - thats the generally accepted cost of a premature death - averaged out. 3000 ish a year - thats 3 billion. Then all the premature deaths from pollution related disease and stress and inactivity - so double or triple that.

3000 premature deaths a year directly from cars. More indirectly. A lot more.

A million pounds is the accepted cost of a premature death, 3000 of which are directly attibutable to cars and many more indirectly. No - not all pollution deaths - say 1/3 of them as thats about the % of pollution that comes from private cars. of course that will be an underestimate because most car pollution is in cities, most power station pollution is not.

Should have swapped phone numbers and give her a good seeing to as she has no action for 20 years, of course she will be moody. 😛

Hang on a minute. Seeing as nobody in the UK has ever died from pollution then the cost is zero. Even the greens figures say that at worst it may knock off 6 months of the life of those affected. And that's making an assumption that no other factors are in play (i.e they smoked, worked in a bad environment etc).

Pollution is bad thing and needs to be reduced. But putting the cost of lives which would have ended in a few months anyway at the motorist feet is plainly ridiculous.

I think you can make the numbers up anyway you choose and what ever you say to TJ, he'll argue this case until you either backdown or go away. Save your energies, ignore it as it's pure sophistry anyway.

BTW I though that £1m was the cost of an accidental death, y'know involving ambliances and the jaws of life n that.

gwj72 I know you are a daft troll but try to get it vaguely right. 9 months reduction in [i]average life expectancy for the whole population[/i] from pollution. 32 000 premature deaths a year from pollution.

A quick google gave.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4283295.stm

daft troll

[i]Public transport is a burden on every tax payer due to huge subsidy. You don't whine on them because it doesn't fit the anti-car agenda.[/i]

It keeps all those pesky poor people off the roads though, no? Means less queues for you. As indeed, does every person riding a bike. Less hold ups, less accidents, less pollution, less stress to the roads, less weight on the health system.

You're welcome.

The tax paid by the motorist pays for the roads many times over. Until you start adding externals, the fuel duty alone covers it easily. But I don't mind you biking on them

Well, I [i]do[/i] mind biking on them thanks, I'd rather they didn't exist and in their place we had a massive network of lovely singletrack 😉

TJ - I did see that. But when I see a report from the European commission with no attribution and statements like "the study suggests", I discount it has piffle.

Anyway, seeing as the vast majority of people killed on the road are motorists (not cyclists or pedestrians). Aren't we slowly solving our own problem 😀 And given that there are more tax paying motorists than none motorists in the population - aren't we paying the majority of the cost? 😀

daft troll

Why not just say troll?

or a stupid way or a witty way 🙂

or in a statistically flawed way? 🙂

Seeing as nobody in the UK has ever died from pollution then the cost is zero

Not actually true.

The exact same thing happened to me a few years ago apart from the drivers wing mirror got clipped (oops) he then did a uturn drove past me and got out of his car and waited in a layby at the top of the hill. When I got there I put my bike on the floor to talk to him he then proceeded to tell me how damaging his car could be bad for my health and I was lucky "bigger blokes than me might hit you" he was around 6ft i'm 5,8" I asked him if he fanced his chances he then drove off. This still makes me smile as I avoid violence like the plague usually.

[i]I was lucky "bigger blokes than me might hit you" he was around 6ft i'm 5,8"[/i]

😉

I once chased after a guy in his car after he overtook me on a blind corner. When I caught him he stopped and got out, I'm 5'11", he was about 5'2" and he looked as HARD AS NAILS!!!! You know the type. We had a chat and I was convinced he was going to start on me and kill me like a badger would. Thankfully we resolved the issue with discussion but he still wouldn't admit it was a stupid place to overtake me.

A million pounds is the accepted cost of a premature death

Can you explain this, instead of just repeating it?

CharlieMungus - Member

A million pounds is the accepted cost of a premature death

Can you explain this, instead of just repeating it?

Ditto... or does it mean [i]accepted by TJ[/i] 🙂

Well I've googled this if it helps.
[url] http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/422.pdf [/url]

The cost there is in american dollars and does seem to concentrate on people stiffing it at work but even in an inferior money, premature deaths seem to cost *significantly more* than a million pounds.

No, i said explain it!!

A quick google -

3000 deaths 8 billion audit commision
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/26/transport.world
1.6 million each road death - IAM
http://www.motortorque.com/news/auto-1006/road-safety-deaths-39cost-billions39-says-charity.asp
road accidents cost 18 billion a year 1.7 million a death, £200 000 a serious injury,
http://www.motortorque.com/news/auto-1011/39staggering39-cost-of-uk-road-deaths-revealed.asp

Edit - you want an explanation? Look to the audit office or IAM or Rospa - the sources for the various figures

Sorry TJ, I'm being a bit hard of thinking, It's still not clear how a premature death costs a million pounds.
please explain, these links are not clear

I want you to explain, not have to search through your references. Which so far seem to be related to RTAs rather than the general case

and these

The figure comes from adding up lost output and health care as well as the cost of pain and suffering to the families of the victim.

All I said was its the generally accepted figure - and it clearly is - or actually more than a million is. i suggest Rospa or the audit office might be able to give you more of an explanation. Me - I am happy to accept it as a reasonable ballpark figure.

Clearly it will vary greatly - but its an average.

Cost of medical care - some die after treatment, cost of the paramedics time, the hospital treatment, the days in ITU.

cost of the police time in investigating the death

cost of the Inquest / FAI

Loss of earnings

Oh - and yes you clearly are hard of thinking. these are figures worked out by experts and widely accepted. Not good enough for you tho - do you have an alternative figure?

I'll say it again. The numbers are made up to suit the argument. It's such a complex case how anyone on an Internet forum could ever get to the bottom of the real cost or real net benefit is beyond me. Referencing the Guardian or that august body, the IAM doesn't prove enything except they have repeated the mantra.

My bottom line is a modern tarnsport system that supports a mobile/flexible workforce has to be a benefit to a modern society.

<edit> TJ you're referencing RTA death costs not premature deaths (though death by RTA would be somewhat premature). You're also missing the point that these are theoretical costs not the true incremental costs of dealing with those RTA's. I.e. we'd need fire/ambliance/police etc just in case cats got stuck up trees rather than pesky motorists (or cyclists) topping themselves.

Boblo - of course any figures that blow your argument out of the water must be invented. ~The audit office and the IAM - (that bastion of car hating) are inventing ludicrous figures just to discredit you.

A million pounds plus is the accepted figure for the cost of a death on the roads. End of.