Angry commuter – justified??

@TJ – You are stupid. And I’m sure your figures stack firmly against drivers

ten second of googling got me this

Official figures, seen by The Independent, show that the cost of motoring has fallen by 13 per cent in real terms since 1997, while bus and coach fares have increased by 17 per cent above inflation. Rail fares have risen by 7 per cent extra above inflation.

I’ve nowt against cars BTW but plenty against our car centric society.

JAG – SCUM, FILTH you were obviously in the wrong. If the same situation had occured and you didn’t own any cars you would have been RIGHT but due to your ownership of a motorised vehicle (or three) you are WRONG.

Oh, you mean VED – which is emissions based

Only if registered after 2001, which is why I pay the same VED on my ’93 1.8 Mondeo as my Dad does on his ’03 4.6 V8 Mach 1. I should get a bonus for keeping the old girl going!

Tax/VED – Yeah and marathons are called snickers now (yet still packed with peanuts).

A lot more to it than a name change though eh?

“Road Tax” might reasonably mean “a tax for using the roads that pays for their upkeep” – as it was prior to 1937.

“Vehicle Excise Duty” however is essentially a license to pollute by a certain amount, based on the emissions of your vehicle.

You may also enjoy reading: http://ipayroadtax.com/

OP I asked a similar question re. a double-parked street.

The cycle-safety boffins advised me to take a defensive position on the road and keep riding.

It would be nice if motorists paid their way tho – as it is they get a huge subsidy from the general taxpayer.

As much as i disagree with ‘car culture’, this is rubbish i’m afraid. Theres only one report showing that and its full of greeny eco nonsense and made up amounts of money to fix problems caused by motorists.

horatio – its the unfortunate truth. When you figure in all the costs of motoring them motoring taxes do not cover it. Add in all the greeny nonsense and its thousands a year subsidy per car. Just take the sensible and costed stuff and its still a subsidy.

GrahaS – I don’t really care. 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. It might make a good rallying cry for militant cyclists but that’s about it.

As for costs. Policing, about £400m. Road repairs – hard to measure but looking at about £3b. Tax revenue from fuel – £27b. That’s before we add in VED, Fines, VAT, Insurance premium.

Trains? Cost about £25b to run and are subsidised to the tune of 50% by the gov.

External costs are wooly as hell. Pollution is a problem. Public transport is the answer. But until the public transport system works properly and is efficient and good value – then nothing will change. I use trains when I can so I can work while travelling (even when its more expensive). But many times it just isn’t possible.

Ironically, the car industry has made progress. Cars pollute less, they do more mpg, they recycle components, they have invested in alternative power plants. In the same period what advances have we seen in public transport?

Practically nothing apart from the price to use it.

horatio – its the unfortunate truth. When you figure in all the costs of motoring them motoring taxes do not cover it. Add in all the greeny nonsense and its thousands a year subsidy per car. Just take the sensible and costed stuff and its still a subsidy

What ‘costs of motoring’ are you referring to here?

Costs. All the deaths and ill health directly and indirectly caused. a million pounds a death. Thats a good few billion a year there. Many many other costs you miss out as well. Damage to buildings. Costs of courts and enforcement of motoring law.

As for public transport – well its starved of investment for decades but inmprovements – plenty. From all buses in Edinburgh being easy access for elderly and disabled to improved rolling stock on the railways

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.

But how do you evaluate whether or not those buildings would exist without the motor industry?

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.

No you don’t. You could choose to drive down there and deliver it by hand

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.

you are 100% correct the facts and accuracy of your comments are not important
oh and TJ pays tax so he can use the same argument as you do- he pays for the roads as he pays tac – he also has the advantage of his argument being true.

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 build 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.

So all premature deaths can be directly attributed to private transport can they? And all airborne pollution is directly attributable to private transport is it? Don’t be bloody daft TJ, my dad died age 42, are you going to say his heart attack was as a direct result of private cars? Get real.

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 average life expectancy for the whole population 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

Why not just say troll? 🙄

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.

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 do 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?
because you can troll in a clever way or a daft way ?