Their downfall had a lot to do with being on strike for most of thethe Japanese taking market share in the 70s.

But what about that bus!

I forgot the essential in my last post. Top Gear did a Le Mans special in 2012 which raised the awareness of the event among “laddish” Brits who then rented something special for the weekend in 2013.

Of course British petrol heads were totally unaware of the very secretive Le Mans 24 Hour Race

That was until “Evil Top Gear” brought it to their attention in time for 2013 of course !! 🙄

(And decreased accidents to zero in the process apparently.)

… No accidents this year

What is 85% of zero by the way ?

But what about that bus!

The first ones in use are on a route that goes through my neck of the woods. Not been on one yet (Too busy using a bike!) but they look brilliant. A really good re-interpretation of the classic Routemaster, and a welcome return to the open platform at the back!

CaptainFlashheart – Member
But what about that bus!
The first ones in use are on a route that goes through my neck of the woods. Not been on one yet (Too busy using a bike!) but they look brilliant. A really good re-interpretation of the classic Routemaster, and a welcome return to the open platform at the back!

really? less capacity than the bendy buses, astronomical cost, design is OK but slower to move people on and off than bendy buses and require a conductor, I dont think they are bad just a silly mayoral vanity project paid for by the tax payer

I’ll add an increase of 86% in the number of people caught speeding (mainly Brits according to the media) around Le Mans between 2012 and 2013 which I attribute entirely to the TG special.

The “no accidents” refers to the Le Mans weekend, lots of Brits will kill themselves rushing for the ferries as usual this year.

Their downfall had a lot to do with the Japanese taking market share making incredibly shit cars in the 70s.

To be fair, they spent a lot of their time not actually making anything at all…

lots of Brits will kill themselves rushing for the ferries as usual this year.

So… not actually anything to do with Top Gear at all then?

Conductor – Security, ensure fare payments more effectively, and double the number of people employed per bus!
Slower on and off – Not so sure about that. Three doors, and some people can and will get on/off where they want to, rather than sitting waiting for the bus to move the twenty yards to the bus stop.
Cost – Seen how much was wasted on the bendy buses? Buses which were never suited to London streets.

Also, tourists love our buses. Seriously love them! Now, I can’t quantify if that does anything to offset the admittedly very large initial investment, but they sure as hell make people smile. That’s got to be a good thing! 🙂

After all, ‘only a moron’ would have wanted to get rid of the Routemaster.

lots of Brits will kill themselves rushing for the ferries as usual this year.

And of course, not a single French person will die on the roads either.

FFS.

What had he GFC and sub prime etc got to do with the demise of the UK car industry in the 1970s?

If anything the renaissance of e UK car industry (with a large dollop of foreign direct investment) has occurred more recently despite the probles in the financial sector and the high levels of debt in the UK.

I stil do not get why the TG haters keep watching it. Are there no other programmes to watch, or better still a few hours of final daylight to ride in?

What had he GFC and sub prime etc got to do with the demise of the UK car industry in the 1970s?

Well, he wasn’t exactly specific as to what was declining.

And of course, not a single French person will die on the roads either.

FFS.

No, all accidents will only involve Brits.

Apart from this one obviously.
http://www.localrags.co.uk/index.php/News/2013/3/8/police-arrest-man-after-lorry-driver-seriously-hurt-in-a20-crash-near-dover/

Edit, managed to go cross eyed on two different articles. I probably do something similar when driving after top gear.

This thread needs graphs

Interestingly but not surprisingly, the percentile of fatalities involving cyclist is 6% for the UK (101) and 4% for France (141)

http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtadpublic/pdf/13IrtadReport.pdf

Interestingly but not surprisingly, the percentile of fatalities involving cyclist is 6% for the UK (101) and 4% for France (141)

So presumably there are more accidents overall in France then? Guess it must be all those British Top Gearists the unedukated one is blathering on about.

Does this help?

Bloody nora!

This?

I’m surprised at you, piemonster. I would have thought you could at least manage this graph yourself:

I’ll add an increase of 86% in the number of people caught speeding (mainly Brits according to the media) around Le Mans between 2012 and 2013 which I attribute entirely to the TG special.

That’s funny 😀

I didn’t see the Top Gear Le Mans Special.

But I got stopped for speeding on the A11 north of Le Mans on my way to La Rochelle for a wedding.

So that’s pissed on your fireworks hasn’t it 🙂

.

Conversely I often speed on my way past LeMans en route for the Pyrenees and don’t even own a TV – where do I fit into that pie chart?

Why do you speed, any of you?

It’s more dangerous to drive faster.
It’s illegal – you may get banned/fined/imprisoned.
It’s very bad for the fuel economy.

Are you all on call or something?

Edukator – Member

I’ll add an increase of 86% in the number of people caught speeding (mainly Brits according to the media) around Le Mans between 2012 and 2013 which I attribute entirely to the TG special.

The “no accidents” refers to the Le Mans weekend, lots of Brits will kill themselves rushing for the ferries as usual this year.
Of course the French media is totally unbiased much like our beloved The Sun newspaper) with respect to this and its only Brits who attend the race that have accidents, no other nationalities were involved in motoring incidents around Le Mans.

So presumably there are more accidents overall in France then? Guess it must be all those British Top Gearists the unedukated one is blathering on about.

Yes, and by quite some margin.

UK – 1960 fatalities – 3.10 per 100000

France – 3963 fatalities – 6.09 per 100000

So he is either talking a load of prejudiced bllx or Top Gear viewers are mowing the French down in their thousands.

It’s more dangerous to drive faster.
It’s illegal – you may get banned/fined/imprisoned.
It’s very bad for the fuel economy.

Any other unquantified “facts” you’d like to present?
Cycling is bad for global warming due to the increased production of CO2 that cyclists create……

You’re in denial I see.

Please feel free to provide any contradictory information for any of those facts.

Why do you speed, any of you?

It’s more dangerous to drive faster.
It’s illegal – you may get banned/fined/imprisoned.
It’s very bad for the fuel economy.

Agree with all that – I speed generally because I am “time poor” and don’t like spending a long time driving.
Speeding saves time. Simple as that I’m afraid.

Any other unquantified “facts” you’d like to present?
Cycling is bad for global warming due to the increased production of CO2 that cyclists create……

See, the thing, is gofasterstripes’ facts are actually true.
Whereas yours is nonsense.

(cyclists partake in the existing CO2 cycle – they don’t add anything extra to it by breathing. Now if you’d said the extraction of materials, production of bike parts and the CO2 emissions from shipping them from halfway round the world then you’d have done a bit better)

Please feel free to provide any contradictory information for any of those facts.

This one’s easy:

It’s more dangerous to drive faster.

Try driving at 50 mph on the motorway and see how safe you feel. Repeat at 80 mph and compare.

This one:

It’s illegal – you may get banned/fined/imprisoned.

I don’t doubt it, but the only time I’ve been caught speeding, I was doing 40 km/h over, and got told to ‘just calm it down a bit’ by the friendly Tasmanian copper, who was also late for lunch.

Last one:

It’s very bad for the fuel economy.

Define ‘very’ bad. Worse than not driving smoothly?

Are you all on call or something?

Well, as I said, I was on my way to a wedding.

Bad form to be late (unless you are the bride, which I wasn’t)

Its a pretty serious accusation to make that a british tv show is/ was soley responsible for and increase in road traffic accidents in another country. Have you (beyond your posts here) made this public or indeed have the french government made the same accusation?. If any of these accidents were fatal then surly TG and/or the BBC should be held to account and possibly face criminal charges. I dont read french papers and therefore have no idea what was reported and the supporting evidence i assume they have, but id say that if they have not persued this then they are are guilty as the alleged culprits. I’ve watched TG for years and it does have good and bad shows but i cant ever remember it being proven that it was the cause of an increase of RTA due to a single episode. Just to be clear edukator what you are saying is the due to a single episode of TG there was a provable link to an increase in RTA in France? and that the proof (lets not suggest that media reports are proof because they are not) comes from a reliable source ( lets say something like the French version of the HSE). I dont want graphs of anything fancy just a reliable unbaised source.

I don’t doubt it, but the only time I’ve been caught speeding, I was doing 40 km/h over, and got told to ‘just calm it down a bit’ by the friendly Tasmanian copper, who was also late for lunch.

Nice here is’t it 🙂 got a warning last time

> It’s more dangerous to drive faster.

Try driving at 50 mph on the motorway and see how safe you feel. Repeat at 80 mph and compare.

Non sequitur.

“It’s more dangerous to drive faster” doesn’t exclude other forms of dangerous driving.

See, the thing, is gofasterstripes’ facts are actually true.
Whereas yours is nonsense.

My “fact” was meant to be nonsense.
Whereas the other “facts” presented are too vague and useless without context.

Nice here is’t it got a warning last time

It didn’t sound like it was going to end nicely. Any conversation with a policeman who’s just pulled you over that starts with “I had trouble catching you” has the chance of going very badly. It was only when we both clocked each other glancing backwards and forwards between my car and his 20 year old troopy that we both smirked slightly and silently agreed that it wasn’t too surprising that he had trouble catching anyone in that!

Non sequitur.

“It’s more dangerous to drive faster” doesn’t exclude other forms of dangerous driving.

They could be driving perfectly lawfully in the inside lane of the M1 at 50 mph. The only dangerous bit would be that they were driving slowly, so no, not a non sequitur.

Conversely, you could quite safely do over a ton on an empty motorway.

Zokes – you are, of course, right that going too slow on the motorway is dangerous. However I was referring to “speeding” – ie breaking the speed limit.

WRT fuel economy – see the previous equation [the drag equation] I posted. See the v^2 – that bad.

Here’s a crappy graph that shows the gist of the effect .

This is the same reason you can bike at 10MPh on the flat easily, 20 is still pretty easy, but 30 is NOT as hard again as from 10 to 20. Also the reason the Veyron needs 1000HP to hit 240 or whatever, but an MX5 can hit half of that with 110HP

Drag – it’s a real drag.

The smoothly/faster tradeoff is much more complex and I have no idea how you’d calculate it.

EDIT: 100MPh on an empty motorway may be as “safe” as 70 on a fuller one. But your reaction times will still do you less favours if something goes wrong, and there’s that V^2 again in

so if you stack there’s a lot more energy to dissipate.

I guess I’d just like it if we all chilled out a bit with the cars, save the gofasterstripes for the racetrack [see what I did there 😉 ]

I don’t doubt that most of you [inc Zokes] are comparitively safe drivers. Take care all.

Cheers
Sammy F

I know about drag, gfs. But, Gently cruising at 65-70 on an NSL road will probably be more efficient than mashing the pedals at 55. i.e. other forms of poor driving may be worse on fuel economy than smoothly driving faster

.
[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CnMQ4L9Pc[/video]

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xgABbHPdwH4[/video]

I agree – and am amazed by the loons that hoon betwixt speedbumps and then jump on the anchors – how do they afford it??!

I do a “Clarkson” on Top Gear threads and the reaction of the fans is always the same. Think about it, you’re the ones telling me not to take Clarkson seriously. To quote Clarkson from a Frontera test years back “it”s all nonsense of course … dreamed up by advertising copywriters in blue-tinted spectacles trying to sell you something” (I used the report as teaching material for years). That was before he realised he could make more money being a yob slob gob encouraging the persecution of minorities rather than making pertinent comments about lousy cars.