Call for £20 4x4 congestion charge

[trashpony]

Speed in London? Are you joking? The average vehicle speed is iirc 13mph.

LOL. of course you can speed in London, Sheherds Bush to Sloane Street in a hurry. throw the speed limit out of the window... In a hurry, Park Lane, easily well above the 30 mph... easily... obviously you do not drive in London...

OK how many people disliking 4x4 own a car and drive in London?

Why is a 4x4 any more dangerous than your average white van man?

Please, not just opinions, some figures please.


The acceleration speeds of a lot of large cars will put them above the speed limit a lot quicker than it takes to read this .. BMW 540, 60 mph in the suburbs, no problem.. The Mall is a favourite, the traffic light grand prixs are usually good for .. but hey not everyone has fun or gets a buzz from things like that.

*yawn*

The average speed is 13 mph - even if you can do a really exciting 40mph up Park Lane. And don't make assumptions - I do drive in London, but not like a prick and I can think of better ways of getting a thrill than doing around half the speed I'd do on a motorway. If I want to drive a car fast, there are better places to do it

Here are some safety stats for you:

UK insurance industry figures from Churchill show that urban 4x4s are involved in 25% more accidents than saloon cars and do far more damage. Admiral Insurance also recently released figures showing that 4x4 drivers are 27% more likely to be at fault in the event of an accident.

The RAC Foundation says, "You could blame some of the higher accident rate for 4x4s on size. Drivers who are new to these cars might not realise how wide they are. There is also psychology involved - if you feel more secure inside a big 4x4, you might drive with less care than you should." Big 4x4s are right at the bottom of the class when it comes to pedestrian safety, getting an average Euro-NCAP crash test score of just 4 out of 36, compared with 10 and 13 for large and small family cars, respectively.

In October 2005, the British Medical Journal called for health warnings on 4x4s because of the dangers they pose for pedestrians.

So - I'll ask you again - give me one good reason why a 4x4 is a suitable car for driving in London.

 

[editor]

Why is a 4x4 any more dangerous than your average white van man?

But that's not the point.

A white van is large because it is built for transporting large amounts of goods. It has a large engine because it has to move heavy goods. It is built for the job.

A 4x4, on the other hand, is grossly over-sized and over-engineered to suit the ego/fashion desires/self-centred 'safety' needs of the owner.

It doesn't have to be that big, that fuel guzzling, that heavy, that intimidating or that dangerous to pedestrians and other road users alike. But it is.

See the difference?

 

[editor]

The acceleration speeds of a lot of large cars will put them above the speed limit a lot quicker than it takes to read this .. BMW 540, 60 mph in the suburbs, no problem.. .

I hope such speeding twats get caught and their licence taken away from them.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

I do drive in London, but not like a prick and I can think of better ways of getting a thrill than doing around half the speed I'd do on a motorway

so you drive above the speed limti on the motorway good one... so at least you bad driving is contained where it's most likely to kill you ..... good good...

there's no reason short of maybe the odd tree surgeon for a 4 by 4 in london, indeed there's precious little reason for any car other than an electric smart car in london if we are talking about general a to be driving... sadly not every journey is that though and a fair number of drivers buy their cars based on what they will need it for in most circustances...

quick question:

consdiering that the hydrogen engine cell is going to be introduced int he next five years (some thing the editor called a flight of fantasy sci fi nonsense before now ... honda are making them i beleive) and that the predicited that the majority of the cars on the roads will be this way powered in 10 years time would people still support the congestion charge being more for 4 by 4's ...

see the thing which get's me is surely it's a congestion issue in which case ban all lorries vans and comerical vechiels from 9 through to 6 period and tour coaches too. for that matter, and the open topped buses unless they are runnign hydrogen cells... all are unnecessary during day time traffic... then tyo solve the car taxation issue we simply say that all 4 by 4's have to pay a seperate and higher based car tax with an included eco tax at say a third of current car tax again... thus making these things unfashionable on in a really punitive tax... obviously if you can prove that it's for farm yard useage or have a genuine need for it commercailly then this is not leveied but again it has to be converted to lpg and then hydrogen cell when avliable...

It's simply not good enough to have a 4by4 ban in london and not lead that trend else where, these things are fashion items not working essentials and you need to change fashion country wide in order to make some kin do fimpact punitive taxation is one way to do that...

Plus all the extra revune could go into say summit like transport for london to make them get rid of desil buses which out put enormous amounts of co2 each day...

 

[boskysquelch]

.. but hey not everyone has fun or gets a buzz from things like that.

a twat would?

Having helped remove a body from the windscreen of a car in the middle of the day in the West End...and having been run over on a zebra crossing, myself, by a white van, first thing in the morning, on the Kings Road ...having "lost" at least 3 friends to stupid fucktard racers and ignorant cunts driving with no care but for their own safety ie carreering uncontrolably across the road in parts of the East End...and the countless times I've helped injured cyclists and motorbike couriers who been rearended or twatted in arrogant pullouts or jumping of lights....and having walked my children around Central London often, I find your attitude rather twattish.

Btw drove a white-van in Central London for 10 years and never had one SINGLE touch, bang or thwack. I always put it down to my attention to MY driving and due care and attention to others around me.

Oh and on and off I've driven about London for nearly 25 years and in all that time I've only ever been involved in one accident where I was driving; when some aqua-planed into me on the Great Noth Road .... I was driving a brand new Hertz"it's new so don't twat it PLEASE!" Renta van. Fucker was totally written off half an hour after I picked it up from Marble Arch!



* must NOT come back...must NOT come back...must NOT come back.....

 

[Logales]

Was the aim of the congestion charge to make the roads safer? I thought it was to cut down on congestion? They don't really take up more road space than a large luxury saloon car, and in terms of pollution, older engines and high-powered sports cars are just as bad.

Don't get me wrong, I hate seeing these vulgar machines driving around the city but is it fair to single them out for additional congestion charges? Why not just tax them greater in general?

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Was the aim of the congestion charge to make the roads safer? I thought it was to cut down on congestion? They don't really take up more road space than a large luxury saloon car, and in terms of pollution, older engines and high-powered sports cars are just as bad.

Don't get me wrong, I hate seeing these vulgar machines driving around the city but is it fair to single them out for additional congestion charges? Why not just tax them greater in general?

ah but the congestion charge isn't rasing the project revenue it was predicted to they need new gimmicks or red ken will be everso in the red ken...

 

[Dan U]

ban all lorries vans and comerical vechiels from 9 through to 6 period and tour coaches too. for that matter, and the open topped buses unless they are runnign hydrogen cells... all are unnecessary during day time traffic...

i disagree with that. its not commercial vehicles i have a problem with in central london, its all the needless cars being driven.

when are all the deliveries going to be made for starters? london isnt a supermarket you can restock when everyone goes home. because it is peoples home in the centre as well.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

i disagree with that. its not commercial vehicles i have a problem with in central london, its all the needless cars being driven.

when are all the deliveries going to be made for starters? london isnt a supermarket you can restock when everyone goes home. because it is peoples home in the centre as well.

at night ...

this system works fine in france and most of europe it's only the uk who persist in the old antiquated idea that deleiveries should be done durig the day....

more over congestion charging is about reducing congestion not about being punitive to certain vechiel tpyes which certain people dislike over others...

 

[bluestreak]

personally i would build a force field around the M25 that repelled all non-essential 4x4's..

but i guess this might be a start

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5075722.stm

yeah, fuck 'em. i try and be reasonable but you know what. i'm not in the mood.

 

[subversplat]

How about an extra licence to take before being allowed to drive a 4x4? A proper off-road test, with winching, hill climbing, the works. Anybody that "needs" a 4x4 needs to know this sort of stuff anyway, but I can't see anyone who doesn't need one going to all the extra bother.

It'll have the side effect of making everyone driving Audi Quattros and Subarus outlaws, but I can live with that.

 

[editor]

They don't really take up more road space than a large luxury saloon car, and in terms of pollution, older engines and high-powered sports cars are just as bad.

But the point is that you can't make an old car new but you can certainly punish the selfish cunts who elect to fill up the streets with their over-sized, over-engineered, gas guzzling, pedestrian-endangering fashion statements.

And if there was a sudden craze for Mum's to drive their little delicate Tabitha 200 yards down the road to school in high-powered sports cars, I'd be complaining about that too.

The point is that SUVs/4x4s are being aggressively promoted and have now become one of the fastest selling classes of vehicles in the UK.

And I'd say that with global warming increasingly becoming a dead cert and environmental concerns becoming a real issue, they're fair game.

 

[scifisam]

How about a tax levied, when buying the car, based on its emissions level? Would that work? ([/genuine non-rhetorical non-argumentative question tag])

4x4s in London also cause problems with parking, as they take up more than the usual parking space and take up extra space on the road itself. Parking spaces on either side of a two-lane city road, those parking spaces taken up by saloons and 'ordinary' cars = no problem for a bus or two-lane traffic to pass. Not so if half those cars are 4x4s. White vans cause a problem there too, but there are far fewer of those and they have a justifiable reason for choosing a larger vehicle over a smaller one. They also tend to park on the street for much shorter periods of time.

In any case, the 'Alliance Against Urban 4x4s,' from the link, are proposing something which does not actually have to effect 4x4 owners:

They want owners of cars producing more than 225g/km of CO2 to pay £20 a day - £12 more than everyone else.

That would include older cars and any other high-emission vehicles. If the manufacturers of 4x4s improved their emission levels, the drivers of those cars would have nothing to worry about.

Personally there's no way I'd want to drive or attempt to park a 4x4 in London or most metropolitan cities - I almost feel sorry for the insecure drivers who struggle through traffic to do so.

Logales: 'Congestion charge' was a clever name - it includes all sort of congestion, including pollution. Which is pretty hard to argue against.

Anything which encourages less pollution and less petrol consumption has to be good, IMNSHO.

 

[Descartes]

So - I'll ask you again - give me one good reason why a 4x4 is a suitable car for driving in London.

Car-jacking, the crime believed to have led to the murder of London estate agent Timothy Robinson last week, has hit the headlines again.

This time a 41-year-old mother-of-three was punched unconscious in New Charlton, south-east London, before her attacker drove off in her £50,000 Mercedes.

Police in Essex are also hunting a group who stole a BMW at gunpoint last Thursday in Loughton and are believed to have tried to steal a second BMW earlier in the evening.

Car-jacking is a growing problem, with 90 reported cases in London alone last year.

But it is not just a problem in the capital. The crime has become such a worry in West Yorkshire police have set up a squad to deal with it.

In Bradford alone there were five reported car-jackings and four attempted car-jackings in January.

Monthly meetings have been set up between forces from London, Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire to try to build up intelligence on the gangs involved.

In one incident in Essex last October a man was shot in the stomach as he was forced from his Mercedes.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "Car-jacking is affecting the whole of the country. It is a matter of real public concern.


SUV's give a feeling of security. The same as putting dead locks on your front door.

 

[scifisam]

So - I'll ask you again - give me one good reason why a 4x4 is a suitable car for driving in London.SUV's give a feeling of security. The same as putting dead locks on your front door.

How would they prevent carjackings? Inability to see short car-jackers?

 

[Dowie]

^^^^ s'true.

London hasn't got anywhere you can reasonably drive a 4x4 for about a 60 mile radius

I'd just like to see one 4x4 in London which has actually got some dirt on it

probably will do if this spray on mud invention takes off:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1506025,00.html

 

[trashpony]

How would they prevent carjackings? Inability to see short car-jackers?

 

[Descartes]

I'd just like to see one 4x4 in London which has actually got some dirt on it

So now it's about clean cars.. what ever next...The usual farm worker will hose down any vehicle going into 'Town'. The part time land rover users will leave them dirty. The 4x4 rally types, totally different person but a lot dirtier.

The 4x4 gives the driver a feeling of security against possible car jackers.

Now, is it really about size, some of the 4x4 are quite small, RAV4, Suzukis but the imported shoguns are considerable larger but not as large as your average transit....The Suzuki runs a much smaller engine, more your averge small saloon, the RAV4, very much the same, The older Land Rover and range rover V8s, there is an argument about emissions but they are over ten years old now.

Boskysquelch, let me know when you are in London, you sound like a mobile disaster zone.

I've driven all sorts of vehicles in and around london over the years and never had any problems, maybe because I'm never there long enough. Speed does have it's benifits.



Must be a better reason, surely?

 

[trashpony]

so you drive above the speed limti on the motorway good one... so at least you bad driving is contained where it's most likely to kill you ..... good good...

I said

I do drive in London, but not like a prick and I can think of better ways of getting a thrill than doing around half the speed I'd do on a motorway

I didn't say I do double, I said I do around double. And there's no point in turning this into a debate about speed on motorways. It's irrelevant.

 

[Poot]

Personally I firmly believe that it is NOT a human fucking right to drive ANY car ANYWHERE and London is one place in the UK where it would be a marvellous idea to ban cars completely unless drivers can prove that their car is a necessity, in which case they would get special dispensation. The congestion charge is just encouraging those with wallets bigger than their brains (as Trashpony so eloquently put it) to feel extra smug in their oversized Chelsea tractors. 4X4s in Central London? I don't think so!

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

I said

I didn't say I do double, I said I do around double. And there's no point in turning this into a debate about speed on motorways. It's irrelevant.

that's right pointing out your poor driving standard whilst you pointificate about other bad driving standards does after all start to show the rocky and supercilious nature of your argument... after all... which is btw irrelivent any how...as it wasn't an argument intially about peoples driving standards compared to the erfect driving of trashpony...

 

[aylee]

personally i would build a force field around the M25 that repelled all non-essential 4x4's..

but i guess this might be a start

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5075722.stm

I suggest £50 which might make these fucking idiots, who drive their M5's, Land Rover Discoveries and similar absurd vehicles all around the city while yakking on their mobile phones because they're too self-important to take the train or a cab like the rest of us, think twice.

 

[citydreams]

ah but the congestion charge isn't rasing the project revenue it was predicted to they need new gimmicks or red ken will be everso in the red ken...

*yawn*

 

[jæd]

personally i would build a force field around the M25 that repelled all non-essential 4x4's..

Um... Isn't this just a call for less environmentally sound cars to have a higher congestion charge...?

Oh, and if this ever went through, what about all the businesses that use lorries/vans...? Be a nice way of killing of the non-chain stores through increased costs...!

Apart from this, it seems a bit of a sound idea. But I wouldn't expect all the "chelsea tractors" to disappear, just become more fuel efficient & cleaner...!

 

[trashpony]

that's right pointing out your poor driving standard whilst you pointificate about other bad driving standards does after all start to show the rocky and supercilious nature of your argument... after all... which is btw irrelivent any how...as it wasn't an argument intially about peoples driving standards compared to the erfect driving of trashpony...

*yawn*

 

[Mr Retro]

This debate was had fairly recently and "peeps arguing against 4x4's(PAAFFS)" won it by a country mile. Ironically you would need a 4x4 to negoitiate the distance between winners and losers.

The only debate lleft is how much to charge them. £20 is a good start.

 

[jæd]

This debate was had fairly recently and "peeps arguing against 4x4's(PAAFFS)" won it by a country mile. Ironically you would need a 4x4 to negoitiate the distance between winners and losers.

Oh, where was this...? In reality, or on some lefty (in theory) bulletin board...?

 

[Mr Retro]

Oh, where was this...? In reality, or on some lefty (in theory) bulletin board...?

It was in the transport forum I think, I had a quick look but I can't find it. I started reading the thread not caring one way or the other about 4x4's.

By the time I finished reading it I had been convinced and I will now never buy one and will support any and all restrictions put on them.

 

[editor]

By the time I finished reading it I had been convinced and I will now never buy one and will support any and all restrictions put on them.

I like the cut of your jib, sir.

 

[angry bob]

selfish cunts who elect to fill up the streets with their over-sized, over-engineered, gas guzzling, pedestrian-endangering fashion statements.

A guy I work with drives a fuckin huge GMC suburban. When I asked him about it he explained that 15yrs ago his wife (the mother of very small children) was killed in a car wreck when someone else smashed into her. She was driving a very small car and probably would have survived if it had been a big SUV.

He is not going to risk that happening again.

Is he a 'selfish cunt'?

I drive a very old Dodge caravan which gets about 18mpg. And I mostly drive it to and from work.
The reason I bought the thing was to transport my entire family (4 people) and everything we owned from Nevada to Baltimore (a good 6 days travel). It was relatively cheap to buy and for various reasons made a lot more sense than hiring a trailer.
Of course as soon as I can afford it I'm going to trade it in for something smaller. But in the mean time, am I a selfish cunt?

A generalised statement about a diverse group of people rarely stands up to scrutiny.