SUVs make up more than 40% of new cars sold in the UK – while fully electric vehicles account for less than 2%

[MickiQ]

If Iived in Birmingham I'd want the ability to be able leave easily.

Birmingham has an ULEZ all of its own, I have twice had to stump up a tenner for the privilege of driving there.

There is no legal right to park your car on the street, it just isn't expressly forbidden. In this country the general rule is that if something isn't banned then it's allowed. I actually agree with editor on this, why should people be allowed to store private property on public land? However it is now so widespread that it has become a sort of accepted 'right' by default. No politician is going to propose a general national ban on it since it would be political suicide. This is why the idiot in the tent needs shifting just because we have made this mistake once is no reason for doing it a second time.
Personally in favour of a complete ban on parking on the pavement though, something else that has just started happening but needs to be cracked down on hard before it becomes too much of a problem is people running power cables from their house across the pavement to charge their car.

 

[Leafster]

I stopped cycling a few years ago as it felt too dangerous and only a matter of time before I had a serious accident, having had a few minor ones and confrontations with drivers. I'd happily start again if the usage of the roads was different.

I started cycling again during the pandemic after a very long break. It was primarily a way of keeping fit and exploring bits of the local countryside but I have started using my bike for other things. What I've found is that I have to plan my routes a lot more carefully than if I was driving a car. There are sections of road I avoid and some junctions are no-go areas for me. Unfortunately, I had an accident a few weeks back where a car came round a blind bend on my side of the road and I was forced off the bike into the undergrowth on the side of the road. Fortunately, I was only badly bruised and had a few scratches/cuts on my legs but it has made me even more wary of riding on roads I thought were safe.

If the road infrastructure and some of the rules were changed I suspect a lot more people would cycle in the UK. I can't see us adopting the strategies used in the Netherlands overnight (they've been changing things since the 1970s IIRC) but simply giving more prominence to bike usage when planning road changes, path upgrades etc. would go a long way.

It is happening but only on a very small scale at the moment. I was considering cycling to the local Screwfix to pick something up but I wasn't going to use the main A road to get there and I was surprised to see that a bike ramp has been installed on a footbridge over a railway so I can use a mix of bridleways and quiet roads to get there. We need more of this sort of thing to help segregate cycling from busy roads.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ultimately, there is no safe way for cars and bikes to share the same road space. There needs to be a physical barrier or gap between the cycleway and the carway, as there is routinely in the Netherlands.

Instructive how cycleway is a word recognised by the spellchecker, but carway isn't. There isn't a separate word for a road designated to cars. It's just a road.

 

[Leafster]

Ultimately, there is no safe way for cars and bikes to share the same road space. There needs to be a physical barrier or gap between the cycleway and the carway, as there is routinely in the Netherlands.

Instructive how cycleway is a word recognised by the spellchecker, but carway isn't. There isn't a separate word for a road designated to cars. It's just a road.

It's also interesting (to me, at least) that I used the term 'bridleway' as, around here, they are far more common than cycleways!

Bridleways are routes for horses, cyclists, other wheelers and pedestrians but not motorised vehicles but I also meant unmade or private roads where motorised vehicles are allowed in some circumstances but rarely use them.

 

[Pickman's model]

Nope, I pointed to the royal commission reports because they contain detailed examples of roads always having been tightly regulated. The reports aren't merely concerned with the late 19th century but cite examples from back through history.

Where regulations/laws made and made it's often because they're not being obeyed as you implicitly point out. So no actual right doesn't translate into people abiding by the rules

 

[platinumsage]

Where regulations/laws made and made it's often because they're not being obeyed as you implicitly point out. So no actual right doesn't translate into people abiding by the rules

A history of people not obeying regulations is surely evidence of a history of existence of those regulations. Goods imports are tightly regulated, and a history of smuggling doesn't disprove that, rather it demonstrates that the regulation has existed as long as smuggling has.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Instructive how cycleway is a word recognised by the spellchecker, but carway isn't. There isn't a separate word for a road designated to cars. It's just a road.

Motorways though.

They're the only roads which are restricted to powered vehicles though. So any cunt claiming that road X is for cars, not cyclists or pedestrians is wrong and can get to fuck.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Motorways though.

They're the only roads which are restricted to powered vehicles though.

No they're not.

 

[SpookyFrank]

No they're not.

Motorways and limited-access dual carriageways which have effectively the same rules as motorways anyway.

 

[Rob Ray]

This is shaping up to be a particularly fine example of urban pedantry.

 

[Pickman's model]

This is shaping up to be a particularly fine example of urban pedantry.

once again you see a crop of under-rated pedants taking the phenomenon in new directions

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Motorways and limited-access dual carriageways which have effectively the same rules as motorways anyway.

This is shaping up to be a particularly fine example of urban pedantry.

Learner drivers not allowed on motorways unless accompanied by a DVSA approved instructor.

 

[platinumsage]

There are at least ten different statutory reasons for pedestrians being legally permitted to walk on motorways.

Meanwhile to get back on topic, there are no roads on which SUVs are explicitly banned. Such bans can't be enacted because there is no definition of SUV in traffic law, perhaps because they aren't materially different to other cars.

 

[SpookyFrank]

There are at least ten different statutory reasons for pedestrians being legally permitted to walk on motorways.

Meanwhile to get back on topic, there are no roads on which SUVs are explicitly banned. Such bans can't be enacted because there is no definition of SUV in traffic law, perhaps because they aren't materially different to other cars.

The back road to my estate has a 6'6" width restriction. Several chelsea tractor models are wider than that. The limit is not enforced though. The only thing for it is physical barriers, which they do have on some of the rural lanes up on Dartmoor.

 

[Hollis]

I stopped cycling a few years ago as it felt too dangerous and only a matter of time before I had a serious accident, having had a few minor ones and confrontations with drivers. I'd happily start again if the usage of the roads was different.

Yep. Cycling in London is still not really for the faint-hearted. I've been commuting across London the last few months, and I feel quite ambivalent about it.. While I enjoy the exercise and freedom, I'm quite conscious it's the most dangerous thing I do all day.. Aside from the danger, being met by aggression/supidity from car/van drivers and sometime other cyclists/ebikes/ etc gets tiresome.

The cycling infrastructure is vastly better than 20 years ago when I tried cycling before, but still inadequate, with some of the main cycle lanes such as the C3 now massively overcrowded.

If cycling was going to take off as a genuine mass mode of transport then there's still a whole load of things need to change - not just infrastructure but culture as well.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep. Cycling in London is still not really for the faint-hearted. I've been commuting across London the last few months, and I feel quite ambivalent about it.. While I enjoy the exercise and freedom, I'm quite conscious it's the most dangerous thing I do all day.. Aside from the danger, being met by aggression/supidity from car/van drivers and sometime other cyclists/ebikes/ etc gets tiresome.

The cycling infrastructure is vastly better than 20 years ago when I tried cycling before, but still inadequate, with some of the main cycle lanes such as the C3 now massively overcrowded.

If cycling was going to take off as a genuine mass mode of transport then there's still a whole load of things need to change - not just infrastructure but culture as well.

The one follows from the other. Build it and they will come and they (drivers) will have to change their attitudes sharpish. That's the lesson from the Netherlands. The more it is obvious from the infrastructure that drivers don't automatically have priority, the more the culture will change.

 

[Chz]

The back road to my estate has a 6'6" width restriction. Several chelsea tractor models are wider than that. The limit is not enforced though. The only thing for it is physical barriers, which they do have on some of the rural lanes up on Dartmoor.

That has got to be a bugger for deliveries and tradesmen! Standard Transit is 83" with the mirrors folded.

 

[editor]

Meanwhile to get back on topic, there are no roads on which SUVs are explicitly banned. Such bans can't be enacted because there is no definition of SUV in traffic law, perhaps because they aren't materially different to other cars.

Apart from being bigger. And taller. And heavier. And generally being more unsafe for everyone else.

 

[Hollis]

The one follows from the other. Build it and they will come and they (drivers) will have to change their attitudes sharpish. That's the lesson from the Netherlands. The more it is obvious from the infrastructure that drivers don't automatically have priority, the more the culture will change.

I'm actually not just talking about the culture of motorists but also around cyclists/ebikes/Lime bikes. This may be partly down to cycle lanes not being big enough - but currently look no further than the C3 for close passing on a bi-directional path.

I would tentatively say that driving culture in central London is generally pretty good - because they know there's so many cyclists around - it gets worse as you get out into zone 2/3.. The incidents I have are as often on residential roads in zone 3.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm actually not just talking about the culture of motorists but also around cyclists/ebikes/Lime bikes. This may be partly down to cycle lanes not being big enough - but currently look no further than the C3 for close passing on a bi-directional path.

I would tentatively say that driving culture in central London is generally pretty good - because they know there's so many cyclists around - it gets worse as you get out into zone 2/3.. The incidents I have are as often on residential roads in zone 3.

Yep fair point. The only serious accident I've had was on a backroad in Nunhead, dickhead driver, not looking, came straight out in front of me.

 

[SpookyFrank]

That has got to be a bugger for deliveries and tradesmen! Standard Transit is 83" with the mirrors folded.

Whether it's a bugger or not has no bearing on the width of the road. Realistically a van and a car can squeeze past each other on that road. Two vans, or two SUVs, not so much.

SUV drivers rely on lots of other people driving normal-sized cars to make their lives bearable. If everyone had a 2023 range rover (6 foot 7 inches wide) then lots of rural roads would be effectively impassable. Same thing with car parks, often you can only get out of your range rover if the car parked alongside you is actually smaller than the space.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

SUV drivers rely on lots of other people driving normal-sized cars to make their lives bearable. If everyone had a 2023 range rover (6 foot 7 inches wide) then lots of rural roads would be effectively impassable. Same thing with car parks, often you can only get out of your range rover if the car parked alongside you is actually smaller than the space.

Just make the fucking spaces bigger. Unlike the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant, parking space size was not set by God.

 

[editor]

Just make the fucking spaces bigger. Unlike the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant, parking space size was not set by God.

Where's all this magical extra space going to come from?

 

[SpookyFrank]

Just make the fucking spaces bigger. Unlike the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant, parking space size was not set by God.

No but the laws of mathematics were set by god, and they state that dividing a finite space into bigger pieces means you get fewer pieces. And you'd better bet the entitled SUV wankers will moan loudest about the cosmic injustice of it all when there's none of the shiny new giant parking spaces left for them.

 

[Chz]

Whether it's a bugger or not has no bearing on the width of the road. Realistically a van and a car can squeeze past each other on that road. Two vans, or two SUVs, not so much.

SUV drivers rely on lots of other people driving normal-sized cars to make their lives bearable. If everyone had a 2023 range rover (6 foot 7 inches wide) then lots of rural roads would be effectively impassable. Same thing with car parks, often you can only get out of your range rover if the car parked alongside you is actually smaller than the space.

Ah, gotcha. I thought there was a single lane bit that was limited to that width so nothing could ever get through. I'd be more concerned about Transit vans - there are only a half dozen suvs wider than them, none of them big sellers.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Where's all this magical extra space going to come from?

Magical extra space?

Are you taking the piss or just actually pissed?

 

[newme]

Just make the fucking spaces bigger. Unlike the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant, parking space size was not set by God.

Parking space perhaps, road size less so unless they start knocking down hedges all over the country.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

No but the laws of mathematics were set by god, and they state that dividing a finite space into bigger pieces means you get fewer pieces. And you'd better bet the entitled SUV wankers will moan loudest about the cosmic injustice of it all when there's none of the shiny new giant parking spaces left for them.

Fewer spaces would make driving to the car park less attractive, is that not what you'd like to see?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Parking space perhaps, road size less so unless they start knocking down hedges all over the country.

It's not an issue. We have an Audi Q8, today it went to Bigbury in SpookyFrank's county, miles of narrow lanes boarded by hedges, Frau Bahn was driving it, she squeezed it past everything that came her way with no issues at all. Frank's just full of hysterical hyperbole about Devonshire roads and likes to brag about his tight back entrance.

 

[newme]

It's not an issue. We have an Audi Q8, today it went to Bigbury in SpookyFrank's county, miles of narrow lanes boarded by hedges, Frau Bahn was driving it, she squeezed it past everything that came her way with no issues at all. Frank's just full of hysterical hyperbole about Devonshire roads and likes to brag about his tight back entrance.

Idk about any of that, I'm in Cornwall tho and we have lots of issues with people with big cars being unable to fit past. Frau Bahn may be an exceptional driver or you have wider roads, or both. Many are not tho, I've had people barely passing me on a motorbike. Others barely passing a yaris (after they froze solid and let Mrs Newme do the driving past) afraid to let a leaf touch their car and leaving no room. We have 6-8ft hedges and not a lot of room to get past, when it's two small cars, no issue. When it's two giant car drivers. We were stuck while they had a stand off or one reversed badly.