Tag: car

Posted on by Tim Worstall

Bring Back the Man With the Red Flag – Not Jezza, Cars

From the BBC
New drivers could be banned from travelling at night as part of plans to improve road safety in England.

Ministers are considering a graduated licence system to restrict novice drivers, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.

The move comes as figures suggest one in five drivers are involved in a crash within a year of passing their test.

Who are these Eeyores in government? I’m not against sensible safety law, but at a certain point, you’re focussing too much on the negative rather than the positive.
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Posted on by Tim Worstall

What The Driverless Car Will Really Kill Is The Rail Network

As this piece from the Conversation points out, the technology really at risk from the driverless car is the long distance rail network. If we can all sit in our own little private carriage, one that goes from point to point, what’s the point of having terminii for node to node travel? Urban rail, the Tube, that’ll still work to a point because congestion. But why King’s Cross to Brum New Street by rail when the West Norwood to Solihull autonomous car will do it?…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Solar Powered Forecourts – This Electric Car Thing Is Going To Cost A Fortune, Isn’t It?

As you will know the official stance on climate change around here is the one that’s unpopular with absolutely everyone. Sure, let’s do something about it but let’s not do what the screaming mob seems to desire. That is, we’ve, at worst, a minor technological problem that can be solved with minor adjustments to incentives, globalised capitalism can not just continue but is the solution – that actually being what the IPCC reports themselves tell us – but it is also worth our doing something along the lines of a carbon tax.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The EU’s New Car Laws Will Kill People – Thank The Lord We’re Leaving, Well, Maybe We Are

From our Special Correspondent, Lincoln Swann:

More invasive and expensive legislation from the EU

All new cars to be fitted with speed control and breathalysers from 2022

This is pretty much a model for what the EU does, centralises control and makes life harder and more expensive for its citizens whilst sounding virtuous.

EU legislation passed Tues 26 March 2019 calls for new cars from 2022 to be fitted with breathalysers to prevent drink driving.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Ridiculous Idea – £2,000 Not To Use A Car

The underlying thought has some merit here but once they worked out the cost they should have shot this dog. For they’re suggesting that people should be paid some £2,000 to £3,000 to not use a car for a year. To use public transport instead etc.

As an experiment? Well, why not? The why not being, well, what are these people thinking? There are 30 million households in the country. £2,000 a year each is £60 billion.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

UK Car Exports To China Fall 72% – It’s Chinese New Year, Dummy

Seriously folks, we should be getting this right by now – no Chinese trade statistics for January or February of any year should ever be taken seriously. Which is exactly what Sky News hasn’t done with this latest screech that UK exports to China of cars fell 72% in January.

Sigh.

There’s this thing called Chinese New Year, you see?

UK car exports to China fall by 72% in January

No, really, sigh.

A total of 120,649 vehicles were produced in the UK during the month, down from the 147,507 made in the previous January, meaning that 26,858 fewer vehicles left British plants.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Kenya’s Very Silly Ban On Second Hand Car Imports

Kenya has a strange – silly even – ban on the import of certain second hand cars. Even if we accept – which we don’t – the reasoning behind the ban on cars over a certain age that’s still the wrong way to achieve the desired goal. Thus, yes, the system is silly.

The aim, the declared one at least, is to reduce emissions. OK, let’s run with that for the moment. So, cars that are older than 8 years cannot be imported.…

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