Don't Desert Hubble

In article , Jonathan Silverlight wrote:

I should know more about what happens in "my" country, but did they ever
get around to banning them, or did they cave in to the road lobby as
usual?
I'm not hopeful, because killing a child apparently isn't a crime if
you're a motorist.

You can, as an optomistic journalist points out every now and again, be
tried for murder in a motoring fatality; it's be a rather cunning weapon
to use, otherwise ;-)

I used to walk past Range Rovers and the like with large shiny bars on
the front (outside a school, on a road thronged with pedestrians, to go
two miles...) in the past couple of years; if memory served, they banned
the more excessive versions (the heavier-mounted ones, AIUI), on the
grounds that this would at least increase survivability. I don't know
people silly enough to own these things, though [1], so I never actually
enquired...

[1] well, plenty of people who own big rusting Land Rovers &c, but
that's Different...

--
-Andrew Gray

In message , Andrew Gray
writes
In article , Jonathan Silverlight wrote:

I should know more about what happens in "my" country, but did they ever
get around to banning them, or did they cave in to the road lobby as
usual?
I'm not hopeful, because killing a child apparently isn't a crime if
you're a motorist.

You can, as an optomistic journalist points out every now and again, be
tried for murder in a motoring fatality; it's be a rather cunning weapon
to use, otherwise ;-)

ISTR a senior policeman saying that he was sure it _had_ been used more
than once. Has anyone ever been tried in such a case? It's like the
other possible offence of "motor manslaughter" (and why the distinction
?)
As we leaned in another case, if you kill ten people and smash two
trains from pure negligence, without any remorse, you _still_ don't get
the maximum sentence (which isn't life)
Sorry, but this is my favourite rant :-)
--
Save the Hubble Space Telescope!
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

Jonathan Silverlight wrote in message ...
I'm not hopeful, because killing a child apparently isn't a crime if
you're a motorist.

Well, it's one way to clear out the gene pool...

I can't speak for anyone else, but certainly when I was a kid I met
one guy at my school who got his kicks from lying in the road right
after a blind corner where a car rounding the corner could hardly
avoid killing him if he was there, and one who used to enjoy running
across a busy four-lane highway. If parents let their kids do things
like that, they can hardly expect them to live long: no idea whether
either of them made it to their teens.

Mark

On 19 Feb 2004 00:25:27 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

Oh, no doubt they will be ruined. If one hits me, though, I'm going to
be a deal more ruined. ("so, you can take the impact distributed over
about a foot of the lower abdomen, or you can take it on three single
points..."). I have a vested interest in making sure that these idiots
[1] given the keys to quarter-tons of speeding metal don't provide
themselves with cosmetic - or un-necessary - "safety equipment" that has
limited use to them but less limited detriments to the rest of us. One
of those summing-effects-over-the-population thing.

Quarter-ton? You're talking about a motorcycle?

An SUV weighs something like 1.5-2 tons. Easily. My '70 GTO weighed
3,000 lb, after all.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

An SUV weighs something like 1.5-2 tons. Easily.

Or more.

A loose definition of classes may be found at
http://www.vehicle-injuries.com/nhtsa_faq.htm#iq5

Even what is considered a subcompact in the US is going to scare the
heck out of one ton by the time some options, a tank of gas, and the
people are put in. Three thousand is, I'd guess, pretty mainstream
for the curb weight of a US passenger car these days (it was fairly
light for the early 70s, by which time the GTO was based on an
intermediate again after a few years as a pretty big car).

Four thousand is to be expected of a luxury car today... or of some
surprisingly small SUVs that are robustly built (and have the weight
penalty of the 4WD equipment).


The most extreme SUVs weigh a lot more -- says here that the Hummer H2
has a curb weight of 6400 pounds, the Ford Excursion around 7000.
Though of course they're often bought simply because it's the fad to
drive one, some people really use 'em for work or play at least some
of the time, in which case you might add as much as another ton for
payload.


Cheers,
--Joe