Reorte

Something I've often thought about when people talk about driving whilst on the phone - confiscating the phone would probably be a more significant deterrent than points on the licence and a fine (particularly if they're not allowed to take out a new contract on a new phone for a while). edit: reading on I see someone's said just that!

If something is seen as too big to fail should it be a private company?

You certainly need the two jabs by all account to achieve the highest level of protection (which still isn't perfect but is significant), as well as that three weeks, so it's certainly fair to say that it doesn't stop instantaneous transmission. And I suppose the virus still has to get in to your body and start doing something before the body responds to it even with a vaccine. The whole business about it not stopping you getting the disease, just stopping serious symptoms though, that sounds - odd. That to me doesn't sound like a vaccine, although it's entirely possible it's pretty normal. Could do with some input from a vaccines expert here!

Some vaccines must be able to stop transmission otherwise we'd still have smallpox.

That's why it's a damned hard job, governing. You'll never know for certain until much, much later when that point actually was (after years of studies and inquests and reports), and in any case nothing's ever 100% safe, all you can really do is go when the risk reaches an acceptible level, so throw in a good chunk of subjectivity too. I don't envy people having to make that sort of decision, because it's very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

That feels a bit too much of a similar thing from the other direction to me. Just in the same way as people shouldn't make things difficult for the railway through their stupidity or laziness neither should the railway expect to be able to shape the rest of the world of which it's a part for its own convenience. Do wish they'd throw the book at some of the idiots on crossings though.

I hope you mean can't see why anybody would need log tables, because logarithms remain as much of an essential part of mathematics as addition, even if the actual calculation is almost always done electronically (the most I ever get to doing it by hand is a very vague "That doesn't look right, must've made a mistake in the code somewhere" type calculation).

I can't remember where I saw this, so apologies if it was in this thread... The other day the AstroZeneca plant was in danger of floods, so lots of effort going in to protecting it. These companies after bail outs... Dangerous joke, that one. I told it to my boss and his reply was "You're sacked."

Could be, but there are a lot more people prepared to drive like idiots than are prepared to deliberately kill as many random people as possible (thank heavens).

Speed detection before junction - the way things are going it'll probably force your car to slow down in the near future, and thus we'll have TPWS on roads.

Never noticed that the M90 was on Pathetic Motorways, that's a bit harsh IMO! Strictly speaking a motorway is any road that's under motorway restrictions, which has included such gems as the single carriageway A6144(M) (now relegated to an A road), which had a 70 mph speed limit as a motorway. The only comparable example left now is the A601(M) stretch to the east of the M6, which needs a rather fancy car to even be able to reach 70 mph and stop in time before it ends. There are standards for motorways of course, so it's unlikely any road not planned to those standards and supposed to be a motorway will be approved, but they're not set in stone, so can be reduced with sufficient justification, such as some of the terrain the M90 has to go through. The bigger problem than the curves and the hills on the M90 was the appalling surface, but that had been mostly replaced the last time I used it. edit: Does that post sound like whatever the motorway equivalent of a rivet counter is?

Things aren't binary dangerous or safe (and nothing's ever completely, 100% safe). I've a degree of sympathy for the "there's no such thing as a dangerous road, only dangerous drivers" view (unless you're talking narrow unfenced mountain roads with the edge crumbling away), but human beings are human beings and even if you remove the careless idiots no-one's perfect, we all make mistakes from time to time (and even if you removed humans from the equation and turned us into useless lumps of flesh unable to do anything for ourselves machines will never be perfect either), so a dangerous junction is one where it's all too easy to make a mistake and all too easy for it to have severe consequences; issues like visibility and how obvious the layout is are important. There are definitely drivers whose behaviour falls well below acceptable standards (361 pages of this thread stands testament to that) but we all make mistakes from time to time.

I think there's quite a bit of difference in seeing something first-hand, or better still experiencing it first hand where possible (e.g. put the brake on yourself and fail to stop) and seeing a video, especially in this day and age where there are messages on screen constantly. Danger is something that needs to be experienced first-hand I think (or at least something that gives the impression of it without actually being it, don't want to really put people in danger to get the message across). A long time ago, when I was still a fairly small child, we were at a preserved railway and there was a loco being moved around not that far from me. And seeing that from ground level really gave an impression of big and unstoppable and scary (in my memory we were just standing clear, but surely even back in the 80s that would've been a bit much to allow the public to stand there, so it may be mistaken). It left that impression, of trains being big scary things that could crush me without noticing, and even standing in front of one in a place like the hall in the NRM leaves me slightly uneasy to this day. Which I think is a good thing. Of course there are always a few who'll never get the message whatever you do.

Influenza and the coronavirus causing Covid-19 aren't different strains, they're completely different viruses. The only things they've got in common is producing some of the same symptoms and having a similar means of transmission.

I know there's a lot of contentious debate about appropriate measures, but mass stabbings? Surely culling people is definitely going too far!

It doesn't spread as much as Covid anyway so it's probably no surprise that the Covid measures will have also had an impact on flu (and other diseases). I doubt it's directly related to competition with this coronavirus, just that the measures aren't disease-specific.

Mostly in this galaxy to be fair, although that still involves very long distances (the nearest star outside our solar system is over four light years away - and has two confirmed planets orbiting it). Sending probes to the nearest stars within a human lifetime is actually a plausible goal, current technology isn't up to it yet but getting there doesn't require science fiction style technology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

That sounds dangerous. Any chance it's all about "priority to pedestrians" and so on, without consideration for things like drivers actually being able to see where they're going? (it's also a more understandable problem with cycle paths, where you actually get a decent one - a cycle path following the main road is pretty poor if it has to give way to every side road, but the side road needs to have its stop line next to the main road so there's good visibility).

I see that a lot where there are lights but I've not seen without lights (I'm nowhere near Norwich though). I would guess it's so that people respond to the lights rather than just looking and going whatever the lights say.

Almost square on (only a very slight angle) - this one here https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.3881451,-2.1699884,19z. The other car was turning right out of Clover Avenue, I was approaching from the left.

The one my grandad had that I'd play with when I visited was quite loud, imagine scaling that up to 1:1!

Awkward location to recover from (no roads anywhere nearby, winching up from the railway might've just pulled the railway down instead), so could well be that the cost of recovery would've outweighed the cost of the loco. It wasn't old, looking it up it was 8 years old.

Not far off.

On the way back from work today, car in a sideroad on the left - waiting, not running straight out, indicating to go right, finally pulls out right in front of me. Swerved to avoid him, thank god nothing close by coming the other way, he still kept moving after I had started turning, luckily nothing more happened. Sometimes I suppose peoples' brains just turn off; it's not as if the visibility is bad where it happened, and my headlights were definitely working.

Better IMO to be able to assess the overall general situation, revisiting frequently, than aim for some arbitrary numbers, otherwise you might reach those numbers but other good reasons will exist for not changing yet but the pressure to relax, because the number has been reached and the box ticked, would be immense.