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19 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Are those doing RDW paid an enhanced rate?

No (TM and SC-wise, I think the Drivers are the same).

14 hours ago, Kickstart said:

Problem isn’t so much unreliability overall, rather that a single electronic unit can fail at hideous cost. A colleagues Audi had the control unit for the DSG gearbox fail - not service related (plenty of service related gearbox failures it could have had!). Easily for a car with, say, a couple of years life to suddenly become uneconomic to repair.

 

Older cars might have been less reliable (sometimes substantially), but most bits easily repaired, or or replaced with a cheaply sourced 2nd hand part

It does cost a lot if it goes wrong I've never said otherwise, but the key point is that it rarely does go wrong, since the introduction of computers into cars (probably the definition of a "modern", early/mid 80-s when they reached common family cars?) I haven't had one fail due to the electrics. The vast majority of modern cars go on and on, way beyond what we were used to back in the 70s when i started driving, also the engines, assuming correct servicing, also last much longer, cars with 150k plus mileages are commonplace, they were very rare indeed back in my younger days , and even then would have had at least one, probably two, rebuilds.

As my daily I am not interested in a car that's easy or cheap to fix, I want one that doesn't need that attention in the first place. And a modern car, with all it's sophistication, does just that, and in addition is much more comfortable, more economical (my current car has an engine that is the same size as my second car, a Mini 1000, but is larger and heavier but has better mpg), and safer.

As I said earlier that doesn't mean I don't like the older cars (I wouldn't be on this thread if I didn't!), but they have a time and place for me, and that is to wallow in nostalgia with other, similar minded people, at car shows and on club rallies. For anything else I use the modern, thanks. 

Common sense or a realistic view of what regulations the general population is likely to abide by?

The answer to that is open to debate as well.

Judging by reactions on social media I do wonder if we've now reached the stage where we have more information than ordinary people can reasonably process and make proper sense of...

Certainly that's the way it's looking so far, based on the experts who have spoken about it and not the media and social media scare headlines. Could be a good thing if it turns out that way... We'll have to wait and see.

33 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

That's easy - loose the fairy and stick the cat on top of the tree.

That'll make their eyes water!

I have been doing it all the time, Andy, our policy is still for people to wear masks, that hasn't changed, all that's happened is that it's now Government policy as well. However it's not my job to enforce it, regardless of what some people may think. I'd be putting myself in danger, both of violence against me and of catching this strain of Covid, we get enough threats of verbal and physical violence as it is I've no intention of risking even more.

On to supermarkets, I was in Morrisons just after opening time this morning (emergency as the milk I'd bough two days ago had gone off!) and it was pretty quiet, can't remember about mask wearing I was just in and out as quick as possible!

44 minutes ago, Neil said:

I'm pretty sure that enforcement won't work 

It never did first time round because it's impossible to do without employing several hundred thousand more staff so that all trains could be policed! But more to the point why it was seen by many to be working in the past was that passenger numbers were very, very, low, so most behaved. Unless people stop travelling (remember they haven't said stop using trains, only wear masks) I would say we'll see many still not wearing them and fights break out again between those that won't and the self-appointed mask police. Personally I'll be in my cubby hole out of the way, and I'll fish my plastic face shield out again!

54 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

Just been on a train packed with Christmas shoppers heading west, apart from me not a single mask in sight.

Weekends have always been a bad time on the railways, we all hate working Saturday and Sunday. Before Covid it was drunks, sports fans and shoppers, now Covid is added to that toxic mix. If I were to give one piece of advice to prospective travellers it would be avoid weekends, especially Friday and Saturdays nights and during the day on Sundays.

28 minutes ago, russ p said:

Isn't the TD5 a 5 pot version of the perkins prima?

Not really, some joint use of parts, but different...

"The Land Rover Td5 engine, a 2.5-litre, 5-cylinder turbodiesel used in the Discovery and the Defender had the same bore/stroke dimensions as the L series and used the same pistons, connecting rods and crankshaft dimensions. However, the Td5 was not simply a 5-cylinder L series. It used Lucas electronic unit injection, instead of the L series' direct-injection system, as well as a through-flow cylinder head and a very different ancillary equipment layout. The Td5 had been developed by the Rover Group under the codename 'Project Storm', which was originally to develop a replacement range of turbodiesels to replace the L series, with 4-, 5-, and 6-cylinder engines of 2, 2.5, and 3 litres respectively." (Wiki)

To reply to those who talk about changing a camshaft and other work needed to keep an old car on the road as if it's just a walk in the park I'd better say here and now I am not one of them! I enjoy driving an old car for nostalga's ake but I'm not mechanically minded, or any good at body repairs, etc, so I use a professional. hence my earlier comment about costs is perfectly valid... For me!!

1 hour ago, APOLLO said:

The worst are ALL the German makes

I'm now on my eighth consecutive VW Group car, one failure since 2001 and even that was just a switch into "get you home" mode rather than parking up on the hard shoulder...

Not that my experiences counts against such illustrious knowledge... But my experiences with 70s and 80s cars would suggest that modern cars, despite (or because of?) the modern electrics are far more reliable... But that doesn't stop me wanting another to run as a classic, even though I know it'll cost me more to run than a modern!

1 hour ago, APOLLO said:

I agree modern cars don't rust, they just either electrically or mechanically die these days, and it's usually the new tech in them that goes awol after a dozen or so years, sometimes a lot earlier.

Really? Do you have the statistics to back up that claim? From what I have seen modern cars are pretty reliable and go big mileages with the correct servicing. Yes, when they go wrong it can cost big money, but compared with the stuff I drove around in in the 70's they are much more reliable and will get you home, unlike the old cars.

In both cases, however, it's how you look after them that's important, my Dad used to to do 50k a year in the 50s and 60s and I can never remember his cars ever breaking down, but they were serviced every 2.5/3k miles so it doesn't surprise me. Everything will break down if it isn't properly looked after, new school or old.

Of course it's virtually certain that it's already out and about, just like the delta variant was out long before we even started talking of banning travel. That's not to say that bans shouldn't happen but we have to be realistic, by the time it's been identified it's too late to do anything but slow the spread, not stop it.

Glass half empty vs glass half full yet again...

To counter what you said, Andy, the development to counter the Delta variant was done pretty quickly and I see nothing that would change that for any new variant unless you have specific inside info to counter that? Thing is, they now know what they are dealing with, and have the information they need to get working quickly, and they also have the basics all up and running, it's very different to the early days when it was all new to the scientists involved.

15 hours ago, alastairq said:

 I'm not so sure that was always the case?

Would agree about towns and cities, but outside them it most certainly was much quieter. I'm talking about the middle 70s when I had my first cars, I used to go stock car racing and used the M6 and M61/2 an awful lot back then and they were very, very quiet compared to today and that also included the back roads... Yes there were still traffic jams, and those are what we tend to remember, but they weren't the norm... Also nearly 7000 people died on the roads in the mid 70s, fewer than 2000 now... 

I agree about the power of cars making a difference, but, to join yours and others speculation I'd add mine, that although there are more poor/bad drivers in total numbers today (roughly 10m cars were around in the mid 70s, now over 32m so a set percentage will have a large affect on the overall numbers), I recon as a percentage of the total number of drivers overall the percentage is probably no different to what it was when I started on the road in the mid 70s. Just that they are much more visible these days, either because their numbers are larger so you see them more often or because of the airing they get on social media.

9 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

Eek! Scary!

In some respects it's also positive, firstly that they've identified it so quickly and secondly because they'll be using the data to modify the vaccines to cope with it!

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

It occurs to me that the modern safety features, along with driving aids such as ABS, traction control and a whole heap of other tech has made some people drive like they're invincible, immortal even.

People have always driven like that, I'll be honest enough to admit that I was a bit reckless back in the 70s. But there was much less traffic so a lot less things to hit back then.

Are you comparing like with like? Those figures are the whole population but his are over twelves so they are right for what they are.

Wonder how many chief aerodynamicists they need? That's two now, any more?

9 hours ago, hayfield said:

Oxford -Astra Zeneca vaccine is back in the headlines in one paper, latest data shows that its much better at maintaining T cells than the other vaccines, the best results is when the Oxford- Astra Zeneca vaccine is followed by Pfizer.

Good, that's exactly what I've had, A-Z for the first ones and just had a Pfizer booster!

6 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Maybe part of the answer would be to make civil service employment at the upper-middle level truly attractive, so that good, broadly-experienced people move into it as part of their career, providing a counterpoint to ‘lifers’, 

You could argue the same for MPs I think!

After having seen a major accident involving an HGV pushing an Audi A3 hard into the central barrier at speed on a French motorway and seeing the guy get out alive and uninjured (and furious!) I'm quite happy with the safety features on modern cars, thanks! Had he been in any car from the 80s and earlier he wouldn't have been so lucky. (Oh and please don't give me the "he should have  been driving to avoid it" excuse either, he couldn't have.)

1 hour ago, Andy Kirkham said:

it would only be a matte of time before some other, more vigorous strain took hold and started to proliferate.

No.

It can go either way, so you can't make such a statement as fact. Past experience of viruses has been that it's the other way, they've mutated into relatively harmless variants and/or humans have developed resistance, otherwise we'd have been wiped out by now. But at the end of the day we simply don't know which way it's going to go.