Hornby price increases

Which all proves that the only answer is to make me Lord Protector :-)

Round here, the garages are too narrow for most modern cars. Just after getting my mother a new car, my Dad found out that while the car (a 3 door Corsa) would fit into the garage the doors couldn't open far enough for anyone to get out. The garage is now his railway workshop.

A fortuitous happenstance! However, it would be too cold for 6 months of the year here.

I'm slightly late to this but that's not the case in The Netherlands. Over here it may take them a while to get a cabinet together (*) but they're quite adept at making the same mistakes as a first-past-the-post gov't. In other words, they can govern with a PR system and we can be just as miserable.

(*) Unlike Belgium where it takes an aeon :-)

-- Rod

Hasselt (Belgium) made public transport free. Result? An eight-fold increase in the number of people using it. Very popular with the voters.

-- Rod

Are you suggesting that it is ludicrous to accomodate the disabled and safety. kevin

A straw man - it is about balance.

Somebody somewhere must have decided that aeroplanes don't need the same kinds of accessible tiolets (oops, wrong group) as trains. I suspect coaches don't have ideal wheelchair access either(?).

What kind of route and traction knowledge is the average motorist expected to have?

There has been a fatal accident just up the road from me today, which could be either a a "rail" or "road" accident. If it is a road accident, will I be able to go to a Road Accident Investigation Branch website and download a detailed study of what happened in a few months? Or will it just be ticked off as one of the 3000-odd dead a year, and not a problem as long as it doesn't cause too much of a jam?

No such thing as a road "accident". It's a crash or a collision.

So are you suggesting it was deliberate? I'm sure the police (and perhaps also RAIB?) will be interested to see your evidence.

On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:15:49 +0100, Arthur Figgis said in :

You're living in the past century, mate. Look at the DfT website, RAGB is now RCGB, the word "accident" is deprecated as so many of them turn out to be the result of negligence at some level.

Collision is the usual word these days.

Guy

It's still an accident, unless there is proof that the collision was caused deliberately - the 'Selby' high-speed derailment was still an accident even though the cause was negligence, OTOH, Ufton Nervet collision was a deliberate act caused by Brian Drysdale committing suicide and had he survived his injuries (and stood trail he would have been charged with murder I suspect).

Negligence doesn't equal a deliberate act.

"Zen83237" wrote

No, I'm suggesting that common sense needs to prevail.

We've had railways in this country for over 150 years and despite all of the recent H&S regulation deaths and injuries to railway staff haven't changed too much throughout that period. In fact if you compare casualties with the number of workers actually employed then the trend is probably upwards.

As for disabled access then I concede there is a definite need at busy main line stations, otherwise provision should be on an 'as required' basis. Look at the staggering cost of providing wheelchair friendly footbridges at places such as Barnetby (North Lincolnshire) and Ulleskelf (North Yorkshire) and tell me that those costs are justified. In both cases it would have been far cheaper to provide a free taxi service on demand for those in genuine need.

John.

"Arthur Figgis" wrote

Maybe not deliberate, but could it not have been caused by negligence rather than being an accident?

John.

The trouble is that an accident is very rarely caused by one person. Railway accident reports make interesting reading as they highlight this. Unfortunately we now assume that one person is somehow to blame for everything, and that simply isn't true - it's an old (but true) saying that it takes at least two people to cause an accident. The modern version should add "but the one with the cheapest lawyer will be held to be reponsible".

Cheers Richard

If it was caused by negligence then it was still an accident. it only becomes something else if there was intent.

Jeff

If it was caused by negligence then it was still an accident. it only becomes something else if there was intent.

Jeff

"Jeff" wrote

Nah, an 'accident' implies 'accidental' and free of negligence. Incident is the word you're looking for.

John.

">> If it was caused by negligence then it was still an accident. it only

Not at all; as you say 'accident' implies 'accidental' i.e. you did not mean it to happen, i.e no intent. In fact negligence itself implies no intent and therefore implies that the incident was an accident. It is simple English. The accident may have been avoidable, but that it a different matter.

For some reason people seem to want to skew the meaning of accidental to mean that there was also no negligence. If that were the case then there would be virtually no accidents because you can, in 99.9% of cases, say that it would not have happened if someone had taken more care over something. It is all part of current culture to always find somebody to blame.

Regards Jeff

So give an example of an "accident", and I bet someone was negligent somewhere.

MBQ