Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

I’ve just been reading about cars. Every week there is an article in the local free paper about how many accidents there have been on the A14 this week. Three serious ones this week. Howcome? I mean its not a particularly unusual piece of road, is it? Its busy, true, but not otherwise exceptional. And what kind of accident do you need to have to close the road for 4.5 hours?

Then there was an article about speed cameras. Which got me thinking – if speed cameras really are placed at accident blackspots, then surely there will be a higher incidence of accidents among those who have just been caught on the camera. Is this true? Where can I find out information like that?

Finally there was a piece about the cost of running a car – where they reckoned the average cost of keeping a car on the road was around 5000 pound per year. Now, I know I’m not driving as much as I used to so my fuel costs are currently down on where they normally are, but I’m not spending anything like that on my car. Indeed, I think I’d be hard pushed to have spent that much even in the year I bought it.


Categories: Memories.

/ 5 Comments

5 comments

  2. ulfilias

    I was about 200M from one of these last week…Tuesday I think, round Milton and the b1049 IIRC. I sat for 2 hours on a slip road after asking the nice policeman if we could go up it the wrong way. He said No and to get back in the car. After a couple of hours a bright copper turned up and said, right lets get this cars going the wrong way up the slip road then we can move the lorries….Talk about a told you so and a jobsworth !

    Suposidly it was 2 lorries and a Car involved. I saw 3 fire engines, 2 ambulances and loads of cop cars zoom down the hard shoulder around me to attend.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Not much fun. But you can kinda see how it happens, part of the problem is that nobody actually wants to stop and lend a hand (I’m thinking more about the small shunts rather than the bits of lorry *everywhere*, road closed chaos), if a few people just got out and pushed the broken cars to the side then everyone could get on with their journey without having to trickle past on the hard shoulder.

      Maybe we should just take the approach that theres gonna be accidents, and that, given that, we should deal with them better?

      Reply
  3. neilh

    The accidents they report are those on the stretch around Cambridge, theres at least one a week, normally two, last week was exceptional with three.

    Lets see…my car was 3000 (and I’ve had it for four years now, say 1000 per year), above average fuel of 1500, then insurance 300, MOT & servicing etc around 600 per year….maybe I should be spending more on ridiculous cars…? Criteria for next one is insurance group above 15.

    Reply

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