If you care about co2 emissions you should be raising fuel duty and increasing taxes on domestic use of natural gas for heating and cooking. Electric cars, induction stoves and heat pumps are all prove technologies now and we should be happy to phase out fossil fuels via tax rises.

Wow this house is older than it looks

Not so fun facts about uninsured drivers: they kill and maim a lot of people.

Another one who thinks the response to a global shortage of something which makes it more expensive is to subsidise people to buy more of it. Truly British politics is blessed with genius.

This is a good piece. We simply accept 1000s of unnecessary deaths because we won't force all of us who drive to accept we have a dangerous machine in our hands. And then fail to enforce that fact as police have basically stopped policing the roads. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Artemis is just Apollo in HD

Fuel duty is *already* 34p per litre lower, in real terms, than in 2010 Its been frozen or cut for 15 years Its cost the Treasury over £200bn in tax - and hugely incentivised people to keep using ICE cars and driving. It's favoured the richest If anything we should be restoring it to 2010 levels

Have said this before but it feels indicative of Britain's approach to a lot of stuff that commercially produced and sold e-scooters are basically illegal to use, yet our roads are full of dubiously modded bikes that are a traffic hazard and also incendiary bombs.

UK politics now in a bidding war of universal fuel subsidies (sorry, "support") to, per ed davey "keep britain moving". The reality - that consumption must fall - is going to be a nasty surprise

You may not like hearing this but actually free on-street car parking is objectively a ridiculous idea when you think about it for a second. Imagine if I plonked literally any other bulky item of personal property in front of my house and expected it to not require permission or payment!

It’s just so stupid on so many levels. The *fundamental* problem is that the world has less oil. We need to use less to account for that. Making petrol a fraction cheaper doesn’t help with the real issue, costs the government money and does very little for households.

I'm going to go by Phen from now on.

I met a traveller from a virtual land. Who said: Two bland and legless trunks of pixels. Stand in the desert.. Nothing beside remains.

This is the way.

In the news today, a cyclist on the pavement who killed a man is charged with manslaughter. By contrast, here's a van driver who killed a little girl. He was driving on the pavement: common, and illegal. Killed her. Only charged with dangerous driving. Fully let off. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...

This should be called the Leroy Jenkins defense. If one of your allies decides to do something stupid you still have to deal with the consequences.

This should be called the Leroy Jenkins defense. If one of your allies decides to do something stupid you still have to deal with the consequences.

Reminder that "jaywalking" was literally made up by american car manufacturers to shift the blame for accidents from drivers to pedestrians. "Jay" was a slang term meaning "idiot" or "rube".

Labour keeps talking about saving the high street without naming the real problem. Car dependency. You cannot fix town centres while planning everything around driving. The internet is permanent. Retail only survives where footfall is dense, local, frequent, and cheap to access.

Can someone tell me what's going on here? Do card companies charge pubs more than charity shops?

These sort of headlines must put off a load of people from buying a proper ebike as they assume all of them are fire risks when it's only the dodgy home bodges that are the problem.

Commenting as Govt launch a road safety strategy. Every death on our roads is unacceptable. We need a Vision Zero ethos: no deaths or serious injury. Change driving culture, reject speeding, use speed-limiting tech, strengthen sentences, end ‘accident’ language. Driving is a privilege, not a right.

“Moving to a situation where cars are not considered the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation will take ambition and imagination. But the alternative is a very expensive dependency, which clogs up the UK economy.” theconversation.com/how-the-uks-...

@yplac.bsky.social we've hit the mother lode here chaps

Car Size xkcd.com/3167/

Until I die, I will never understand why so many motorists think that “having a car” should give you special protections from doing crimes.

Your city doesn't have a Muslim mayor? Embarrassing

Speak loudly and carry a small stick

"Though robotaxis have notched up impressive growth, they look ploddingly pedestrian compared with far zippier pedal-powered rivals. [Waymo] proudly proclaims that its cars do around 250k trips a week. Yet in NYC alone that number of trips is made every three days using the city’s bikeshare scheme."

Electric bicycles, and shared electric bicycles in particular, are a revolutionary transportation technology. Forward-looking cities should be building out the infrastructure necessary to make cycling safe and convenient for everyone who wants to do it.

@sirpaintalot.bsky.social scarf just arrived. This thing is massive!

Democratic Bloc would be a great name for a bouldering centre.

Thought the UK’s fuel duty freeze was distorting only patterns of passenger transport? Think again after reading a leading rail freight executive’s complaints about how it boosts trucks over rail: www.ft.com/content/5785...

Lots of questions about my Not Involved in Blackmail, Match-fixing, Drug Trafficking or Corruption banner already answered by the banner

It is extraordinary the way that fare payers are expected to pay more each year, at least in line with inflation, but people driving get a free pass for more than a decade?!

There is no possible justification for limiting e-bikes to 15mph but not cars.

Hear me out, AI is like the car. Yes it's useful and will make lives easier but we will all be worse off if we become overly dependent on it and we should definitely not trust a word of anyone who is making money from selling it.

The bullet train in 🇯🇵-as glorious as everyone says. A reminder the Japanese built their first high speed train for the 1964 Olympics and it became national by the 80s. They’re now building Maglevs (floating trains). Meanwhile in 🇬🇧 we can’t be sure we’ll connect HS2 to Euston. Pathetic.

Kill a tree, get four years in jail. Kill a cyclist, get a suspended sentence www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wale...

My contribution to the air con debate

@medcrisis.bsky.social good morning to you too

An equivalent UK version of this stat is that there are more journeys* on the Elizabeth line per day than there are people living in any other UK city except Birmingham. (*I know journeys does not equal people)

These huge cars are vastly more dangerous, kill far more children, as they're higher at the front. They should have their own much lower speed limit in towns; and higher tax. Parking should be charged as for vans, they're larger than normal spaces. It's bizarre that they're treated as cars.

Cities increasingly have a divide between the urban mindset which eschews car ownership, is comfortable with density and uses transit by default and the suburban which sees car ownership and a single family house+garden as essential. This seems to cross established socioeconomic groups.

motorists will *never* notice cuts to fuel duty (which they permanently be convinced is too high, and in fact actually purposefully being set to victimise them), but the state will bleed itself dry for their discount that doesn't touch the sides, in a way they never would for public transport users

Important thread from Adam here. Public space - especially in towns and cities - isn't just there for the fast, efficient movement of motor vehicles and we mustn't let that motonormative thinking enable another generational landgrab as automated driving slides in

Rescued this fellow from the road last night

I Call App Britain