https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

checked throttle pedal and cable for sticking, return spring still tight

2 hours ago, Jacko said:

Im all for letting Darwin get back to his regular job. We shouldnt have to have campaigns to tell people to wear their seatbelts....

 

or helmets on pushbikes

2 hours ago, richard said:

All the driver training in the world wont stop traffic crossing over median line , I think its time for two lanes on all major roads and a median barrier down the middle.

If you use work safe practice to isolate ,minimise or eliminate , then to minimise would be your best practise.

 

totally agree I would guess not many deaths involve a badly handled skid for example so you can't expect advanced skid training to save many lives, defensive training which is more spotting the dangers would though. I'm all for actually putting the road taxes back into roads so they can actually improve them. 35 deaths on that Tauranga article seems like a good start, hit the worst ones first then the annoyances. Why the hell is Huntly still on SH1,

Some of the roading engineers need some better training too. The one dual carriageway, we call it a motorway here in HB had a ridiculous major T intersection added at day 1 then changed to lights and now they are putting in a roundabout 10 years later which any idiot could see needed to be there since day 1. It already has 3-4 other roundabouts on same stretch of road put in at day 1. made zero sense to anyone.

just as a note , our small village Havelock North, basically a retirement home now has had 3-4 cars driven through front windows by mistake by elderly who hit the wrong pedal in last 18 months or so. My 95 father in law lives and drives there in a manual 71 mini. No way I'd ever get in car with him, only drives in daylight hours but basically half blind and deaf. I'm not going to take his keys off him, it would kill him but his bloody doctor is doing him no favours continually passing him fit to drive.

21 minutes ago, Eagle said:

All well having a wish list in all but its a fact is being obsessed with punishment has been done over and over and has failed every time. Of course there's always going to be some people who don't learn but it's still far better have to support programs,policies etc that help people so they are less likely to offend in the first place. Not to mention the cost benefits down the line.

Your right NZ'ers are casual as with most things but i don't see that changing in a hurry.  

what would you do then out of curiosity, what policies are going to help say 20 yr old boy racers not offend in the first place,or people who don't bother with licenses or drive deathtraps with their kids unbelted in

society has to have laws and laws only work if there are consequences

It probably doesn't affect road safety in your case and yes the last test only really picks up a few learned bad habits but the attitude does, Ron is bang on with that.play the game or get off the road, hold insurance or get off the road,Its like holding a loaded gun and you either take it seriously or don't drive.Those people who you rightly say drive around with no license and don't care about it or the penalties would get a much ruder awakening in Aus when they get caught. here you can run up thousands in fines and its just a joke to a 20 yr old. Crusher Collins needs to take charge, get un worthy vehicles off the road, really penalise people and the others out there will gradually take the whole thing more seriously 

Like in Aus get caught for DIC on a friday and get thrown in the cells till mon where your delivered straight to court, here your taxi'd home to be back out behind the wheel within hours

point is people here are casual because they can get away with it,

look how many are driving on a restricted having never bothered to actually pay to do the final or don't even have a license, laws needs some teeth or cops are losing before they start

Aus is way tougher

4 hours ago, E30 325i Rag-Top said:

What is going on in Waikato? How can there be more road deaths there than anywhere else, even Auckland.

wondered the same,

Im also guessing NZ car base contains a larger section of older poorly maintained vehicles than europe, and we seem to have a larger collection of uneducated drivers, We constantly have people stopped around here with kids not belted in.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/govt-view-on-roading-projects-will-up-the-ante-says-group/ar-AAw7trQ?li=BBqdk7Q

10 hours ago, 3pedals said:

The big yellow signs are part of the problem along with the stupid chevrons, instead of reading the road people are reading the signs - no sign - no idea what to why - because they have no driving skills because we like many other don't teach them any more 

 

wow no "spouting the usual dross" or other sarcastic comments ,fantastic keep it up

Not sure you could prove the corner speed suggested signs are the cause, I never really take any notice of them except the big ones with multiple chevrons that really jump out which indicates hey theres a largely unseen tightening of this bend and people keep sliding off here so you better slow down mate. I don't think majority of deaths are by being slightly above or below the limit except when they on a space saver tyre or some other crappy vehicle, Intersections are bad and when you have them and people backing out of their driveways directly onto SH1 like in levin. GPS is maybe a factor here too

also overseas roads are no comparison, you don't know the percentages of who travels them per head of population, what their road deaths are, most of them are probably 80% motorway and a few locals who travel their local side roads where we are exactly the opposite, people coming 35 minutes down a country road to town for school/work everyday and on motorway at holiday time when we go to visit Gran. Theres kids in Hawkes Bay that have never seen a motorway.You can spend 12 months in taranaki,hawkes bay , east coast, wairarapa, northland etc etc and never drive one yet they seem to be the roads people die on most possibly more deaths than Auckland district with 1.5 million

as for not teaching them ,when has the driving test been any better, its damn harder now than it ever was, our parents just turned up after driving a tractor round the farm and were given them.mine was a joke too,defensive driving courses were optional or court forced but they were far more useful than the license test was, probably made sense and stuck in minds of many that would never have realised otherwise

I guess logically its foolhardy to think you can grow from 3 million to nearly 5 on same roads and the deaths have to go up statistically

2 hours ago, Buklemaschu said:

There really is no fix-all for reducing the road toll. But they could start with a look at the root cause of fatal accidents and then actually publish the results. But i'm guessing that wouldn't actually sit well with the various lobby groups out there that push their own particular "solution'

But my pet peeve:  Few months back, i drove from Akl to Wgtn, significant stretches we were trucking along at 80-90... until we hit the passing lanes, then miraculously those car's at the front of the queue that didn't seem capable of breaking 85 up a hill were suddenly able to do 110+ WTF ?!?!  Now i took it mostly in my stride, but i saw a few road warriors letting loose to get past so they could catch up to the next queue 5 mins further down the road.

 

 

I'm guilty of still passing those guys who speed up then, but I prefer to have a clear road rather than follow some idiot who rides the brakes on every corner or whatever. I know you catch the next group and supposedly you don't get there any faster, I dispute that, but the bits where the road is clear are so much more enjoyable and you can drive smoother by judging rises, decents corner speeds etc rather than constantly having to adjust because of others not anticipating and reading the road

2 hours ago, Jacko said:

Prime candidates for seem to be SUVs, and from my sample while driving: everyone who drives a new ford ranger

Judging from the sample set "whos crashed into me and neighbours fence in the last 12 months" 1x Suzuki Swift, 1x Mitzi Canter Truck, 1x Vt Holden, 2x Honda Odyssey, 1x  Honda Accord....

After the first few crashes, AT put in a new 50kmh sign. The Suzuki actually crashed into it, and it did slow the car down before it hit the fence, so good job there. 

to be fair tho those arn't really the deaths, not sure of stats but I would assume most are on the open road, the tragic ones are either one off where the car left the road, tired, drunk or incompetent or are some sort of headon where somebody has crossed the white line involving many vehicles.

The cops need to get their act together over the accidents too, spend hours looking for all the evidence as to whose fault it was including shutting roads or lanes for 12-24 hrs sometimes like they did on the desert road over easter. I n Europe the focus is on getting the traffic moving again quickly. get the vehicles off the road, sweep up and get traffic flowing. If your dead your dead no court case is going to solve that not that their seems to be ever much done with all the evidence gathered anyway.

As of Friday, 125 compared to 107 last year , and for 12 months to today its 398 compared to 329.

we obviously had few lucky low years and things were maybe skewed into thinking they had it solved. Time to get rid of some of the sillyness like 3km holiday limits and actually makes some changes that work. Not that were ever going to achieve miracles on our simple 2 lane overcrowded highways. Compulsory insurance would be a start and more cops on roads. Last 12 months Ive driven up and down north island and barely seen a cop. Can't be just luck. The fear of a ticket is the only thing that keeps my speed in check to be completely honest.

ex.Over Xmas and new year went HB to Wanganui Taranaki Taupo and home saw one cop going in other direction and one speed camera. I guess because they were all on leave after doing allnighters on the 23/24 Dec handing out lollies and things to xmas travellers.

6 minutes ago, huff3r said:

We get it, you don't like speedway. Plenty of people do, and I wouldn't say it's that minor at all. It has a huge following. But of course you'll have an explanation why that following is actually small or non existant.

I don't like it so people shouldn't do it. Cool story bro. 

Don't react to trolls, your being played with.

well just watched E6 last of latest top gear season 25 and I would rate this season as one of the best seasons.

pretty dramatic seeing them compete in monte carlo rally and have car burst into flames mid run.

Think matt was a genius casting and the 3 of them work really well together, their jokes are a bit more current than the original three

10 hours ago, 3pedals said:

time it went , totally inaapropriate activity in an urban area - move on 

come on thats not a even a good attempt at trolling, expected better from you

this is the sort of thing that makes me smile

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/entertainment/tv/top-gear-sets-new-guinness-world-record/ar-BBKA2om?li=BBqdk7Q

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/woman-struck-and-killed-by-self-driving-uber-vehicle/ar-BBKrj5e?li=BBqdk7Q

the new season of Top Gear season 25 is 4 episodes in and they are really into their thing now.Chris Harris and Matt Le Blanc have really got a good relationship and matts comic timing is pretty undeniable. been some great articles electric motor-x bikes, 2cvs etc. I actually prefer it to the grand tour which seems just repeats of ideas. Top gear seems to have kept some fresh ideas coming in. matts articles about some massive crane or other industrial equipment are great fun.

less intelligent people (the masses) are easier to control, when there's no jobs left and the worlds falling apart

hence the programmed dumbing down of society, replace news with clickbait and reality shows and people are just lambs to the slaughter

I was under the impression all BMW had world radios, you just had to program them from japanese to world, which isn't hard, certainly was the case on my e39

99% of them have international radios on ebay and work fine here, the jap import cars have japanese specific bands which is what causes the issue

you just need one that increments in 0.1 otherwise you could pick up 93.3 and 93.5 but not 93.4.  type issues and it will list the upper and lower limit as well which from memory are about 88 to 106 on FM

https://www.lovenewzealand.net.nz/new-zealand-radio-stations.php

1 hour ago, 3pedals said:

We don't operate cake mixers - suggest you read the post slower and adjust the inclination of your location - you might come up with some insight rather than the dross you have spurted out above. 

haha gotta love autocorrect and failure to proof read doh

On 1/03/2018 at 5:26 PM, 3pedals said:

Sure but what you are doing again is using the extremes - camshafts and followers  in most other cars are not  $14 grand and the root cause of failure is likely to be a maintenance issue.

The SMG pump is likely to be design related but that is a risk of that type of transmission system as are the problems with DCT types - buy them and take the risk -- or as we all basically agree you could mitigate it ( MBI) BUT  you could also choose to eliminate the risk by not buying SMG / DCT  type cars therefore it is not a risk you have to manage. 

If we took  a risk based approach to buying a vehicle rather than an emotional one half the cars on planet would have died in gestation and manufacturers would be less inclined to use the buying public as crash test dummies. 

The issue was raised about the electronic complexity of the car - my key  point was and still is the electronics are unlikley to be the problem,  mechanicals and poorly maintained mechanicals are. 

And on the point of you can't maintain your way out of failure - not 100%  but you can do a sh*t load better than average, we do it at work with trucks doing 2-300,000 km per year they don't break down and some of them are well over 3,000,000 km without a breakdown. 

how many cars of that age need cams and followers or big end bearings or whatever so I'd call that an extreme. To purchase a BMW without an MBI is a lottery or gamble in anyones book. people will always gamble, some win too.

the problem with risk based buying is you don't know the risk until heaps of people have bought and discovered the issue by which time its too late. Second hand buyers get to research and learn from others misfortunes or get a repaired model with the bugs ironed out once parts have been recalled and swopped. you'd never consider a giulia based on that theory

with the amount of floods and other overseas issues previous Water ingress is a real unknown risk when buying an import. Why electronics are on the floor under carpet or tucked into boot wells is still beyond me. there has to be a better location

if everyone bought based on risk the whole world would be driving toyotas based on any conversation with someone who manages fleet vehicles will tell you. To be fair other brands are now cutting into those glowing records of past fleet ownerships

to say some of your trucks are doing 3,000,00km doesn't prove that maintenance is working and your beating the average, it may well be but it may also be brand specific. Your not proving that owning a fleet of Isuzus is more reliable than a fleet of kenwoods and "the some" are the ones that the boss is concerned with. Why are they off road and for how long