Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

gfplux

Just driven 950k on French motorways. Most annoying drivers are the speeding English who know (for now anyway) that if they get flashed by a French camera they won't get a ticket. Most of the rest of us "suffer" the liaison between country's that means a "flash" in France will mean a ticket in the post in Luxembourg.

The only retribution is that the French authority's store up the offenders reg number and there is a slim chance they will get stopped at a toll booth on a later trip, particularly if they are serial offenders.

michaels

gfplux wrote: »

Just driven 950k on French motorways. Most annoying drivers are the speeding English who know (for now anyway) that if they get flashed by a French camera they won't get a ticket. Most of the rest of us "suffer" the liaison between country's that means a "flash" in France will mean a ticket in the post in Luxembourg.

The only retribution is that the French authority's store up the offenders reg number and there is a slim chance they will get stopped at a toll booth on a later trip, particularly if they are serial offenders.

I thought they liked to pull over British drivers and frog march them to the cash point...at gun point!!!

I also thought we did share traffic offence info with Europe just not parking offence?

So nice to be home and not just feeling cold / chilly right through every where even in sweaters - we are t-shirt weather 24/7/365 here, even in the mornings we can be safely in the car before opening the garage door.

DD1 starts big school tomorrow :eek:

chewmylegoff

Doozergirl wrote: »

I drove a car for three years that had perfectly good in built bluetooth phone system and had no idea. I thought 'prep' meant I had to pay for something else to make it work. I sold it and still didn't know. It's only now we have another one of the same age that I found out.

Ha ha..errr...snap.

I thought multifunction steering wheel meant that it had wipers and indicators...

GDB2222

Deleon Alonso Smith surely must be a prime candidate for a Darwin Awaro, surely? He found a gun, and took some selfies fooling around with it and holding it against his head. It went off. Dangerous things, selfies.

Generali

GDB2222 wrote: »

Deleon Alonso Smith surely must be a prime candidate for a Darwin Awaro, surely? He found a gun, and took some selfies fooling around with it and holding it against his head. It went off. Dangerous things, selfies.

Selfies don't kill people, people kill people!

zagubov

Kurt Vonnegut used to write about the American mass gun possession from the point of view of an alien. He described guns as heat engines running on a nitrate fuel, and he'd describe bank robberies as transactions where people would offer to put holes in other people to encourage them to transfer bits of paper, unless other people offered to put holes in the robbers to make them change their behaviour.

He was a brilliant writer, but to be fair, you don't have to be Vonnegut or a man from Mars to see mass gun ownership as a baffling self-inflicted social catastrophe.

Generali

zagubov wrote: »

Kurt Vonnegut used to write about the American mass gun possession from the point of view of an alien. He described guns as heat engines running on a nitrate fuel, and he'd describe bank robberies as transactions where people would offer to put holes in other people to encourage them to transfer bits of paper, unless other people offered to put holes in the robbers to make them change their behaviour.

He was a brilliant writer, but to be fair, you don't have to be Vonnegut or a man from Mars to see mass gun ownership as a baffling self-inflicted social catastrophe.

The bit I find strange is that there are countries with much higher rates of gun ownership than the US with far lower murder rates (Switzerland being the obvious example). Why is it that Americans have such a propensity to shoot each other but the Swiss don't?

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

The bit I find strange is that there are countries with much higher rates of gun ownership than the US with far lower murder rates (Switzerland being the obvious example). Why is it that Americans have such a propensity to shoot each other but the Swiss don't?

Cheese and yodelling.

I don't know the real answer, but like to think that the fact that the Swiss prefer to have holes in their milk-based products than their people may have something to do with it. And how can angry, uptight people yodel? Actually scratch that, I get angry and uptight when Yodel screw up parcel deliveries, so that may not count.

Truly I find the gun thing baffling, but it is not as long term ingrained as you would think... the NRA was quite moderate until the 1970s, it's since then that the gun problem has really raised its ugly head. Sadly though I don't know what you now do... guns are so endemic that Pandora's Box cannot be closed. Glad I live here in that respect.

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

The bit I find strange is that there are countries with much higher rates of gun ownership than the US with far lower murder rates (Switzerland being the obvious example). Why is it that Americans have such a propensity to shoot each other but the Swiss don't?

Don't know about the difference between the US and Switzerland but I've heard an explanation for why it's so different between the US and Canada.

Apparently it was due to the lack of law and order as the country expanded. Everybody needed to protect themselves with firearms till it became part ofthier culture.

If settlers moved west into Canada, the mounties moved with them and dealt with law and order, so guns weren't needed.

michaels

I think the US has a healthier attitude about govt being representatives pf the people rather than Europe where we seem to be in awe of our betters who rule us (not rule for us). May not help that much in practice but I think once machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence I don't think Europeans will have any problems with handing over our personal decision making to them.