Smoking tobacco, I mean...)
Given the law re mobile phones (see current thread), will smoking go the same way? IMO lighting p and 'managing' your ciggie while driving has to be distracting, especially in demanding driving conditions. It's also interesting to consider that self-administering a drug (actually a whole variety of chemical compounds) on the move is legal. (Is swigging lager from a bottle OK, even if you remain within the legal blood-alcohol limit)?
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Its a matter of time.
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But officer I was told it was legal to remove my trousers and inject insulin while on the move.
Drivers looking at their passengers when talking.
No doubt their SWMBO says 'look at me when....'
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is eating whilst driving an offence? ie a big mac or bag of wotsits for example
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Can most certainly be. (Due care and attention)
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I know,
Let's ban.............
Eating boiled sweets ( sugar rush )
Talking to passengers ( distracting )
Children in cars ( too noisy )
Luggage / briefcases / shopping ( might fly about in a crash )
Dogs ( unpredictable, might bark )
Radios ( might distract driver )
Apples ( might roll about and get stuck under pedals )
Smoking ( daily reports of accidents directly attributable aren't there ? )
;-)
Or....... just encourage those you hold dear to use a bit of common sense maybe ?
As with all in car activities not directly related to driving, there are circumstances and situations where they are not advisable and others when it is perfectly safe.
Education before legislation. ( except hand held 'phones of course, that is dangerous ! )
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You've taken the words out of my mouth shoespy.We should also ban those killer manual window winders, indicator stalks,gear levers and any other switches etc. that you have to take your hand off the wheel to use.Are hand signals still legal?
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Let's ban.............
Can we include nose picking?
The number of people who seem to think they're invisible amazes me
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Am I committing two offenses by sucking on a Victory-V?
Due care and DUI?
Kevin...
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You can't call them Victory Vs anymore :-)
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Wot ? Is that banned too now ?
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On the basis that as its an implied victory than someone must be disadvantaged !
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"Champion" spark plugs a "no no" then !? ;-)
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so any wynns products is a no no too ? :)
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I wonder if Averageyear tyres will be as popular.
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I know it's my fault for leading you all astray - meanwhile back on topic !
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You can't call them Victory Vs anymore :-)
They're still packaged by the manufacturer as Victory V. tinyurl.com/39vfky
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It was a joke, a cheap shot I admit at the silly way our country has gone.
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I've never smoked and I hate the smell of cigarettes - BUT - if someone needs to smoke in order to relax, then they should be allowed to when at the wheel. Tense, twitchy drivers could be a threat to themselves and others - obviously not as much as drunk or drugged drivers, but a threat nonetheless.
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m a smoker but i never smoke in the car for one very good reason theres nothing worse then losing the red end off the end of a cigerette and having to try to find it before it burns though the seat or worse burns though your trouser......especially while doing 70 down the motorway and then there blow back when you try to put a lit dog end out of the window only to see it blow back past your ear to somewhere in the back.
and too be honest i can go for a few hours without a ciggie so even on long journies i always wait till i pull over for a stretch before lighting up
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I think smoking while driving lends an air of elegance to the driver but, of course, only while wearing a helmet.
Helmets will be mandatory in time, I'm sure, but hands free mobile phones could be incorporated into them, thus easing the genuine peril of the cell phone held to the ear.
Edited by wildcolonial on 16/03/2008 at 07:13
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In reply to the Q above, eating while driving has been penalised, a driver was done 3-4 years ago for eating a KitKat.
Most drivers ARE quite capable of driving sensibly & safely while there is a distraction going on -- whether it's noisy kids in the car, lighting a ciggy, changing radio stations, talking to a passenger, using a mobile phone or whatever.
Mobile usage is deemed to be unacceptable, as is eating food. The rest is just a matter of time.
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I don't really care if people want to stink up their cars and make them filthy, as long as I don't have to share them.
What irks me is that smokers seem to think they have a special dispensation that allows them to throw their empty packets and disgusting fag ends straight out of the window.
Yes, it's my garden that gets littered and yes, I am an ex-biker who once caught a burning fag end under the visor of an open-face helmet...
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if someone needs to smoke in order to relax then they should be allowed to when at the wheel.
I'd have thought tense, twitchy drivers who need a fag are smokers who haven't had one for a while.
BTW, I thought it was sucking on a Fisherman's Friend that is frowned upon.
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I've been smoking and driving for around 40 years without any comebacks, apart from once getting a bit of ash in an eye through flicking the cigarette end out of the window.
If we still had quarter-lights that would never have happened....:-)
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That's an £80.00 quid fixed penalty now if you're caught. Fag ends were specifically written in as "litter" in the Litter Act. Quite right as well, if its not downright ant-social, its dangerous to other road users and causes fires in the summers around here.
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Ahh, quarter lights. Sniff. Like indicator flippers, sadly no more.
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Quarter lights were a pia. They leaked after a few years, were noisy and the hinges rusted...
As I drive with all windows closed, perhaps my opinions are biased:-)
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That's an £80.00 ((quid)) fixed penalty now if you're caught..>>
I did state "..flicking the cigarette end out of the window..."!
What's more, I've never found myself in a "dangerous" situation through someone throwing a cigarette end out of a car, although I can appreciate it could be dangerous for anyone following on two wheels.
Edited by Stuartli on 17/03/2008 at 12:34
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didnt someone flicking a fag end in some dukes car start WWI or is that just taking conspiracy thoeries to the extreme LOL
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didnt someone flicking a fag end in some dukes car start WWI or is that just taking conspiracy thoeries to the extreme LOL
Actually it was a hand grenade that was thrown at the archduke ferdinand in sarajevo by a member of the "black hand" extremist serb gang led by gavrillo princip ( nerd hat off)
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It would be far more useful (and universally popular) to place a total ban on interfering nannying busybodies who think they have the god-given right to micro-manage everybody's lives.
Funnily enough they're all non-smokers! ;-)
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It would be far more useful (and universally popular) to place a total ban on interfering nannying busybodies Funnily enough they're all non-smokers! ;-)
When I was young every adult (nannies, parents and other interfering busybodies included) was a chain smoker, so alas, I can't fully agree. But you're right somehow on an emotional level Hogrider.
But people going on about the awfulness of smoking do get up one's nose even when one has managed to give up smoking oneself.
People who have never smoked know nothing about it. They can say they don't like it, but if they go any further they should be hit over the head with shovels, non-lethally of course.
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Lud I think the shovel thing is a bit severe.I would suggest one of those inflatable hammers that kids get and batter them for at least 3 hours .Or at least untnill they promise never to bad mouth smokers again.After all, the taxes they pay, buying their cigarette,s probably pays for the NHS many times over.
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It would be far more useful (and universally popular) to place a total ban on interfering nannying busybodies who think they have the god-given right to micro-manage everybody's lives.>>
Therein lies the hub of practically everything that is wrong with this country.
Left to their own devices, the majority of the population would get along famously and with very few problems providing the basic services were available.
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I have to agree - Leo Abse the ex- MP had a theory about Health and Safety - "Happy Factories" lot to be said for it.
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Given the law re mobile phones (see current thread) will smoking go the same way?
Probably, as has eating Cadbury's "Fingers of fudge" (or somesuch) whilst stopped at traffic lights, and other such. "Nannyism" can go to far.
IMO lighting p and 'managing' your ciggie while driving has to be distracting especially in demanding driving conditions.
It must be "distracting" - however, it's entirely to do with "self", in a way that talking on the 'phone is not. I would personally put smoking whilst driving at the bottom end of the "distraction" list - below listening to the radio, for instance. If you were to say "Smoking is detrimental to reaction during a crash", I'd agree!
It's also interesting to consider that self-administering a drug (actually a whole variety of chemical compounds) on the move is legal. (Is swigging lager from a bottle OK even if you remain within the legal blood-alcohol limit)?
Well. Nicotine, the desired "drug" from tobacco smoke is "legal", and harmless unless taken to excess (in which case it would be quickly fatal). I don't see why drinking alcohol "on the move", in circumstances where proper allowance for other road users has been made, and given the stricture you mention, should be anything but "legal".
Hm?
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>> IMO lighting p and 'managing' your ciggie while driving has to be distracting especially in >> demanding driving conditions. Goodness FT, should I succumb and mention the old-time Westbourne Park Road character who was seen rolling a joint on the binnacle of his big Ford in the outside lane of the M1 at, you may be sure, a goodly pre-NSL lick heading for some important business meeting or musical event in, er, the Midlands?
A lot easier and more relaxing of course than doing it while running down a back corridor in a pub in Catford, which I once saw the jazz saxophonist Tubby Hayes doing as I hared after him er, ages ago ... We had gone there in a racing mechanic's vintage Sunbeam from the neighbourhood I live in now. No one needs to believe this though, even if it's true.
Of course the motorways were extremely useful to enthusiasts for a while after they first appeared, and they have always been safe to the sane driver under all circumstances ...
Hm?
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As a measure of just how much attitudes have changed - does anyone know what a relief tube (in an aircraft) is? It is a rubber tube going through the fuselage to a bernoulli tube out in the airstream. The airflow through the tube creates a suction. On the inside end there is a conical funnel into which the hapless pilot is meant to find relief.
There used to be available for sports cars in the 50s a similar device, only for disposing of ashes and cigarettes - lit, of course, I suppose either for convenience or to be spared the degradation of being seen flicking it out the side window. The cigarette butt was sucked down the tube and exited via the Bernoulli tube in the airflow under the car!
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As a measure of just how much attitudes have changed... ...It is a rubber tube going through the fuselage to a bernoulli tube out in the airstream. The airflow through the tube creates a suction. On the inside end there is a conical funnel into which the hapless pilot is meant to find relief.
Ah, those innocent days of yore - no wonder all the pilots were men.
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