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Yearly Archives: 2012

Going Bussed: Economy And Tuition Fees Drive The Young Away From The Car

Monday, February 27th, 2012 | warai03p | No Comments

, Tom Midlane and James Brilliant, guardian.co.uk

    Passengers board a National Express bus at Victoria coach station

    Sales of coach and train discount cards surge as driving becomes a minority pursuit among cash-strapped students. Photograph: Micha Theiner/City AM/Rex Features

A generation of students facing higher tuition fees and lower job prospects appears to be embracing the mixed joys of budget travel in rising numbers – with the teenage dream of passing the test and driving a car now an increasingly unaffordable, minority pursuit.

Operators report that the traditional staples of budget travel, the young person’s rail and coach cards, are being purchased in record numbers.

National Express, Britain’s largest coach operator, reported a surge in sales of coach and regional bus discount cards last year, with 36% more being sold year on year.

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One Reason Why I Hate Cars

Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | Editor | No Comments

From Peter Hitchens’s blog, Daily Mail

“I think our roads are statistically safer largely because soft targets, particularly child cyclists, have almost entirely retreated from them. But the roads are not really safer. It’s just that people have learned to avoid them unless they themselves go out in armour, and have narrowed their lives as a result.” – Peter Hitchens

On Sunday morning a woman rushed out of a side road in a quiet Oxford suburb, violently knocked me off my bicycle and mangled the machine I was riding.

Quite understandable, some of you may think. It’s the only sort of treatment I would understand. But in fact the person involved had nothing against me, didn’t know me, and was quick to apologise for the hurt (even quicker and more comprehensive,  once she had been given quite a large piece of my mind). She also paid for the damage to be repaired.

But, as some of you will have guessed,  there was another element in all this – an element which makes an apparently shocking and inexplicable event make perfect sense.

My assailant was driving a car.

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2:50 am

Monday, January 9th, 2012 | Editor | No Comments

Cherie Howie & Russell Blackstock NZherald.co.nz

January 8, 2012. 2:50 am. One life lost. Another changed forever…

“A young man died yesterday when his souped-up car was completely crushed in a high-speed smash – allegedly T-boned by a boy racer aged just 15.

Shaun FitzPatrick, 22, had signed up to participate in the controversial CannonBall Run street-legal car rally yesterday, in which 270 amateur racers circle Auckland in everything from Suzukis to Ferraris.

But at 2.50am yesterday morning, just hours before the rally was due to start, the Pakuranga man was killed by one of several cars racing through industrial Mt Wellington.

A stolen Subaru Forester ran a red light on Carbine Rd and hit FitzPatrick, who had right of way, shunting his car through an iron lamp-post and into a fence.”

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