This blog is about car and motorbike performance.
Bear with me.
During the last week I have sat through a few "Horrible Histories" with my darling little grand daughters. They love them! They are amusing and I guess informative too. The theme is often how extraordinary our forbears were - they did the most bizarre and outrageous things!
Horrible Histories - Vile Victorians | Compilation - Bing video
Like most Islanders I read the IOW County Press - the local newspaper. The CP maintain a good website with rolling news. I pick up the Islands news headlines each day and to be honest it is often the basis of local conversation. We are parochial - with a village mentality.
The IOW is not really a big place - population in total about 140K and in many respects a bit of a backwater (much is rural - half is designated an AONB). There are no motorways of course but we refer to one. The "motorway" is the only duel carriageway on the island. It is an urban road - and the duel carriageway stretch is less than a mile long. Despite this there seems to be an extraordinary number of car and motorbike accidents. Over the weekend there were at least three separately reported collisions involving a car and motorbike on the County Press website. Injury and death. Almost always excessive speed for the conditions features.
Now the link! Horrible Histories and road accidents on the Isle of Wight!
I am imaging a Horrible Histories in say 50 or more likely a 100 years time - DID THEY REALLY DO THAT?
Did they really, for more than a hundred years, build virtually all cars and motorbikes capable of exceeding the legal speed limit by at least 50% and in many cases over 100%?
Yes they did !
Why ?
Why build a car or motor bike that can achieve speeds far in excess of the legal speed limit? ( so the only time the engines capability can be fully utilised is when the driver breaks the law !? )
Why build transport that is so over engineered for its basic purpose?
Why buy a car that is much more expensive than it needs to be because it is so over engineered?
Why when the planet is threatened by climate change do we continue to build cars and motorbikes that consume far more resources than necessary and burn far more fuel because the cars and bikes are so unnecessarily powerful.
Speed kills. Why are we building cars and motorbikes that are capable of such excessive speeds? Driving within speed limits and reducing rates of acceleration would massively reduce accidents.
Horrible Histories will be able to have a lot of fun with this question. Why have we bought into it?
The short answer I can see -
VANITY
STATUS
CHEAP THRILLS
IT CREATES JOBS AND TAXABLE INCOME.
The more you think about it the dafter it is. Very hard (impossible) to justify if cars and motorbikes are just a means of transport. It is particularly hard on the IOW where there just aren't the roads for excessive speed. Perhaps it is why there are so many accidents - drivers and riders frustrated that they cannot open the throttle and consequently take chances. Years ago I realised there is no point overtaking on the IOW. Occasionally I get overtaken - but you can almost guarantee without fail I will catch them up at the next junction.
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