Driving Appreciation Thread

I honestly have no idea what you guys did. I know Maestro has the hots for me, so that's a given, but dschult3? Why him, and why group him together with us?

I just want to point something out that I've been meaning to comment on for months now. I find it baffling that Balder never understood the purpose of toll booths, because they exist for a very important reason: maintaining air quality. In the early days of automobiles, nobody gave much thought to the hazards of car exhaust, so cities around the world weren't enforcing any restrictions on cars and driving, even in the most densely populated cities. As more and more people acquired cars, the situation worsened. People were dropping dead from the effects of smog in cities around the world everyday. But the crisis hit its peak in London in 1952 in an event known as The Great Smog of London

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London




The excessive burning of fossil fuels within the densely populated city of London killed over 6,000 people (some sources estimate) in just 5 days. Keep in mind that although coal was the primary culprit in this case, exhaust from cars (even modern ones) produce many of the exact same pollutants as burning coal, like carbon monoxide and soot, as well as other pollutants like nitrous oxide. Soon after this smog event, new laws such as The Clean Air Act were put into effect world wide to prevent severe smog events from happening again. Toll booths became an effective way to deter excessive driving within densely populated cities, which is why most major cities in first world countries now use them. If we didn't have toll booths air quality would plummet at a local level and per-capita carbon emissions across all countries would skyrocket, so having toll booths is a win-win scenario because they combat two calamities at once: local air pollution and climate change. For this reason I fucking love toll booths. I would never want to live in a city that has none.

I will never understand how Balder can be so ignorant about the history of his own continent. I don't live in Europe and even I had known of The Great Smog of 1952.

Spirit Bomb that would make sense if Stavanger, the city I live in, was densely populated, but it's not. There are about 100K peoole here spread over large area as there really is not a center in this city. This just goes to show that you think you know fucking everything despite knowing very little as you make huge assumptions that aren't based in anything. If this forum was an RPG, you would be the village idiot.

I sometimes forget that this is the driving appreciation thread. Going for a drive today for sure. Had to replace the clutch and now it runs smoothly again.