rachel.blog

Tag: cars

  • Pissing in the streets and self-driving cars

    A friend sent me this article about a Scottish councillor who was recently fined for urinating in public. What was particularly ironic about it is that this councillor was responsible for closing public toilets in an effort to save money. I’ve already had a couple of rants about men pissing in the street – I’m not a…

  • The electric car and cycling

    I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the electric car and why I couldn’t start it on Saturday night. So yesterday I booked it just for an hour so that I could figure out how to use it. I unplugged the charging cable from both the car and the charging point first go and…

  • How do you start an electric car?

    My father arrived late last night and so I booked the Co-wheels car club car to collect him from the airport. This is only the second time I’ve used it and I thought it would be straight forward since we had done it before so I booked the car for 9:30pm; Dad’s flight arrived at…

  • Pitlochry

    We are in Pitlochry in Perthshire, which is in the middle of Scotland. We caught the train from Aberdeen yesterday and plan to spend two nights here. We thought about booking one of the Co-wheels cars but it actually worked out to be the same price, if not cheaper, to catch the train. That’s including the…

  • We’ve joined a car club

    We don’t own a car and we have no intention of buying one. It’s very easy to live in Aberdeen without a car as we can walk and cycle everywhere. This is our car (photo was taken a couple of months ago when there was snow and ice on the ground and I think Ben…

  • In praise of cycling and a dress colour

    It must be about time I posted another photo of Busby so here he is, with precious cargo: I cycle to and from school everyday and I love it. My only complaint is that it has become too easy and the distance to school too short. I’m stronger than I was when we first arrived and…

  • If there’s a car in the fridge …

    I’ve never understood how someone could have a box of chocolates in their fridge for more than a few days. How do they do it? Give me a box of chocolates and the whole lot is gone in about 24 hours. Then what usually happens is I get a headache and feel sick and swear…

  • Roads, traffic and Braess’s paradox

    I understand that we all have differing ideas about what we find beautiful and pleasing to the eye, but is there anyone who would choose the first photograph below over the second? The two photos are before and after pics from the Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration project in Seoul, South Korea. The concrete highways were built…

  • An open letter to Gerry Brownlee

    We will be leaving the UK at the end of this month and so I have started to think about what my life will be like back in Auckland. The biggest change will be the shift from a commuter-cycling lifestyle here over to a car-dependent one in Auckland. But does it have to be this…

  • When is it ok to kill cyclists?

    Earlier this month The New York Times published an opinion piece about cycling, “Is it O.K. to Kill Cyclists?“. It prompted a huge number of articles and blog posts which, insofar as discussion about cycling safety helps to improve cycling safety, is probably a good thing. Even the Economist has waded in with, “The American…

  • Backwards reasoning

    George Monbiot wrote an article this week which has struck a chord with me called Backwards Reasoning. It is something we all do – reason backwards. If we’ve already made up our minds about something, then we reason with ourselves to justify that conclusion. If we don’t like a particular conclusion, we reject the premise.…