Party Vibe

@Nigboat 458771 wrote:

But think about it, if they turn around now and say the laws are stupid then why have they been enforcing them for the past however long it would just make them look stupid

when bicycles were first invented people were always getting hauled up for riding at 15-20mph as it was thought to be way too fast and dangerous, and at one point people with motor cars had to drive at 10mph and a dude with red flag walk in front as a safety warning..

@Nigboat 458803 wrote:

So your saying bike speeds in the past and drugs today are the same concepts?

sort of, though somewhat ironically drugs weren’t as heavily controlled then as vehicles! however it was widely believed until the early 20th century that travelling at over 10mph was dangerous to the body (people were scared to get on the train for this reason) and there were a lot of crashes with bicycles and early motor cars simply because folk weren’t used to encountering them. However it soon became apparent that these were useful ways of getting around, and over the years modern road layouts and the concept of road safety developed, and laws have evolved (for instance other than what side of the road you drive on, road signs are pretty standard across Europe).

@p0ly 458805 wrote:

oldskool debtford boy who i worked for and who’s part of my family (by law) was telling me about how you could just drink drive around like a mentalist like 30-40 years ago.

This was true, however there were way less cars around 30-40 years ago (it was only in 1978 my Dad got his first car), powerful fast cars were not that affordable and cops watched out for those a lot more.

However metpol then didn’t have anything like ANPR. CCTV only existed on main railway stations (it wasn’t so much that they didn’t have the technology or want to do this) but the Post Office hadn’t got the resources to provide the comms links (the railways have always had their own separate telecoms network which is linked to the signals). Also metpol’s traffic police radios were around 100-104 MHz which of course is in the middle of the FM broadcast band (the UK and FR ignored international agreements to do this as it meant the equipment was slightly cheaper). This made it very easy to listen in on them even on a bog standard car radio and work out where any traffic cops were.

They did actually try building a ANPR Police vehicle in 1972 – but not only was the equipment very expensive, a Police car loaded up with 1970s era computer equipment isn’t going to be able to do much more over 50mph 😉

Also the most popular beer was “mild” at 3.0% ABV or bitter at 4.0% ABV. It was rare until the 1980s to find anything stronger. Some old chaps what worked for the Post Office/BT said the reason this was the case was so you could drink throughout the day and still be able to do some work. For many years it was considered far healthier to drink beer than Thames water (which to be fair wasn’t exactly untrue at least in the early part of the 20th century).#