Independent ie article! Madness if you drive a ten year old plus car !

Wombatman

In truth if we did all we could to keep existing cars on the road, so new ones didn't have to be manufactured, in the spirit of reuse, reduce, recycle, we would be better off environmentally.

Toyotafanboi

Didn't read the article as the first few comments told me it woulf be a waste of my life.

That being said, i do think there has been huge leaps in terms of safety tect in the last decade if you compare a 2010 ish car to it's 2020 ish counterpart.

Interestingly though, i did read a stat a few weeks ago that was so interesting i forget the exact figures of the stat was but it was something to the tune of, if the entire national fleet of private vehicles were all upgraded to comparable vehicles < 3 years of age this would equate to a drop in Co2 emissions of approx 30%.

I'd be interested to know would that negate the production Co2 of the new vehicles and the recycling Co2 of the decomissioned vehicles. Maybe it would and i suppose if it would be even 1% lesser, combined with the upgrades in safety of newer cars then it is possibly a worthwhile exercise.

Hard to know, an interesting topic though.

magicbastarder

according to this, the CO2 footprint of building a new car is 17 tons (for a mondeo)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car

with a 30% saving on fuel (ignoring electric for now, as you mentioned 'comparable vehicles'), say going from 150g/km to 105g/km, you're gaining 45g/km. to make up the 17 tons, you need to drive over 350,000km.

can someone sanity test that? that's quite a gap to cover, way more than i'd expected.

there's lots of ifs, buts and maybes to that even if my figures are correct (keeping an older car on the road will incur a CO2 cost or replacing worn parts etc)

Toyotafanboi

Jaysis, that's not great at all.

I'd love to know the average life expectancy of an Irish vehicle in km's.

I'd say it's well shy of 200k kms.

Murph85

California has an upcoming ban on petrol powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers etc... the figures are mind blowing versus the relative damage cars are doing...

https://nationalpost.com/news/california-to-ban-gas-powered-lawnmowers-leafblowers-chainsaws-generators

a extract from the article...

"According to the California Air Resources Board(CARB), there are more small gas-powered off-road engines in California than cars, and they create more pollution. The number of them — 16.7 million — is approximately 21.9 per cent greater than cars, contributing more total nitrous oxide (NOx) and reactive organic gases (ROG) than passenger vehicles

Operating a commercial lawn mower for one hour emits as much pollution as driving a passenger car for about 483 kilometres. Similarly, an hour use of a leaf blower emits pollution comparable to driving a car for about 1,770 kilometres according to CARB statistics."

But they turn a blind eye to the burning of domestic waste etc.... wont provide proper public transport in dublin or elsewhere. What a total and utter farce...

Wont build 30 floors in the docklands, commute from 30km out instead on third world public transport system or by car...

Toyotafanboi

That's mad. Petrol garden equipment is the best. I have a 4 stroke petrol lawnmower, a 2 stroke strimmers and hedge cutter. I've never seen a good electric version of any of those that would deal with anything other than a postage stamp sized, regularly manicured garden.

Gatling

Current daily is a 06 Vw 1.2 hitting 186,000km ,runs quite and so it utterly reliable and definitely don't have the funds for something built in the 2020's ,it's not a bad little thing even on back roads.

Definitely won't be going electric , hopefully it will eventually be replaced with something along the lines of a midlife crisis car

Murph85

I dont know, it has a lot of advantages... for large areas, it could be a bit problematic...

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118036418#Comment_118036418

No, it's not. It is a rust bucket at that age.

You'll be driving along some day and the axle will snap in two, probably at wheel hub.

SupplyandDemandZone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118037301#Comment_118037301

So true. Motorbike industry is the same. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Montage of Feck

Well Eddie, you shill, I'm perfectly happy driving a 10+ year old car thank you very much.

GreeBo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118035948#Comment_118035948

I think the whole point is that they dont have any impact!

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038674#Comment_118038674

Wahey :P

Buddy Bubs

That article is like posting on boards and you hit the post comment button too early before

Buddy Bubs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038715#Comment_118038715

proof reading and making sure it makes some

Buddy Bubs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038722#Comment_118038722

sort of sense for anybody reading it

Timmaay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038055#Comment_118038055

And let's face it, the car manufacturers have become smarter and smarter at achieving that completely unrealistic test circle g/km co2 figure, the 150g figure would be hard to achieve, but I'd say the 105 is basically impossible. You'd probably do alot more for both the environment, and your pocket if you just stuck with the older car, but used engine braking more, kept a bigger distance from car in front, and other driving improvements to reduce your fuel consumption without much a loss in journey time.

And obviously the likes of the 330e are a complete farce in terms of achieving its on paper co2 figures.

antodeco

As an owner of a 1976, 1980 and 1998 car, I can definitely say this article has not made me change my mind whatsoever! :D

jelutong

That badly written article was posted by Mr. Cunningham on October 16th @2.30 AM.

Quote.“Wondering what they make of all the awesome expanse of technology and comfort that adorn new and newer cars”

Is that gibberish or is it just me?

tayto lover

Gobshyte Greens.

My 14 year old runaround is still going strong.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038133#Comment_118038133

for that sort of article, the author has to make the mental leap of discounting CO2 as 'pollution'.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118039021#Comment_118039021

depends on your driving. my car has averaged 5.3l per 100km for the last couple of thousand km (and it seems reasonably accurate at estimating fuel consumption). that's about 120g/km.

Atlantic Dawn

The Irish Independent own Cartell.ie, you would think they would have an interest in keeping the older cars on the road for the history check market.

Leonard Hofstadter

My 18 year old car has 6 airbags, traction control, stability control, leather seats, memory seats, climate control, cruise control. There's only 138,000 miles on it, and the engines in them are known for being able to pass the 200k mile mark in their sleep with proper maintenance.

The safety features it doesn't have are things I don't want my car to have, I do not want lane departure, speed limiters, blind spot, or the other rubbish you find in new cars. I find these things distracting and annoying, and so called lane keeping assistance in particular is dangerous and should not be fitted to cars IMO.

I also don't want touch screens to distract me when I'm driving, or weight heavy battery/hybrid tech to spoil the handling and make the ride less comfortable.

In short, it will do me fine for another while and it's certainly no death trap or anything even close to it.

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118037301#Comment_118037301

We used to supply cars to these so called "journalists" and surprising enough none of the makes/ models we supplied on behalf of the manufacturer ever got a bad write up despite some of them in my opinion being absolute **** heaps.

Any way theres one story that stuck out with me and really grated on me.One of these so called "journalists" ended up leasing a car for a year or some other wishy washy agreement I think - anyway it came with a service plan and it arrived in with around 15k on it. We recommended 2 front wipers and he asked was it covered under the service plan - (Im not aware of any service plan that covers wipers) so I told him nope they werent covered and he went apeshit after being told he`d have to bear the cost.BTW the cost of maintenance outside of the service plan was agreed before he took the car and he knew well wipers werent covered.

He said that he wasnt paying for them and within 5 minutes there was a post on twitter / facebook slating the manufacturer and I mean absolutely slating them asking why a wiper wasnt covered under a service plan.

I get a call from the head of the manufacturers press department and he says to cover the wipers - I asked who was paying and he said I should cover them for free. Since Im a stubborn fucker I said I wasnt and they could reimburse me and that I wouldnt do it for anyone else - you`d want to see them all jump . They actually drove to the warehouse to pick up the wipers and drop them out to me....Never seen so much bullshit in my life.

The point Im trying to make is that these "journalists" often get cars to "test" drive for free and arent always as independent as they should be.

BrianD3

Re: the safety of cars of various ages, a revolution in car safety started with the introduction of EuroNCAP and new statutory testing around 25 years ago. Manufacturers were forced to make major improvements with subsequent models, in particular in terms of body integrity.

A 2001 Laguna II would be a zero star car today but would be much safer than a 1996 Laguna 1 with its considerably weaker passenger compartment. The Laguna I was above average for its class at the time. But AFAIK it would have been illegal to sell the Laguna I if it had been introduced as a new vehicle after 1998 as it wouldn't have passed even the statutory EU tests.

By the time the Laguna II was introduced, Renault had gotten ahead of other manufacturers and it took some others a few years to catch up to the standards set by the Laguna II. Then there was a further lag as these cars started to enter the national car fleets and have an impact on road deaths with this becoming very apparent by about 2010 or so

If in 2021 we were all driving around in brand new, 1996 Laguna Is, perhaps road deaths would be around where they were in 2006. 365 killed in Ireland that year and even though better than previously, yeah it would be regarded as carnage today. By 2006/2007 EuroNCAP was reckoned to have already saved 78,000 lives across Europe. Obviously way more by now.

No matter how the RSA, Gardai and government try to spin road death reduction as being their own doing (building motorways, penalty points, drink driving etc.) the reduction in road deaths in Ireland will have been heavily influenced by safer cars. The logic is that other countries were way ahead of us in terms of motorways, driver training etc. yet experienced similar major reductions in road deaths as us in the same period. The factor common to every country is replacement of older cars with newer safer ones.

i wonder how many people died in this country in older cars who would have lived if they had been in newer ones but couldn't afford them due to VRT. You'll never hear that angle from the media or authorities. You might hear it from the SIMI but not because of concern for people.

At the time of introduction of EuroNCAP the British SMMT (similar to SIMI) was raging as it was a PR disaster. The tests are too tough, it's impossible to score 4 stars, they were trying to defend the appalling Rover 100 by stressing that it passed all current statutory requirements. That's business I suppose - hundreds of thousands of potentially avoidable deaths across Europe don't matter. Except when they copped on later that safety sells.

It will be interesting to see if new cars do turn out to be safer in real life even than ten year old ones. There has been considerable changes to Euro NCAP recently. New offset test and the side impact test and pole test are much harder now with a big increase in KE in the former. This will make "a" difference. but personally I think we might be well into diminishing returns by now.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118041392#Comment_118041392

My 23 year old car has no traction or stability control, no ABS and the only airbag present is me. Before each trip I face Makkah and say a decade of the rosary on Buddhist prayer beads. Just to be safe like. Though that and being a very raw experience compared to modern iron does mean I don't speed and concentrate on my driving. In a mate's Beemer 120Kph feels like walking pace, in mine it very much does not. Cars of that age tend to have fewer blind spots around pillars because, well the pillars are thinner and don't have airbags in them, for extra death and injury. It also averages around 6 liters per 100 in new money, long run going below 5, spirited driving a well engineered petrol leak. I don't do that very often. Considering it took less carbon dioxides to make, is good on go juice, uses zero oil and is still around over two decades later and would have fewer non recylable parts to it it's pretty "green".

I've had a go on a Tesla 3(4WD nutter version) and it did occur to me that it's a bit odd that if a Guard spotted me checking a text on my phone he or she could do me for it(rightfully), yet the Tesla has a feckin Imax screen stuck to the dashboard. Off centre with it. The lane assist was bloody weird alright, though I'd say that was more me being simply not used to it. Over time maybe I would? Or I would get used to it and find it irritating. Autonomous mode was well weird. You could certainly feel the weight in corners, but it was a comfortable place to sit. I could imagine with all the safety stuff going on it would be much safer overall, especially with any lapsed concentration on my part. The big thing for me was a complete and utter absence of driving feel going on though I find similar to one degree or other with most current cars.

DoctorEdgeWild

I have five cars currently on the road. All of which are 20+ years old. My daily to work and back is a Fiat Cinquecento. If I crash in that, nothing is saving me. Crash protection is basically non existent. So I use my experience to avoid situations which might increase the chance of an accident. Like 95% of posters on here. No motoring industry nonsense will make me take a 40k loan rather than being able to change cars as and when I feel like a change (which happens a LOT), for a fraction of that.

I let other people enjoy their new, or electric, or modern cars, and I enjoy my old ones. I accept the miniscule risk involved.

Murph85

I'd day the days of mass drink driving being a thing of the past also has a large enough influence on road deaths...

Ubbquittious

It is gas how this culture of needing cars to be new has permeated society. With other types of transport this isn't the case

Here's a plane from the 60s, just one random example plucked from 100s for sale: https://www.avbuyer.com/aircraft/single-piston/cessna/182/363010

Yacht from the 80's, just sold for a few mil: https://www.moranyachts.com/luxury-yachts/octopussy/?yacht-type=luxury-yachts-for-sale

No layby's in the sea or in the sky but the people buying them don't seem to bothered. But a car from 10 years ago is a death trap?