Empty Roads - NL

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exiled
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Empty Roads - NL

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From The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gall ... res#img-14

The stagecoach on the motorway is my preferred.

In context the year is 1973. The place the Netherlands. During the Yom Kippur war the NL was embargoed by OPEC for support of Israel and Sunday non essential driving was banned.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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Germany had the same - I lived there at the time. I was only eleven but I remember it quite well. I don't think it lasted very long though.

PS a check on German Wikipedia suggests the ban in Germany only affected five Sundays in November and December 1973. Not sure about the Dutch version.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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Into January 1974 in both Netherlands and Belgium according to Dutch wikipedia and google translates.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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South Africa's approach was to ban the sale of petrol from 17:00 on a Friday to 06:00 on a Monday and to reduce the maximum speed limit to 80 km/h.

At the time, it was not unusual for people on Johannesburg to drive to Durban (600 km) for the weekend or to drive to Swaziland (400 km) for the casinos and other "attractions". The weekend trips to Durban stopped while Swaziland opened up their petrol stations at 12:00 on a Sunday. The 80 km/h speed limit was a right pain, especailly with wide open roads.

The heavy fines that were levied for speeding encouraged everybody with older cars to learn their mph to km/h conversions as South Africa had changed roads signs over to the metric system the previous year and there were no dual-unit speedos - last years' model was in mph and this years' model in km/h.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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The effects of the 1973 oil embargo is why NL has some of the best NMU provision on earth whilst we still think we should be allowed to drive around the aisles of Asda.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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Bryn666 wrote: Wed Feb 27, 2019 14:03 The effects of the 1973 oil embargo is why NL has some of the best NMU provision on earth whilst we still think we should be allowed to drive around the aisles of Asda.
Dutch response to limited access to petrol (and some poor child collision statistics) - start a grass roots movement protesting traffic deaths, review transport system and enable, not 'encourage', use of bike for short journeys. :thumbsup:

British response to limited access to petrol (see 2000 fuel protests) - stockpile petrol in every empty bottle and jam jar in the house and make the garden shed into potential time bomb and, at government level, cut or freeze fuel duty. :confused:
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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Debaser wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 09:39
Bryn666 wrote: Wed Feb 27, 2019 14:03 The effects of the 1973 oil embargo is why NL has some of the best NMU provision on earth whilst we still think we should be allowed to drive around the aisles of Asda.
Dutch response to limited access to petrol (and some poor child collision statistics) - start a grass roots movement protesting traffic deaths, review transport system and enable, not 'encourage', use of bike for short journeys. :thumbsup:

British response to limited access to petrol (see 2000 fuel protests) - stockpile petrol in every empty bottle and jam jar in the house and make the garden shed into potential time bomb and, at government level, cut or freeze fuel duty. :confused:
Because we think being sat in traffic of our own making is an inalienable human right. I've used the analogy before that we are free to have a dump in our underpants but common sense says we shouldn't.
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Re: Empty Roads - NL

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Debaser wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 09:39 British response to limited access to petrol (see 2000 fuel protests) - stockpile petrol in every empty bottle and jam jar in the house and make the garden shed into potential time bomb and, at government level, cut or freeze fuel duty. :confused:
In fact, what the Government should have done would have been to require that whenever anybody visited a petrol station, they woudl be charged for at least half a tank of petrl, whether they bought that amount or not. This would have reduced the total amount of petrol in people's fuel tanks by quite a bit.
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