I’ve done that drive a few times now, it’s one of the most incredible parts of the country.

And yes, that’s a state highway, considered one of the country’s main arterial roads, and it has one lane bridges.

Somehow, I don’t think this crowd will frown on a girl dating someone old enough to be her dad.

I’m almost old enough to be an 18 year old’s dad, and it’s a strange feeling.

We have a lot of roads like that in NZ too, just barely two lanes wide. Locals will absolutely do 100 on them though.

Either that or community gardens.

But yeah, very out of touch with the reality of rural life, or even living in a small to medium sized town.

Nah, it was very much an inflexible policy. Previously, the relevant departments had been doing very well with implementing targeted speed reductions in response to known hazard areas.

And we’re going back to that again, fortunately.

NZ has a similar land area to Japan, with five million people, mostly in urban areas, whereas Japan has something like a hundred million. We’ve got rural roads that are dead straight for kilometres, and you can drive for 10-15 minutes without a car coming the other way.

There are also much more winding roads where actually driving 100 would be suicide, of course.

I seriously wonder if some of the people here have ever been outside an urban area.

They very much are, there were a number of roads that got reduced from 100 to 80, for example, in the same push for slower speed limits, most of them with no real justification. Side roads that were the responsibility of the local council remained at 100, meaning people often drove on narrower roads to avoid the lower limits.

There are likely some justified speed reductions being thrown in the bin along with the silly ones, and that’s mostly on our previous government.

I was genuinely hoping to have some type of intelligent discussion here, I live in NZ, and I know for a fact that public transport just isn’t an option for a large chunk of the population.

But instead you’ve responded with “hurr durr car brain.”

I don’t know what I was expecting.

It’s quite possible the yacht was legitimately in the wrong, there’s some absolutely boneheaded sailors out there.

Yeah, it’s entirely possible the people on the yacht were below decks not paying attention.

I don’t think you realise how rural parts of NZ are, there’s a big chunk of the population for who public transport will simply never be an option.

Attitudes like yours only serve to piss off a large chunk of the population.

So, the previous Labour government made some very rash decisions around speed limits, based around the idea that slower is safer, less crash energy etc. This involved lowering speed limits in urban areas, but also on the open road, in many cases from 100 to 80. Obviously, this doesn’t help vehicle vs pedestrian crashes, and a vehicle vs vehicle, or vehicle vs stationary object is still bad news.

This pissed off a lot of people, because they have places to be and shit to do, and our overall road toll actually got worse during this time.

The incoming National government reversed these changes, and it seems like a handful of them may have been worthwhile after all. This is kinda on Labour though, because they made so many silly changes that the few good ones got thrown out at the same time.

Overall, we should be looking at our speed limits on a much more case by case basis instead of the broad changes we’ve been making in the past. It’s getting better, with an increasing number of speed limit changes being made at dangerous intersections, for example, and immediately returning to 100, rather than reducing the speed limit on an entire road, for example.

The aircraft is also permanently at takeoff attitude on the ground, the front landing gear is significantly longer than the rear. Also, both sets of main gear rotate, so it can crab down the runway, this is for landing in crosswinds.

Yeah, weird plane.

I realise that, but it’s a very famous aircraft type.

Bombers tend to look like that, they have a very small fuselage compared to a passenger aircraft. Very compact cargo.

It’s because the cargo they’re built to carry is very dense, hence the very slim fuselage.

How the hell have you not heard of the B-52 stratofortress?

An ML being helpful is a first for me.

I’m impressed you made it half way, the man was not a natural writer by any means.