The police as agents for the state chased children on a bike in a car until they crashed and died. Those kids would be alive today but for the actions of the state and their police.
What is going on in the UK?
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Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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That doesn't really tally with the account in the link you posted.
Which bit?
The police originally claimed they were not chasing them, then CCTV footage came out of a police van dangerously close behind them at speed, and they changed their story. I think they went down a street with bollards than the van could not follow, and there they crashed.
It was enough for a gross misconduct case about the lying, the driving and the "language he used in relation to the boys at the collision scene" but they got off.
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Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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Well the article you originally says this:
From the video footage you posted, it looks like 4 or 5 car lengths behind, at the same speed the bike is doing. Is that "dangerously close"? Are they to blame for the speed the bike rider chose to be going at? Also it sounds like they crashed after evading the police anyway if they went through bollards.
I don't know, it just seems a bit of a stretch to describe this as "killed by the state".
From the video footage you posted, it looks like 4 or 5 car lengths behind, at the same speed the bike is doing. Is that "dangerously close"? Are they to blame for the speed the bike rider chose to be going at? Also it sounds like they crashed after evading the police anyway if they went through bollards.
I don't know, it just seems a bit of a stretch to describe this as "killed by the state".
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Lose weight or lose your jobs, offshore workers told
Thousands of North Sea oil workers are being told they must lose weight if they are to keep flying offshore - or face losing their jobs.From November next year, industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said the maximum clothed weight for a worker heading offshore should be 124.7kg (19.5 st) - so they can be winched to safety in an emergency.
The 249kg (39st) maximum Coastguard rescue helicopter winch load is made up of that figure plus the average 90.3kg (14st) weight of a rescue worker, a 29kg (4.5st) stretcher and the 5kg (0.8st) kit.
OEUK said more than 2,200 workers were currently above the weight limit, and jobs could be lost in the worst case scenario.
One offshore worker, Phil Perry, told BBC Scotland News he was managing to lose weight - but was worried colleagues could lose their employment when the new rules come into force.
The new safe weight limit policy comes after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warned that rescue winches - which are critical during offshore emergencies - cannot safely lift heavier people.
OEUK said the average weight of offshore workers had risen by almost 10kg (1.5st) since 2008.
The decision to implement a safe weight limit for offshore workers follows a review by industry experts over the past two-and-a half years.
Rules about shoulder size were previously introduced for workers travelling to and from offshore installations by helicopter.
Passengers with a shoulder width of 22in (56cm) or more were classed as "extra broad" and had to sit next to a similarly large helicopter window, so they could escape.
Phil Perry, 42, from Aberdeen, was 129kg (20st) at one stage - which would have been over the new limit.
He is now 118kg (18.5), and his target weight is 110kg (17st).
Mr Perry said the fear of losing his job was an added motivation to keep his weight down.
"There's not a lot of people talking about it offshore yet," he said.
"You've kind of got to understand that back in the 70s and the 80s the average person was about 70-odd kilos, it's obviously going in an upward trend.
"I think you maybe have to do something about that, because you don't want to be the one stranded there because you're too heavy to be lifted out."
Mr Perry said it was possible to be healthy while working on a platform in the North Sea.
"There are a lot of healthy people offshore, there are gyms, you can go for a walk round the helideck, you can be fit there, I think it just comes down to personal mindset of each individual.
"There's a wide range of fruit and healthy options, but there's also crisps and sweets which does not help.
"Everybody can lose weight, it's keeping it off that's the hard thing. I was one of these people that did these kind of crazy diets, but you can't keep it off."
He said he started eating the right foods at the right times, adding: "I started seeing the results."
He said he "definitely" feared the new rules would lead to job losses.
"It will affect the pool available to go offshore, there's a lot of us out there, and sadly it's just the way that it's going to go, that people will start losing their jobs, which is not good for anybody," he said.
He added that the onus was on staff themselves, as well as employers, to make a difference.
Could jobs be lost?
Graham Skinner, the health and safety manager at OEUK, said it was hoped the new safety policy - as part of a "robust safety culture" - would not lead to job losses, but he could not rule it out."That would be the absolute worst-case scenario.
"Employers will have a duty to support their workers through this and try to find reasonable solutions for it, but in the very worst cases that would be the case for some people."
Mr Skinner described it as "really important" that there was a clear message to the workforce that the new rules were going to come in.
"Hopefully that is the impetus for everyone to get behind the policy and lose weight in time for November next year," he said.
"There are those who are going to have a real challenge over the next 12 months to lose weight to get under the weight limit.
"There is about 2,270 that are going to have to lose a little bit of weight to make sure they can continue working after November next year.
"At that point an offshore worker who weighs over 124 kg will not get their medical and that will preclude them from getting on a helicopter."
However, Mr Skinner said they were "really confident" that the "vast majority" of workers were going to get under the weight limit.
Some are extremely fit
He cited the support they would get from their employers, the offshore operators, and the offshore community itself."We have already heard of offshore workers who are offering circuit training and gym sessions for workers," he added.
"So it's a great opportunity for the community to come together."
John Boland, the regional officer at the Unite union, said: "We would hope that nobody loses their job through this and there can be support put in to stop that from happening.
"The biggest concerns we have had are from individuals that are naturally larger built and in some cases are extremely fit but are above that actual weight limit.
"Those are discussions we need to have, how we can support those individuals as well."
The mandatory implementation of the new policy will be from 1 November 2026.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx274xp00zxo
It is less than the 2 seconds you are supposed to leave between vehicles for safety. I read it as they crashed evading the police as they went a dangerous route the the van could not follow.
I will admit to a certain amount of hyperbole in my choice of words, but I think it is valid. In choosing to engage in chases the police, from the individual offices involved to the policy makers who authorise it know people will die. I cannot find stats for the UK, but in the US 3,336 people were killed in police vehicle pursuits from 2017 through 2022. This is well known to be a really dangerous activity.
In choosing to criminalize this vehicles and enforce the law so harshly when most miles would be done in car if not an ebike, and cars are so much more dangerous the state is choosing to make the transition to ebike based transport harder. This seems mad to me if the priority is decarbonisation of the economy.
Yeah, don't see emergency light's flashing so there's no evidence the police was chasing them, more like young people are bad at driving and thought the police were chasing them, drove through bollards and looked behind them and crashed because they didn't look front. Can't really blame police for not choosing an unmarked car and biker's paying attention to them, and considering the maps shows the police car turned BEFORE the bollard's, just kids being bad drivers. Shows how bad internet rumours are to spread the worst events possible.
There is a police van about one second behind children on a bike. If they were not chasing them it would be even more evidence of dangerous driving than if they were.
This link's map shows the police car turned BEFORE the bollard's, read your link's properly.
I read it as the police were chasing the bike, as evidenced by the video. The bike went a route the police could not follow, they they took an alternative route because they knew about the bollards. It is possible that they had given up on catching them by the time of the crash but the damage was done.
Map show's they turned before the bollard's (point 3 is before), doesn't make sense if they were chasing, that's why you should automatically ignore social media, they're likely wrong. Sadly the new's don't just call these people delusional, the article is very noncommittal about how wrong they are if you clance at the route map.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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At what point does personal agency get taken into account? I would suggest it's at the point where you choose to take a dangerous route to evade a police pursuit.
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When the police got to point 3 they knew that they could not progress from Stanway road to Snowden road so they turned down Howell road. That is the way you would go if you wanted to drive to where the crash happened, you can get google maps to give you that route. That they ended up on Cowbridge road indicates they may not have been doing that but the kids were not to know that.
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I am not denying that the kids had some responsability. I am saying that the criminalizing these vehicles and the severity of the enforcement is counterproductive to the energy transition.
This event happened in 2023, i doubt it has anything to do with current british politics, couldn't even see from the CCTV if the kids had helmet's on (likely since police car didn't flash sign's), more like another coincidence and a case of young people being bad driver's, relative's wanting someone to blame instead of accepting their kids were the bad driver's who died, so they rioted and made this thing "news".
The rules have not changed in the last couple of years, and from the media I get the impression that enforcement has only got more severe. They have linked them to mobile phone theft, which I think is more about justifying the crackdown than making the world a safer place.
I think the really big issue is that the easy to get legal ones are limited to 15.5, which is enough below the speed limit that cars will overtake you even on small roads, which makes it much more dangerous. I think they should increase that limit to 20 and reduce the car speed limit on most residential urban roads to 20 (which they basically have done in Wales where this happened). Then bikes and cars can go along at the same pace which would be so much safer and more pleasant. There would then be much less incentive to have an illegally fast one as the legal ones would be so good.
Klaus Hergersheimer
Emperor
Maybe not, but that's what I'm told, at least, though I wouldn't be surprised if it funds unrelated things.
Well then get rid of it. I was only considering what would be the most fair to all drivers.
Akka
Moody old mage.
It's a weird take to consider that fleeing from police makes police responsible for the reckless behaviour of the guy fleeing. Wut.
There is a philosophical question about how you attribute responsibility, but as a society we get to choose what crimes result in police chases. We do not get to choose how reckless people are. I think choosing to engage in such chases as a response to ebikes makes "society", or the state, or however you want to frame it, responsible for the consequences of that choice. When the main upside of this enforcement is impairing the energy transition and the cost is these childrens lives it seems a relatively easy decision.
It is US data, but from my earlier linked report this is the crimes that result in 1,877 deaths. Are they worth it?
Spoiler Who was killed :
Akka
Moody old mage.
That's ridiculous and self-contradicting.
"we don't get to choose how reckless people act, so we are responsible if they act reckless"
Wut, again.
I mean, I understand what you say. But that's just the exact same reasoning as blaming the victim.
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