Paris Mayor Proposes Banning pre-1997 cars
 

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe seeks to ban gas-guzzling classic and antique cars - NY Daily News

...why not pull a "Nepolean" and simply decree it a "closed city" to ALL motor vehicles? That way, they'd only have to worry about cleaning up the 'evironmental' horse and donkey manure from all the roads and streets!?!

Great idea, make the poor and middle class pay for saving the environment.
Latest excuse for class warfare.

I have personally banned my vehicles from Paris perpetually. Touche Mr. Mayor.

regards
Mech

Touche? Yes, but I'm thinking he's more of a douche. If congestion has reached a tipping point maybe it's high time to quit subsidizing the breeders.

Lets call them "Frank" fries :thumbup:

regards
Mech

gas guzzlers? euro cars from the 80's and early 90's had smaller engines than today's cars....the real story is they either want people to start spending money to buy new cars to "help" the economy or don't want the pollution that cars without catalitic converters give out

God damn socialists

EDIT: Screw it, I originally responded to the socialism remark, but don't feel like getting into a political debate.

Socialism is great until you run out of other peoples money. Kind of like Greece and Ireland did.

I recognize the failure of socialism as clearly as the next guy, but I would ask for a more thought provoking comment. The one above only incites others to attack capitalism in a similarly thoughtless way.

Socialism is for the corporations and the banks, here, . . . and yes, they have already stolen other peoples money (whether by tax evasion, lobbying, monopolization or bailout. With no fear of prosecution). What the citizens may or may not get is paltry by comparison.

A simple enough plan for Paris. Things have to move along from some point in reasonability. The vehicles affected are already 15-16 years old.

.

When you call the police/ fire department, how much do you have to pay for them to come? Oh wait.... That's socialized.. How have all of our houses not burned down yet with such a failure of a system? I guess it only works for emergencies, and teachers, and healthcare, and ....

It honestly sickens me that even a terribly poor country like Cuba still has better life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates than a country as rich as the US. Even the poorest people in Britain still live longer than the wealthiest americans, but I guess a socialized system doesn't work for healthcare either.. But it's not like living is all that important.

I kinda had a hunch that this post would evoke such debate. Kinda interesting to watch what I've started. :D

"Even the poorest people in Britain still live longer than the wealthiest americans."

I would love for you to provide some sort of factual statistic to back up that opinion.

Lets see... How often do they buy fast food? Do they drink soda? Diet? America is fat and lazy and no amount of Dr. visits is going to save thier fat asses. Preventitive maintence is the key to a healthy life, not going to the Dr.

"Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States; one in every three deaths is from heart disease and stroke, equal to 2,200 deaths per day."
Source: CDC Features - Heart Month

I do not want to pay for other peoples choice to be unhealthy and hence have to constantly visit the Dr. The only way I will support Socialist healthcare is if they ban unhealthy food and make exercise mandatory.

The trouble in the US is even though many decisions appear to be a choice, there is a mental programming of those choices by large interests from children onward. Our country is very very lax in claims made by companies VRS public good, few countries for example allowed direct drug advertising.

AKA our system is training us to be fat fools, get rid of this ideotic Iphun couch crap and maybe we will have the possibility of seeing the correct role models or viewpoints are so squewed that we do things that make us slaves into a system.

Big Food -> Drugs -> Hospitals are owned by the same companies, I wonder if they have a conflict of interest?

That is whats going to happen here. People are going to live the fat life for 30 or 40 years and then when life catches up to them they are all going to go to the doctor and ruin the "free health care for all" system.

There is a difference between a better life and longer life expectancy.

If socialized health care is go great then why to do rich canadians come to the US for advanced treatments? :confused:

Few countries put up the money or have companies that will put up the money to R&D safe new Drugs.

Many of the surveys done of peoples happiness have shown people were happier in the period between 1920-1940 than they are today (recent years), perhaps stuff and income level have less to do with happiness.

It is not uncommon for rich americans to go to Germany or Japan either.

And canadians who do come to the us almost always have special insurance because most of them are TRULY AFRAID of being in the us medical system and its assicociated massive costs. (1/3 of GDP)


LoL, few drugs are safe or very new, we spend millions on making slight modifications of existing drugs.

When ethicy reviews have been done 75% of the drugs on the market were found to be

1. Dangerous
2. Ineffective
3. Contaminated
4. Misprescribed

and that is not overseas either. The phrase, No place in any market, as the board said I believe fits most of what is forced down our throats, physiciatric drugs are the biggest scam.
3% effective is considered a resounding sucess.

The truth of the matter is, we really only have roughly 75 very effective drugs on the market with many iterations of the same, the rest are garbage.

We perhaps are wasting our time and resources on a lot of garbage with only a handfull of individuals making truly effective drugs, most of which were designed prior to 1985.

Ah well.

What a very interesting discussion. Allow me, however, to return to Paris for a moment:

Socialism is not relevant to this discussion. The EU is trying to improve air quality in cities by reducing pollution from vehicles. This is done by enforcing increasingly strict standards for fuel efficiency and particle emissions, thus leading the industry to build more fuel efficient cars. (Btw this is also reducing our dependency on foreign oil, which is good.)

In large (and very polluted) cities such as Paris more needs to be done to improve the air quality. Right now the air pollution is a serious health hazard, as it is in most large cities. For this reason some cities ban certain vehicles from specific areas. This is normal in most large European cities.

The (democratically elected) officials of each city decide if and where this is necessary. If the citizens don't agree they can change it by protesting or by voting for someone else in the next election. Hopefully I don't need to tell you that all members of the EU are democracies...

Generally people accept these bans as neccessary for health reasons. Remember: Europe is a very densely populated area compared to the US. And we need to breathe just like Americans do.

Now, feel free to return to the political debate.

Don't worry, Dave. It's not your fault, you tried your best. The problem is that some things are out of your control.

Thankfully, those things aren't out of the mods' control. Something tells me that this thread is going to start over after post #7.
I understand that cars, fuel, and the world they exist in are not free from politics, but can't this forum be? PLZ??

BTW, this is a warning not only to whoever started the political OT, but also to all who didn't ignore it and took the bait:mad:

I think this ban is aimed at trying to save the automotive economy. I recently read that PSA (Citroën/Peugeot) is having trouble.
If he wanted to reduce congestion and/or pollution, he would have tried either introducing fares for entering the city's center (like London), or banning cars that really do pollute (like Germany's Umweltzones).

I agree that this is probably the reason - however it also seems very myopic because old cars are part of the automotive economy too. Parts, mechanics, customization, the whole aftermarket thrives on old cars more than it does on new cars. Trashing old cars is not only a waste, but also a clear 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario.

Once a whole new car has been manufactured and put into service, its days are numbered anyway - eventually it will be in a collision, or will rust out, or will simply fall into enough disrepair that it's no longer worth keeping on the road - and the problem will "solve" itself.

How many 12+ year old cars are even on the road, really? In the US, a car is expected to be in service an average of 8 years supposedly. I don't know what the half-life of a car is but I doubt more than 5% are still operational after 20 years. I can't even remember the last time I saw a Dodge Colt or Renault LeCar or Subaru Justy on the road - I'm even a gearhead and naturally pay attention to what sort of machinery I see on the road, and hardly any of it is from the 80's or earlier. Maybe 5% of what I see on the road in South Phoenix is 20+ years old - and we don't have rust here at all. - how much pollution are they really contributing?

If anything, they should make old cars pass reasonable safety inspections... brake serviceability and emissions and such. I hate getting behind a pre-emissions, carbureted car as much as anyone - it stinks! But, it's once a month at most around here. Not really a concern.

A lot.
Traditionally the average vehicle age of a vehicle on US road ways has always been between about 8 years but since 2008 the average car age rocketed to over 11 years old. Hmmm, what changed in 2008? :rolleyes:

As of Jan 2012:
Average age of U.S. vehicles is now 10.8 years
"The cars and trucks in America's driveways have reached a record old age"
"the average age of a car in the U.S. last year was 11.1 years"
"the average truck was 10.4 years"

The main problem is no one tunes carburetors any more.
My camaro did the same thing until I installed a wide band O2 meter and bought a rod and jet tuning kit.

Here a snippet from my camaro page:
"AEM air/fuel ratio meter and expanded edelbroock metering rod and jet kit.
Lean idle 17:1 or leaner
Lean cruse around 15:1
Lean hard acceleration 14:1 (unintended need to re jet to get between 12.5 to 1 and 13.2:1)"

Before I started tuning the carb it ran horribly rich, the A/F meter stayed maxed out (10:1) or would occasionally show 11:1 through its entire operating range.

Now the idle keeps the A/F meter around 17:1, to help clean off plugs. The lean cruse is leaner than most older fuel injected cars and WOT is not nearly rich enough.