My turbo diesel doesn’t have a DPF so it has never been a problem but if It had one I do enough long trips to burn it clean.
What has also added to the problem that paying for parking has caused with deserted high streets, is the out of town retail parks. Free parking and all the big, well-known stores are there. Why go to the town centres and pay, up to £8 a day here, when it’s just a car ride out of town for the same facilities. Also it’s this that has totally finished off the small, independent shops though. The supermarkets arriving started it, the parking costs then just about finished off small shops. Only in small towns and villages do you get the smaller shops, which is a shame really as it stops the choice that these shops often offer.
What’s a CBD?
Exactly. I think there are going to be some very disappointed, or even shocked, new car buyers who have invested their hard-earned money in one of those contraptions.
I’m hoping that it’s just going to be another trendy idea that will fizzle out in a few years as people begin to realise their mistakes.
Yes, a bonus. An incentive for self-centred cyclists to begin to realise that they are not the only people on the roads.
They may think because they are unidentifiable they are above the law. I think that many of them need to realise that that does not make them immune to injury.
Maybe a Central Business District, at a guess? 
I wonder whether any local councils have yet realised the reason for that is their high business rates and lack of free/cheap parking.
How to shoot yourself in the foot!
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If I could legally remove the DPF, I’d buy a diesel again.
(I’ve just had an automatic warning that I have posted far too many replies all at once, so I’d better stop now!)
This has nothing to do with electric cars but my brother mentioned to me that our Shopping Malls are completely different to the ones in the UK. Ours tend to be in the centre of the shopping district rather than the way they are in the UK which I understand to be, as you alluded to, out of town or on industrial estates. Here the Mall’s peripheral shops tend to be banks, restaurants or coffee shops.
Parking fees only exist in capital cities even in Wollongong the parking fees only extent for a couple of blocks.
This is quite an interesting blog about a bloke who took his electric car 10000km across Australia towing a camper similar to mine. It can be done. Well worth reading.
Yes as pointed out CBD means Central Business District - where the shops and offices are
The out of town retail parks here have free parking, that’s partly why the town centres are dying off. People prefer to travel to the out of town retail parks as there is no extortionate car park charging, like there is in the town centres.
Thanks for that link, I will have a read of that later. Other than the electric car a blog on that kind of travel sounds very similar to your own, which incidentally I have read and found very interesting so thanks also for that.
To be honest I had to look that up as personally I’ve never heard that one used before.
Folks here like out of town shopping, it is far more picturesque sitting in the traffic jam there, just imagine, if all the folks had a Bicycle. 
Or even an electric scooter! The roads around here are becoming awash with young kids and adults flying around in the road and on pavements with these highly dangerous new “toys”
It’s the same here, they are used for transport from one village to the next. Driving along on country lanes and there in front is some ‘idiot’ whizzing along, standing on one of those machines. No high viz, nothing of a light colour to make for easier visibility against the dark colours of hedges and trees. Worst of all no crash helmet either! One of those saved my life in a motorcycle accident many years’ ago, hence this comment.
Yes, it is strange, in L.A, they all wear helmets.
Sensible to wear crash helmets, in my experience anyway. However, look at the four of them all in very dark clothing without anything light or high viz. How on earth do they expect to be seen? Basically they appear, if even seen, to any car driver as a thin, dark vertical shape! 
Absolutely. Am sick to death of seeing people wearing dark clothing riding a bike with no lights whatsoever.
I fell off my bike a few years ago. I was probably travelling at less than 10 mph and hit a black ice patch of road. Would have been in all sorts of trouble if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet.
Exactly and the same as me you could easily have sustained a head injury that could have been life-changing or worse. With me it wasn’t even legislation for motorcyclists at the time but fortunately I did wear a crash helmet. After the accident I had, one side of the helmet was worn away to the lining, where I skidded across the road, up the kerb and into a brick wall, need I say more?
Another time I did actually become involved in an accident with a cyclist. I was waiting at a T-junction, late one afternoon, and looked carefully left and right then slowly exited the junction, only to find right in front of me a young cyclist who unfortunately just clipped the front bumper. He fell off but was not injured so it was just a bent front wheel, which I paid to have replaced. He was wearing very dark clothes, the bike was black and the background opposite that T-junction was a wooden fence stained almost black. I simply did not see the cyclist against this, hence what happened. My fault entirely but it would not have happened had he worn something light-coloured or a high viz. jacket to be seen more easily. All in all not good but it could have been far worse. 
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I suspect that cyclists, scooterists etc seem to have forgotten that although they have perfect peripheral vision, and are also able to hear everything around them, vehicle drivers do not.
They alas lure themselves into a false sense of security.
It might also help them to understand the forces (and hence dangers) involved by pushing a car for a few yards, or indeed try in to stop a car rolling at very low speeds. It’s all too easy to forget just how blooming powerful vehicles are, and how we shouldn’t treat them quite so glibly!!
It is an unavoidable fact that there are many idiots on the roads and that some of them are cyclists.
The problem is that when an accident happens, it is usually someone’s fault.
That is why I believe it is essential these days to have a working dashcam.
If, as has been discussed, the accident is caused by a cyclist who is wearing dark clothes, riding an unlit bicycle in the dark and not taking care to be seen, then if he is hit by my car (unintentionally, of course) I feel that I should protect myself from any claims that it was my fault.
A dashcam provides evidence of the circumstances and records exactly what has happened.
We all need to take care on the roads and that includes cyclists, many of whom seem to think they are both indestructible and above the law.
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