Today's drive

Currently stuck on the autobahn, haven't moved for an hour. Must be a big accident the full compliment of emergency services have been through in big numbers including wreckers and the technical support wagon which looks like a block of flats on wheels.

Naturally hope everyone is OK but looking at the army of emergency vehicles tha have gone through doesn't look good.

Cylinder deactivation has been about since the 1980s, but as all the pistons are still moving with the crankshaft, and I don’t think there’s a way to keep the valves on a common camshaft selectively open, there will still be friction and compression losses. Modern engines don’t inject any fuel on a closed throttle anyway, so you’re left with gentle acceleration or steady-speed cruising, when it might be injecting four cylinders to 5 percent capacity or two to 10 percent, and you’d need a complex combustion model to measure the difference between those two options.

Disengaging the clutch to coast gets around that, provided there’s a way to make it selectable; moderate engine braking is useful in many situations. And with all that added complication, it’s still using three times the energy of Esp’s EV.

Yes I noticed this yesterday when the gear display momentarily only showed D in stead of D1,2,3 etc.  Realised it was taking itself out of gear and coasting.  And yeah as I said I got over 50mpg last night.  I bet I can do a bit better given a longer run.

That is the key - they opened the outside lane to let traffic through.  In the UK the whole motorway would be closed for hours.  

Surely you know that depends entirely on the situation.  Police will open a lane if they can, and will do so as soon as possible.

We're better than this conspiracy nonsense aren't we?

My Mum was stuck on the M4 last summer for something like 4 hours, whilst the authorities dealt with someone threatening suicide from a bridge.  It was enormously uncomfortable for her, and inconvenient, and she missed one of her grandchildren performing in a concert at the town hall, which was sad for both of them.  Hard to see what else could have been done, so you have to take it on the chin.  I have no doubt that, had it been a regulation accident on the carriageway, which didn't consume all lanes, a lane would have been opened when possible.  

The one thing I will criticise the Highways Agency for though is the obvious mismanagement of overhead gantry signs when closures and speed limits can obviously be lifted, and are left in place.  "Report of Debris" etc.  Well if I have passed through and there was no debris, then surely the combinations of the local patrol cars and endless surveillance cameras will tell then it's a incorrect report pretty quickly.  But I put this down to poor procedures, cock ups, and not conspiracies of people willingly and gleefully sitting there watching people's journeys get disrupted for no good reason.

Don't joke.. it was the most left wing group of Tories I have ever seen. Tony Blair was more right wing...

Al - I understand about suicides but there does seem to be a mania of closing a whole carriageway after an accident and not assisting the traffic backed up behind a blockage to get off the motorway. Even opening one lane would help. A year ago, a family of four in an Aygo spent the whole night stopped on the M6 due to an accident ahead. No attempt to help them turn around. They were about a mile from some services but no-one had the authority to let them off the motorway through the services and in fact they were prevented from doing so. That is what is so wrong.

Suella Braverman might agree with you, Esp. I don't.