Tuesday, 25th March 2008

A startling story in The Daily Telegraph informs us that bus passengers who travel along a route of more than 30 miles must get off the vehicle midway through their journey to comply with new EU laws about the maximum time commercial drivers can spend behind the wheel, writes Tim Worstall

They tell of one route, Newquay to Plymouth, where the driver must ask all of the passengers to follow him off the bus, then remount, three times in one journey. Also, the bus must change its number each time. This is, of course, insane. The actual reason for it is in this:

“We’re caught up in something aimed at long-distance truckers.”

No, nobody meant for something quite so stupidly amusing (or enraging, to taste) to happen to bus passengers. But it reveals the fault at the heart of the entire project. It simply isn't possible to write a rule book for 450 million people from the centre without such idiocies occuring. It doesn't matter how much the planners and bureaucrats try to avoid such things, doesn't matter whether they mean well or not. Such things will always happen.

Which is, of course, why such things should never be planned at all.

Read the story in the Telegraph

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