OT: Why are 3 door cars allowed on the road?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Thicker than two short planks and twice as wide.

Cant even speak English.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In the case of car accidents, there were a horrendous amount of casualties.

[Steve Walker]

I never wore a seatbelt as a child. If I was in the back of a car, I was always in the middle and often stood up (I got badly travel sick if I couldn't see where I was going - although that passed completely once I started driving and I can now sit in the back, reading a book!)

These days, I am so used to wearing a belt, that it feels odd moving the car even a short distance, at slow speed, around a car park, without putting my belt on.

I'm not so sure that there were few casualties - just look at the road death figures and how they have declined over the decades - although I am certain that we are far too restricted these days, preventing even adults making their own decisions, where the only risk is to themselves.

[Peter Keller]

And probably me on a bike.

[NY]

He's using "absent" in the archaic meaning of "in the absence of". It made me stop and try to re-parse the sentence when I saw it.

[NY]

You have my greatest sympathy. I've often thought that I was very lucky that I've never felt travel-sick in a car, train, boat etc, and can read for ages without any problem. When I was very little I use to curl up in the footwell of the front passenger seat without feeling any ill effects, even though from that position I definitely couldn't see where we were going. The only time I've felt a bit odd was in a small boat (maybe 20 feet long) as it was pitching and rolling in very rough sea as it was going around the end of an island and moving from sheltered water to the full force of the Atlantic. But that was only a few minutes until it turned onto the other side of the island.

My wife teases me that if I get into the car, even if we are not intending to drive off (eg get back from a walk and then sit in the car to eat lunch before setting off) I instinctively put my seat belt on as the first thing I do when I sit down. That's how ingrained the action is for me.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its not archaic. Its normal English. Same as 'excepting Commander Kinsey, there is intelligent life on earth' and so on

[NY]

OK, it's a rarely used meaning of the word "absent" which *may* be gradually dying out. For some reason, most people substitute the much more wordy "in the absence of". It may be more common in some English-speaking countries than others.

[Max Demian]

It appears that the preposition form (which I used) is US English.

[Max Demian]

There still are (FSVO "horrendous").

There seems to be an arms race when it comes to safety, with each generation trying to outdo the last; part of the way that people try to denigrate the ideas of the past.

I suppose people could be forced to wear crash helmets in cars, or fill them with quick-setting foam when they get in so they can't move.

Someone should have the courage to say that life nowadays is safe *enough*.

[NY]

Ah, I was thinking that it was more common in Scotland, like the use of "without" (or the Scottish equivalent "outwith") in its sense of "outside" or "beyond" - as in "There is a green hill far away / Without a city wall" which was unusual even in the 1930s and 40s when my parents learned the hymn and only knew "without" as meaning "lacking".

English evolves - and at different rates in different places, hence the regional differences like "absent" (as a prefix), and "without" meaning "outside/beyond".

Spellings change too: I wonder if anyone uses the spellings "connexion" (connection), "alarum" (alarm) or "shew" (show) nowadays. My dad can remember everyone ridiculing the spelling in the notice on buses the 1940s and 50s "All tickets must be shewn", with people young and old, offering to "shoo" their tickets to the conductor.

[Steve Walker]

Down to 1,752 killed in 2019 (we'll ignore last year as an anomaly) and I've not got the seriously injured figure.

I often wonder though, how many of those casualties are the fault of normal car drivers - filter out where the cause was a truck, van, motorbike, drink driver, drug driver, driver of a stolen vehicle, uninsured driver, untaxed vehicle, unlicensed driver, cyclist, pedestrian, etc. - how many (fairly) law-abiding drivers actually cause accidents?

And then adjusted for miles driven. I did see one comparison of car drivers vs cyclists - and it turned out that the rate that cyclists kill someone per million miles ridden is the same as that for car drivers and million miles driven. It only looks worse for drivers are there are so many miles driven, by so many vehicles.

[Ed Pawlowski]

That is known as a truism.

[The Natural Philosopher]

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read"

(either a marx brother or mark twain)

[rbowman]

Literacy is gradually dying out.

[NY]

I wonder if it's slightly more specific than that. Maybe when a word has a literal and a figurative meaning, and the figurative meaning is significantly different and could cause confusion, the figurative meaning is dying out and is being replaced by a slightly more cumbersome wording but with more straightforward meaning.

Hence "without" now meaning only "lacking", with the "outside/beyond" meaning dying out except in the Scottish "outwith".

"Touching" used to be a common word to mean "concerning" or "with reference to", as in a business letter which begins "Touching your communication of the 31st ult" (nowadays: "With reference to your letter of the 31st of [May]" (assuming the current month is June). Nowadays "touch" only implies slight physical contact "Don't touch me".

I wonder when "without" meaning "outside" lost its original meaning *to the whole English-speaking population* (excluding places where it survives). The fact that my parents confused the word in the 1930s and 40s suggest that the current meaning "lacking" was by far the dominant meaning. It was evidently thought to sufficiently widely understood in 1848 when Cecil Frances Alexander wrote, otherwise she (*) would have written "outside" which scans the same.

(*) For all these years, I've assumed that Cecil F Alexander (as it is usually written in hymn-books) was a man. Evidently Cecil is a name which was once used for both men and women, whereas now it's always assumed to be a man's name. Same as Sidney: I was gobsmacked when I went to see a customer called Sidney who had a rather husky androgynous voice, to discover that this was a woman, not a man. And Beverley used to be male and female, but is now almost exclusively female. And Shirley, as in the real name of the wrestler Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree): Shirley is now almost always a female name. I worked with a French woman called Laurence (stress on the second, rather than first, syllable) who was used to be people assuming she'd be a man until they met her, having only previously corresponded by letter/email.

[Commander Kinsey]

That's quite amazing cyclists can do that with much less weight to them than a car. Which makes them a lot more dangerous than they should be.

[Commander Kinsey]

I feel odd wearing one, so I never do. Why would you enjoy being tied up unless there are naked women with whips around?

Indeed. We need to get back our right to do as we wish to ourselves. We are names not numbers, we do not belong to the state.

[Commander Kinsey]

Eh? That's precisely what I thought he meant, and know of no other meaning of absent. It just means not there.

And I meant no modern cars.

[Commander Kinsey]

If you're stating something exists, you don't have to except things which don't stop it existing. You might aswell have said the rather ludicrous "except for the red cars, there are blue cars on the road".