How bizarre!
How utterly bizarre that in a race, you get fined fro breaking the speed limit! Isn't the idea of a race to get to the end point as fast as possible?
After a stellar start to the World Solar Challenge, the fancied Nuon team from Delft has had to cop a ten minute penalty for breaking speed limits, while Japan's Tokai University entrant has been given a more serious 30 minute penalty. The penalties will probably put Solar Team Twente (also from The Netherlands) in the lead at …
I assume that 'racing' on public roads requires that rule since they haven't been formally closed and isolated from public traffic.
I assume so too, and of course the authorities would never agree to closing the *only* road down the middle. The next nearest detours pass ~1000km on either side!
Breaking the speed limit is a very easy thing to do in Oz. If the guy walking in front of your vehicle waving a red flag and ringing a bell decides to start jogging then you are done for. As advances in solar technology have already exceeded the petty tolerances of the various state and territory governments in Oz then how long can the solar challenge continue to be held there. They may as well perform the challenge on a race track in Malaysia.
From the article the "race" sounds more like a "rally", where your timed over certain sections and lose time of you arrive late, but are much more heavily penalised if you arrive early to a time control/checkpoint,
Also, in the UK even during road rally events (held on open public roads, but usually overnight) the Road Traffic Act still applies, so you must stop at every give way and stop line and stick to the speed limits.
Want a laugh?
In the US, a give way is a mystery in many, many states.
Indeed, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, no such thing exists. It is right of way. Meanwhile, the right of way exists *only* for the purpose of yielding it.
Making it a give way.
Now, I'll not go into how many road accidents result from "I have the right of way" or the many, many accidents with pedestrians who are lawfully granted *full* right of way in favor of all motor vehicles, including emergency vehicles.
Darned shame... That thing looked like it wandered straight out of a seventies Japanese science fiction movie!
Look at it! http://regmedia.co.uk/2013/10/05/wsc-hochinoe.jpg
It looks like it could convert from car, to boat, to aircraft if you played the right background music!
(And just try to convince me those yellow rectangles in the front aren't frikkin' Lasers!)
I can't work out how you justify putting it in the title but well done for at least making the effort to keep working the Profanisaurus into mainstream media.
You need to keep an eye out for a story involving a water-borne, vapor-driven vessel of low-countries origin whose forward-motion is impaired so moves in a stern-first fashion.
"I can't work out how you justify putting it in the title "
Well, on the count of the cockpit being rather warm, and the vehicle being Dutch, that'd count?
And of course, the cockpit being enclosed to reduce drag, then most of the vehicles will be Dutch ovens after more than a few minutes of human occupancy.
SFW perhaps, but interestingly the "Internet Traffic Management System" here did block me and say "no go: this is pornography."
How on earth it decided this I have no idea: it is one of the least offensive sites I've ever seen.
Not a good idea - the max. speed limit is only 130kmh after all, check out them damned Dutch from Delft again!
Pedestrian fined for jaywalking.
Motorist fined for speeding.
Any objectors, I'll happily have a ground level mach one competition outside of your child's school while in session.
Speed limits exist for a reason. I know, as one who peeled a child's head from the pavement, only to see his brain fall out onto the pavement. With five other dead children in the car, courtesy of a drunk, speeding driver t-boning their car.
And dozens of other horrors.
Speed limits exist for the very same reason I can't take my gun outside and target shoot. If things don't go according to my plan, which would ignore millions of factors of safety for the entire community, someone ends up dead.
The only difference is one of grams. Grams of bullet or kilograms of motor vehicle killing someone.
One challenges a law based upon reason, not mere random objection.
...according to the article, it was for one of their support cars breaking the speed limit.
Presumably the support crews have packing up to do after their car has set off, and then want to get to the next checkpoint and set up well before their sunshine-mobile arrives. This means going faster then their entry in the race - so breaking the 130kph limit might seem like a good plan, up until the point where you get caught and your team is penalized.