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#3200312 26-Feb-2024 18:32

neb: Posting a second time to emphasise this point, the guns on movie sets are typically real guns. They're not props. The one specific problem is that, with Hollywood's love of ammo dumps from automatic weapons, blanks don't provide enough energy to cycle the action on automatic weapons.

They may have been real guns once but there are companies eg Movie Armaments Group that specialise in modifying them to appear to work as normal with various degrees of muzzle flash down to fully plugged barrels.

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#3200319 26-Feb-2024 19:01

richms:
They are not safe to be discharged towards people at all. Anyone that does it is negligent.

"let me point this explosion at you" is not how sensible people do things.

In keeping with the thread topic, I imagine that just about every military in the world would look at your statement above and ask "what the...?".

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#3200515 27-Feb-2024 13:35

The genius road layout that AT has come up with at one point on Glenfield road. This is a major arterial road, four lanes in many places and extra-wide-two-lane where that's not possible, that carries a constant flow of through traffic.

At one location there's a roundabout, which is already bad enough for a situation where the vast majority of traffic is straight-through. However, AT have recently figured out how to create what may possibly be the pathologically worst roundabout layout you can come up with. What they did is added pedestrian crossings with speed tables and lights a bit back from the roundabout, with just enough room for a car or truck to get caught between the crossing and the roundabout.

When no-one is crossing it's bad enough, with the roundabout and speed tables, two each way, significantly slowing down all traffic. However, it's when someone is crossing and vehicles get caught between the crossing and roundabout stalling the entire roundabout until the lights change again that the genius of this design really shines.

I'm sure someone got paid a nice bonus for coming up with this.

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#3200534 27-Feb-2024 14:35

Comment on the above via PM: "All our roundabouts are like that. Just batsh*t. Worse still when you come off the roundabout you're looking for cars but then immediately have to make sure there are no pedestrians stepping out in front of you. If there are any, the whole roundabout is blocked if there is even a single car behind you that can't get out of the way".

So it's not just this one in Glenfield.

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#3200545 27-Feb-2024 15:33

neb: Comment on the above via PM: "All our roundabouts are like that. Just batsh*t. Worse still when you come off the roundabout you're looking for cars but then immediately have to make sure there are no pedestrians stepping out in front of you. If there are any, the whole roundabout is blocked if there is even a single car behind you that can't get out of the way". So it's not just this one in Glenfield.

They are doing that because people will cross there anyway and in their mind the person crossing the road is more important than all the cars.

Really they should put a fence there to stop crossing but they want to be seen as promoting walking and other stuff and being anti-driver is the best way to keep the loud anti-car minority happy.

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#3200575 27-Feb-2024 17:52

neb: Comment on the above via PM: "All our roundabouts are like that. Just batsh*t. Worse still when you come off the roundabout you're looking for cars but then immediately have to make sure there are no pedestrians stepping out in front of you. If there are any, the whole roundabout is blocked if there is even a single car behind you that can't get out of the way". So it's not just this one in Glenfield.

I'm convinced all current traffic engineers went to the same school.

Roundabouts used to be there to improve traffic flow, now with this style of "enhancement " traffic flow is anything but enhanced. Sadly the malaise is spreading right round the country.

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#3200576 27-Feb-2024 18:00

I'm going to guess you'll find it's built to regulation and safety specifications and environmental considerations which have an undesirable outcome when combined and yet perfectly compliant for the situation and perhaps even the only way to comply. If you assume the individual traffic engineers are competent professionals then it's going to be something like that.

On the other hand you are free to make a different assumption and start with probably needless insults which don't make good conversation starters.

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#3200581 27-Feb-2024 18:21

gzt: I'm going to guess you'll find it's built to regulation and safety specifications and environmental considerations which have an undesirable outcome when combined and yet perfectly compliant for the situation and perhaps even the only way to comply. If you assume the individual traffic engineers are competent professionals then it's going to be something like that.

On the other hand you are free to make a different assumption and start with probably needless insults which don't make good conversation starters.

Don't worry, I hold a lot of, but not all, engineers in many different disciplines in the same regard. Bright people who have no concept of how their designs actually work for the end user. Totally technically and regulatory correct yet totally non functional at the same time.

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#3200590 27-Feb-2024 18:37

Once again there is a default assumption there that there was a different possible outcome with a different engineer. That may not be the case. Ie; Constraints may have been applied to the project making that the only possible outcome. Regulations, existing infrastructure, immovable services, etc, etc.

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#3200596 27-Feb-2024 19:12

richms:
neb: Comment on the above via PM: "All our roundabouts are like that. Just batsh*t. Worse still when you come off the roundabout you're looking for cars but then immediately have to make sure there are no pedestrians stepping out in front of you. If there are any, the whole roundabout is blocked if there is even a single car behind you that can't get out of the way". So it's not just this one in Glenfield.

They are doing that because people will cross there anyway and in their mind the person crossing the road is more important than all the cars.

Really they should put a fence there to stop crossing but they want to be seen as promoting walking and other stuff and being anti-driver is the best way to keep the loud anti-car minority happy.

There's a vocal minority on each end. I think you'll find most drivers would rather not kill pedestrians either, and recognise that more people walking and by implication talking public transport results in fewer people driving and reduced congestion.

Sounds like a widespread failure to obey the rule of not entering an intersection you cannot exit. We have similar intersections in Wellington and I've rarely seen this happen.

Safety rules now essentially forbid zebra crossings on multi-lane roads, resulting in traffic lights being essentially the sole remaining option, unless you want to convert the entire intersection to traffic lights.

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#3200597 27-Feb-2024 19:55

Technofreak:
Don't worry, I hold a lot of, but not all, engineers in many different disciplines in the same regard. Bright people who have no concept of how their designs actually work for the end user. Totally technically and regulatory correct yet totally non functional at the same time.

An example from the Casa de Cowboy reno, a specced-and-designed-by-engineers and signed-off-on piece of structure that, it turned out, was impossible to build as designed. They had designed something for what could in theory be possible if the necessary structural parts existed, but since they don't actually exist in practice there appears to be no way to build it the way it's been designed and approved.

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#3200600 27-Feb-2024 20:01

gzt: Constraints may have been applied to the project making that the only possible outcome. Regulations, existing infrastructure, immovable services, etc, etc.

There's nothing much there in the way of existing infrastructure and services getting in the way so it was either rules and regulations on how to build it or whoever designed it. Given that other roundabouts in very different parts of Auckland appear to have the same problems, I'm guessing AT set rules that they have to be like that.

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#3200601 27-Feb-2024 20:04

I believe NZTA has rules that pretty severely dissuade pedestrian ('zebra') crossings on major roads.

As above, there are few other options aside from no crossing, cross at own risk, or various degrees of traffic light.

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#3200602 27-Feb-2024 20:09

An example from the Casa de Cowboy reno, a specced-and-designed-by-engineers and signed-off-on piece of structure that, it turned out, was impossible to build as designed.

Builders on site 'negotiations' with architects has always been a thing. Adding engineers to that mix is no surprise. Not that it's any consolation in your scenario.

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#3200603 27-Feb-2024 20:12

gzt: Once again there is a default assumption there that there was a different possible outcome with a different engineer. That may not be the case. Ie; Constraints may have been applied to the project making that the only possible outcome. Regulations, existing infrastructure, immovable services, etc, etc.

In most of the cases I can think of there was a different possible outcome. In some cases the different outcome was acheived after strong feedback from the end users in other cases the engineers knew best and continued with their original plan despite the feedback, delivering a sub optimal outcome.

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