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Some smokers

George Douglas

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141
Location
Cornwall
Car
2004 E320 cdi estate , 2003 triumph speedmaster & Good old suzuki gs750
Riding from Exeter to Plymouth tonight I was was in the outside lane overtaking a fairly long run of traffic when I caught a glimpse of a cigarette end just before it hit me on the chest. I thought no more of it but on reaching home and taking off my biking gear there it is, the cigarette end that I last saw about 25 miles away was stuck in the middle of a melted hole in the front of my £200+ jacket. It is absolutely ruined and I am absolutely livid. I did say in the title SOME SMOKERS because I am a smoker myself but I would expect any car driver to look for overtaking traffic before throwing buning litter out of the window. Rant over
 
In my experience, smokers are the most inconsiderate people and I have never seen one take any kind of regard about how and when they dispose of their buts.
 
A smoker in a flat above me when I lived in London would regularly discard their still smoking butts quite knowingly onto my patio. One burned through a BBQ cover, another a seat cushion. A note to all the residents made not a jot of difference.
 
When I used to ride I had an episode while waiting between lines of cars. A woman tossed her cigarette end out of her window and it landed on the tank of my BMW R75/7. I picked it up and threw it back through her still-open window. Apparently I was being unreasonable :D




To the smoker, the World is an ashtray
 
One of the lads I used to work with had a frankly hilarious incident when smoking in a van; he had to borrow one of the firms painters van to nip out to a job and he lit a fag up on the motorway, got to then end and went to flick it out the window, except it didn't! It flew back over his shoulder and in to the back of the van, setting the dust sheets on fire!

He knew that it was strictly no smoking in those vans as well, he ended up getting the sack for it which was deserved because he wasn't a full shilling and he was shiite at his job.

As the van was ablaze on the hard shoulder, he asked the attending fireman if he thought his packed lunch box had survived the blaze?!?!
 
In my experience, smokers are the most inconsiderate people and I have never seen one take any kind of regard about how and when they dispose of their buts.

To the smoker, the World is an ashtray


I have a couple of these tins in my van and car in case I have a fag while I'm driving which isn't as often as some. I hate seeing cigarette ends anywhere, it's litter and I hate litter.

extra_ice_mints_peppermints_tin_4.jpg



At a major call centre of a large bank there are a several smoking areas. The bank have bent over backwards to make the shelters attractive and usable. They are rewarded by the smokers dropping butts all over the place when there are plenty of bins/ashtrays.
 
I've butt in my face when on a motorbike, not a pleasant experience. I remonstrated with the driver who was most apologetic and hopefully changed his ways. There is no reason to throw butts out of a car window, that's why they have ashtrays, just &%$££ inconsiderate.
 
Riding from Exeter to Plymouth tonight I was was in the outside lane overtaking a fairly long run of traffic when I caught a glimpse of a cigarette end just before it hit me on the chest. I thought no more of it but on reaching home and taking off my biking gear there it is, the cigarette end that I last saw about 25 miles away was stuck in the middle of a melted hole in the front of my £200+ jacket. It is absolutely ruined and I am absolutely livid. I did say in the title SOME SMOKERS because I am a smoker myself but I would expect any car driver to look for overtaking traffic before throwing buning litter out of the window. Rant over

Sorry to hear that .

Do you have any insurance which might cover this sort of thing ?

In bike insurance perhaps the equivalent of windscreen cover on a car ?
 
One of the lads I used to work with had a frankly hilarious incident when smoking in a van; he had to borrow one of the firms painters van to nip out to a job and he lit a fag up on the motorway, got to then end and went to flick it out the window, except it didn't! It flew back over his shoulder and in to the back of the van, setting the dust sheets on fire!

He knew that it was strictly no smoking in those vans as well, he ended up getting the sack for it which was deserved because he wasn't a full shilling and he was shiite at his job.

As the van was ablaze on the hard shoulder, he asked the attending fireman if he thought his packed lunch box had survived the blaze?!?!

Don't know how recent that was but it is actually illegal to smoke in work vehicles nowadays - this includes vans , trucks and company cars as they are all considered an extension of the workplace where colleagues/passengers have the right to expect a smoke free environment .

I read a report recently about a company losing a contract with a supplier because a worker was seen smoking in his van in the car park during a break - so it must have been a costly cigarette .
 
Excuse me for asking but do they still put ash trays in cars.!!!!!

Most don't even have fag lighters.

MB have had the smoking delete option for quite a while now , however even before it was an option , a Mercedes-Benz always came equipped with CIGAR lighters as apparently cigarette lighters were for the lower orders who drove more plebian cars :D






The last word on this subject , though , must go to LJK Setright , who wrote the article 'The non smoking car is enough to make you choke' ; sadly Mr Setright is no longer with us and I miss his prose .



"Our Government, should it so long endure, is keen to make smoking illegal in public places. Our Ken is evidently anxious to do it even sooner in London, even if it be theoretically ultra vires - that is, Beyond Our Ken. He seems to think he owns the place.

His attachment to London goes back a long way. The greatest grandfather of Our Ken was the Welsh mystic Glendour Ken, who arrived at the capital when the pioneer aviator King Bladud had just killed himself trying to fly over the city, which in those days was called Trinovantum. He sought the throne but failed, and it was Bladud's son who became King Lear.

Not until Chaucer's time was another takeover attempted, from a half-concealed site on Hampstead Heath to the north - hence Ken Wood, which in Chaucer's Middle English meant Mad Ken.

Now, in making his detailed plans for the prevention of smoking in public places, Our Ken has found that motorists are a source of difficulty. How can the inside of a private car be a public place?

Well, BMW, most public-spirited of all makers of private cars, has offered an antidote - the non-smoking car. They volunteered to omit all ashtrays and lighters from the interior, without actually charging extra (such generosity). This lead was not followed: lawyers suggested that it implied that the interior of a BMW thus took on the characteristics of a public place, which might lead to it being classed as a public service vehicle, inviting pedestrians to jump in and demand to be taken to a tobacconist.

One has to assume that it is to tobacco that the current anti-smoking campaign is directed. It actually started when the famous newspaper boss William Randolph Hearst had a tiff with one of the Virginian tobacco barons, and ordered all his editors to contrive the wretched fellow's downfall.


The poor man is long dead, but the campaign against tobacco smoking has gathered too much momentum to be stopped, even though (as some medicos admit with embarrassment) it can in some respects be beneficial to health. Certainly, there is no question of forbidding all other kinds of smoking: imagine buses, lorries, taxis and diesel cars being penalised for smoking, not to mention incense.

Manufacturers used to take smoking seriously, as once we all did. Rolls-Royce used to make the most magnificent ashtray, though they put it in the wrong place. Even worse was the placing in the Rover 3500, just in line with a ventilation nozzle on the dash: any attempt to discard the ash of a cigar or a cigarette was foiled by a blast of air that blew ash and embers all over the interior of the car. The only people to do it correctly were, as you might expect, Bristol, who set two ashtrays on top of the coaming above the dashboard, so the driver could reach and locate it without taking his eyes off the road. Now lighter sockets seem meant for charging mobile phones, and ashtrays are tinier than ever. Judge, then, my joy when a Lexus IS300 joined the family, and I discovered that with the gearlever in the usual D position, the hand has but to slide past it for the ashtray to be unerringly located.

Too many car-makers seem to have joined the anti-smoking brigade, villains that they are. When a road-test car is delivered to me bearing a sign telling me not to smoke, I can only assume that there must be something wrong with the ventilation system, and I am obliged to mark the car down accordingly.

It is refreshing to note, however, that there remain stalwarts for whom driving and smoking - two of the greatest pleasures known to man - are not to be separated. One came to collect a test car for its makers (whose sticker merely offered "Thanks for not smoking") and, noting that the ashtray had been used, wrote across the bottom of the discharge sheet: "Car been smoked in." Handing me the carbon copy, he climbed in, lit up a grateful gasper, and drove contentedly away."
 
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There are moves afoot to ban it in all vehicles , partly on grounds of road safety and partly on health grounds since it can be bad for children who sometimes have to endure it .
 
I don't like smokers who inflict their smoke and cigarette ends on others.

But... At the same time I don't like an interfering government that demand people's compliance in whatever political whim is on the current agenda. So... I would prefer that people choose not to litter our country with their discarded cigarettes (and the same applies to chewing gum). Although I know that won't happen. However, I still don't like the government having more and more control over our lives.
 

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