I dont have a speed limiter and have no trouble keeping my speed in check. As such, I've never understood this excuse.

How long does it take you people to check your speedo, for me it's a fraction of a second. This is for every car I've ever been in.

Also, if you spend all your time with your eyes glued to the road in front of you, you're driving horribly wrong. You should be focusing on multiple things, mirrors, instruments, blindspots. If you're not checking your mirrors every 10-15 seconds you're dangerous. Same if you change lanes or turn without checking your blind spots. As for your instruments, well your car may not overheat every day, but when it does you want to know about it long before it reaches the red and you need a new head gasket.

I check my speedo every 10-15 seconds, same with my mirrors. It hardly changes unless I move my right foot. Realistically if you need more than half a second to read a speedometer or cant keep a consistent speed for 10-15 seconds, you need to hand in your license and admit this driving thing is beyond your capabilities.

Its not exactly a secret that Cambodia is a poor nation with lots of opportunistic theives, what made you think it was safe to play with your smartphone in public.

I've lived in Thailand and the Philippines which are pretty much the same, using a phone in the open is practically asking for it to be stolen.

Whilst I agree with your point, Greenpeace isn't one of the more hard-line environmental movements.

Sure their one of the most active and prolific, but they're quite moderate, rejecting violent methods of activism. They're nowhere near as bad as the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front who have no compunction about being violent against the organisations they oppose (the kind of people who set fire to diggers and attack laboratories to liberate the animals). Even PETA is more extremist than Greenpeace.

Couple of mitigations

Which wont do a damn thing to prevent theft.

The thief wants the hardware (which is valuable) not your personal information (which, lets face it, is completely worthless).

The first thing a thief is going to do is sell it to someone who will first reset it to factory settings so they can sell it. Your data actually makes the device worth less than a blank one.

I dont even have a password on my Android phone. The absolute worst thing a thief can do is spam from my Gmail account and Facebook. Seeing as I can simply go to the nearest Telstra shop and get my phone number back by flashing my drivers license, even if they reset my password it's only temporary. However chances are, they wont even bother looking at whats on there and just flog it.

Phone theft may sound rare, but it isn't uncommon, and thieves know that they can just grab the phone, stuff it in a tinfoil envelope, let it sit for a week or two until the battery dies, disassemble it, then sell the screen, case, and other parts for a good amount of cash.

If they're going to sell the phone for parts, why wait for the battery to die? Beyond this, why not simply just remove the SIM card instead. Like a lot of ./ers you're over-thinking things to the point where you've completely ignored the obvious solution, relevent XKCD

Getting the phone wiped isn't a problem for a phone thief, they dont care about your personal data. They want to sell the hardware to make a buck. So they simply take it to a pawn shop run by someone who will get the phone wiped. They want a blank phone to sell.

Even IMEI blocking is useless as you can just sell it over the border and anyone unscrupulous enough to steal a phone wont think twice at selling a phone that doesn't work (and no, there will never be a shortage of suckers).

I've also lived outside the angloshpere, every single nation has huge glaring problems that people simply ignore because it's part of their culture.

There's no real way to say which one is better, both have their advantages and drawbacks. You may be able to get away with more things in Thailand than the UK, but in Thailand you'll always be a second class citizen, accepted only because you have enough money to live there without working. Any fight between you and a Thai will result in the Thai winning regardless of what actually happens. If you want to live in Asia, you'll have to get used to the corruption, nepotism, tiered society, face, blood money and a lot of other things we would consider uncivilised in Anglo countries.

Often you dont have to give up essential liberty for essential safety. The key is in also being an accepting society. It becomes harder and harder for a malicious person to hide when the average person does not feel the need to hide a lot of details about themselves (please note, this is not a "if you have nothing to hide" argument, its about people feeling secure to be themselves without the fear of societal judgement).

The problem is, politicians know that fear sells. So they use fear to get through what would ordinarily be unpopular and unacceptable laws.

The mechanical failure mode of a light aircraft is to turn it into a glider. But you have a point in that your average moron would probably screw it up.

I mean they cant even concentrate on a simple task like driving without complaining that its too boring and playing with their phone.

The mechanical failure mode of a jet liner is plummet to the ground, this is why they have multiple redundant systems and see more mechanics in a week than cars will see in their lifetime.

And thats where the E Coli comes from.

He sounds more like a cowboy coder who couldn't give a shit about code maintenance after he moved on to something else.

The only difference between a "cowboy" coder and a "superstar" coder is that the "superstar" has better PR.

typically diesel commuter cars have only a small badge (if that) to distinguish them from the petrol versions

I take it you're from the US where diesels are uncommon.

Its quite easy to tell when a car is a petrol or diesel, you just need to listen to it. If the car sounds like a tractor, it's a diesel.

Unfortunately society has gone soft on the issue and discussion has fallen short.

It's been a proper cock up.

I can only assume you have never worked in a male dominated blue collar job, such as a mechanics workshop, garbage depot, or a building site. I did that sort of work for 15yrs before moving to a white collar job. The first thing I noticed about working in an office was how polite most people are, the boss even says please and thank you.

Same here,

I've never heard one of my work colleges described as "that useless cunt" since I left the building industry for IT despite that description being perfect for many of my work mates.

Basically there's a war on men being men.

As a white, middle class, mid 30's male, I have never seen any actual evidence of this war.

The only suggestion of its existence is from bitter old farts who seem to have the most tenuous connection to reality.

You can blame the *NCAP programs for this. The difference between an ENCAP 4 star rating and a 5 star rating are a number of warning buzzers. The Honda Accord got knocked down to 4 stars solely because it didn't have a rear seatbelt warning chime. Crash tests demonstrated that it was as safe to pedestrians and occupants as other 5 star cars.

Automatic Emergency Braking is going to become your new favourite annoying safety features in a few years as the woman who rear ended you keeps crying that the car was meant to brake for her.