Re: Another wrist slapping

"Matt B" wrote

Quoted message said:

Mike Sales said:

I remember that the death rates for pedestrians and cyclist went up,
whilst drivers deaths stayed the same.

Do /you/ have a reliable source for that, because the official UK figures
do not show that.

Sorry, I don't keeps notes of these things. I seem to recall it is mentioned
in Robert Davis's book "Death on the Streets". Do read this. Its an
excellent alterative view you might enjoy.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> Advances in the human body to withstand an impact with a ton of metal
> travelling at lethal speeds have not matched these advances.
Precisely. Now you see why we should be working towards a sustainable
way of ensuring that vulnerable human bodies, and hard metal objects
moving at speed, do not exist in the same space.

Indeed, we have to ensure that the all road users have an equal
investment in avoiding accidents.

And less opportunity to, and less likelihood of, causing them.

I am not clear what you are advocating. More traffic segregation, i.e. cycle
facilities?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Since the physical results of accidents are so unequal in that a driver
can kill with physical impunity, the legal penalties must be used to
redress the balance.

Or better still, the environment designed to reduce the ways accidents can
happen.

Do you mean segregation again, or perhaps widespread "traffic calming."

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I think that jail is hardly ever a useful penalty for any criminal. I
would not send this woman to jail. Lifetime bans are completely
appropriate. At 57 I am only now learning to drive in order to chauffeur
my widowed mother. So for all this time I have been in the position of a
banee. Hasn't been too bad. If not being able to drive is such a dire
punishment, what of the old (see Jo Brand) or the too disabled, or
children? What have they done to deserve not being able to drive? It
would better for all if society was not arranged mainly to suit the
motorised. I might reluctantly allow prison for driving whilst banned. So
this woman might go to prison for driving whilst banned for speeding.

I agree with what you say, in the main. I disagree with your support for
bans. I think bans should only be considered for those whose actions are
wilful. I think the ideal will be when everyone is entitled to (and able
to) drive without special training, and without tests etc. Roads and
vehicles could be designed to allow children, the old, the poor, the rich,
everyone, to drive safely without injuring each other - as they all manage
it whilst walking. We are, of course, a long way from being able to
deliver that yet.

Vehicles designed to allow their use by children without special training
would be radically different to today's. I would welcome them. I would think
that increasing the physical vulnerability of the occupant would be
necessary. I think you have not grasped my point fully. Vehicles like the
car as we know it are so "safe" and easy to kill with that the only way to
increase the risk to drivers of dangerous behaviour is via the law.

Mike Sales

Mike Sales

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

On 24 May 2007 05:57:49 -0700 someone who may be raisethe
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

A far better set of punishments would be as follows:

(i) Life time ban from driving.
(ii) The confiscation of her property to compensate the next of kin
for the victim's estimated lifetime income stream and the state for
the cost of dealing with the accident and the prosecution.
(iii) A punitive tax linked to all of her future earnings to also pay
for (ii) above.
(iv) If (ii) and (iii) does not raise sufficent cash, she should also
forfeit her right to receive anything from the welfare state.
(v) The requirement to walk through the centre of her town, once a
week for the rest of her life, in chains, carrying a noticeboard
giving details of what she has done.

I think this ticks all the boxes.

Except that the courts would listen to the whinings of the criminal
and let them off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/6686959.stm is
one example. The criminal didn't kill cyclists, but the lives of
those in cars are just as valuable as the lives of those on bikes.

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.
--
Cheers
the.Mark

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

In fact the trend for all road deaths showed a sustained decline from
the year dot until the early 1990s, when it levelled off.

Wrong:

Here's an email I sent to someone several years ago - the links may no
longer work, sorry, but I haven't got time to find where they've gone
to.

[snip]

Does all that take into account people who wore seat belts anyway?

--
Mike
Van Tuyl titanium Dura Ace 10
Fausto Coppi aluminium Ultegra 10
Raleigh Record Sprint mongrel

raisethe said:

If someone has commited an offence serious enough to warrant such a
ban then they should be closely monitored. If they are caught driving
again then they should suffer amputation.

You're a sick puppy and no mistake. I suppose you'd like to start with the
head?

--
Mike
Van Tuyl titanium Dura Ace 10
Fausto Coppi aluminium Ultegra 10
Raleigh Record Sprint mongrel

the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

I can see time could be an issue if on-call for emergencies. There
should be the possibility of staying on-site for this though.

A car-free but retired doctor.

--
Helen D. Vecht: [email hidden]
Edgware.

Mike Sales said:

"Matt B" wrote

Quoted message said:

Mike Sales said:

>> Advances in the human body to withstand an impact with a ton of metal
>> travelling at lethal speeds have not matched these advances.
> Precisely. Now you see why we should be working towards a sustainable
> way of ensuring that vulnerable human bodies, and hard metal objects
> moving at speed, do not exist in the same space.
Indeed, we have to ensure that the all road users have an equal
investment in avoiding accidents.

And less opportunity to, and less likelihood of, causing them.

I am not clear what you are advocating. More traffic segregation, i.e. cycle
facilities?

No. If a car driver didn't have clear boundaries, like kerbs, and white
lines, for instance, between which he could be fairly sure would remain
pedestrian free, and wasn't given carte blanche to travel at 30 or 40
mph, and didn't have to pay attention at junctions if he had a green
light, and wasn't sure whether he had right-of-way in any given
encounter with another road user, then I think you would agree, he would
have to take more responsibility, and would probably select a slower
speed, and would be paying close attention to what was happening around
him. Picture the activity at a cross-roads with broken traffic lights.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Since the physical results of accidents are so unequal in that a driver
can kill with physical impunity, the legal penalties must be used to
redress the balance.

Or better still, the environment designed to reduce the ways accidents can
happen.

Do you mean segregation again, or perhaps widespread "traffic calming."

Traffic calming - sort of. Like I describe above.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I think that jail is hardly ever a useful penalty for any criminal. I
would not send this woman to jail. Lifetime bans are completely
appropriate. At 57 I am only now learning to drive in order to chauffeur
my widowed mother. So for all this time I have been in the position of a
banee. Hasn't been too bad. If not being able to drive is such a dire
punishment, what of the old (see Jo Brand) or the too disabled, or
children? What have they done to deserve not being able to drive? It
would better for all if society was not arranged mainly to suit the
motorised. I might reluctantly allow prison for driving whilst banned. So
this woman might go to prison for driving whilst banned for speeding.

I agree with what you say, in the main. I disagree with your support for
bans. I think bans should only be considered for those whose actions are
wilful. I think the ideal will be when everyone is entitled to (and able
to) drive without special training, and without tests etc. Roads and
vehicles could be designed to allow children, the old, the poor, the rich,
everyone, to drive safely without injuring each other - as they all manage
it whilst walking. We are, of course, a long way from being able to
deliver that yet.

Vehicles designed to allow their use by children without special training
would be radically different to today's.

Yes. As indeed today's are from those which needed an engineer and a
mechanic to drive them - just a few decades ago.

Quoted message said:

I would welcome them.

They would certainly be empowering. :-)

Quoted message said:

I would think
that increasing the physical vulnerability of the occupant would be
necessary.

Possibly, or at least the perception of it.

Quoted message said:

I think you have not grasped my point fully. Vehicles like the
car as we know it are so "safe" and easy to kill with that the only way to
increase the risk to drivers of dangerous behaviour is via the law.

I understand your point exactly, but I disagree with your conclusion.
As I have already said, it doesn't have to be a real risk for you to
perceive it as a potential risk. Didn't Wiltshire find that removing
the centre line of a road caused the traffic to travel significantly
slower? There were no legal penalties involved in causing that speed
reduction.

--
Matt B

Quoted message said:

On May 24, 12:59 pm, "[email hidden]" <[email hidden]>
wrote:

Just shows you know f**k all aboput statistics if you're trying to
prove a trend, or lack, of from 3 points.

Huh? How can a seatbelt law cause a trend? To a first approximation we
assume the trend is independent of the change in the law and then look
for a step change that doesn't track the trend.

The argument often espoused is that the large change in deaths in 1983
was due to the seatbelt law. However, the facts do not easily support
that. Pedestrian deaths went up despite a pretty much monotonic decline
for years and years. Cyclist deaths went up (although cyclist deaths have
always been a bit more volatile around the long term trend probably
because the numbers are fairly low). Almost all the savings to life
accrued to motorists occurred between the hours of 10pm and 4am.

We anticipate risk compensation moving deaths from drivers to other road
users due to the seatbelt law and we expect the drink driving law change
to have most effect on the deaths that occur at night.

The data supports that hypothesis.

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

mb said:

raisethe said:

If someone has commited an offence serious enough to warrant such a
ban then they should be closely monitored. If they are caught driving
again then they should suffer amputation.

You're a sick puppy and no mistake. I suppose you'd like to start with the
head?

No, not at all. :l) But if it is not possible to keep these
dangerous people out of cars (I'm also thinking of those adolescent
serial joyriders) it would be best to make them physically incapable
of driving. I am sure simply removing the top of a little finger from
the knuckle would be enough in 99.9% of cases to stop people without
licenses from getting into cars. For those few who continue, then try
a finger, hand and so on.

If that sounds barbaric, what about the innocent people they are
maiming and killing at the moment? At least it would be the guilty
individuals who get to suffer. Of course, it would be enough to have
the threat of such a penalty to virtually wipe out this type of crime.

It would also be nowhere near as sick as killing criminals, like the
Americans do.

Tim Woodall wrote on 24/05/2007 22:38 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Huh? How can a seatbelt law cause a trend? To a first approximation we
assume the trend is independent of the change in the law and then look
for a step change that doesn't track the trend.

I think you are looking for the Isles Report, commissioned by the DoT
but suppressed when it showed the opposite of what it was supposed to.
http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/isles%20report.pdf

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

On Thu, 24 May 2007 19:47:41 +0100 someone who may be "Mike Sales"
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Sorry, I don't keeps notes of these things. I seem to recall it is mentioned
in Robert Davis's book "Death on the Streets". Do read this. Its an
excellent alterative view you might enjoy.

I note that you gave this sensible advice and the Troll failed to
respond.

I am fairly certain the Troll has been referred to this before and
also failed to respond.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

in message <[email hidden]>, the.Mark

(') said:

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/6686959.stm is
one example. The criminal didn't kill cyclists, but the lives of
those in cars are just as valuable as the lives of those on bikes.

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

I am not defending this guy, but it's worth pointing out that the distance
between the two hospitals is 68 miles, so a taxi would eat a fair chunk of
even an anaesthetist's wage. I think, frankly, that if he couldn't perform
the work he was contracted to do he should have sought other employment.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Tony Blair's epitaph, #1: Tony Blair lies here.
Tony Blair's epitaph, #2: Trust me.

Tony Raven said:

Tim Woodall wrote on 24/05/2007 22:38 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Huh? How can a seatbelt law cause a trend? To a first approximation we
assume the trend is independent of the change in the law and then look
for a step change that doesn't track the trend.

I think you are looking for the Isles Report, commissioned by the DoT
but suppressed when it showed the opposite of what it was supposed to.http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/isles%20report.pdf

Perfect, thankyou.

I did know about that (and mentioned it in my original post) but I
didn't know it was available anywhere. I'd only seen bits quoted in
various sources.

Tim.

in message <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah Vecht

(') said:

the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
how much your local taxis charge per mile...

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

:: Wisdom is better than weapons of war ::
:: Ecclesiastes 9:18 ::

On Fri, 25 May 2007 12:58:32 +0100, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah Vecht

(') said:

the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
how much your local taxis charge per mile...

Maybe he shoulda thought about that before risking his primary source of
transport.

"Marc Brett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Fri, 25 May 2007 12:58:32 +0100, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah Vecht

(') said:

the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed

> I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
> get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
how much your local taxis charge per mile...

Maybe he shoulda thought about that before risking his primary source of
transport.

His job probably contributed to the crash. Regularly driving 70 miles
between places for work could well have made him blase about driving
quickly.

cheers,
clive

Clive George said:

His job probably contributed to the crash. Regularly driving 70 miles
between places for work could well have made him blase about driving
quickly.

poor didums

--
Andy Morris

AndyAtJinkasDotFreeserve.Co.UK

Love this:
Put an end to Outlook Express's messy quotes
http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
------->>>>>>http://www.NewsDem

"AndyMorris" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Clive George said:

His job probably contributed to the crash. Regularly driving 70 miles
between places for work could well have made him blase about driving
quickly.

poor didums

That's somewhat missing my point, which is that his employers shouldn't be
contributing to road danger by making him do that. Regardless of whether
this guy is jailed, banned, or whatever, there will continue to be others
like him while they're encouraged to do this. And of course not requiring to
travel in such a manner for work would remove the plea he could make in
front of a court.

(yes, I can well imagine why he does work on two such sites - hospitals not
big enough to support his job, etc, and Scotland's a big place. But it
should be something the employers consider - recruiting patients isn't what
they're supposed to do...)

cheers,
clive

Clive George said:

"Marc Brett" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Fri, 25 May 2007 12:58:32 +0100, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah Vecht
([email hidden]'😉 wrote:

> the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed
>
>> I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
>> get paid enough as an anaesthetist.
>
> Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
how much your local taxis charge per mile...

Maybe he shoulda thought about that before risking his primary source of
transport.

His job probably contributed to the crash. Regularly driving 70 miles
between places for work could well have made him blase about driving
quickly.

Goodness.

I quite agree; driving such a long distance makes it almost inevitable the
person behind the wheel will disobey the law. By far the greatest number
of long-distance drives must be done by omnibus and lorry drivers - we
should require them to do it in relays, say, no more than 50 miles each per
day?

"_" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>>
>>> I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
>>> get paid enough as an anaesthetist.
>>
>> Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.
>
>I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
>how much your local taxis charge per mile...

Maybe he shoulda thought about that before risking his primary source of
transport.

His job probably contributed to the crash. Regularly driving 70 miles
between places for work could well have made him blase about driving
quickly.

Goodness.

I quite agree; driving such a long distance makes it almost inevitable the
person behind the wheel will disobey the law. By far the greatest number
of long-distance drives must be done by omnibus and lorry drivers - we
should require them to do it in relays, say, no more than 50 miles each
per
day?

Garn, another one stunningly missing the point. Well done. I'm a bit
surprised at you since I'd have thought you'd broadly agree with what I'm
saying, but never mind.

There's quite a difference between a person driving a vehicle with an extra
licence, extra training, a tachometer, limited hours, extra speed
restrictions and perhaps most importantly a vehicle which isn't fun to drive
fast and no impetus for them to do so, and somebody getting in a car for
work.

There is fun to be had from driving a car quickly - it's irresponsible I
know, but it doesn't alter the fact that it happens. Get used to driving
medium distances at speed, and it's easy to start driving faster. Start
'knowing' the roads, and more problems - "there's never a tractor there",
"this bit's always clear", "I know I can see past this bit". The employer
has put him in that situation. The best way out is to remove the situation -
not require him to do the travel. I'd be extremely surprised if you didn't
believe this was a good thing to do.

(I deliberately said medium distance - if you've got a 8 hr drive ahead of
you, there's not the temptation to mentally knacker oneself by driving at
the limits that there may be for a shorter journey.)

clive

Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah Vecht
([email hidden]'😉 wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the.Mark <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

I don't know why the judge didn't suggest he got a taxi, he must
get paid enough as an anaesthetist.

Getting taxis often works out cheaper than owning a car anyway.

Quoted message said:

I'll say it again: it's 68 miles between those two hospitals. Don't know
how much your local taxis charge per mile...

OK. I've only just logged on today. You can't reasonably travel 68 miles
for an emergency, and travelling that far in the lunch hour is
unrealistic IMO as well.

I'm not sure what working arrangements were but this distances sound
fairly impractical by any mode of transport.

--
Helen D. Vecht: [email hidden]
Edgware.