More stupidity.

[Richard]

David Hansen wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:31:32 +0000 someone who may be Michael
> MacClancy <[email protected]> wrote this:-
>
>
>>Thanks. That article says that 18 people were killed in 2003/4. (1 train
>>driver, 9 pedestrians and 8 vehicle occupants.)
>>
>>Is that a figure to get excited about?
>
>
> One is looking at two systems with grossly different attitudes to
> safety. If 3000 people died on the railways every year there would
> be uproar.

If 5 people died on the railway in a single crash, there would be uproar.

Oh, wait...

R.

 

[JLB]

bugbear wrote:
> JLB wrote:
>
>> I also wonder if the effects of trying to control and manage other
>> people's risk taking are almost inevitably cancelled out by the
>> results of making people less wary.
>
>
> That's an interesting concept.
> We could call it "risk compensation"

You could, and so could I, but I thought I'd use a phrase less familiar,
to slip under the radar of those who automatically deny that risk
compensation exists.

--
Joe * If I cannot be free I'll be cheap

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:35:28 +0000, Michael MacClancy
<[email protected]> wrote:

>They could build a bridge. Or an underpass.

They could. At vast expense. On the other hand they could try
placing photographs of the girl taken at the scene, minus limbs and
plus blood, alongside the barriers, just to remind people what can
happen if you ignore the warnings.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

 

[JLB]

Ian Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:16:22 +0000, JLB <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't think anyone has a complete answer. It's not in human nature to
>> always be careful, always follow instructions and so on. Teenagers are
>> notoriously reckless with their own safety and welfare.
>
>
> I question your assesment of human nature.
>
> It might be this society's typical nature, but it's not necesarily
> universal human nature. I've had some (indirect) dealings with a
> high-speed-rail design produced by Japanese. They have a tendency to
> install astonishingly dangerous stuff on platforms with a sign saying
> "don't touch". When we query whether this ought to have a fence round
> it, or even a complete enclosure, the response sometimes tends towards
> "there's a sign telling no-one to touch it, so what's the point of
> goingh to teh expense of a fence (and consequent loss of useful
> platform space)?"
>
> Some societies manage better at following instructions.

I'd interpret that differently, and take it as evidence for my case, as
explained further on in the post you quoted. The Japanese don't add on
"safety measures", and the accident rate does not go through the roof.

Similarly, I've talked to safety engineers who've worked in third world
countries and the UK. They've described construction sites with almost
none of the mandatory safeguards required here, where the workforce
takes nothing for granted and the accident rate seems much the same as
ours. I have no statistics to back up this anecdote.

A further interpretation of your observations on Japan is that after a
certain length of exposure to such risks you end up with what is called
a "survivor population". Those that cannot obey signs are removed from
the population. (This is not Darwinism.)

--
Joe * If I cannot be free I'll be cheap

 

[Zog The Undeniable]

soup wrote:

> While I feel sorry for the girl concerned and her family it is hard to
> see what Railtrack (?) could do to make this crossing any safer
> have cycled across it many times ,in both directions and have
> never felt it was at all risky,mind you I do stop if the lights are
> flashing, barriers are coming down etc.

Candidate for a Darwin Award, from the sound of it. Why do the rest of
us have to suffer silly rules, inconvenience and cost because some
people go out of their way to circumvent perfectly reasonable safety
measures?

 

[Mark McNeill]

Response to JLB:
> Similarly, I've talked to safety engineers who've worked in third world
> countries and the UK. They've described construction sites with almost
> none of the mandatory safeguards required here, where the workforce
> takes nothing for granted and the accident rate seems much the same as
> ours. I have no statistics to back up this anecdote.


One striking example was [allegedly] the World Trade Centre site, after
the destruction of the twin towers. Apparently, the clean-up operation
was more or less without precedent; the workers were thus often obliged
to rely upon their own judgement rather than formal safeguards and risk
assessments, and the site had a much lower accident rate than would be
expected for an operation of that size. (Obviously, that's anecdotal,
and all sorts of biases can be proposed.) I have a very good book
somewhere about the clean-up; I must see if I can find it.

Re-reading, this reminds me of the "naked streets" idea.


--
Mark, UK.

"A wartime Minister of Information is compelled, in the national
interest, to such continuous acts of duplicity that even his natural
hair must grow to resemble a wig."

 

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:31:37 +0000, JLB <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Similarly, I've talked to safety engineers who've worked in third world
> countries and the UK. They've described construction sites with almost
> none of the mandatory safeguards required here, where the workforce
> takes nothing for granted and the accident rate seems much the same as
> ours. I have no statistics to back up this anecdote.

No, and though I've heard it, my experience is oppositte - I've worked
Malaysian sites, the H&S regime was pretty much entirely absent, and
teh accident rate was much higher than teh UK rate.

For example, here if a crane topples it's big industry news. There
when a crane toppled on teh site I was on they pushed it back upright
and carried on. The crane toppled because teh safe load wotsit was
disconnected, and teh driver did something obviously stupid.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

 

[David Martin]

Ian Smith wrote:

> No, and though I've heard it, my experience is oppositte - I've worked
> Malaysian sites, the H&S regime was pretty much entirely absent, and
> teh accident rate was much higher than teh UK rate.

My father worked on a contract in South Korea repairing some bridges.
The scaffolding over the river was 'interesting' so he insisted four of
the scaffolders who had put it up jumped up and down on it together
before he would set foot on it. The standard improved dramatically from
that point on.

...d

 

[Al C-F]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:04:39 +0000, Richard
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Graham Dean wrote:
>> A truely sad and distressing story.
>>
>> Given that "The Kirknewton crossing has in the past been labelled the most
>> notorious in Scotland due to the high instances of accidents and motorists
>> jumping red lights." it does raise the question what else really does need
>> to be done in addition to the *technical* safety measures - some mechanism
>> for raising the social, cultural and emotional engagement in the risks
>> concerned.
>
>Unfortunately, an incident like this often does just that.
>
I'd suggest a career sitting in a wheelchair, telling her story and
begging for coppers.

That would improve safety at the crossing no end.

 

[Andy Morris]

Richard wrote:
>
> Some children are not as daft as people think. I was walking past a
> farm in the depths of the Lake District; there was a small
> substation/transformer unit there, behind a low stone wall which had a
> "Danger of Death" sign on the gate. The small child I was
> accompanying (not mine) turned to me and said seriously, "Don't go in
> there. The electricity will kill you dead." He was all of five at
> the time.
Generally they are more daft at 15 than at 5.

--
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/

 

[Biggles]

soup wrote:
> While I feel sorry for the girl concerned and her family it is hard to
> see what Railtrack (?) could do to make this crossing any safer
> have cycled across it many times ,in both directions and have
> never felt it was at all risky,mind you I do stop if the lights are
> flashing, barriers are coming down etc.
>
> Full story at :-
> http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=285742005&20050317093650
> or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3nvcm

Sounds like the sort of simple mistake anyone could make - assume that
the crossing is still closed for the train you just got off. She may
have done the same thing before and got away with it - lowering her
perception of the risk. Very sad.

Biggles

 

[Chris Malcolm]

bugbear <bugbear@trim_papermule.co.uk_trim> writes:

>JLB wrote:
>> I also wonder if the effects of trying to control and manage other
>> people's risk taking are almost inevitably cancelled out by the results
>> of making people less wary.

>That's an interesting concept.
>We could call it "risk compensation"

When my kid was little I encouraged him to climb all sorts of things
his mother freaked out about, just making sure that I could catch him
if he fell off. I wanted him to learn a realistic attitude to falling
off things, so that his natural and realistic fear of injury would
keep him safe when I wasn't there. I got his mother to agree not to
try to communicate the ridiculous fears her own mother had inculcated
in her.

I sometimes took him to rocky places with other little friends. Some
of them were dangerous lunatics, who swarmed up anything climbable in
complete idiotic disregard of the risks. Others refused to climb
anything. Both these kinds of kids had mothers who refused to let them
do anything remotely risky. The lunatics had decided that mother was
an over-cautious fool who could safely be ignored, but the problem was
that they had been prevented by their mothers from learning any useful
risk assessment of their own.

Getting painfully injured now and then, such as in skinned knees, is
an essential part of acquiring realistic risk assessment.
--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[dkahn400]

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

> They could. At vast expense. On the other hand they could try
> placing photographs of the girl taken at the scene, minus limbs
> and plus blood, alongside the barriers, just to remind people
> what can happen if you ignore the warnings.

They could, and it might do some good until people became de-sensitised
to it, but I think it should be up to the young woman herself whether
she wishes to allow herself to be used in this way. Her punishment for
a moment's stupidity has been severe in the extreme. Is it fair to add
such an invasion of privacy to her suffering and that of her family?

--
Dave...

 

[Trevor Barton]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:09:59 +0000 (UTC), Chris Malcolm wrote:
> bugbear <bugbear@trim_papermule.co.uk_trim> writes:
>
>>JLB wrote:
>>> I also wonder if the effects of trying to control and manage other
>>> people's risk taking are almost inevitably cancelled out by the results
>>> of making people less wary.
>
>>That's an interesting concept.
>>We could call it "risk compensation"
>
> When my kid was little I encouraged him to climb all sorts of things
> his mother freaked out about, just making sure that I could catch him
> if he fell off.

Hmmm, isn't that just teaching him that when things do go wrong Daddy'll
be there to catch him?

> I wanted him to learn a realistic attitude to falling
> off things, so that his natural and realistic fear of injury would
> keep him safe when I wasn't there.

I've never bothered with that too much - I've taken the attitude that
so long as they don't do anything which might likely result in
permanent or dangerous injury they they can get on with it. I've
sometimes had to go somehwere else, mind - it's difficult to watch
your offspring do things that you know could hurt them if they went
wrong, the natural reaction is to say "Don't climb on that branch, it
looks too thin and might break".

They're all still alive and healthy, with no obvious scarring or
disfigurement

--
Trevor Barton

 

[Simonb]

Chris Malcolm wrote:

> I sometimes took him to rocky places with other little friends. Some
> of them were dangerous lunatics, who swarmed up anything climbable in
> complete idiotic disregard of the risks. Others refused to climb
> anything. Both these kinds of kids had mothers who refused to let them
> do anything remotely risky. The lunatics had decided that mother was
> an over-cautious fool who could safely be ignored, but the problem was
> that they had been prevented by their mothers from learning any useful
> risk assessment of their own.

Surely after one painful fall all of those kids learned pretty quickly?
Isn't that how most kids learn?

 

[Chris Malcolm]

"Simonb" <[email protected]> writes:

>Chris Malcolm wrote:

>> I sometimes took him to rocky places with other little friends. Some
>> of them were dangerous lunatics, who swarmed up anything climbable in
>> complete idiotic disregard of the risks. Others refused to climb
>> anything. Both these kinds of kids had mothers who refused to let them
>> do anything remotely risky. The lunatics had decided that mother was
>> an over-cautious fool who could safely be ignored, but the problem was
>> that they had been prevented by their mothers from learning any useful
>> risk assessment of their own.

>Surely after one painful fall all of those kids learned pretty quickly?
>Isn't that how most kids learn?

There appear to be times when learning certain things is easy, and
times when it is very hard. I suspect that some of these skills, like
learning to speak a foreign language, are best acquired at the same
time as the associated motor skills are being formed. That's why we
have so many adults who find it impossible to learn a foreign language
properly, and IMHO why there are so many adults who are unable to
learn the risk avoidance skills that they were prevented from learning
as children, despite the injuries they suffer as a consequence.

--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[JLB]

Andy Morris wrote:
> Richard wrote:
>
>>Some children are not as daft as people think. I was walking past a
>>farm in the depths of the Lake District; there was a small
>>substation/transformer unit there, behind a low stone wall which had a
>>"Danger of Death" sign on the gate. The small child I was
>>accompanying (not mine) turned to me and said seriously, "Don't go in
>>there. The electricity will kill you dead." He was all of five at
>>the time.
>
> Generally they are more daft at 15 than at 5.
>
Yes. Sometime between 5 and 15, there is usually an epiphany, possibly
involving Santa Claus, that transforms the bairn's trust of parental
honesty and knowledge in general.

--
Joe * If I cannot be free I'll be cheap

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

David Hansen wrote:
> http://www.hse.gov.uk/railways/liveissues/levelcrossings.htm is your
> starting point to understand the issues. In my view 9 pedestrian
> fatalities at all level crossings in 2003/04 is not something to get
> too excited about.

Remembering also that there were 2 fatalities on stairs on railway property
in 2002. (Don't have current figures)

A

 

[Al C-F]

On 18 Mar 2005 01:34:13 -0800, "dkahn400" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Her punishment for
>a moment's stupidity has been severe in the extreme. Is it fair to add
>such an invasion of privacy to her suffering and that of her family?

She wasn't punished, she suffered a natural consequence of taking a
risk and that risk occuring. It certainly sounds as though she chose
to ignore the many and varied warnings.

Now, she has, no doubt, cost the tax payer a great deal of money. She
could make a small contribution by discouraging others from taking the
same risk.

Or, she could campaign for everyone to be protected from their own
stupidity at great public expense.

 

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:11:09 +0000 someone who may be Al C-F
<[email protected]> wrote this:-

>She wasn't punished, she suffered a natural consequence of taking a
>risk and that risk occuring. It certainly sounds as though she chose
>to ignore the many and varied warnings.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/hsc/iacs/riac/070704public/levelcrossinghse.pdf
appears to be a series of slides from a talk. Anyone interested in
the current position in Scotland may like to have a quick look.

The first photograph shows a fairly typical half-barrier crossing.
It is on a single line and so does not have the "another train
coming" sign that there is at Kirknewton. It is difficult to imagine
anyone genuinely missing all that, even in the dark. The only
reasonable conclusion in my view is that she decided to walk across
the crossing, ignoring the warnings. She is the author of her own
misfortune. I have limited sympathy for her, but every sympathy for
her family and friends, together with all those involved from the
train driver to those who cleared up.



--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.