Re: I smoke for my mental health

BoredToTears <beejayceee1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

nigel <use...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
BoredToTears wrote:

Drivers must be the biggest bunch of whingers there are. You hear it
time and again, "speed cameras are just a stealth tax imposed by New
Labour". Here's some news for you, genius, if you don't speed and
break the law, you wont get fined! Simple!

Speed limit signs are often badly placed and difficult to see, and many
speed limits are unintuitive.

When I learned to drive I was taught to use common sense, but that's no
defence against cash-hungry quangos. It doesn't matter that you're
driving at a safe speed for the conditions - if an office junior
somewhere (good team worker, MS Office) has arbitrarily decreed a lower
speed you're fair game, unless you're a cop racing to get a pizza.


What utter nonsense! "Safe speed for the conditions"? Oh, so everyone
gets to decide on their own personal "safe" speed limit?

Certainly! Why not? Keep the posted speed limits but don't apply a
penalty for breaking them: apply a penalty for *being involved in an
accident if exceeding the speed limit*. Not for *causing* the crash
(although you keep the penalties for that too), but just for being
involved.

Did you know that one Dutch town has speeded up its traffic and made the
roads safer by getting rid of all its traffic signs and traffic lights
and everything like that?

(I should track down a Web link, but I can't be bothered).

What you've got to understand is that road signs and suchlike do not
make the roads safe: the proof of that is the fact that we've got very
dangerous roads and lots of signs and regulations.

Everyone gets
to make their own personal laws?

Not at all - see above. (but why not? An anarchist like me sees no
trouble with getting rid of laws entirely - it could be made to work
with suitable rearrangments)

There's no reason why one shouldn't trust the judgement of a skilled
driver, is there? After all, that's the principle behind letting people
drive at all.

The only time you are "fair game" is
when you *break the law*.

Laws are just arbitrary rules made by people. Many of them are stupid,
many of them are unjust, and some are just plain evil.

You might as well argue that what Hitler did to the Jews was entirely
legitimate since it was entirely legal - illegal, for example, for Jews
to own certain kinds of property, take any form of wealth out of
Germany, that sort of thing.

But of course that was all perfectly proper since it was in accordance
with the law, am I right?

Ditto internment without trial in Northern Ireland in the 60s and 70s
(okay, nothing like as evil as Hitler's doings and I expect someone
better versed in Irish history than me could come up with a more
harrowing example than what I quote, but you get the idea). Perfectly
right and proper since it was all done in accordance with the law, am I
right?

I could go on like this: the point is that the law is often an ass.

And if you do get caught and fined you have
no one to blame but yourself.

Not at all: there is the problem of the stupid laws, and the discretion
of whoever's doing the `nick'. The problem with speed cameras is that
they never apply discretion to offences recorded that way, which is not
how the law was meant to be applied when it was passed.

So speed cameras have corrupted the intentions of the laws that they are
being used to implement - this is clearly wrong from all sorts of
viewpoints.

And Hell mend you.

But many laws are foolish. You seem to miss that point. The current
road traffic laws are not fit for purpose: they have failed to give us
safe roads. I have ideas for making things safer; you don't seem to
care about people but - so it seems - just want to restrict people for
the sake of it. The hell with you!

Rowland.

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