Re: Victory for green lanes

Simon Challands wrote:

Oh please. That makes as much sense as saying cars suddenly sprout
machine guns to mow down pedestrians the instant they stray over the
speed limit. The ones who kill and destroy are the lunatics who race
around with no regard to the conditions or location. Whether or not
that matches or passes the speed limit is becoming increasingly
academic. Nearly all drivers speed at some point or another. Nearly
all of them are safe drivers. Someone going 75 or 80 down the M6 past
Shap at 3 in the morning is not dangerous, but someone going 20 mph in
a narrow road past a school at 8:45am might very well be. Please apply
a bit of common sense to speed limits.

On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand lots of drivers (and if you
think it's confined to lunatics then you're living in a dream world)
have shown they're not good judges of a safe, appropriate speed, so it
follows from that that since there is a single set of rules for everyone
there is required to be a degree of lowish (/not/ low*est*) common
denominator about what the limits are.

Ideally you'd have safety limits set for every combination of car and
driver according to ability, but until you can come up with a way of
doing that reasonably and objectively we're stuck with one rule for
everyone. And the sad fact of the matter is that if you break that
you're liable for a fine, so either pay up or drive inside the rules.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.clinch@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
.

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