Re: Victory for green lanes

Roger wrote:
The message <68agqfF2sfq3lU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from Peter Clinch <p.j.clinch@xxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

Roger wrote:

Turning the majority of motorists into common criminals doesn't help the
situation particularly when what has been perfectly legal for years gets
criminalised for no better reason than a non driving socialist not
wanting the rich to drive any faster than the volk in their volkswagons.

Oh dear. The rant-o-meter has just broken having gone off the scale,
leading me to suspect some angry rationalisation has taken the place of
informed thought.

What's the matter Pete? Got out of bed the wrong side today?

Roger, read your paragraph quoted above again, complete with
"non-driving socialists" and ask who it was might've got out of bed the
wrong side...

Barbara Castle was a Stalinist of the old school resentful of anything
that was not distributed equally be it wealth, intelligence or fast
cars. She never even learned to drive which further prejudiced her
against motorists. The arbitrary 70 mph limit had no justification other
than it was the top speed of the VW Beetle which had been widely
advertised as being capable of being driven flat out all day, unlike
many of its contemporaries. Hardly surprising when the 1200 cc Beetle
engine put out only a pitiful 34 bhp at maximum, the same as a 848 cc
Mini and 5 bhp down on a 997 cc 105E Ford Anglia which could also be
driven flat out all day.

So Ms. castle also managed to influence, say, the even lower limits
you'd have found in Texas, hotbed of Stalinism, in a similar time frame?
Wow! She was either /much/ more influential than I remember, or you're
having a bit of a rant.

Transport research has long noted a "safety in numbers" effect. The
more cars/bikes/whatever there are, the lower the accident rates. If
people are more used to other vehicles, they pay more attention to them.
Perhaps counter-intuitive, but true, and neatly sidesteps you rant
about the evils of socialism.

Ah yes, that would be why road casualties soared as the amount of motor
traffic on the roads increased in the first half of the 20th century.

Because it hadn't reached the critical mass of numbers to be safe in
during the first half of the 20th Century. Cars were not a completely
normal thing of which everyone was aware and constantly on their guard
as is the case now. It was perfectly normal for kids to play in
non-cul-de-sac streets up into the 1970s, it doesn't happen any more,
because cars are so much more pervasive.

Motorists who are convicted of causing death by dangerous driving
generally end up in jail with a criminal record. I haven't heard
anything that leads me to believe that anyone in the NHS has acquired a
criminal record because of hospital acquired infection deaths, let along
bgeen sent to jail.

So losing your job isn't /any/ sort of punishment?

See above. There is ample evidence that by and large motorists do limit
their speed when circumstances demand it.

"By and large" still leaves a great deal of scope for them to get people
killed by not knowing how fast is fast enough.

Extending the scope would give
said motorists more opportunity to practice roadcraft and as everyone
knows, practice makes perfect. :-)

So the roadside memorial flowers I pass quite often these days on dead
straight sections of rural road, the folk they were left in memory of
really benefited from their "practice" at high speeds, and the reason
they crashed was they never broke speed limits and thus weren't good
drivers?

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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