[geeks] Stuff fo' sale

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 @ 22:43 +0100, Mike Meredith said:

> Authorities have been focusing on vehicle design, driver training and
> road design for many years. Compare cars built in the 1960s with
> those made today. Indeed some of the UK funds raised from speed cameras
> do go into that area.

No doubt there have been improvements, but much of that was driven
outside of government.  A lot of vehicular safety comes from auto
racing, for example, and the industry often has to fight the government
to get things authorized for road usage.

In any case, I was addressing local government focusing on revenue
rather than safety, which does happen and is a big part of the problem
with things like road cameras.

The road cameras cost *MORE* than needed improvements which have a
bigger positive impact on safety.

Follow the money and you'll find that the localities always focus on
things which generate revenue.

They should focus on the greatest need, but that isn't what drives their
decision making.  That's painfully obvious.

At the state and federal level, its kind of mixed.  Yes, there are some
good programs for safety that are net losses, but still, most of the
time they look at what will generate the most revenue.

> Of course the law isn't perfect but complain about the law and not the
> enforcement of it.

No, complain about both.

Even a police officer is supposed to use some judgement in enforcement.

They have the power and the duty to be a check against improper law.

One mistake of the founders in the USA made was not adding an amendment
that specifically addressed the issue of a law enforcement officer
having to choose between his people and his career.  He never should
have to.

> > Or it could be the statistics are created by people with a vested
> > interest in making them say things are improving, even if they aren't.
> 
> Same applies to those who claim cameras increase accidents of course!

Not really.  The people making those claims are usually the ones who
pick the bodies up off the pavement.

They have a vested interest in *NOT* having to do that.

> Especially in comparison to the US ... after all most of our roads (and
> cities) were built long before cars and those that haven't been upgraded
> aren't suitable for upgrading. In some parts of the UK it is common to
> find yourself on a 6-foot wide road with very solid stone walls on
> either wide curving enough that you rarely can see more than 30 feet
> from where the car is.

I grew up in Hampton, VA USA.  The city has been English for 400 years
(actually longer, 400 years ago was the official founding), but was
native for centuries if not millenia before that.

400 years ago, the English used the animal and native paths through the
woods and swamps for their horses.

Fast forward 400 years to the present, the we are still using them for
vehicle traffic, only we've paved them.

It makes for an... interesting traffic grid.





-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["I wish life was not so short. Languages
take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about." - J.
R. R. Tolkien]