Driving a car is almost certainly the most dangerous thing that any of us do in our lives.
Bollocks. Indeed, bollocks on stilts. Bollocks on stilts with knobs on. The most dangerous thing I do is walk about the railway line with a live conductor rail carrying up to 750V DC next to my feet. And that’s just me, not the airline pilots, ships’ masters, emergency service crews and… well, I could go on, but my point is made. Andrew Brown is a cretin. Indeed, a short sighted or careless one – whichever it is.
I spent Monday morning at a speed awareness course, whither I had been dispatched for failing to notice a speed camera on the other side of a dual carriageway.
The reason that driving can be a dangerous activity – particularly for we vulnerable road users is because there are fuckwits like you who aren’t paying attention.
So there’s no doubt that regulating drivers is part of any kind of utilitarian concept of morality, and certainly part of the essential functions of a state.
Oh, fer fucking fuckitty fuck’s sake! Where to start with such wibble. It is a role of the state to ensure that those who wish to use a shared resource demonstrate the basic level of competence to do so. Otherwise, ongoing regulation is not necessary or, at best, light touch. Indeed, it is arguable that less regulation improves road safety as shared space consistently demonstrates – as opposed to being constantly cosseted and nannied by the glorious state.
Bad driving is wicked and antisocial under any recognised scheme of morality.
I guess I can grant him that one. And having been tailgated on a soaking wet motorway this morning, I have to say that bad driving is one of my bugbears.
I suppose you can argue that some speeding is entirely safe but in a country where the speed cameras are painted bright yellow anyone who fails to notice one is guilty at the very least of driving without proper concentration.
Indeed you were. However, a safe speed and the speed limits are two different things. A safe speed is one whereby you can stop in what you can see to be clear. This morning on the M4 it was about 55mph despite the legal limit being 70mph. However on a sunny Sunday morning in the early hours before the world has risen, a safe speed on the motorway could be well into three figures. Driving quickly is perfectly safe providing it is carried out competently.
One interesting thing is that there was no attempt by our lecturers to make explicit the moral dimensions of what we had done.
Well, that’s a good thing, because there wasn’t one. Getting caught by a speed camera is not a moral issue, it is a legal one. Breaking the law is not necessarily immoral – especially when the law is so frequently an ass.
But the emphasis was entirely on self-interest and the unpleasant social and financial consequences of being caught again.
Well, yes, that is the reality for those of us who do not reside in the la la land of the Guardianista.
Related to this was the extraordinary lack of remorse or even interest shown by some of the participants.
Given that they are there to avoid getting points on their licences, I’m not remotely surprised by this. They have to put up with patronising hogwash about speed in order to keep those points off. Otherwise, they wouldn’t pay extra over and above the cost of the fine to attend.
The only time there was an outbreak of moral outrage was when one of our number confessed that he sometimes rode a bicycle. Cyclists, we rapidly learned, were vile, dangerous outlaws who shot red lights, paid no tax, rode on the pavement and behaved with utter disregard for the safety of anyone else on the road.
Aha! Now we see where this is going, don’t we? Thing is, in some cases, this is perfectly true. Riding on the pavements and jumping red lights are breaches of the Highway Code and are illegal. Yes, I realise that cyclists will argue (with some justification) that they do this for their own safety. Others do it because they happen to have a complete disregard for the rules of the road. However,see above regarding morality.
While this noise was going on, I had a small epiphany. The cyclists were hated because they are cheats. They are getting away with something that car drivers cannot.
I’m positive that there are motorists who hate me filtering on the motorcycle – especially those who nudge sideways to block my path. Not that it does them any good, as when the traffic moves I can usually slip through and if not, no harm is done. When I’m in the car, I move over to allow filtering motorcyclists and cyclists. Again, no harm is being done.
All this tells me is that there are arseholes out on the roads – as if we didn’t know this already. Those arseholes are not confined to cars, mind. You find them on all forms of transport including Shanks’s Pony.
Like Russians under communism and after its fall, they have become anarchic individualists, held in line only by fear of punishment. They don’t see anything wrong in cheating, nor in other drivers cheating. Only in their hatred of cyclists is a vestigial mark of any moral sentiment.
More bollocks on stilts with knobs on. The motorist has been punished by successive governments and spiteful local authorities, ever trying to restrict our passage. The A38 was once a pleasure to ride or drive, whereas today it is a nightmare full of traffic calming and absurdly low speed restrictions. Is it any wonder when looking at a clear road that could be traversed safely at 60mph, we fume when restricted to 40 or even 30mph while being inundated with partonising hogwash about speed kills? And, to cap it all, the state is forever dangling us by our ankles for any loose change that might be lurking in our pockets. So, yeah, getting one over the state is fine by me.
As for me, for the moment, I am driving more slowly.
And doubtless pissing off the queue behind you…
The most dangerous thing any of us do is open our eyes in the morning.
We’re dying every minute of the day and doing it fully conscious. 😯
Wot ze fook is all that ??
Surely one of the most dangerous things you do is keep reading the worthless drivel written by self-important idiots that is CiF (though I suppose this could apply to anything in The Guardian) – it can’t be good for your heart.
Yeah, but it’s well addictive though.
Like banging your head against a brick wall — it’s nice when you leave off. Unfortunately you’ve got to do the headbanging first to get the pleasant aftereffect.
XX anyone who fails to notice one is guilty at the very least of driving without proper concentration. XX
“Driving without due care and attention” is the phrase you are looking for you journaltic piece of frog shit.
XX Riding on the pavements and jumping red lights are breaches of the Highway Code and are illegal. XX
NO NO AND A THOUSAND BLOODY TIME NO!
There is NO such thing as “a breach of the highway code”. It is ADVICE and TOTALY unenforcable!!!
The ONLY things you can “breach” are LAWS, I will repreat The highway fucking CODE is NOT LAW!
Actually, significant portions of the Highway Code are legal requirements. Look for the capitalised “MUST” and “MUST NOT” in big red friendly letters with the relevant statute listed underneath the rule.
No, you won’t be prosecuted for breaching a Highway Code rule (providing the above does not apply and in the ones I mentioned, they do – rules 64, 69 and 71) however, in the event of an accident going to court, expect it to be held against you.
xX with the relevant statute listed underneath the rule.XX
EXACTLY!
“THE RELEVANT STATUTE!!!”
THE Statute is the law, and is NOT law because it is in the highway code, but because it is in the STATUTE BOOK.
The fact that the HC popints it out does NOT make the HC “THE law”.
I’m not sure what your concern is here as I’ve said nothing that contradicts this point. You can be in breach of the Highway code (and not be prosecuted) and you can be in breach of the law (and be prosecuted). There will be occasions when both apply – breach of the Highway Code and breach of the law. Which is what I said.
You can not “breach” something, that has no legal standing, therefore to “breach the highway code”, is bollox!
You are being far too pedantic in your interpretation of “breach”. Indeed, it is your own interpretation, not the one found in a dictionary. To breach something in this context merely means to infringe or to break. It is perfectly possible to infringe or break a Highway Code rule without breaking the law, just as it is entirely possible to breach a code of practice in health and safety management – that, too, will not necessarily involve breaking the law.
So, no, it’s not bollocks, it is an accurate use of English as a perusal of any decent English dictionary will demonstrate.
I refer to it in its legal meaning.
As I presume the HC does NOT mention river crossing, or such.
(Breaching the river).
Legaly you can not breach something for which there is no legal enforcement/penalty.
The sooner people get this crap out of their heads, that the HC is somehow second only to “god” the better.
Have not got a bloody CLUE what happened THERE!?!?
Less regulation does help. Not just shared spaces.
In certain areas of Central America (I think the depths of Mexico BICBW) there are some jurisdictions that have removed the requirement for driving licenses. Partly this was because it was so easy to bribe an official to get a license it made no difference to the competence of the driver. Now rather than thinking that the other driver is competent because they have the license and so are allowed to drive, you now know that they could be incompetent and drive more safely. Accident levels fell after the change.
I suspect that from the comments above your respondents are seeing their comments plastered with lots of stray code. Returning to the page afresh and the code vanishes.
i.e.
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JimS
December 14, 2012 at 17:52
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I suspect that from the comments above your respondents are seeing their comments plastered with lots of stray code. Returning to the page afresh and the code vanishes.
I see it on your last. From mine it is gone. Lets see what happens after this one.
I’ve disabled the comment editor. Pity, it was a useful plugin and I wasn’t seeing the error messages as I was logged in.
Yup.They have gone. Thanks. 🙂
Yup. And now its back on the others as well! ??
So…let me get this straight. Man goes to subset of drivers (those busted for disobeying the rules) and extrapolates, from this, something he ascribes to all drivers?
Yup.
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that the speed limit and the safe speed are two different concepts. I’ve been on a motorway, driving at 15-18mph in the fog (in the ‘slow’ lane) and seen a car doing about 80mph slam into the back of another car doing about 25mph in the ‘fast’ lane, killing all four on board. The 70mph ‘limit’ on motorways is no guarantee of safety.
On the B road out of my village the limit goes between 30-40mph. At 0500 it is quite safe to drive at 60mph or higher because there’s no traffic.
I drive at the speed which is appropriate for the circumstances prevailing at the time as I consider that speed to be safe.
The received wisdom is strong in that one.
Certainly doesn’t understand that safe driving is not about speed, or training, or courses, but about awareness?
You can never take into acount the idiot actions of other road users though.
Traveling down the middle lane of the Motorway, and some dip shit thirty meters in front of you makes a half hand break turn from the fast lane because he has just realised the Mc dogs junction is all of a sudden closer than he thought, and cuts right, accross both middle and slow lanes, breaking like a bloody Tomcat on the deck off U.S.S Enterprise, to catch his breakfast.
(USUALLY farting into his mobile wank machine, or i.pad, or whatever the name is for hand held telephonic aparatus these days.) as he does it.)
If driving a car is so dangerous, how come I have been doing it for nearly forty years without getting a single scratch? The problem that we have here is ignoramuses who think that all we need to do to have 100% safe roads is obey the speed limits. My daily commute is about twelve miles, on mostly rural routes. Examples of shit driving that I see daily include:
Having faulty lights or no lights in foggy or dark conditions; misleading or non-existent signalling; tailgating, often in wet and icy conditions; incorrect road positioning, especially when turning right; a complete inability to deal with roundabouts correctly, positioning, signalling, entering, you name it; failure to maintain adequate progress. Oh yes, and this:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fa2_1306624528
I wasn’t.
I didn’t say that, so it’s not relevant.
“I spent Monday morning at a speed awareness course, whither I had been dispatched for failing to notice a speed camera on the other side of a dual carriageway.”
No – he got done for speeding. It’s not illegal to “fail to notice a speed camera”.
Idiot.
Driving without due care and attention? 😛