Risk-taking behaviour and personal safety: A debate

[Famine]

We could go round and round all day (like my job) I agree with a lot of your points but not relaxing the law.

Where would it end? Safe to carry knifes in your pocket? guns?

Yeah, I'm reasonably cool with that.

If the problem is crap drivers, crap driving must be addressed. Making the problem into drink driving takes police resources away from crap drivers, it takes court resources away from crap drivers, it demonises and destroys the lives of perfectly acceptable drivers by criminalising their behaviour and crap drivers are allowed to continue, perpetuating crap driving. Meanwhile, drink driving continues at the same rate it did 30 years ago.

The same thing has already happened with speeding. Speeding, like drink driving, is de facto crap driving regardless of the quality of your driving. An arbitrary collection of limits are set along with arbitrary enforcement limits and above that you commit an offence, whether you're crap or not. Meanwhile people who drive to the limit and are crap continue to be crap. They sail past speed cameras - which do not detect crapness - with impugnity and, because detection rates remain high with fewer actual traffic police, police budgets and staffing is cut, so there's fewer traffic police to detect them being crap. We even have a law-breaking document sent out to all speeders that says they have to identify themselves (denying their right to keep their counsel) or face prison - that's how far we've come.

We go for speeding and drinking because they're quantifiable and they make convictions easier than the opinion-based crap driving - the opinion that someone in a Vauxhall Agila doing 27mph in an NSL, brake testing people and swerving to prevent the dangerous speeders from overtaking is, in fact, a jobby.

We shouldn't do things because they're easy. We should do things because they're right. It's hard to get dangerous drivers off the road, so we make quantifiable acts that are not inherently dangerous into crimes and criminalise drivers who are not dangerous to get them off the road instead. This doesn't solve any problems - and indeed makes them worse.

 

[Spagetti69]

As usual Famine you provide good valid points for your debate. Getting crap drivers off the road would be a good start.

Not sure if your aware of the central lane hogging law that is now in place. Basically if your seen hogging the middle lane when it is safe to pull into the slow lane you can get nabbed.
Maybe there trying to get rid of crap drivers or more than likely trying to increase revenue.

As an experienced driver I can see one reason to occupy the middle lane when it would be safe to go in the slow lane. If I know a busy slip road is joining onto the motorway I will be prepared for it. How would I stand in a court of law in that regard. What if I said I was doing 70MPH and wasn't expecting to be overtaken?

To be clear on this I don't hog the central lane, it makes overtaking a 3 lane manoeuvre and a pain in the backside.

What's a Noo-Noo. Lol

 

[ASH32]

Wait, wait, using a water gun for a prank now qualifies someone as being on drugs?

Dem assumptions.

Yes I made an assumption but not one that is baseless. I saw him, he certainly looked like he was on drugs. (There are plenty of addicts round here so I can spot them fairly well) It was about 10pm, he was old enough to know better too, he didn't even really laugh either, it hit me in the face and yet he just drove off. Using a water gun while driving can't be that safe either but I guess they'll never be a law against that.

 

[arora]

Actually there is a law, and in most states it's been on the books for eons. It's called distracted driving 👍

 

[Danoff]

Reckless

 

[arora]

Or that, But you know, back in the day police were given discretionary responsibility, most of them had brains in their heads as well and things generally worked out much better.

 

[Spagetti69]

I'm pretty sure that statistically, the average death is male 17-24 at 4am in the morning.
Usually a car full of mates in tow too.

As for squirting people whilst driving its most certainly a crime. We've had youths throwing concrete from bridges also, in there infinite wisdom.

 

[Famine]

As usual Famine you provide good valid points for your debate. Getting crap drivers off the road would be a good start.

Not sure if your aware of the central lane hogging law that is now in place. Basically if your seen hogging the middle lane when it is safe to pull into the slow lane you can get nabbed.
Maybe there trying to get rid of crap drivers or more than likely trying to increase revenue.

As an experienced driver I can see one reason to occupy the middle lane when it would be safe to go in the slow lane. If I know a busy slip road is joining onto the motorway I will be prepared for it. How would I stand in a court of law in that regard. What if I said I was doing 70MPH and wasn't expecting to be overtaken?

To be clear on this I don't hog the central lane, it makes overtaking a 3 lane manoeuvre and a pain in the backside.

Yeah, I wrote a piece on some other things that should be on-the-spot fines too

The lane-hogging thing is actually easy to break down. You start by giving the lanes their correct names.

The left lane is lane 1, or "the driving lane". This is the lane in which you drive - as it would be if only that lane existed and one was coming the other way, like on the majority of UK roads. The first additional lane is lane 2, or "the first overtaking lane". You may use lane 2 to overtake slower traffic in lane 1. Any subsequent lanes are lanes 3, 4, 5 or 6 (rarely 6!) and they're known as "the (n-1)th overtaking lane". You may use those to overtake slower traffic in lanes to your left.

The Highway Code says, of overtaking, that you should return to the left lane when it is safe to do so. This means that if you're in lane 6 and it's safe to return to lane 5, you should do so, as from lane 5 to lane 4, from lane 4 to lane 3, from lane 3 to lane 2 and from lane 2 to lane 1.

Once we get people out of the habit of "slow lane", "middle lane" and "fast lane", and into "driving lane", "first overtaking lane" and so on, they pretty much realise that they're supposed to be in the lane that's as far left as they can be unless they're overtaking. They wouldn't drive down the right-hand side of a single-lane, single-carriageway road unless overtaking, so they shouldn't drive any further right than the driving lane anywhere else either.


With the specific instance you cite, you actually don't need to move to lane 2 - it's the job of joining traffic to reach the carriageway speed and filter onto it appropriately. In fact it's just about the main rule of any kind of multi-road driving (road junctions, sliproads, roundabouts) that you give way to any vehicle to your right - and carriageway traffic is to your right when you drive down a sliproad.

However, many of us do move, because although it's not a necessity, it's a safe action (assuming you're looking) when there are vehicles on the slip road looking to join. You're taking pre-emptive action to avoid a potential hazard before it becomes one. That's good driving - predictive rather than reactive. Police won't bother with you.

Some people move out to lane 2 whenever they see a sliproad joining, traffic or not. That's not good driving because they're not observing. Police will bother with these people. Hopefully.

What's a Noo-Noo. Lol

Gully cleaner. Has a hose on it and a circular tank, like Noo Noo from Teletubbies.

 

[Spagetti69]

Shoulda got that Noo-Noo.

 

[XS]

Yeah, I'm reasonably cool with that.

If the problem is crap drivers, crap driving must be addressed. Making the problem into drink driving takes police resources away from crap drivers, it takes court resources away from crap drivers, it demonises and destroys the lives of perfectly acceptable drivers by criminalising their behaviour and crap drivers are allowed to continue, perpetuating crap driving. Meanwhile, drink driving continues at the same rate it did 30 years ago.

The same thing has already happened with speeding. Speeding, like drink driving, is de facto crap driving regardless of the quality of your driving. An arbitrary collection of limits are set along with arbitrary enforcement limits and above that you commit an offence, whether you're crap or not. Meanwhile people who drive to the limit and are crap continue to be crap. They sail past speed cameras - which do not detect crapness - with impugnity and, because detection rates remain high with fewer actual traffic police, police budgets and staffing is cut, so there's fewer traffic police to detect them being crap. We even have a law-breaking document sent out to all speeders that says they have to identify themselves (denying their right to keep their counsel) or face prison - that's how far we've come.

We go for speeding and drinking because they're quantifiable and they make convictions easier than the opinion-based crap driving - the opinion that someone in a Vauxhall Agila doing 27mph in an NSL, brake testing people and swerving to prevent the dangerous speeders from overtaking is, in fact, a jobby.

We shouldn't do things because they're easy. We should do things because they're right. It's hard to get dangerous drivers off the road, so we make quantifiable acts that are not inherently dangerous into crimes and criminalise drivers who are not dangerous to get them off the road instead. This doesn't solve any problems - and indeed makes them worse.

👍👍👍. It's amazing how there's an almost collective hate for the rules of the road these days. No matter what the infraction, the story usually goes like this: the accused driver will complain about an infraction (once again it doesn't matter what the infraction is), and anybody listening will chime in about how absurd said infraction is. I'm so sick of it. My cousin got his license taken away for drag racing stop light to stop light. We were with a group of friends and I said he deserved it. I was chastised by the entire group. It's the same story with speeders: "that cop was an ****, I was only doing 5 over the speed limit!!" Anyway, what got me on this rant was, you're correct, it's easy for law enforcement officials to turn a blind eye to generally terrible driving. A couple years ago I was driving to work and another driver was following me very closely. I drove by a police officer who was looking for speeders with his radar gun out. I remember specifically thinking, "pull this guy behind me over!!", but no such action was taken. A couple miles later as I was stopping for a red light he plowed into me. When the police showed up I made the argument that the accident never should happened because that other officer a couple miles back should have done his job and pulled the driver over for failure to maintain proper following distance. Angry with me the responding officer let the driver off on one warning and one general moving violation ticket, which is basically a $50 fine and two points, usually knocked down to one point. So yeah, this topic gets me fired up instantly. Like I said, I just can't get over the collective hate of the rules of the road by the general public these days. And it's not just driving, it extends into other facets of everyday life. Sorry for the boring rant.

 

[Danoff]

When the police showed up I made the argument that the accident never should happened because that other officer a couple miles back should have done his job and pulled the driver over for failure to maintain proper following distance.

Ooooh... that could easily be me... easily. I would be so angry in that circumstance. I've been known to lose my mind when I see cops letting people drive recklessly as long as they stay at or below the speed of surrounding traffic (speed limit being almost irrelevant).