Safe Speed Forums

Actually, if you have time for this, I see the formation of behavioural systems (societies) as something of an experiment in simulated annealing, where we gradually coalesce on a set of rules that, while not perfect, are good enough to give a functional society. Then we tweak the basic set ad infinitum to get it right (or wrong as the case may be), and introduce the occasional big change to break out of a local minima. This means that sometimes, a poor local solution is adopted to get to a good global one, i.e. we have to be radical sometimes.

So what? Well right now we have the laws geared up to work in the "fair play" Britain of yesteryear, where cops don't have guns and people play fair. We can't expect those laws to work when we have so rapidly trashed the class system that was the social glue of this place for 10 centuries until the 60’s. This is going to take generations to work out, and in the meantime we have to deal with yobbos who have quite simply never learned how to function in this new version of Britain. And how should we deal with them? By setting a good example and treating them harshly when they don’t follow it.

What I mean is that it is a small expectation that a responsible person should obey the law if it doesn’t put them out too much, because the law is the main thing that is different here to the situation in Iraq. Let’s give the law a modicum of respect, please. Pretty please?

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I stole this .sig

Respect is not given freely by any society, it must be earnt

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Steve

Society is not governed by law it is governed by conscience and respect for authority.

As we have seen in recent years authority has not deserved this respect.

There is a “biblical” law that those who are given authority are judged more harshly when they err. There is a very good reason for this because of the effect it has on society when they see people abuse there position of power. Do they get judged harshy? Answer...no. They try and weazel out of it.

Is it any wonder why things are falling apart!

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Speed camera policy Kills

Yes, broadly speaking I would agree with you.

However, there are further factors to consider:

1. If you have a law that is very widely disregarded by generally "responsible" people, that calls into question whether that law is appropriate - which is not the same thing as advocating breaking it
2. We need to consider the method and degree of enforcement as well as the law itself. Even the best law can be enforced in a heavy-handed and counter-productive manner
3. It is all too easy for a "zero-tolerance" approach to focus on relatively trivial transgressions by "responsible" people, because they are easy to catch and to punish, and ignore more serious transgressions by "irresponsible" people who are harder to finger

Also, law can only deter people from doing particular things, and at the end of the day society cannot be governed simply by fear. The best way to stop people doing things is to get them to believe that those things are wrong.

Unfortunately for whatever reason there has been an erosion of social cohesion during my lifetime, and a lot of people seem to take a very nihilistic and selfish approach to life. But you won't change that by fining them for dropping litter in the street.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Yes, that's a very important point. In a number of ways authority has forfeited respect from responsible people - and one of the most significant is speedcams.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Yet when the law is clearly an ass it loses respect, and sadly some will not distinguish between bad laws and the law in general. I think this is mainly a failure on the part of the legislators, i.e. politicians, and to a lesser extent the judicial system. It doesn't help when those who make or enforce the law are found out to have, shall we say, a less than healthy respect for it themselves.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I can see loads of problems - interesting ones - with your position.

Neither the class system nor any system of laws or regulations will hold society together. Mutual interest is good.

In the past we had poverty as social glue (feudal times), later we had Christian morality (and fear of the Devil possibly) as social glue.

As Christian morality has fallen away, (possibly aided by the demise of the class system although I don't much think so) we've got a sort of respect vacuum.

There is no way on earth that we can fill the respect vacuum with laws. Laws are only enforceable by consent, and it's been said that even 2% non-compliance makes a law unenforceable. Laws that appear to be widely respected, don't usually have a whole lot to do with the law, but more to do with social values. For example, I don't need a law to stop me killing someone - I find the idea of killing someone abhorrent, mainly on the basis of the "do unto others..." principle.

I think we have a very advanced society now fully capable of working well without a great deal of regulation affecting the responsible majority. In fact if we squander resources trying to alter the behaviour of the responsible majority we'll miss the chance to control the behaviour of an irresponsible minorty.

I think roads policing looks like a very good microcosm for wider society. We could learn lessons there!

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

An important rule of Policing is enforcement IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

The law as such has no power without enforcement.

It is a big responsibility to decide what is in the public interest.

We have already covered laws here which are not enforced..piracy for example, which has potentialy a much higher penalty than speeding. There are dozens of others.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Treat others as how you yourself wish to be treated. It's an old one but I think it would do in the abscence of anything else Empathy is partly what is missing. The culture has changed to where what *I* want is always more important than what anyone else wants rather than being equal. This is of course highly ironic when the powers that be are always banging on about equality...

What it all boils down to is that laws should be formed by society, not the other way round.

If the majority of society think that something is morally wrong, then a law is enacted to encourage the minority to follow this moral code. This makes a good law, for example the law that says it is illegal to murder people.

But if a law doesn't reflect the moral code of the majority of society then it is - to coin a phrase - an ass! If a law is enacted that defies the moral code of the majority, merely to serve the immediate ends of some minority, then it will never earn respect, will never be obeyed, and will merely serve to make hypocrites of its enforcers. This can never be good for society.

How can we impose any moral code on "yobbos" when they display loutish behaviour, when we ourselves fall foul of other laws that were enacted for the wrong reasons?

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Thomas Hobbes in the 1650's wrote a wonderful book called Leviathan.

This outlined the responsibilities of man, society and it's interaction. Althogh 440 years out of date when it comes to some points, one point is still relevant.

Man ( as a whole) is not an entity which will behave well if left to their own accord. THere must be a way for society to control this instinct.
That way is the law.
The only way to maintain law ids to enforce it.
Man will only comply with law if the fear of the consequences is greater than the benefit of the act - hence the Leviathan.

Now I am not suggesting that we hang, draw and quarter anyone , but think about this as a concept, and is it still relevant as a theory?

If anyone wishes to look at this in more detail (http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/texts/hobbes/levcon.htm)

It's relevant as a theory, but basically it's an apologia for dictatorship, written at the time when Britain was ruled by Cromwell.

It's a long time since I studied political thought, but there are plenty of other classic works putting across a different view such as "The Rights of Man" by Tom Paine and "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill.

I think the terrible events of the 20th century have ultimately shown that dictatorship cannot survive indefinitely without popular consent - fear alone is not enough.

Another lesson is that in a world of global trade, it is the working of economic markets as much as political protest that undermines tyranny.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

The intention was really to show that this is an age old problem, and that the answers can be extreme.
What we have to have is a balance.
No matter what the law is there will always be those who suport it or deny it with the same vehemence.
The trick is finding the balance.

Really Wildy Cat or Jessika Tiger are the best persons to discuss this as both lived in East Germany under the Stasi regime at one point in their lives. But from hearsay for the pair of them - they were there at the time of the uprising:. It really started in the summer of 1989 when West Germany closed down a consulate in East Berlin. A lot of East Germans headed to Budapest to gain access access to the West instead.. The East then had a "celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the DDR - only they threatened those who refused to join in with jail. It then led to the Monday demos in Leipzig in early September. By November - the Wall was down!

Thus people will take so much and then revolt!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

But hang on - what is the law really?

It's a set of rules which affect people's lives and activities. Some of the rules - like science rules - enable us to predict what will happen in a given example: if you hit summat at speed - it will hurt you! So we regulate our conduct arount it. One of the things we can do is to apply those good ol' rules which form the basis of our COAST words. In other words we regulate our conduct to ensure we do not get hurt - or locked up!

So - in our community we make up some rules. Paul has made one or two rules or guidelines concerning gentlemanly and ladylike conduct on this site - for example - and these have been agreed upon to develop and "control" relationships beween members.

The rules are essential if a communuty is to work and co-operate and we find them in schools, games, clunbs, work places, the roads.

But in any community there must have been a tacit agreement that the rules were desireable - and we progreesss and become more complex we then enforce those rules and they become "LAW!"

(However - nobody consulted drivers about speed cameras! And police just thought at the time - "Labour saving doo-dah - good idea!" )



But as our legal system develops - we find our rules fall into tow categories - criminal and civil. Criminal law is concerned with conduct of which the state disapproves (and the state disapproves of murder, burglary, taking drugs, drinking too much and driving cars too quickly ) - and disapproves so strongly that it will punish the wrong doer by locking up murderers, fining drivers and boozers and letting burglars and druggies off the hook!

It is thus felt that society cannot possibly work if drivers drive their cars too fast, kill people and it punishes to deter people from doing this sort of thing. (Note - I am now leaving our robbers, muggers and so on as they now tend to be let off these days by politically correct magistrates and we end up re-arresting these same people on a regular basis! - and it could be argued that our paperwork ain't up to scratch or the CPS is dopey of the Mag is an idiot - but then a Mag has just more or less been forced to resign for daring to suggest lock up a burglar for at least 6 months!)

It is not the objective of criminal law to compensate a victim.

Civil law has a complementary function. It aims to resolve disputes and offer a remedy to the person wronged and not punish the wrongdoer - although damages may be view as punitive.

I could go into the history of Law from the emergence of common law under the Normans, equity, law merchants, statute law and EU directive laws - all of which BiBs have to have a little knowledge of.

And you thought all we did was harrass you over a little speed limit and tread on tyres!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

In the absence of wider scientific knowledge in our society between those times and sometime in the 20th century (in a very real way) the role of the leviathan was filled by Hell and the Devil as promoted by the Christian Church.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Cunobelin, PeterE and InGear have explained how, at one level, the law plays a part in societal behaviour, although it is not rigid these days and lots of responsible people break the law (in small ways) without major apparent effect on the overall system. We all seem to agree that to function, the law has to be “respectable”. For the law to be respectable, it has to be in the general public interest, and it has to be enforced in the right way. We have heard that society as a whole has the best chance of making “respectable” law in the general public mutual interest, but most of us believe that there has been some “erosion” in our society over time. This might be to do with a loosening of the “social glue” - the collapse of certain traditional value systems. I suspect (although no-one else seems to) that Britain has or at least did have a decent system for creating and enforcing law.

I’m specifically interested in two cases. The first case is where there is no general mutual interest. Issues like speed cameras, fox hunting and parking on the pavement come to mind. In these cases, half of the stakeholders will be happy, and the other half will be pissed off whatever the law says. Right now, foxhunters and speeders are miserable, while townies, pedestrians and non-speeding motorists are happy. It doesn’t have to be that way, but (in the balance, all things considered, voting patterns and so on) this is the result decided through due democratic process in one of the world’s “fairest” systems of government. In this case, is it unreasonable to expect the pissed-off stakeholders to get with the programme, obey the law and campaign for change through proper channels? I think it is, especially <plug for my point of view coming up> when so much good can come from driving more slowly!

The second case is where lots of responsible people break the law in small ways without major apparent effect on the overall system. Does this actually lead to slow but incremental erosion of the law, which left for long enough, means that laws become useless. In the 70’s, parking on the pavement was just not done. Now, everybody is at it, and if a copper complains, people are fully entitled to say “get lost copper, everybody does it”, although I wouldn’t put it in those terms myself! It’s the same with dope, although I have less objection to that, but the principle stands.

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I stole this .sig

Err, excuse me!

Everyone wants improved road safety. That's mutual interest. We disagree as to how that might best be achieved. This is nowhere near the same as saying: "Well, we can please half the people".

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I believe that your astute observations mean that, when the sytem suddenly decides (or has at its disposal the technology) to enforce a law that was being widely ignored, the result is an inevitable backlash - it was OK yesterday, why not today?
For example, we seem to agree (I say 'seem' because I'm seldom sure of what is agreed upon in here ) that tailgating another vehicle is dangerous and unecessary yet, if tailgating cameras were introduced tomorrow and fines starting plopping onto doormats a few days later, there would be another outcry.
Enforcement of the law is as much about how its done, as why its done and when its done.

But it amounts to pretty much the same thing if the end result is approval from one group(s), disapproval from another.