SafeSpeed wrote:
basingwerk wrote:
SafeSpeed wrote:
Ahh, so you DO recognise that good driving has to be described in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.
Do you finally recognise that the quality of driving depends on how satisfied stakeholders are with the outcomes of driving, not just on an individual’s view?
Seeing as this is clearly semantic Thursday, what exactly do you mean by stakeholders?
You started it! Anyway, one idea is to say that the quality of a process is generally measured by the level of stakeholder satisfaction with the outcome from the process. If satisfaction is low, that means the quality is low, and if it’s high, that means the quality is high. Different type of stakeholders will be satisfied by different attributes of the driving process. The Jeremys of this world might be satisfied only when they can open it up to full throttle whenever they want, whereas the basingwerks would only be satisfied when all the Jeremys are in jail!
In the driving process, let’s focus on one driver, and see what stakeholders he involves. Clearly, all the other drivers in his vicinity are stakeholders, and all the road users and pedestrians, and residents near where he passes are all stakeholders to a degree. Then his activity influences the highway engineers, the gritters and the local NHS, the insurance companies, and all the other drivers who buy policies from those companies, the local scouts and Old Farmer Giles. The influences ripple out from the driver to immediate stakeholders (those whose lives he can directly effect) to lesser stakeholders (lives less influenced). There are zillions of these I haven’t considered.
Now let’s consider the type of influence. If the government is influenced, it might be economic or strategic concerns. If other drivers, the pedestrians or residents are influenced, it will be safety, noise, pollution and congestion, inconvenience etc.
Pretty soon, it is clear that the network of stakeholders is huge and interconnected, at which point, the measurement of quality as I define it (i.e. level of stakeholder satisfaction) can only be conducted in a political way. Which is where we are, and of course, government processes depend on laws which specifically determine what is not allowed. Libertarian ideas have been rejected thus far, and rules, limits, tests etc. are in. So. In summary, firstly quality of driving is measured by how satisfied (or dissatisfied) people are with the system, not by technical measurements of driving ability nor by quantitative terms (!?!) And, secondly, assessing satisfaction is political because the stakeholders are so many. Isn’t that odd/mad (delete as appropriate).
Question: is it a good thing? Possible answer: it doesn’t matter, because it is inevitable.