Safe Speed Forums

You have not told us how and what they 'scrape' people off the road with, yet either.

You're too kind sir!

Yes, it's true I've been involved with seconday safety pretty much all my working life but of course, from an engineering point of view - so there's no particular reason why I should be any more conversant with the psychology of making cars safer and its effects on driver behaviour than the next man. That said, it IS a phenomenon I've heard of and it's quite an old theory too - which, for all I know pre-dates the Adams book. If certain other posters who think I can't understand their posts care to look back through this (and other) treads for "risk homeostasis", they will, I'm sure, find the term.

Needless to say, my position on it remains unchanged and yes, I did consider the kind invitation to "have the last word" but spent yesterday afternoon raking up leaves and taking the kids' tramploine down for the winter instead!

There was the 'Peltzman Effect' in the mid-'70's which was the first time the way people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behaviour was connected to the use of seatbelts as far as I know.

But you knew that already didn't you? Just that you failed to mention it.....

That's libellous crap, and you know it.

- I'm delighted to argue in public any point worth arguing.
- There's no 'standard defence' of anything, let alone 'shakey ground'
- I'm very happy to admit to being wrong, but I'm not wrong very often
- I've encouraged any review of any of my work by any individual or organisation right from the start in 2001.
- Why would I publish 'credentials' to convince people that I'm talking sense? The evidence and analysis speaks for itself and should speak for itself.

I suggest that an apology is in order.

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

I think that was needless, unfair and unnecessarily strong.

He didn’t say he refuses to argue the point: “PM, email or start another thread”.
Also, I’ve been given an idea of his schedule for the coming week, he genuinely does have better things to do.
Paul is right to say that this issue is a distraction, certainly a needless one in terms of this thread; arguing the toss over something so trivial and irrelevant doesn’t help anyone.

You might be right to say that it isn’t 'blackmail' but I’m not going to argue that here.

I read them, but your arguments are inconsistent. You wouldn't support a law enforcing a healthy diet, immunizations, surgery etc. even if everything pointed toward such compulsion being in the best interests of both the person concerned and society as a whole, yet you do support belt laws. It's no good trying to excuse this inconsistency with claims that belts are somehow "a different matter" which bear no comparison.

But clearly we're just going to go around in circles on this one.


Except for those people who might be injured or killed because they were restrained. Getting killed is pretty inconvenient in my book. You have not tried to deny that this can happen in some cases, however small a proportion they may be of the total number of accidents.



Whether you like it or not, some people simply do find it uncomfortable to have a strap pulling and rubbing across their chest and shoulder, just as some people find it uncomfortable to wear heavy boots or tight fitting underwear. If you can't see that, I really don't know how else to explain it.



Now you're joking, surely? If I make a post about people finding belts uncomfortable you ask if I've stopped arguing about potential dangers. If I make a comment about the latter, I'm asked if I've stopped arguing about the former.




So again, I ask you a straight question: If everybody else is forced to pay for your (hypothetical) utterly needless risk in smoking 100 cigarattes a day, eating a dozen double-whopper-cheeseburgers every day, and plunging naked into a freezing cold lake for a swim every night, would you support laws against doing all those things?



Precisely. I don't think those still pushing for belt laws here have actually bothered to read and think about the evidence that you and I have both pointed to with Prof. Adams' work.

Read "Seat Belt Laws - A Clumsy Perspective." Adams doesn't make much of the fact that belts may injure in certain cases, but what he does demonstrate quite clearly is that there is simply no sound evidence to show that belt laws have resulted in an overall net reduction of road fatalities (all road users including pedestrians included).

If anyone is interested in that paper it is currently available from here.

Picking up this point from a little way back, it's not quite so simple as that.

If you see somebody driving along without a belt, you don't actually know that he's breaking the law. He may have a medical exemption. The cop doesn't know that until he has stopped the vehicle and the certificate has been produced.

That poses another question as to whether people who are legally driving unbuckled are likely to be unfairly harrassed by being stopped more frequently when they are not actually committing any offense, especially during things like month-long enforcement campaigns.

In fact, just because an officer sees somebody riding without a belt, does he really have reasonable cause to believe that an offense may have been committed when he has no idea whether the person has an exemption or not?

Exemptions aside, it's also not quite so simple as "just looking" for those older cars which have lap belts but no shoulder straps, and for any vehicle at night. On this latter point, last year the Maryland Hwy. Patrol resorted to using infrared night-vision cameras to look for belt violations after dark. When the State Governor heard of it, he ordered them to stop wasting taxpayers' money immediately on such expensive equipment just to enforce the seat belt law.

Handy, I don’t know what you’re trying to get at here, could you tell me what credentials you expect Paul to have? Also if anyone wants to peer review Paul’s work it’s on the internet for all to see, by the very virtue that anyone who understands what Paul has written on his website, and can read it, they are in effect, peer reviewing his work.

It all boils down to the reader either agreeing with what Paul has written or they can make it known to Paul what they don’t like about his work, and what better place to do it than on these forums for everyone to see. As you well know Paul’s resources are very limited, unlike the resources of government backed organisations.

Tell me, what credentials do the likes of brake have and, if their work has been peer reviewed.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

my bold - me too...

_________________
Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Why do you assume my stance in other examples – how contemptuous! Please desist.

How many times!
Sometimes it’s nice to eat junk – it’s one of life’s pleasures. There is still something to be gained from it at some level, even if only at an emotional one; the same cannot be said for not belting up.
Surgery can substantially take away from the emotional character of a person.
Immunisations are a genuine inconvenience and can cause discomfort.
Please stop with these obviously flawed comparisons.


That’s a specious argument (and not at all what I was talking about, see the next part below).
I can reverse that by saying that it is even more inconvenient to not belt up because (consensus accepts that) occupants are more likely to suffer injury or death because they were not restrained.


How much/often can a seatbelt rub when one is properly restrained? Do people not wear clothes when driving? So how is that noticeably uncomfortable?
You cannot explain how or why or where it is uncomfortable. Also, you make no mention on the supposed restrictiveness. I think we can leave those points there.


Well have you?


Your comparisons are becoming tedious, especially as I’ve answered these types of examples already:
Smokers on average subsidise their care via the whopping duty they pay.
People who insist on ‘eating a dozen double-whopper-cheeseburgers every day’ are few and far between; their numbers are not great enough to warrant the effort of a policy change and subsequent enforcement.
Many people get a mental and physical stimulation out of immersing themselves in freezing water – they enjoy it. I’ve often used saunas, buried deep in the German alps, during winter – those guys are crazy, yet there seems to be no problem.


ANPR!
(granted the databases aren’t great but police won’t act at all on those who do belt up, so that problem is substantially reduced).

You learn to be objective and you focus your mind on the task in hand which is basically keeping the person alive as best you can. But this comes with experience more than training. The training only tells you what you should do and it's like every other job - the experience gained by doing the job whether it be in situ at incident scene, in A&E or in the operating theatre or lurgy wards even .. you become professionally objective and just get on with the job.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Steady on old chap! Paul does not live his life tied to this forum and may indeed have other commitments as well as some decent rest periods given he's still recovering from a heart scare.

Besides - "peer reviewed" does not mean "correct" either. You ever read "peer reviews" of medical research. I'm surprised we've made the progress we have as we savage everyone else's work But then we had the MMR furore. That was "peer reviewed and held" at the time. We still have the fall-out from that - even when later work - also peer reviewed found the original work to be flawed. Despite the conflicting views - neither can convince the other or even the public at large (including MPs) as to which piece of research can be fully trusted to 100% certainty.

So what I am saying ... having works published and "critiqued" in various journals ain't all it's cracked up to be and in any case, who actually takes Monbiot seriously these days?

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

You really haven't been paying attention, have you?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7055735.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/stor ... 60,00.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ick123.xml

Even if you have not outright stated that you would be opposed to such laws, you've certainly implied that with your responses, including the most recent, viz.:



Straight answers then:

Would you ever support a law mandating diet?
Would you ever support a law making immunizations compulsory?
Would you ever support a law which compelled people to have surgery?



Except to point out the many after-market belt accessories available, such a padded belt covers for the shoulder, those little clips which hook over the upper anchorage and keep the shoulder strap slightly loose, etc.



I thought the answer to that was pretty clear. No.



And how exactly does ANPR show whether the driver holds a medical exemption or not? The officer can't even know who is driving until he stops the vehicle.

I don't want to derail this thread, but I must point out that the idea that everyone who is overweight eats dozens of burgers daily is a nasty piece of propaganda designed to stir up hatred. The vast majority of overweight people are only slightly overweight, even by the extremists' standards. And they probably don't even consider themselves overweight. Remember that next time they talk about all these people, they're probably talking about you and your family, not some hypothetical "greedy" people somewhere else.

Also watch out for the term "overweight or obese"; it's a particularly dishonest language trick, equivalent to "killed or injured".

Have you seen Supersize Me?

I certainly don't disagree and, other than for aesthetics, I don't really care how fat other people choose to be either. It was the 'their numbers are not great enough to warrant the effort of a policy change and subsequent enforcement' comment that I was posting about. Clearly the powers that be have a different agenda.

Good point.

Do you care to tell us how many people insist on ‘eating a dozen double-whopper-cheeseburgers every day’?

Moreover, if we were to legislate against doing so (or anything comparable), how on earth could we enforce it?
Would the effort needed for logistics and enforcement be immense and completely disproportionate? Would doing that be at the expense of more worthy campaigns?
Is that really in society’s best interest?

The same way as the seat-belt laws are enforced -- Badly and erratically. Inability to effectively enforce a law hasn't stopped parliament before, but that's a slightly different topic.


Quite probably -- Just as for seat belts.


Undoubtedly -- Just as for seat belts.

Beginning to see a pattern here?



In the interests of a free society in which people take responsibility for their own actions, no. But according to your arguments for seat belts it would be.

Correct. Because each situation has to be weighed up on its own merits, not by some simple-minded comparison with another activity. Black does not suddenly become white merely because it may be white in an alternate reality - which you appear to exist in.
In fact, the more you keep arguing from this pathetic, lame and obviously untenable standpoint, the more pleased I am that you are obliged by law to wear a seatbelt in a car.
And you aint going to change that laughing-boy, not in a million years.

_________________
Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.