SafeSpeed wrote:
Rigpig wrote:
The odds may be heavily in their favour but, when multiplied across the road network, there are many more lucky drivers than unlucky ones.
There are people saying 'you make your own luck' in various different ways in this thread. In many practical ways they are right, but the terms are getting confused.
If you have improved your chances that really isn't luck at all. It's deliberate cause and effect.
'Luck' is about falling on the 'right side' of chance
and chance alone.
The result of a single coin toss, or the roll of a die (dice) may turn out to be lucky or unlucky.
If you have a million standard tailgaters and 10,000 of them crash, you could call the ones that crash 'unlucky' and the ones that don't 'lucky'. But they are all taking the same chance.
It doesn't matter if they are all taking the same chance or not, its a 'game' of chance in which the odds are extremely long and so only a few, like the national lottery, will ever 'win'. Nonetheless, those for whom the odds continue to play our in their favour, albeit heavily in their favour, are still more 'lucky' than the others. There is more systemwide good luck than bad luck.
And besides, for any driver whose luck runs out, the fact that there are still millions of other lucky drivers out there is irrelevant.
Safespeed wrote:
rigpig wrote:
So the idea that the clever/dumb balance is restored is ludicrous.
Ahh, that's where you're wrong. They terms are relative to one another and must always exist in perfect balance.
No they are not in balance in any way. If we play a game of pure chance with short odds (rolling die) and where our decision making isn't even involved then numerous rolls of those die may eventually return a 'balanced' result. But across the road network, any driver who makes a decision to reduce his/her safety margins to the point where the outcome of an incident would be outside of their control, they are relying on luck. And as there are routinely less incidents than there are non-incidents then the balance of probability lies in favour of the 'lucky ones', not distributed between the two.
[Edit]
I can see from your reply in the motorcycling thread that you don't take this point seriously. I happen to believe that there is something in it.
When a great number of drivers, perhaps even the majority, get in their car and drive around they rely on luck to keep them crash free at times when they themselves could have control or at least do more to steer their own fate. Improper observation, driving too close etc etc increase the need, albeit unknowingly, to rely on factors outside of ones immediate control - no sudden braking ahead, no motorcycle coming along the road.
Yes its a game of chance played with dice that have a huge number of sides and we are hoping to avoid rolling one or two numbers out of them all, but the chance element is there. Improving driver awareness, observation and driving behaviour will surely improve the odds in their favour; they go from a ten thousand sided dice to a fifty thousand sided dice perhaps.