Rigpig wrote:
What I should have concluded was that the chances of pulling out a small ball were directly related to it's size - which is of course true because it's blindingly obvious. All of the other information is irrelevant.
I still don't get it. I've even taken a couple of days to see if it sank in. However, this next bit looks more understandable.
Rigpig wrote:
Relating this to your assertion, the same holds true. Crash severity is mitigated by driver response so the numbers are always going to be crunched in favour of this argument, the magnitude of favour depends on how many of the oodles of little accidents we choose to include (particularly if we count ones where the chances of being killed are very small indeed). This is unless we go off into the land of the fanciful....
I don't actually see any reason why this is true. Suppose we just looked at accidents on high speed roads. We know that a crash delta v of 70 mph is very likely to result in a death. If we were all crashing at full speed, we'd all be dead - we wouldn't have to have "oodles of little accidents" at all.
The fact that we do have oodles of little accidents is the critical observation that leads us to the question: "why do we have oodles of little accidents?"
Rigpig wrote:
For free travelling speed to be considered more important, using your calculations, a driver would have to accelerate into the crash having spotted a hazard.
Ergo, for the two to equally significant, the driver would not respond at all giving us an oxymoron.
That's not right for the reasons given above.
Rigpig wrote:
It is like saying that to win a football match scoring goals is more important than conceding them. If it were equally as important then you'd get a draw, less important and you'd lose. And the significance of scoring goals increases the more you concede...its obvious.
I'll conclude by asking this. Do any independent road safety specialists see the 12mph argument as having anything significant to contribute towards road safety in the UK?
I don't know the answer to your last question off hand. I have had a number of private email comments on the page, many of which have been supportive. I have "always" had a policy of posting criticisms and I can tell you for sure that no one has found anything that I believe to be a material error.