Focus on speeding analogies please

**paturoa** · 15th February 2012, 19:19

I was musing at work today, actually I was having a rant, about the focus on speeding with too little on avoiding accidents in the first place, and the following analogy occured.

In NZ every year a lot of people are stabbed and tragically too many die. What the powers that be should do is mandate the maximum length of knife that you can carry around (and stab people with). That way when the death rate goes down they can say they are doing an excellent job.

Are there any other analogies that you like?

**oneofsix** · 15th February 2012, 19:31

Every year more people die through suicide than in road crashes and yet whilst theoretical causes of crashes are pushed at us continuously it is illegal to discuss suicides through fair of copycats. They should legislate the maximum length of rope you can purchase and its strength to ensure it is neither strong enough nor long enough to be used as a noose and all buildings most have WRB around the roofs and any other accessible outside platforms over 2m above hard surfaces.

**Berries** · 15th February 2012, 22:44

More people die traveling below the speed limit than above it.

Go figure...............

**Dadpole** · 16th February 2012, 06:30

Just to add to the merriment, there is - or currently under review - legislation governing the size of knife blades. I am sure it will be fine if the knife that stabs you is just under 10 cm long.

**oneofsix** · 16th February 2012, 06:34

Originally Posted by Dadpole

Just to add to the merriment, there is - or currently under review - legislation governing the size of knife blades. I am sure it will be fine if the knife that stabs you is just under 10 cm long.

But but how will I carve the roast with that, or skin the animals?
Sounds like just another punish everyone due to a few and if we spent money on policing those few we might have to cut the Parliamentary Services budget

**Maha** · 16th February 2012, 06:35

Fred Dagg came up with an idea on how to control the rising problem what to do with plastics...(yes back in 1974ish)
His idea?....Dont produce it.

**Owl** · 16th February 2012, 06:35

Originally Posted by Berries

More people die traveling below the speed limit than above it.

Go figure...............

Well it's usually the sudden drop to 0 that does it!

**Zedder** · 16th February 2012, 07:50

Originally Posted by Maha

Fred Dagg came up with an idea on how to control the rising problem what to do with plastics...(yes back in 1974ish)
His idea?....Dont produce it.

Ah yeah g'day Trev. Or is it Trev or Trev?

**Jay GTI** · 16th February 2012, 07:57

Originally Posted by oneofsix

Sounds like just another punish everyone due to a few and if we spent money on policing those few we might have to cut the Parliamentary Services budget

But in this ever-increasingly PC world (where the voices of the extremist few is all the Govt can hear), you have to remember... if it saves one life, it's worth it...

Or so we keep getting told, as yet another of our civil liberties gets strangled to death by nonsense policies that, due to the red tape and ineffectual administration, have little to no positive impact on society anyway.

I do love how we get told that these draconian measures save lives... they don't, they just occassionally postpone a death.

**martybabe** · 16th February 2012, 10:02

As a firefighter for many years I saved loads of lives at some considerable risk to myself and other colleagues. If only I'd known that you can save lives simply by writing

tickets and taking money off people, I needn't have bothered showing up eh.

I could have fined people for lighting up a cigarette and consequently saved them from dying in a house fire I suppose. Except it doesn't really work like that does it, it's a lot more

involved if you really wan't to save lives and prevent accidents, it takes a lot more work and effort than writing in your little book and robbing people.

Analogy then:

Thinking you can save lives by fining otherwise law abiding people for doing 110 on an empty 100kph highway is like thinking you've stopped the rain by using an

umbrella, you may feel like you've made a difference because your dry, or your quota book is filled, but you ain't done jack shit about the rain and you ain't done jack shit about road

accidents, you just pretend you have.

**Jay GTI** · 16th February 2012, 10:51

Originally Posted by martybabe

As a firefighter for many years I saved loads of lives at some considerable risk to myself and other colleagues.

Technically speaking you haven’t saved a life, you just saved someone from dying at that point, as a result of their house being on fire. They’ll die of something at some point though, so as I say, you merely postpone that inevitability.

The point is, how much value do we need to put on one life? The bleeding heart chant of “if it saves one life...” etc is all good and fine, unless whatever the measures being put in place to save that one life have a significant detrimental impact on those who still have a bit of living left to do. This is more of an issue when those “positive” measures are ineffectual in achieving their intended goal and/or have a significant negative consequence. There is a cost in everything we do, somewhere, so is it worth it?

A 4km tolerance on speeding, for instance. We can debate the impact that has had over the various holiday weekends it has been implemented. Some weekends the toll was lower, some it wasn’t, could be the tolerance was the reason for when it was lower, could be that that is just part of the natural variance in the number of fatal accidents and nothing to do with the tolerance at all. However, what is the long-term impact on how we, the general public, view the Police and the work they do as a result of this behaviour? I’d reason there is enough people that believe this to be simply a revenue generating exercise (true or not isn’t the point here) for it to have an impact on the levels of respect given to the Police. If people feel they have been unfairly penalised, which some certainly do, for what they consider an insignificant offence, on a number of occasions, what is the social cost of this form of policing?

Wildly hypothesising here (otherwise known as making shit up for the sake of an argument), but there have been a few news articles recently about members of the public taking matters into their own hands in robberies and muggings etc. Is this as a result of people thinking “well the Police are too busy catching people doing 5kph over the speed limit to bother with a mugging, I’ll sort this out myself”? Having been burgled 3 times and having had my car vandalised, with very little response from the Police (and yes I do understand resourcing issues and idea of focusing effort on crimes they actually have a hope of solving), it is perhaps not unreasonable to form the opinion that the modern face of the NZ Police Force is that of a cash-grabbing bunch of opportunists who can’t be bothered doing any of the hard work*? Why should I help the Police if I am ever in a position do to so, when they put so little effort into helping me when I needed it? . But anyways, I’m just saying, there is more to policies such as those that target speeding motorists than just how many lives that policy may or may not save.

*For the record, I know that isn’t true, I have a good friend who is a cop, from what I understand, a good proportion of his time he could use productively is wasted trying to stop drunk people fighting and sorting out domestic violence issues with the same people, over and over again.

**slofox** · 16th February 2012, 12:25

I might just be being a cynical old bugger here but given that the planet is in danger of dying as a result of human over-population, I fail to see the sense in trying to keep every human on the planet alive for as long as possible. Just don't make sense to me. Human life paramount over everything else? I bet Planet Earth wouldn't agree if it had a voice...

**5150** · 16th February 2012, 12:44

Originally Posted by slofox

I might just be being a cynical old bugger here but given that the planet is in danger of dying as a result of human over-population, I fail to see the sense in trying to keep every human on the planet alive for as long as possible. Just don't make sense to me. Human life paramount over everything else? I bet Planet Earth wouldn't agree if it had a voice...

Pity there is no "LIKE" button like on FaceTube

**Swoop** · 16th February 2012, 12:46

Originally Posted by Berries

More people die traveling below the speed limit than above it.

Go figure...............

More deaths are caused by sober drivers than by drunk drivers. The propaganda focus is, however, on the drunk ones.

**Zedder** · 16th February 2012, 12:49

Originally Posted by slofox

I might just be being a cynical old bugger here but given that the planet is in danger of dying as a result of human over-population, I fail to see the sense in trying to keep every human on the planet alive for as long as possible. Just don't make sense to me. Human life paramount over everything else? I bet Planet Earth wouldn't agree if it had a voice...

Check out the Gaia theory if you're interested.