Originally Posted by
James Deuce
I've never had an accident and I've always contributed to whatever incident I've had.
*Shrugs* not really relevant, dude. What might be relevant is the size of your contribution.
Look, I get pissed because I see the other end of your premise, accident victims, (I can see your hackles rising already) getting abused because they didn’t take ALL adequate steps to prevent the accident. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that driver behaviour is the single most controllable factor. At least my behaviour is most easily controlled by me.
But any accident has a vast array of causal factors that must all switch true before the accident occurs. Oh yes, on the face of it there’s culpable negligence involved in all of these:
Originally Posted by
James Deuce
It is NOT an accident when someone falls asleep at the wheel, it is not an accident when someone crosses the centre line, it is not an accident when a drunk driver does what drunk drivers do, it is not an accident when someone runs a red light, it is not an accident when someone reverses over a child.
But in spite of being aware that most people semi-frequently fail to take prudent precautionary measures on the road I don’t believe the majority of accidents are so cut and dry. I think most of them are the result of a set of factors of which driver error is not only not the principle factor but falls some way down the list in terms of contributing factors.
So while failing to obtain a warrant of fitness is utter heresy worthy of outcry in the local rag of your choice I doubt very much if it’s likely to be a contributing factor in any subsequent accident. It MIGHT be, but it’s unlikely. To the point where the difference is statistically impossible to measure.
Look at any accident and you’ll be able to list the major contributing variables, some of them will be environmental, some will be vehicle related and some related to driver behaviour. There’ll be others outside those groups no doubt, but of the last group; some would have been amenable to mitigating strategies by the driver. Of those just a few might be considered lacking in due care.
In fact I suspect a tolerably low percentage of accidents are those where the driver behaviour elements are genuinely and clearly culpably foolhardy. I guess if you could describe every behaviour less than immediately and specifically dangerous but which nonetheless MAY contribute to an accident you’d have the basis for a list of proscribed behaviour. If you converted that into legislation and policed the living fuck out of it then you’d certainly have an impact on the crash rates, because the only people driving or riding would be those hardened criminals that didn’t give a fuck for the rules. Certainly none of the numerous and present company would consider driving or riding, it’d be impossible not to transgress. This is the path I think we’re on.
Which is a pity, because modern transport systems rank up there with modern healthsystems and modern engineering as heavyweight contributors to our quality of life. In fact I’d go so far as to suggest they contribute a shitload more in terms of overall life quality and life-time than they cost.
“There’s no such thing as an accident” is just a slogan, a silly one at that.
Go soothingly on the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon
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