In a more serious vein - > Russell McMahon wrote: > > Speed kills. > > Absolute speed kills absolutely. That was a joke (as in "Power corrupts, absolute power ..." ) , but ... I'll move this up to the top - Roman said - > I respect you greatly for your intellect and > sensible attitude in your other posts, please > don't blow it here, on a scientific or social > level. :o) The feelings are mutual. But respect needs to be earned or lost on each independent "battlefield". Not all respect is transferable :-) Hopefully you will not find me lacking in scientific approach. Whether in social approach is for each to decide. I'm sure you also are prepared to demonstrate scientific and social "sensibleness" in this discussion. > Speed DOES NOT kill. Ever. Similar but not identical to the US "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line. > You can get in a > 737 plane and do 800 kph, in perfect safety. > You can do 20,000 kph on the space shuttle. > You can do 315 kph on a French train every day > to work, in perfect safety. Most days anyway - I saw a picture of one lying on its side smoking gently to itself a few days ago after a high speed derailment, but it was well enough designed that nobody died. (I have managed a mere 230 kph in a Japanese "Shinkansen".) > You can get in a > Ferrari, (or my motorbike) and do 200kph > on any reasonable road in perfect safety. > Crashing kills. Accidents kill. Bad driving > kills. Speed does not. No. None of these kill any more, or less, than speed does. Killing is a function of all its components. I can bad-drive all day long in my garage with the brakes on and I'm most unlikely to die (except, maybe, from CO poisoning). I can bad-drive on the roads at 10 kph and I'm less likely to kill than an averagely competent driver on a "reasonable" road at 200 kph. But if I bad-drive at 100 kph I MAY be more liable to kill than an averagely competent driver at 200 kph. And maybe not. Speed is undeniably a function in the equation along with all the rest. (Even though people deny it :-) ) If you had to produce a formula which predicted probably outcomes of given road events then if your formula demanded that speed be left out for PC reasons the formula would be an inadequate one unless you then included speed in some other indirect manner. Sure, speed alone doesn't kill - but ultimately it's the collision energy that kills, and speed is a physical factor in this. Only if your driving can ensure no collisions ever (and it can't) can you remove speed from consideration. As you well know, one reason that YOU cannot remove collisions from consideration is that "I" am also driving / playing / running on the road. No matter how competent YOU are I can combat your competence with my incompetence, or my inexperience or my youthfulness or my inability to fully predict how you in your great and (literally) death defying competence are going to appear into my world. If I as a child run into your path because your 200 kph motorcycle seemed so small and distant that it did not seem a threat then all bets may be off. And so on through a few zillion other potential examples .... > I have paid good money and invested a huge > amount of hours to become a skilled driver on > the street or the racetrack, and I am the person > who decides the SAFE speed that I need to > travel at. On the race track - certainly. On the street - no. Why? - see below. > Stupidity kills. Lack of skill kills. > Speed? It's like electricity, it should be > handled by trained, mature, competent people, > not traffic cops or media marketers. I'll agree with this analogy as far as it goes. Public road driving is governed by social contract. As has been well argued over centuries (indeed, millenia) your freedoms at least begin to be limited when they impact and affect other people's freedoms. A majority of your countymen (and mine) have chosen to live in a Democracy and not in an Anarchy. You could all, should you wish, choose at the very next election to live in an Anarchy. "We of the Decomcratic Anarchists, when we win the next election, promise to dismantle ALL state intervention in your lives, all taxes, all speed limits (and any other limits) all .... . If we fail to deliver on our promise, feel free to kill us, who's going to stop you ?) ). In a more realistic context, there are many people present in our society of varying competencies and expectations. They (almost) all have SOME DEGREE of right to use the roads for transport and leisure. The rights of ALL must be balanced in setting "limits on reasonable freedoms" to meet the desires of the majority in a way which is acceptable to the majority. Anyone who chooses may travel below the speed limits if they choose to do so. By so doing they MAY improve their safety levels. They also MAY decrease their safety levels due to interactions with other drivers. On our country roads (nice and winding in many places) I often travel at times BELOW the posted speed limits on some corners if my wife is in the car. If I am driving by myself I almost always drive AT the speed limit - to the maximum extent reasonably possible in my judgement given conditions and vehicle and my capabilities. I enjoy driving fast. So what? There are speeds which are NEVER safe to drive at because the uncertainties introduced by people other than the super competent driver introduce risks which are unacceptable to people other than the super-competent driver. NOBODY (not even Roman) could safely drive down my residential street at 200 kph. In fact, nobody (not even Roman) could safely drive down my residential street at 100 kph. (It has one 30 degree dog-leg bend and is otherwise straight). In both cases the risks to others exceeds the social contract risks agreed to by all who accept a motor drivers licence. It WOULD, I think, be possible for someone like Roman to "safely" drive down my street at 70 to 80 kph as long as they actively and intentionally applied their immense and impressive reaction times and experience of high speed driving to decrease their level of danger down to that imposed by Joe average driver at 50 kph, which is where the social-contract risk is set. Above that speed the ball, the child, the dog, the man backing out, the teenage learner driver and more impose a level of risk wich is above that which we all have mutually agreed to accept. IF we decided to test each person individually we could assign the Roman's special "can do 70 kph in residential streets and 235 kph on the open road" status. And some "can do 40 kph max anyuwhere" status. This however poses extreme problems. If SOME can legally traverse my street at 70 kph be utterly assured than many who are neither entitled to or copetently able to will also choose to do so. The social contract will be violently abrogated by those who are incompetent. We could then choose to require bright identification of vehicle and/or driver or electronic tagging or electronic vehicle enablement to match allowable speeds to drivers' entitlements and capabilities or ... . This all gets pretty unmanageable & unacceptable politically pretty quickly. Even if we did get a workable acceptable system we would then have the situation where nominally equivalent vehicles were allowed (indedd compelled) to travel ay widely disparate speeds in the same circumstance. Some would be allowed to overtake and not others. Mayhem would ensue. Certyainly in urban areas, in any given situation, a constant speed limit for all is highly desirable. In "open road" situations more flexibility may be possible without total chaos ensuing. But only "may". Adherence to "social contract" by "1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade drivers" is sure to test male testosterone driven behaviour and relate to all and sundry seeking to behave as if they were all Roman class drivers. An interesting "experiment" is to ask a group of youing males how they rate their driving abilities compared to the norm. Just about all, I'm told, will rate themselves 'above average". As indeed do I :-). And those most liable to do this (males aged 16 to 24 years old) are those most disproportionately represented in the died while * driving statistics. * - (or actually, as speed is not what kills, "died instantaneously after having been driving" :-) ) Now, Roman claims to be in an elite group of drivers who can safely drive at high speed and who is mature enough top determine their own limits. I suspect, based on the little that I know of him, that he probably is in most circumstances (but certainly not in all circumstances). Should I be happy to let everyone else who claims similar capability make their own decisions? Should I be happy with any number of people whjo think, like Roman that > trained, mature, competent people, > not traffic cops or media marketers. when they themselves decide the level of training, maturity and competence is required? If Roman's children were the one's at risk I'm sure that he would not agree with this (and I'm sure that he doesn't) but in the absence of a system which allows this to happen with a formal methodology what the argument really turns into is 'I can drive at whatever sped I like because I know my capabilities". The two ideas are, of course, worlds apart but most would say the former and mean the latter. In an imperfect world the freedoms of the more capable are limited to some extent by the extent to which they may encroach on the freedoms of the less capable. In most places the excessively competent are still free to demonstrate their safe superiority and risk the consequences. The truly more competent (like Roman) are less liable to be "caught" than the least deserving and to that extent they somewhat make their point. They make it best by living to a ripe old age (and Roman is no "Spring Chicken" :-) ) without having killed or damaged either themselves or any children or others along the way. If you (whoever you are) manages to transit my highways at an occasional 200 kph without coming to anyone's notice, and without causing anyone to have had to take defensive action or to have been in any risk of their life or safety, then you have done moderately well. This judgement can only be made retrospectively and after the termination of all such activities. If however you are involved in a fatal collision with ANY other road user under such conditions then I would hope you would be happy to defend vigorous charges of manslaughter and perhaps of murder. In the event of your not surviving the event yourself (which is entirely likely) I would hope your estate would need to be prepared and able to remit the appropriate penalty for an innocent life taken should the courts so decide. (And what is the appropriate penalty for the death of a child?) Similar provisions would need to apply to non-fatal accidents with other road users. If any of these expectations are felt to be unreasonable then the right to exercise such excessive speeds is equally non-existent. regards Russell McMahon PS1 For an impressive but also poignant record of one who didn't fully manage to manage the challenge see www.dynopower.freeserve.co.uk/nitrous_oxide/ . PS 2 A brief comment on Roman's electricity analogy: We expect our mains voltages to be within a certain range. We don't expect 11 kV to appear at a wall outlet most days. Very occasionally it does ! There are regulations as to who can connect what and how installations are certified. There are standards to be met for equipment and work practices. There are examinations and tests for competency. There are graded areas for involvement - these are similar to classes of licence for car/motorcycle.bus/taxi/heavy vehicle. The amateur may very largely transgress these boundaries as long as they don't place the lives of others at risk. They may built devices laser power supplies and Tesla coils without formal licences. In most countries at least, once they wished to pursue such activities commercially they would be required to meet regulations I think the road-user/electricity analog is a reasonable if imperfect one. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics