Dangerous driving – more data points

As I always say I’m

<ramble> As I always say I’m much more interested in how to avoid death and injury in the first place. This is why “extreme” cases actually aren’t positive evidence of much at all for me. In the two cases here we’ve people who were so actively dangerous / out of control that I could imagine them killing and injuring people if allowed nothing more than a unicycle. Hence I was highlighting the drinking – because for the judge / jury that moves these safely into “socially unacceptable” territory e.g. these guys are not likely to be “one of us” – they’re a horrible “other”.

I’m also not much of a believer in a “deterrent effect” from driving law. I’d actually suggest it does nothing for road safety but currently that’s hard to say because there is such a low detection and conviction rate for most offences so it’s being very lightly applied. (No, it really isn’t “there are few because everyone is a careful driver” because as soon as anyone looks closely e.g. with a close pass initiative a ton of unsafe / illegal behaviour is observed.)

In terms of “justice” however what bothers me is it seems you’d have to shame satan himself before you racked up near the maximum sentence and that points to our “day-to-day” standard of “a careful, competent driver” or whatever as being deliberately, dangerously low. Essentially a “gotta let the people have their rights”. While I appreciate this is really an expression of the legislators following the culture (now that the driving genie is out of the bottle) it still bugs me. Why? If you accept poor driving morally you ought to reduce the harm caused.

We have certainly reduced the potential consequences inside the car over the years. (Drivers still kill themselves and each other though). I just don’t see us doing “harm minimisation” (e.g. something like Sustainable Safety) effectively on the roads. Maybe we have a more “individualistic / personal responsibility” culture rather than a “group / system-focussed” one? Maybe progress is blocked by conflict with our idea of “let everyone get on with it, and if there are issues it can only be particular inept or wicked drivers – which we have the courts for”?

Anyway that then leaves the roads as an obvious conflict between the “rights and freedoms” of the few and the safety of everyone. I’d say it’s our polite UK version of the tangle the US has with guns and their regulation.