Path: utzoo!yunexus!telly!ziebmef!becker!eric
From: eric@becker.UUCP (Eric Siegerman)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Highway Driving Rules
Summary: Rule of Law strikes again
Keywords: traffic, flow, rhythm
Message-ID: <485@becker.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 89 06:32:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: becker.485
References: <8904061731.AA21685@ellesmere.csri.toronto.edu> <3098@looking.UUCP> <794@mks.UUCP> <797@mks.UUCP> <2009@egvideo.UUCP>
Reply-To: eric@becker.UUCP (Eric Siegerman)
Distribution: ont
Organization: There ain't no organization here.
Lines: 65

In article <2009@egvideo.UUCP> edhew@egvideo.UUCP (Ed Hew) writes:
>In article <797@mks.UUCP> mike@mks.UUCP (Mike Brookbank) writes:
>>So why can't
>>we all pay more attention, like they do in Germany and Italy, to the
>>traffic patterns and rhythms and learn to drive as a collective team
>>rather than little aluminium wrapped egos.
>
>1/	political (the politicians have designed our laws in opposition
>	to what I would consider a rather intelligent concept).  This
>(I take the liberty to speculate) is probably due to the preponderence
>of motorists who lack the skill and/or intelligence to make such a scheme
>viable on our highway system.
>
>2/	The motorists referred to in 1/ above.

But why do North American drivers differ in this from Europeans?
I assume we're no less intelligent, so we must just be less
skillful.  The above quote hints at the answer, but doesn't state
it explicitly:  I think we have a vicious circle here, in which
our laws themselves discourage people from thinking for
themselves (or, at least, fail to encourage them), and then our
lawmakers are forced to base future decisions on the fact that
the people don't think.

I believe that in Germany, although there are no set speed limits
on the Autobahns (or weren't; they were talking about imposing
them), one can (could?) still be cited for driving too fast for
conditions (road, weather, traffic, etc.).  Such an approach
permits, indeed requires, police officers to exercise their own
judgment as to whether a driver is going too fast.

This sort of thing is unthinkable here -- police don't *make*
laws, they just enforce them.  We're so afraid of possible police
excesses that we insist everything be written out in advance; we
put as much distance as possible between the making of a legal
decision and its enforcement, in hope of reducing the amount of
the process which is open to individual bias.

The only problem with this is that it reduces the motorist's
freedom of choice as well, and thus his need to learn to choose
wisely.  One no longer has a legal inducement to choose a safe
speed, since one won't be punished for driving at an unsafe speed
per se.  In good conditions, one is forced by the law to drive
frustratingly below the maximum safe speed (reasonable behaviour
is illegal), but in bad winter conditions, the law will ignore
even people who are driving dangerously fast (unreasonable
behaviour is quite legal); in neither case does the law match
well with the real needs of the situation, and in neither case
does it reward wisdom, only pattern-matching (white sign on the
roadside vs. speedometer).

In short, in Germany the police and the populace trust each other
to act reasonably (at least a little bit), and the law rewards
reasonableness.  Here, we don't trust each other at all; the law
sometimes punishes reasonableness and other times ignores it,
rewarding only unthinking submission.  Is it any wonder people
don't bother to think?

Of course this discussion has ignored other potent reasons for
driving safely, like not getting killed or killing others.  It's
the law's effect on behaviour that concerns me here.

-- 
Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.
eks@kneller.UUCP,  eric@becker.UUCP,  ...!utzoo!mnetor!becker!kneller!eks