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By A reader (anonymous) | Posted December 16, 2006 at 14:17:35
I'm gonna swim upstream on this one and suggest alternative ways of thinking about the MADD/RIDE pogrom and vehicle "safety.
First, MADD/RIDE. While we all can agree impaired driving is essentially an anti-social behaviour, the typically quoted justification that 30% of all fatalitied involve alcohol makes one wonder why little is done to eradicate the the cause(s) of the remaining 70%. Before we all hear the "those are true accidents" excuse, anyone who drives in Canada today knows the overwhelming majority of auto "accidents" aren't. They are most often the result of incompetence and poor judgement. While graduated licensing is supposed to fix all this, I somehow doubt that will be the panacea the politicos and bureaucrats promised.
So in our zeal to eradicate impaired driving, we are rushing down the road of unfettered police-state actions- summarily detaining all driving on a certain piece of road without any cause being instigated by any particular driver. The additional surveilance that takes place at RIDE stops for other violations beyond possible DUI infractions is absolutely unacceptable, but why else would there be additional officers scanning the vehicle and it's interior while the primary officer talks to the driver?
It was difficult enough to secure personal freedoms in the first place, now we just hand them back without a second thought. It is easy to make a case that RIDE programs are as much about getting the Canadian public to accept what amounts to illegal detainment and search as it is about catching impaired drivers.
And as for truck safety- Have you ever heard of the joke regarding the Volvo Syndrome? It's based on the phrase "I think I'm safe therefore I am". It seems may people who drive vehicles they believe are "safe" will attempt things they would not in an "inferior" vehicle. So as manufacturere add "safety" features to vehicles, the drivers just drive that much more "recklessly".
The best case in point was a curved section multi-lane highway in Britain where a lot of drivers just slid off the road from excess speed in wet conditions. The highway authority applied a compound which increased the grippiness of the pavement. At first, it worked. less "accidents", but as the drivers realized there was more grip, the accident rate went back up, except that drivers were now exiting the road at higher speeds.
You want safer roads? Stop building vehicles that make the driver feel safer than they really are.
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