Posts by George Darroch
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OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay., in reply to Russell Brown,
Yeah, though I can't work out with absolute certainty whether that means what it looks like it means. I'll assume it does for the moment.
Interestingly there's a big increase ($180m) for Defence. New helicopters and frigate upgrades, mostly. Which, you know, might be justifiable - there are arguments for and against things.
But it's peculiar what gets funded and what doesn't. Why not a systems upgrade for civilian bicycle lights? After all, the threat to me is immediate and proximate (about 5 minutes and 20 metres away). I'm more likely to suffer in the next few years from a unguided vehicle than a guided missile. Now that we have free GP visits for the under 13s and 18 weeks of paid parental leave* we'll consider these part of the landscape and it will take a fundamental shift in thinking to step back from them. Our decision making is ad hoc, traditional and incremental, but sometimes that denies us the ability to think more clearly about what gets us to what we really want.
*Laila Harre had to fight the Clark Government to get 12, proving the point. Parental leave is now established in the expectations of the population and their politicians.
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For every medical condition, some people will get worse, other people will get better. If you’re interested in a particular ‘cure’, then you will notice that some people will get better at the same time as the ‘cure’ is administered. In many cases, more severe the disease, the more likely it is that person will transition to a less severe form of that disease.
This is why we have science: if there is a plausible mechanism, then it can be investigated. In the case of gastro-intestinal inflammation, it appears that since the immune system is implicated in many diseases, it was considered worthy of study. Trials were conducted, and no association was found. The problem is that autism's mechanisms are still not well understood (AFAIK) and so cures can be thrown around without needing to be justified under any criteria.
I just wish there was a willingness among our media institutions (the management as much as the journos) not to be party to these self-promoting auto-didacts.
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personally I think we should all have Morris Minors that we can work on and drive sedately in…
…what’s the rush?A nice modern safe quiet electric/hybrid vehicle for me, please.
Speed limiters would be useful. You get to 105km/h, and the vehicle starts playing soothing music, pulls over, and tells you how life is about the journey, not the destination.
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I'm utterly astounded by the comments of (seemingly intelligent and otherwise rational) people here that speed doesn't matter.I won't repeat the arguments I've made, because they were clear enough in the first place.
It's clear that more advertising over a long period of time will be needed to correct significant misperceptions among male drivers who consider themselves above average in skill and competence.
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Speaker: Sponsored post: Speed and Safety, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Coupled with the new car/ute/SUV front design which seems higher and blunter these days, no more ‘cow-catching’ of struck pedestrians and sweeping them over the bonnet, it seems…
Cars sold in the EU have had pedestrian impact standards as part of their safety testing since the early 2000s, and I know that other jurisdictions have introduced them over time. Which means that any vehicle is considerably less likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision at survivable speeds.
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Speaker: Sponsored post: Speed and Safety, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I saw a good example of a fix on the main road to the West Coast last weekend – at one intersection in the middle of a long open road straight, a 70km speed limit sign well in advance of the intersection, is triggered on when a car stops at the side road stop sign, to turn into the main traffic.
They're rolling these out across high-risk open road intersections over the country.
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Open road speeds are decreasing over time. We've scrubbed off about 5km/h over the last decade, and that has saved a lot of lives.
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I can’t help thinking that this campaign will have the effect of shifting the onus or blame towards an innocent party. Sure, in the clip above, the driver on the straight is breaking the speed limit at 108km/h, but that would still not likely have earned him a speeding ticket (unless on a holiday weekend). The primary responsibility is with the driver on the Give Way.
and
This ad annoys me. It implies that the guy who’s travelling 8% above the speed limit is doing something wildly reckless, something so far outside the realms of reasonable behaviour that it increases the risk dramatically. It doesn't.
These both miss the message of the ad (to the extent that it communicates this message it's a success). That message is not that the person driving faster is a bad and reckless person, or that the father is blameless and in the right. It's simply that accidents are more likely at speed, and when they occur the consequences are worse. These were the messages NZTA sought to communicate when putting the ad together, according to their brief.
For an increase of 8km/h, there is about a 15% increase in energy in the collision, IIRC.
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tradesmen in utes and vans
Tradesmen are the worst. Courier drivers are either really bad or pretty decent when you're cycling, in my experience.
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It's an incredible ad.
I'd like to see more of a focus on overtakers. I identify (more or less) with the man in the white shirt; I do a reasonable amount of driving around the Lower North Island for work. I try and stay close to the limit, or a few km/h below it.
But it's difficult, because if you go consistently at a speed that is within the law, a person going faster than that speed will soon reach you. That person will tailgate you, cajoling you, desperate for the chance to get ahead. At a certain point, that person will cross the centre line, go into the path of oncoming traffic, and risk killing themselves, you, and the people approaching.
I'm disappointed that there are still huge swathes of state highway in which white lines indicate overtaking is an acceptable activity - where two vehicles travelling at 100km/h would have no time or space to evade.