On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:18:21 +0000, Andy Champ
wrote:

There is no victim in looking at any image - if he believes there are
... why are they a 'victim' and what are they a 'victim' of?

In that particular case, and with some images the harm is done to the
subject of the picture when it is originally produced, not when it is
viewed. It is the aim of the legislation to destroy the market for such
images.

Whether it will work is another matter.

That may be so, but it does not mean that the viewing of images has
created any victim of itself.

--
Cynic

In article , ®i©ardo
scribeth thus
On 03/02/2012 17:33, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
wrote:
No, that's what NI was supposed to do. It also seems to make a loss for
the state (ie taxpayer)

So would you privatize it while making it compulsory?

no, just let the state learn from the private sector work out how to make
it more efficiently.

RBS. I rest my case. And countless insurance companies have gone bust over
the years.


Countless! Absolute ********.

Still it's a funny world, isn't it, the RBS on a one off got the same
support that the NHS gets on a permanent basis. Still, only £12billion
for their failed computer operation - which will be blamed on someone
else, of course.


Talking of the NHS I see that Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon has
just appointed a private company to run it.

They have to cope with being saddled with a £38 odd mill debt. Be
interesting to see what they can do with it all..

Not 'agin state operation just that from most all I've seen of it its
not that efficient and usually rather wasteful..

Not that private operation is perfect but they usually have the
opportunity of going bust;!..

--
Tony Sayer

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:07:29 +0000 (GMT) Charles wrote :
no, just let the state learn from the private sector work out how to
make it more efficiently.

My health insurer will pay $150 (£100) for dental work without
question. Guess how much a clean, scrape and polish costs. The InsCo
doesn't ca it just factors the cost into the premiums, same as in
the UK with whiplash claims.

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com

On Feb 3, 4:23*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 06:57:37 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Seeing myself as being both a consumer and a producer, it is obvious
that in general I want some sort of balance between the two. And even
as the builder, I don't really want individual consumers to be stung
with covering the full cost of my family emergency. But clearly I want
some general power to take time off to deal with irregular
emergencies, without total collapse of my lifestyle and reduction to
penury.

Can you not see that for a great many employers, paying an extra
salary every month to someone who does not actually do any work can be
just as devastating, and could easily result in bankruptcy for the
employer? *That would especially be the case if such a thing became
law, because for every genuine case there would bound to be several
chancers who did not *really* have to stay at home as a carer.

Indeed, so once again the answer is to distribute that cost more
widely than either individual consumers or individual (small)
employers. The buffer has to be built somewhere into the system. In
the post-war period, that was somewhat achieved by having a system of
contributory and earnings-linked state benefits.



If money were to be taken from someone (I suspect you would like it to
come from myself and other taxpayers) to pay for you to look after a
disabled relative, how about a situation in which your partner leaves
you or dies and you are left literally holding the baby? *You will
have to find a way to care for your infant in that situation.

Indeed, and in many cases that is achieved by recourse to state
benefits.



I see two perfectly reasonable solutions. *The first is as I mentioned
- friends and relatives who do not work step in and help.

But that simply presupposes that there are systematically such non-
working friends and relatives available. It doesn't matter which way
you look at it - somewhere in the system, there has to be a sufficient
reserve of time/labour, to cope with irregular but highly-demanding
emergencies. In the past women as a class fulfilled that function to a
large extent, where even if their domestic duties were far more
demanding than today, those duties were significantly more flexible
than formal employment.



*The second
is for you to take out insurance to cover the possibility that you
will have to give up work due to your own or someone else's
disability.

Indeed, but if the insurance cover is discretionary (as opposed to
compulsory), then, amongst other things, that carries problems with
individuals opting-out, particularly due to strained economic
circumstances and competitive social pressures - the very sorts of
circumstances where such insurance might be most necessary and
desirable from a social point of view, but where individuals acting
individually are most likely to take risks in opting-out.

It also carries the problem of adverse selection, where individuals
are likely to pay into such policies only when they are most likely to
need the cover, and therefore the premium will be most unaffordable,
as opposed to if the same premium had been spread over their entire
working lives.

In the presence of perfect foresight on everybody's part, people would
only choose to buy an insurance policy immediately before the adverse
event, and the premium demanded by the insurer would carry the same
cost as the adverse event itself. That would subvert the whole point
of the insurance in the first place, which was to spread large and
irregular costs, across society and across time (including, to some
extent, the time period *after* the adverse event).

The reason for doing this is so that individuals do not become 'total
losses' in insurance parlance, bearing in mind their social and
economic value to society at large. The traditional economics
assumption that individuals who take bad decisions will be 'driven
from the market', often fails to appreciate the systemic importance of
not allowing individuals to drive themselves from the market, nor
allowing them to make extremely bad decisions and then attempting to
hold them to the fatal consequences and trying to force them from the
market when they decide that they do not want to leave after all.

I can't help viewing the recent worldwide economic troubles as being a
somewhat more general example of what I'm talking about. With Greece,
for example, permitting them to accrue unmanageable levels of debt,
and then attempting to extract that money on terms that will lead to
the failure of their state, is inevitably going to lead to default
anyway, but not without imposing a heavy burden of international
tension (with the tension proportional to the ferocity of the attempt
to extract repayment of the debt instead of allowing immediate
default). It is easy to declare in retrospect, that prudence would
have demanded that these loans were never made to the Greeks in the
first place, even if they demanded them and were willing to accept
them.

That sort of dynamic is exactly what contributed to World War 2, where
runaway competition amongst imperial powers, and the imposition of
harsh consequences on the losers, only led to a renegotiation of terms
later and regulation of international competition, but not before
hundreds of millions of people were killed or psychologically maimed,
and trillions of pounds of economic capital had been lost.

I would also point out that, fundamentally, the idea that consequences
should follow the choices, is often only an ideological commitment. It
does not follow in any natural way, that the repayment of a debt
should follow the consumption of the borrowings. You can quite easily
take the money, and then refuse to repay. Honesty and credit-
worthiness is a pretense that can be discarded, if the circumstances
demand it. And if for whatever reason you have made a bad bargain, and
the consequences (if accepted) are now fatal (metaphorically, if not
literally), then there is going to be a strong temptation to
renegotiate or default.

For, if the creditor were your friend, then he would not have accepted
the bargain, and certainly he would not hold you to its harsh terms
now having seen how events had unfolded. And if he is not your friend
but your red-in-tooth-and-claw competitor, then you owe him nothing
anyway, and there is no reason to abide by the rules of the
competition anymore. The smart creditor does not enter into such
arrangements, because the punishment of a defaulting debtor is
extremely expensive in terms of both the forfeit of the loan and the
additional conflict generated by the punishment.

In any society that relies on a degree of trust, cooperation, and
willing adherence to common ideology, you cannot afford to be an
irresponsible creditor in general, because in the end you'll probably
lose not only your own capital, but even more certainly everyone will
lose the benefits derived from trust, cooperation, and willing
adherence to common ideology.

On 03/02/2012 16:23, Cynic wrote:
Can you not see that for a great many employers, paying an extra
salary every month to someone who does not actually do any work can be
just as devastating, and could easily result in bankruptcy for the
employer? That would especially be the case if such a thing became
law, because for every genuine case there would bound to be several
chancers who did not*really* have to stay at home as a carer.

IF such a thing became law? Have you ever looked at the rights for
pregnant women?

Andy

On 01/02/2012 13:27, Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:29:48 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Good for you. But have you had to juggle normal life and caring for
someone 24/7. I can say that I have not first hand, but certainly second
hand. Even caring for my family when my wife was ill (not requiring 24/7
care) was enough to lose me my employment and saddle me with massive
debts which I am now working extended hours to clear. A couple more
months and we would have lost our home.

Why should that situation be anyone's problem apart from you, your
friends and your family?

When my wife was in a similar situation, it would certainly have
caused me just as much hardship as it did you *if* I had provided all
the necessary care personally. There were however plenty of friends
and family members who between them were able and willing to provide
the additional necessary care without significant detriment to
themselves.

The idea that complete strangers had any sort of duty to solve the
problem by paying for her care did not even cross my mind.

My wife's family is from Ireland, she has no family over here (her
parents moved here before she was born and have now died) and we
couldn't really expect her extended family to come and live here for a
very extended period. My parents are well into their seventies and
certainly couldn't help her up and down the stairs or grab her when she
moved and her balance went; or look after our three young kids for
extended periods over many, many months. All our friends are in full
time work or live many miles away. No, I am not making up a scenario
here, this is simply the case.

SteveW

On 03/02/2012 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In , charles
wrote:
In , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article4f2c0467.141281750@localhost, Cynic
wrote:
I see two perfectly reasonable solutions. The first is as I
mentioned - friends and relatives who do not work step in and help.
The second is for you to take out insurance to cover the possibility
that you will have to give up work due to your own or someone else's
disability.

Surely that's what NI does? And without a private company making a
profit?

No, that's what NI was supposed to do. It also seems to make a loss for
the state (ie taxpayer)

So would you privatize it while making it compulsory? The snag with
voluntary schemes is many will just take the risk it won't happen to them.
Look at what is happening to pensions in the UK now so many employers have
pulled out of providing them without choice to their employees.

You don't have to take the risk to get caught out. I had insurances that
paid most of my commitments, but they generally only last one year (and
even that is very expensive) - our wonderful NHS bounced my wife around
various consultants and tests, with long waits for each, for two and a
half years before they diagnosed her condition. Total time being seen or
tested during that time, less than a day, discounting waiting. Along the
way, one consultant stated that he didn't know what the problem was, but
could take away the symptoms - he "offered" and then pushed for my wife
to let him permanently blind her in her left eye! In the end it turned
out to be a problem that could be alleviated with medication.

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) or the NHS seeing people in a reasonable time
(measured from GP referral to diagnosis, rather than separate times for
each re-referral).

My wife happens to work in the NHS and I know that she has referred
patients for treatments that will sort their problems out, only for the
budget committee to decide to send them for a cheaper option, that they
know will not work, but will push the problem out of this year's budget!
These are mental health patients, with severe conditions and by
extending their illnesses in this way, they and their families are badly
damaged and the total cost to the economy is increased ... but that's
from "different" pots, so doesn't matter!

SteveW

On 01/02/2012 13:37, Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:32:34 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Wrong. Taking the property of an innocent man because you are acting on
*rumour* is still theft. In your scenario, the *thief* is still a thief,
even if by mistake, while my uncle was quite clearly an innocent victim.

Similarly, beating up an innocent person because you *think* he is a
thief is still GBH.

"Think" is not the right word and neither is "innocent". There's a big
difference between "suspecting" that someone has your stolen tools and
having actually seen him take them from your vehicle and make off with them!

SteveW

On 01/02/2012 12:39, dennis@home wrote:


"Ste" wrote in message
...

8

How does the driver know what he can ignore it if he doesn't see it?

Because he can ignore the object based on its position in the visual
field - and also whether the object is moving.

Like I said how can he know if he hasn't seen it.
It isn't even above and to the left when he is a few cars length away
and he should be looking that far ahead to be safe.

Because most of the brains visual system works subconsciously. The brain
is incapable of taking in and processing all the imformation that it is
bombarded with, so it notes those of importance and ignores others. The
driver *will* see the speed camera, but may only process it as an
inanimate object that he in not going to hit and that is not going to
hit him, without ever consciously recognising what it actually is.

Interesting things don't normally happen off to the left above head-
height, even less so when those things are not moving into the path of
the vehicle, and so where there is excessive demand for visual
processing, that capacity will be allocated to certain areas that
have, by experience, been found to be the places where interesting
things happen.

Like in the road in front of you where all gatso cameras have white
lines painted?

Gatsos do, others don't.

I would not have come to that verdict and the coroner should be
re-educated
as it was obviously poor driving.

No, it was intentional on the part of the agency that installed the
speed camera, that the driver should have reacted in that way - that
he should have devoted more attention to his speed, and therefore
necessarily less attention to anything else.

The driver should always be aware of his speed and the limit.
If he can not do so while still paying attention to other things he is
not capable of driving safely and will have an accident.
The case you quote proves this to be true.

All drivers are human. Even if they know the limit and are within it,
they still have momentary doubts and check again.

If you can't take in all the information that you need to drive
safely then
you are driving too fast for your abilities!

This is where people like yourself wander off into fantasy land. No
driver can take in all the information at all times that they need to
drive "safely" in all possible circumstances.

Then they shouldn't drive in those circumstances.

Then no person at all should ever be allowed to drive. That's the way
human brains are constructed and we're stuck with it.

Even people on foot,
moving by definition at walking pace, manage to fall off kerbs into
traffic, or even simply walk straight into traffic, or even fall down
uncovered manholes.

They don't have to pass a test to show they are competent.

Competent, does not and can not mean perfect.

You also missed out falling through manhole covers which is what
happened to me.

In the end, people like yourself hold drivers to impossibly high
standards simply because you don't like cars and want to drive them
off the roads, not because you have any legitimate safety (or
otherwise humanistic) agenda. When drivers react adversely to your
ploys, as the driver clearly did in this case, you use that to try to
argue for further restrictions, when in fact it was the restriction
that worsened road safety in the first place.

It was poor driving, plain and simple.
If it were the case that the camera did cause the crash then how come
nearly every other driver can manage to drive past it without problems.

Because every driver and the information presented to them will be
different, different people, different cars, clouds, lighting, noise,
animals, even leaves on trees and everyone is processing it differently.
A particular distraction (in this case a camera) might only distract one
in a million, but if you ran it all again, it could be a different
driver that was distracted and on a different day. This is not a nice
simple Newtonian system where everything runs a perfect, preset course.

IME the biggest problem with cameras is that the speeders see them and
then jump on the brakes to about 5-10 mph below the limit. They don't
spend lots of time looking at their speedo so that they run into an
object in the road.
The problem is easily solved by hiding the cameras.


I've pointed out myself before now that the prevalence of red-light
cameras in particular (and combined speed/red-light cameras), simply
means that I have now reallocated attention away from checking the
junction and road ahead (including the behaviour of pedestrians at any
associated crossings), to carefully scanning the side of the road for
the presence of a camera whilst actively inhibiting my desire to
accelerate, and being braced for an emergency stop on a much more
cautionary basis than usual.

Why, if you are driving legally there is no need to worry about the
cameras.
There are millions of drivers who don't have a problem with cameras
because they don't speed and don't try to jump amber lights.

When the lights suddenly change to amber and you are close, there is
always a moment where you have to decide is it safer to stop quickly or
continue through. That is why amber means "stop, only if it is safe to
do so." I personally don't have a problem with the idea of red light
cameras, as they are sensibly adjusted so that someone misjudging
slightly and going through a little late won't be caught, but someone
blatently forcing their way through red will.

Hidden cameras would remove the drivers that do have a problem with
speeding and jumping lights.

Anyone can get the speed limit wrong, such as missing the signs because
of parked vehicles totally obscuring them - probably why some people hit
the brakes when they see a camera and they have a moment of self-doubt.
In your world, they'd be punished for no fault of their own. No one can
be blamed for not seeing a sign that someone has parked a truck in front
of or are you only going to allow drivers with X-ray vision? And before
you say it, I have seen (or rather not) two signs that I knew were there
only because it was a familiar road, each completely concealed by a 7.5
tonner (one parked on the left, one stationary in traffic on the right)

If a pedestrian then steps out and gets run down, then that is the
choice that people like yourself have made - you can't have my
attention allocated to both tasks, because I do not have enough of it
to allocate to all possible factors,

You are driving beyond you abilities then.
You need to slow down and stop being an idiot.

Even at walking pace, pedestrians bump into things. No-one can take in
all the information and use it. They can only take what they
subconciously recognise as the most important bits and most of the time
they are right. Once in a while everyone over-prioritizes one piece of
information to the detriment of another - most of the time they get away
with it. Most of the time they will never even know. If you drove to
work today, I can absolutely guarantee that you missed some things. Some
of those won't have mattered, but some might have if the circumstances
had been slightly different. Today you were lucky. You may well be for
the rest of your life, but if not, then that is just bad luck, because
you're made just like everyone else.

and you've made it clear by
installing a camera and imposing draconian penalties, that you want my
attention to be focussed first and foremost on maintaining a lower
speed, and stopping earlier at the amber, than I would otherwise
choose to do without the presence of the camera.

I haven't, I would hide them.
However I can't see why they are a problem to anyone who knows how to
drive properly.

According to what you have stated however, a driver who had spotted
the pedestrian and given full attention to avoiding hitting that
pedestrian, but who had not spotted the bright yellow camera would be
a worse driver.

Yes, he would have been a worse driver than one that didn't need to
worry
about the speed camera because he knew how fast he was going and what
the
speed limit was. You would be amazed at how easy that is.

Drivers like yourself (I assume you are a driver in the first place)
are simply dickheads.

The fact is, most of us do not spend all our time on the roads
monitoring speed limits and our compliance with them - even by your
own logic, it is easier to observe the speed camera and make a
temporary adjustment of speed, than to observe every change of posted
limit and keep one's speed constantly in accordance with that limit.

I don't have a problem with knowing how fats I am going or what the
limit is.

And if the lamposts in a village are just above or just below the
required distance apart? Could be NSL or could be 30. Admittedly
unusual, you'd expect terminal signs, but as I've shown earlier, these
can be totally hidden.

I don't see why another driver should either.
If they do then they have a problem with their ability and need to
address it by either getting better or by changing how they drive.
If that means they have to drive at 20 mph then so be it.


And contrary to what you imply, knowing how fast you are going and
what the posted limit is, is a significant intellectual task,
demanding both careful visual observation and memory capacity (and
therefore require compensation by demonstrating a lower standard of
overall driving skill and progress, or by a reduced amount of stamina
for driving due to the high intellectual demands of your driving
behaviour - or even possibly both of these).

Balls, its insignificant effort.

It would be if roads were designed correctly. A European study
criticised the UK's roads some years ago, as many were designed for
higher speeds than the limits then set on them. This unconciously caused
drivers to exceeed the posted speed limits or concentrate more of their
effort into keeping their speed down - to the detriment of concentation
of everything else around them! This was a major study of roads
throughout Europe.

SteveW

On 02/02/2012 12:15, dennis@home wrote:


"Ste" wrote in message
...

The fact is, the mental resources required to monitor and maintain
one's compliance with speed limits, has to met from a necessarily
limited supply of those resources. There will *always* be situations
where circumstances are such that the full extent of potentially
relevant sensory information overwhelms your ability to process it
all,

If that is the case you are driving at an unsafe speed.
Why do you have a problem realising that it is not good driving to
ignore information just so you can drive faster?

You're saying that as if someone is choosing to ignore information. They
are not. All human brains ignore information automatically, as they
cannot cope with it all - even at rest!

Look straight ahead. Now look quickly to your right. You saw a
continuous moving scene didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You saw ahead
of you and to your right, but while you were turning you actually saw
nothing for a moment, then your brain went back and filled in a memory
of what it thought you "ought" to have seen. That is the way our brains
work and part of what I have said elsewhere about information we can
take in.

SteveW

"Steve Walker" wrote in message
...
On 02/02/2012 12:15, dennis@home wrote:


"Ste" wrote in message
...

The fact is, the mental resources required to monitor and maintain
one's compliance with speed limits, has to met from a necessarily
limited supply of those resources. There will *always* be situations
where circumstances are such that the full extent of potentially
relevant sensory information overwhelms your ability to process it
all,

If that is the case you are driving at an unsafe speed.
Why do you have a problem realising that it is not good driving to
ignore information just so you can drive faster?

You're saying that as if someone is choosing to ignore information. They
are not. All human brains ignore information automatically, as they cannot
cope with it all - even at rest!

Look straight ahead. Now look quickly to your right. You saw a continuous
moving scene didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You saw ahead of you and to
your right, but while you were turning you actually saw nothing for a
moment, then your brain went back and filled in a memory of what it
thought you "ought" to have seen. That is the way our brains work and part
of what I have said elsewhere about information we can take in.

We all know, or should know, about the little tricks the human systems do.
That doesn't mean you can't avoid them by thinking.

I will state again, if you don't have enough time to analyze what you need
to be able to see when driving then you are driving too fast.

If you get caught on a speed camera it is not the cameras fault, you just
aren't as good a driver as you think you are.

On 04/02/2012 02:21, Steve Walker wrote:
On 01/02/2012 13:37, Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:32:34 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Wrong. Taking the property of an innocent man because you are acting on
*rumour* is still theft. In your scenario, the *thief* is still a thief,
even if by mistake, while my uncle was quite clearly an innocent victim.

Similarly, beating up an innocent person because you *think* he is a
thief is still GBH.

"Think" is not the right word and neither is "innocent". There's a big
difference between "suspecting" that someone has your stolen tools and
having actually seen him take them from your vehicle and make off with
them!

SteveW

Not if you're a pedant!

--
Moving things in still pictures

On Feb 4, 2:16*am, Steve Walker -
family.me.uk wrote:
On 03/02/2012 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:





In , charles
*wrote:
In , Dave Plowman (News)
* * *wrote:
In article4f2c0467.141281750@localhost, Cynic
* * *wrote:
I see two perfectly reasonable solutions. *The first is as I
mentioned - friends and relatives who do not work step in and help.
The second is for you to take out insurance to cover the possibility
that you will have to give up work due to your own or someone else's
disability.

Surely that's what NI does? And without a private company making a
profit?

No, that's what NI was supposed to do. *It also seems to make a loss for
the state (ie taxpayer)

So would you privatize it while making it compulsory? The snag with
voluntary schemes is many will just take the risk it won't happen to them.
Look at what is happening to pensions in the UK now so many employers have
pulled out of providing them without choice to their employees.

You don't have to take the risk to get caught out. I had insurances that
paid most of my commitments, but they generally only last one year (and
even that is very expensive) - our wonderful NHS bounced my wife around
various consultants and tests, with long waits for each, for two and a
half years before they diagnosed her condition. Total time being seen or
tested during that time, less than a day, discounting waiting. Along the
way, one consultant stated that he didn't know what the problem was, but
could take away the symptoms - he "offered" and then pushed for my wife
to let him permanently blind her in her left eye! In the end it turned
out to be a problem that could be alleviated with medication.

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) or the NHS seeing people in a reasonable time
(measured from GP referral to diagnosis, rather than separate times for
each re-referral).

My wife happens to work in the NHS and I know that she has referred
patients for treatments that will sort their problems out, only for the
budget committee to decide to send them for a cheaper option, that they
know will not work, but will push the problem out of this year's budget!
These are mental health patients, with severe conditions and by
extending their illnesses in this way, they and their families are badly
damaged and the total cost to the economy is increased ... but that's
from "different" pots, so doesn't matter!

This is the logic of "efficiency savings", where on every formal
accounting measure, the NHS has spent less money and the government
has 'proved' the existence of 'layabout public sector workers' who
have now been forced to 'put a full day's work in'.

In reality, what has happened is that service users are forced to put
a full day's work into hurdling the additional bureaucracy and
inflexibility created by the new 'efficiency', whereas previously they
did not have to do so.

Then users suddenly realise just how really inefficient the system has
become, so the rich go off and pay for private healthcare (where they
pay only for themselves and not for others through progressive
taxation, and magically the service also seems so much better because
it is not under the political pressure of an oppressive 'efficiency
drive'), whilst the poor (especially those who think of themselves as
"middle-earners") vote for even more 'efficiency savings' that will
further erode the public services that they enjoy and which they can
not afford to pay for privately, and which were previously paid for
not wholly from their own tax payments, but by taxing the rich
progressively.

In the meantime, reductions in taxes on earnings, will allow the
market to drive down earnings further so that, ceretis paribus, most
employees end up taking home the same pay as they did under a 'high-
tax' regime, but whilst also gradually and imperceptibly forfeiting
the efficient and effective public services that they once used to
enjoy and which they did not need to pay for out of their take-home
pay.

As for the effect of this poor-quality treatment of the sick, perhaps
after a decade or two, there will be a massive inflation in the number
of patients requiring treatment with 'increasingly complex needs', but
it is unlikely that the link will be made to a lack of better
preventative treatment decades earlier, and anyway the increased cost
might be used to justify further assaults on the system and lend
weight to the argument that the service "is simply unaffordable" given
the "sheer proliferation of demands made and increasingly complex and
costly treatments" (which are in fact necessary to remedy the lack of
effective treatment at the earlier stage).

The same is true of education and social security, where cuts in
income (both in-work and out-of-work) at the bottom made from the 80s
onwards, have led to an increasing number of 'feckless families' whose
physical, mental, and moral degeneracy (viewed from teh dominant
culture) the state then has to compensate for with massive (and
inefficiently belated) interventions across many agencies
(particularly with poorly socialised children), that are more costly
in the end than the savings that were originally made.

If I remember correctly, it costs the state a couple of grand a year
to educate the average child from a decent family, and that child will
come out of it at the end with a reasonable standard of education. It
costs tens of thousands of pounds to manage a poorly socialised child
within the education system, and even despite that level of spending
at the end they will have derived few if any useful skills from the
process (although warehousing them in a school, may well have been
prevented from developing even more antisocial behaviours if left to
wander the streets).

On Feb 4, 8:43*am, "dennis@home" wrote:
"Steve Walker" wrote in message

...





On 02/02/2012 12:15, dennis@home wrote:

"Ste" wrote in message
....

The fact is, the mental resources required to monitor and maintain
one's compliance with speed limits, has to met from a necessarily
limited supply of those resources. There will *always* be situations
where circumstances are such that the full extent of potentially
relevant sensory information overwhelms your ability to process it
all,

If that is the case you are driving at an unsafe speed.
Why do you have a problem realising that it is not good driving to
ignore information just so you can drive faster?

You're saying that as if someone is choosing to ignore information. They
are not. All human brains ignore information automatically, as they cannot
cope with it all - even at rest!

Look straight ahead. Now look quickly to your right. You saw a continuous
moving scene didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You saw ahead of you and to
your right, but while you were turning you actually saw nothing for a
moment, then your brain went back and filled in a memory of what it
thought you "ought" to have seen. That is the way our brains work and part
of what I have said elsewhere about information we can take in.

We all know, or should know, about the little tricks the human systems do..
That doesn't mean you can't avoid them by thinking.

I will state again, if you don't have enough time to analyze what you need
to be able to see when driving then you are driving too fast.

If you get caught on a speed camera it is not the cameras fault, you just
aren't as good a driver as you think you are.

As I've said Dennis, I've modified my behaviour in response to speed
cameras, to as to avoid capture.

I've probably moderated my speed somewhat downwards to compensate for
the additional mental burden at times, but I've also reallocated
attention from other safety-related tasks.

When passing a speed camera these days (even those that I have
anticipated in advance, or recalled from previous encounter), I spend
a disproportionate amount of time looking at the speedometer and using
the pedals to carefully moderate my speed to be just within the limit
- controlling the pedals much more carefully than in general, and
using the speedometer to maintain a speed within a very fine margin.

This moderated speed is often well below my own judgment of a safe
speed, and so I am reluctant to slow down any further than I have to
(unless it is accompanied by rapid acceleration once past the camera),
so there is every incentive to drive at the fastest speed possible
without exceeding the limit. I also spend a disproportionate amount of
time looking for a confirmation of the speed limit (repeater signs,
etc.), to be sure I have recalled the correct limit (which I otherwise
have little need to pay attention to) and have not overlooked a change
in speed limit.

There is also, of course, the principle of the matter, in which the
letter of the law is enforced against my will, so I want to comply as
little as possible with the spirit of it - so even if I could make it
easy on myself by slowing down further, I want to feel as though I'm
putting two fingers up at people like yourself, by only complying as
little as possible, and disgorging any increment in safety that you
expected to gain by threatening to penalise me.

Occasionally I'm caught out by a speed camera that I did not
anticipate as early as I would have preferred - this occurs more often
at night, and more often with cameras of inconspicuous colours. If
possible, I'll immediately reallocate attention to the moderating and
confirmation-seeking behaviours, to the exclusion of all other tasks
that can be reasonably dispensed with for a few seconds (including
looking at the road ahead). If it's not possible to do that (either
because I can't safely reallocate attention from more important
demands that I'm already managing, or because there is just not enough
time remaining to complete those moderating and confirmation-seeking
behaviours), I'll slam the brakes on hard to bring my speed below the
lowest limit I think might possibly apply given the instant snapshot I
have of the road.

It is certainly the case that speeding is not as easy as it used to
be. To speed now, you must additionally monitor for speed cameras -
and indeed monitor for places where police speed traps are most
likely, like long straights where it would otherwise be most
reasonable to speed (and then simply compensate and indulge by going
faster in places where there is less likely to be a trap, but which is
otherwise less suitable for speeding).

However, even where I have ceased to speed, I've often compensated
with other speed-increasing and safety-reducing behaviours (less
courtesy, faster pulling-out at junctions, more lane-changing, etc.),
and also by doing more non-driving related tasks at the wheel, like
listening to the radio, talking on the phone, reading texts, etc (this
is my common response to average speed cameras in particular).

When the lights suddenly change to amber and you are close, there is
always a moment where you have to decide is it safer to stop quickly or
continue through. That is why amber means "stop, only if it is safe to
do so." I personally don't have a problem with the idea of red light
cameras, as they are sensibly adjusted so that someone misjudging
slightly and going through a little late won't be caught, but someone
blatently forcing their way through red will.

Hidden cameras would remove the drivers that do have a problem with
speeding and jumping lights.


In Dorset some traffic lights have sensors in the road so that if you are exceeding the speed limit through the lights you get caught.