20 September - The need for Speed
Some
might call it clickbait but there can be little doubt that a degree of
controversy and provocation is the way to attract readers.
Monday’s blog did its
job admirably and the hard of thinking rose up against it.
The message was that although it is preferable to get in the way of a slow
moving vehicle than one going faster, the issue is really much wider than that.
Most road accidents are the result of stupidity and ignoring that by slowing everything down
indiscriminately costs money. Less money ultimately means life is
impoverished in every sense of the word.
When Stephenson managed to kill an MP (an exaggeration, he was there but not his fault) on the first day of the Liverpool &
Manchester railway exactly 197 years ago, perhaps we should have given up on
railways instead of learning from one MP’s stupidity. (Ironically the train was doing less than 20 miles per hour.)
Is it really a good idea to increase the Abbey Wood to Cannon Street
train’s running time from 21 minutes to 35 and have National Rail Enquiries recommend the Liz and change at
Whitechapel for something quicker? How stupid is that? What an indictment of
Southeastern! Personally I would prefer the old faster trains
even if you would get your head swiped off if you stuck it out of the window
before the Woolwich tunnels. Only stupid people did that and only stupid people
think that longer train journeys are a good idea.
One of those who took issue with me over the 20 m.p.h.
limits simply wouldn’t see that there might be more to it than the casualty count. Even one death is bad,
obviously, but to get the number nearer to zero requires movement to be ever
more tightly controlled, which is perhaps what some people are aiming for. Stupid again.
I got fed up with the demands to prove that speed had been beneficial
to society over the years. I thought it was self-evident. Why did our forebears ride horses and invent the
wheel? Should such Luddites go back to 56k modems (my first was 1·2k!) and shun fibre? Faster speeds have driven the economy forward without any exceptions
that I can think of. Why else would humanity have always striven to go faster? There may
occasionally be consequences but they must be managed, not allowed to be the dominating factor.
Maybe we should revert to tuning knobs on TVs because once in a while the remote control
disappears down the back of the sofa or the batteries go flat thus effectively
killing the TV. With a tuning knob no TV ‘dies’ְ. The ‘accident’ rate is zero but it is probably stupid.
Eventually I tired of the argument that the only thing that mattered in the
speed debate was speed itself. The Twitter/X Mute button came into its own.
Even more annoying was the repeated request for chapter and verse on the
economics that may prove that reduced speed has consequences.
Family connections occasionally provide me with an insight into what is going on
in the road transport industry but even if I fully understood the oddments I hear
about, it would not be appropriate to spill all the beans here.
Consultants do not study and measure things for months and produce reams of
expensive reports for their clients and expect the conclusions to be made public
without permission - which is why I know so little of the specifics.
A few such studies have gone public in the trade and
occasionally the main stream press. Among them is the safety of lorries in
convoy with a single driver in charge. Autonomous buses on the streets of
London, whether bus lanes do more harm than good. Are pods such as those trialled in Greenwich ever going to be a practical proposition? Do cyclists die under the wheels of lorries due to their own stupidity, or not?
Would increasing the Motorway speed limit to 80 benefit the country overall or
not? Is it sensible to regulate vehicle speed via an electronic link from speed
limit signs or sat nav? Do public bodies waste millions on the wrong sort of vehicles
because they think they are experts when they are not?
Is it better to let a bus driver injure a single pedestrian or jump on the
brakes and injure a busload of passengers?
Will cameras directly monitoring driver behaviour translate into a better
understanding of accidents and in turn to safer driving?
Our governments and those in the EU and beyond (plus vehicle manufacturers) need to know the answer to
such questions and are
prepared to pay dearly for it. Occasionally I pick up an indication of which way
an investigation is heading but never in intimate detail, just the general drift of
things if I am lucky. I remember what the 80 Motorway limit conclusion was but of course the
Luddites in Green are allowed to stand in the way of improvements to the economy and
instead we get 50 limits even on EVs to allegedly cut pollution levels.
The arguments are much the same for 20 limits randomly sprinkled by unthinking
Lefties except that it will increase pollution. Restrictions are fashionable and
allow authorities to issue monetary penalties but are they right?
Politicians versus science and engineering that has heaped huge benefits on
society; which side would you back?
I have no access to the detail of unpublished road safety reports but I have
been able to question at an inevitably superficial level what sort of conclusion
they may have reached and occasionally allude to it here.
Those who will not accept that BiB cannot publish the conclusions of
expensive confidential reports and do no more than take up a position based on a
modicum of inside knowledge on matters already in the public domain have been Twitter/X blocked,
possibly temporarily. A first for BiB; but persistent impossible Twitter
questions are not unlike persistent FOIs from certain quarters and inexorably
lead to the vexatious conclusion so beloved of Councils.
Such people will never be satisfied by answers that do not fulfill their
prejudices. There is no argument that being hit at 20 is better than being hit
at 30 but even that is not a simple scenario. In nearly every case there would
be an emergency stop and the argument is more often between 7 m.p.h. and 4.
And the more the experts probe the more the complications will arise.
Note: Photos from Harrow Manorway this morning.