On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Jeffrey Blankenship wrote:
> Jamie and Jim write:
>
> >> But hey -- I live the place where a traffic judge decided a woman
> applying
> >> makeup at 60 mph wasn't driving recklessly because she stayed in her lane
> >> and didn't hit anything (true case -- last year!)...
>
> > Where is this so I can stay really really far away from there?
>
> I know you all are just having fun, but be careful what you wish for,
> legislators are way too willing to turn us into criminals to save us from
> ourselves the moment something bad happens. If you went through pilot
> training, you'd learn that you can do many things at once in a very
> stressful environment. Its not easy, and can be scary, but you learn to
>avoid
> focusing on any one thing for so long that you miss something that needs
> your attention.
I have been through pilot training -- and the first lesson I learned was:
fly the airplane. Everything else comes second.
Flying and driving are also fundamentally different -- most aircraft do
not demand a constant hand on the controls to remain level and on-course,
and you don't routinely fly in close formation (which demands much more
attention to flying), which allows a little breathing room if you
unintentionally deviate from your flight path. A car without an attentive
hand on the controls will depart the road in under a minute, and will
usually hit something hard soon after. And traffic is akin to flying in
close formation with people you don't trust.
> So a lack of skill or an incident of stupidity can
> cause an accident, but nobody has sufficient skill from the get-go, and
> nobody is immune from stupidity. That is why pushing driving age higher or
> outlawing cel phones is a waste - its insulting to think that people can't
> learn to use their cars and gadgets, or that accidents won't happen.
True -- raising the driving age will just push the new-driver accident
rate into a higher age group. As far as cell phones or any other
devices go, they're fine if they were designed for use in a car (as
some are) -- 'nuff said. The real evil, though, is allowing people to
occupy the driver's seat of a car when driving the car isn't their primary
task. We don't train people for that mindset and we don't enforce that
mindset -- instead, we try to make negligent stupidity survivable, often
by penalizing those who take the task more seriously.
Drive the car first. Everything else comes second.
Jamie
'92 Prelude Si
Speed Demon Racing
http://www.mindspring.com/~jsculerati/sdr
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