There’s currently an insane furore in Stratford over plans to build a bridge across the Avon. I don’t know the detailed arguments in favour of the bridge, but there’s been a bombardment of the arguments against, and they suck. It’ll get in the way of swan flightpaths, for example.

While it is of course the job of the proponent to justify the case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to get a tentative sense of which side is in the right based on the strength of the opponents’ arguments. In this case there’s only one objection that seems to warrant a reply from the council, and I suspect that has an easy answer. I’m certainly not informed enough to start arguing about it properly (and that would possibly get me lynched, given the ferocity of letters to the local paper - maybe I missed the plans to pave the bridge with the crushed bones of small children) but I can suspect who I’d end up agreeing with if I actually put the effort in. It is, however, just a bridge, and I have better things to do.

I’m in a similar situation regarding pay-per-mile road taxing, except it actually matters. Intuitively it seems like a reasonable idea, and although I don’t know the exact justifications every argument against has seemed either paranoid or selfish. Thankfully B4L has actually researched the matter, and does a good job of demonstrating why it makes sense.

I had an odd experience yesterday. While driving from Stratford to Solihull I joined a long queue of traffic on a 50mph section between built-up areas. We edged forward, and it became apparent that there was something blocking one side of the road. It was rush hour, and traffic in my direction was having to wait for kind opposing souls to leave them a gap to swerve around. As I got closer I could see a bunch of stuff that looked like it had fallen off the back of a truck: bits of wood, crates, netting etc..

I thought this was a bit silly, so pulled over and started dragging it all onto the thankfully-wide pavement. I heard a couple of other car doors open as if people were coming to help, when a guy appeared and told me that the police were on their way and I should leave it for them to see. By this time the queue was stretching well into the distance. I tried to clear a little more and he again told me to stop, because he’d called the police, and waved other people away. At the time I assumed he must know something about the protocol, so got back into my car and drove off. But within a couple of minutes I’d decided that was dumb. It’s not like it was a crime scene - there was no accident - and surely the police would only have cleared it themselves? It’s bizarre that somebody actively stepped in to stop us clearing the road. Why would you do that?

I headed over to Walsall yesterday afternoon. I’d been asked to upgrade an ME machine to XP, and there were a few smaller problems on a different PC. I was planning to stop at PC World to buy an XP upgrade, but realised that I’d be passing a Currys that was far less out of my way. I walked in and was trying to find the software section when somebody senior-looking passed by:

He: Was there something you were looking for?
Me: Hi. Do you sell Windows XP?
He: We should have that, yes.
Me: Great, I need the upgrade version…?
He: An upgrade?
Me: Yeah, so I can go from Windows 98.
He: [beat] You’ve lost me, I’m afraid. They’re two separate programs. You can’t upgrade them.
Me: Ok, but I have Windows 98 already, and I just need to upgrade it to XP.
He: [looks at me like I am sprouting horns] You just want a copy of Windows XP, then?
Me: …Yes.

He transferred me to another member of staff, who dug around in a cupboard and the first box he pulled out was an XP Home Upgrade. Lucky.

The motorway was remarkably clear and the journey didn’t take as long as I’d feared. The various computer problems turned out to be fairly minor, happily. One had been described as ‘I can’t delete blocks of text in Word’, so I typed some gibberish, highlighted it and pressed delete. Word promptly placed a message in the taskbar that said ‘Delete Block? No (Yes)”, with no obvious way to select either option. This was a new one on me, and after drawing a blank in the options a quick google revealed it to be the ‘Help for Wordperfect Users” setting. Strange.

Thanks to the wonder of Hettie the TomTom I didn’t have to worry about finding my way, but the return journey was dreadful nevertheless. It was pouring with rain at rush hour on the M6, and my brain was a little frazzled after three hours of upgrading and reconfiguration, but didn’t go too badly until I took the wrong exit off a roundabout. Hettie was calmly telling me to turn around, but somebody behind me decided that despite heavy rain, darkness and the speed limit, I should be going faster. It was too busy for him/her to overtake, too dark for me to see turnings / laybys far enough in advance to pull in, and too wet to have much time to look anyway. That lasted about ten minutes, during which time I got myself more and more worked up, until I finally ditched the guy when the road split into two lanes. Hettie then, as ever, cut across country using the smallest wombat trails she could find, but did bring me out onto a main road within a mile of Stratford, which was quite impressive. I arrived home at 2000, realised that the last thing I felt like was waiting half an hour for a pizza to cook, so went to Burger King. Not healthy, or even terribly warm, but sometimes it’s just the Thing To Do.

I’d managed 700 words before leaving that morning, and another thousand seemed like a daunting prospect. It took me an hour to settle into a rhythm, but by one o’clock had reached 2300, my highest daily total so far. I’m still behind the recommended total, but slowly catching up. I find it easier to write when it’s late, although I can tell while doing so that the quality isn’t up to daytime standards. Ah well, I’ll fix that in the edit

I’ve only just discovered Malcolm Gladwell’s 2004 article on S.U.V. safety. It’s quite the dramatic read. In typical style, he grabs you in the first few sentences:

In the summer of 1996, the Ford Motor Company began building the Expedition, its new, full-sized S.U.V., at the Michigan Truck Plant, in the Detroit suburb of Wayne. The Expedition was essentially the F-150 pickup truck with an extra set of doors and two more rows of seats—and the fact that it was a truck was critical. Cars have to meet stringent fuel-efficiency regulations. Trucks don’t. The handling and suspension and braking of cars have to be built to the demanding standards of drivers and passengers. Trucks only have to handle like, well, trucks.

S.U.V.s have appalling safety records in comparison to any other type of car, it seems. Such large cars may be better at protecting you in the event of an accident, but the inherent control difficulties result in accidents being far more difficult to avoid, more than offsetting any protection benefit. He quotes life-threatening injury risk percentages, from studies of 35mph crashes, that are just ridiculously high. A Porsche is safer than a Ford Explorer, statistically speaking.

Gladwell goes on to talk about the psychological effects that work to make people feel that S.U.V.s are safer. Sheer bulk, soft surroundings and height all contribute. Cupholders, believe it or not, are also a major factor! This leads to a discussion on the perceived risk of factors that are out of our control. It’s far more likely we’ll die in a car accident resulting from irresponsible or drink driving, but when a manufacturer recalls tyres thought to be responsible for a small number of deaths it’s big news. We’re actually far more at risk from factors we can control (to an extent) than those we can’t. This obviously resonates with the news of recent days, and the general climate of fear.

I don’t know much about cars - how do S.U.Vs such as the Ford Explorer compare to 4×4s more common in the UK?

David Aaranovitch writes an excellent piece on traffic wardens and calming measures:

Ask almost any conscientious school governor or PTA activist. You can send out a zillion letters, put up a gallery of posters, invite endless consultation — and no one but the same half-dozen parents will respond. Then, as in the case of the school-run permits, suddenly it affects them. Wardens are moving them on as they attempt to triple park in a narrow road. Bang! Why didn’t you tell us? It’s a disgrace! Boom! There’s a campaign group and the local paper moans about a dearth of discussion.

Perhaps indignant passivity is a product of representative democracy, in which the citizen almost expects to be protected from her own prejudices by the enlightened representative. Under this system we are free to dissociate ourselves from the results.

I wonder whether this doesn’t infantilise us all. Perhaps we should be forced to live more directly with the consequences of our own decision-making, through much greater use of local plebiscites or the setting-up of citizens’ juries, who can hear all the facts and then decide on the complicated question of, say, whether the discomfort of motorists is more important than the lives of children.

It does irritate me when drivers complain. You’re in a car capable of killing anybody in an instant. The onus is not on other people to accommodate you.

Does the same apply to speed cameras? I think it’s extremely likely. I’m trying to educate myself on road safety so that the next time somebody explains how they’re justified in speeding in a 30mph zone I can properly nuke them from orbit.

If there are any owls reading, I have some advice: you do not help the whole endangered-species thing by sitting in the middle of the road while cars approach you. I would suggest that some people’s first reaction would be ‘wow, is that an owl’ (for you are cool creatures) instead of ‘I should take avoidance measures’. Happily, I did not run over one of your compatriots this evening, and I didn’t appreciate the ‘what the hell are you doing?’ stare as I passed him/her. I don’t know if you heard rumours of the eyes of cats, or what, but not so much with the roads. Trees. Telegraph poles. Mice family reunions. These are places to spend an evening.

This September, new safety regulations will require children below 135cm¹, and the age of 11, to use a child seat. It is the driver’s responsibility to ensure that this is the case, and fines of up to £500 can be imposed if it goes to court. A quick google search suggests that the average child hits 135cm at age nine. When I was eight, I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to be put into a car seat. There seems to be evidence that seat belts provide the most protection for those over 135cm², but whether it’s enough to make any real difference is an interesting question. Available data don’t seem to support the regulations.

Economist and Freakonomics author Steven Levitt examined data from the US Government’s “Fatality Analysis Reporting System”, which has collected police data on accidents since 1975, including details of whether and how restraints were used. Levitt concludes that:

among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts

Controlling for vehicle size, year of accident (are newer car seats better?) and severity of accident makes no difference.

This data is based on fatalities. What about injuries? That’s harder to analyse. Levitt and co-author Dubner commisioned various crash-tests using dummies based on children of various ages and with sensors to measure the force suffered. Although the force was greater with seat belts, due to their being designed for people over 135cm, it was below that considered likely to cause injury. The authors admit that this is by no means comprehensive, and say that different analyses of real-world data have produced conflicting results. It’s just not known whether car seats reduce injuries, at this point.

Parents go mental over car seats. They have to be installed by qualified technicians, often at considerable expense. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, of course - I’d probably be exactly the same: here’s something I can control relating to my kid’s safety, and I’m damn well going to do everything I can to comply with regulations. But if the effort put into car seat publicity were instead turned onto car manufacturers, to get them to design better seat belts, wouldn’t it save a large amount of needless expense, annoyance and worry?

Safety groups estimate that up to 60% of children don’t wear seat belts at all, and the adults aren’t much better, particularly if they’re in the back seat. Excuses, incidentally, range from “it’s just a short journey” to “it creases my clothes”. If people are happy to break the law currently, are child seat laws for children up to 11 going to make any difference?

Levitt and Dubner’s New York Times article is here, with more detail here. The preliminary academic report is here.

1. 4 feet 5 inches [↩]
2. why the age of 11 is specified, I don’t know [↩]

So there I was, minding my own business in a queue of traffic, when a huge silver 4×4 thing drove into the back of me. It wasn’t too jarring, but was enough that I needed to check for damage. In the mirror I saw Big Silver Man wave an oops/apology. Happily, there was a car park entrance within a couple of metres, so I pulled into that, expecting BSM to follow. He didn’t. I got out of the car, couldn’t see anything broken, looked up again and saw him still parked in the queue. I didn’t really know what to do at this point, so got back into the car. In the mirror I saw BSM point at me, then drive away. I guess he must have thought everything was ok, which it was, but I’m surprised he didn’t pull in to check.

I can’t stand driving. It’s an evil necessity, and I hate it. I particularly despise driving on hot, blue-sky days, because the sheer level of wank on the roads increases by orders of magnitude. There seem to be large numbers of people who think hot days mean they can drive any way they like, because they’re feeling good.

Driving from Stratford to Solihull is a half-hour trip, and today’s journeys were just awful. I’d look in the mirror, see a car in the distance, and within seconds it’d be on my back bumper. Most of the time they hover, swerve around a bit just so I know they’re there, then roar past at the first opportunity. I wish this didn’t piss me off, but I can’t help thinking that if anybody pulled out of nearby driveways or junctions, I’d be killed because somebody’s too stupid to understand road safety. Maybe they’re all rushing heavily bleeding passengers to hospital, or maybe they’re just thick. It’s not just this, though. Some people decide to teach me a lesson by tailgating, or backing off then zooming up real close. I decided to get out of the way of one van who did this repeatedly, and pulled into a layby as he roared past, horn blaring. There are also plenty of people who go too fast for corners, so cut across onto my side of the road. I’m a nervous wreck by the time I finish the trip.

The odd part is that the drive back, at 2300, was just as bad as driving there at 1800. In fact it was slightly worse, as sheer volume of traffic didn’t help slow things down. People must still be on a high from the day’s weather, I guess.

I’ve had people explain ‘the unofficial laws of the road’ to me (apparently 90’s the limit on the motorway, 60 everywhere else) and I guess this has a “sunny days = fun!” clause, but I can’t do it. I’m not going to break the law, even if 99% of people do. Maybe that makes me pathetic, naive, and deserving of ridicule, but I refuse to allow the possibility of killing somebody just because I was too weak to stand up for what I think’s right.

If anything’s going to make me move to London at some point, it’ll be the Tube. Getting around without a car would be so very nice.

Sorry. Some days it just gets the better of me. Bring on the clouds.

My sister was in a car accident a few weeks ago. She’s ok, but was pretty shaken up at the time. She was waiting at traffic lights in a nearby town when she saw a car approaching in the mirror. She watched it come a long way down the road towards her, and she realised it wasn’t slowing down. Being in a queue, there wasn’t anywhere she could go, and there wasn’t time to reverse and get out of the way. The car crashed into the back of her at 15-20mph. She called her boyfriend, who came straight out. The other car was a write-off, its bonnet completely crumpled. Jane’s had a major dent in the back, but was still drivable. She went to hospital and was checked over. They took some x-rays of her neck but pronounced her ok to go home.

I heard about this the same evening, directly from Jane over MSN, so knew she couldn’t be too badly hurt. I then realised that Megan would have been in the car, and it turned out she was in the boot. Happily she was unharmed - the other car crumpled far more than Jane’s was compressed - and Meg, being the big lump that she is, must have simply bounced around. Meg’s been fine ever since, but Jane’s had problems. A week after the accident she received a phone call from the hospital to say that they’d re-examined her x-rays and wanted her to come back in for a check-up. She said that her neck had been hurting a fair bit, and they put a consultant on the line who, after a couple of questions, told her to come in immediately. She was then diagnosed with a fractured neck, and the poor thing’s been in a hard neck brace ever since. Despite only being allowed to take it off for showers, and developing a nasty cold in the meantime, she’s coping remarkably well, and they should be able to swap it for a soft brace next week sometime.

The car, incidentally, developed a crack down the front windscreen a few days later, and for a while we thought it would be written off. The garage managed to repair it, however.

I haven’t mentioned this before because I was worried she wouldn’t want everybody to know, but I don’t think she’ll mind now. The reason I bring it up is that I thought I was going to have a similar accident this evening. I was in the same town, waiting at the next set of traffic lights. It was about 2320, so there wasn’t much traffic around. The lights went green and I pulled away. I remember seeing a pair of headlights round the corner maybe 150m behind me. I was maybe ten metres further on, glanced in the mirror again, and saw that this car was almost at the junction I just crossed. I’ve never seen anybody going so fast around there. I wasn’t too worried as the road was straight and there were no other cars, so there was plenty of room to overtake. Except, it didn’t. I watched it roar up behind me and finally swerved to the left into a (very) happily-placed drive entrance. The car must have pulled out at the last possible moment, and it can’t have missed me by much. I half expected a police car to appear, but one didn’t. I’ve never been approached at that speed before, but the whole thing was over so fast that everything was instinctive and it wasn’t until afterwards I started to think about it.

Some days, I really hate driving. The sooner we get Minority Report style transport systems the better.

Dear Mr Man-I-Saw-On-The-Stratford-Road,

Thank you very much for flashing your lights at me this morning. When I rounded the corner and saw the police officers, I realised that you were warning me of the possibility of being fined for speeding. However, it may have escaped your attention that I was not, in fact, speeding. Furthermore, I actually had no intention of doing so.

Perhaps you noticed that the road we were travelling along has many houses, side-streets and obscured driveways? I suggest that I would deserve to get fined were I to speed along it. The fact that the road is straight does not actually cause me accelerate to whatever arbitrary speed I have decided is safe.

That’s aside from the small matter of the law, which is not, contrary to your apparent opinion, formed just to annoy drivers. Speed limits, it may surprise you to know, are there for safety reasons, and given that you have the privilege of driving a vehicle capable of killing somebody in a split-second it is not unreasonable to expect you to follow them, and the police to enforce them.

If, next time, you could perhaps not assume I’m an ignorant, law-breaking, dangerous, arrogant fool like yourself, I would appreciate it very much.

Many thanks,

Andrew

• We bought some spray that claims to null Megan’s come-hither scent for a short while, so I’ve taken her on some brief walks. I’m avoiding the park and not letting her off the lead, but it’s better than nothing. I don’t get so antsy or feel guilty, Meg’s very happy with the whole arrangement, and other dogs look a little confused when they walk by.
• This annoys me. I’m sure they think they’re very clever, but have they actually read the book? No matter how authoritarian you think the state is becoming, it’s nothing like that bad. Stop being silly.
• I’m hungry. What’s wrong with me at the moment? Maybe I have a tapeworm. Wait, does that really happen?
• Double kudos to Anna Ford: firstly, for pointing out that Michael Buerk is a muppet, and secondly for not going with the obvious yet slightly tacky retort.
• New speed cameras are calculating average speed over long distances, like between motorway junctions. Fantastic! I await with interest the response from the speed-freaks concerned road users. What will their excuse legitimate concern be this time? Given that I know perhaps two people who agree with me that it’s not ok to break speed limits except in emergencies, this can only be a good thing.
• A documentary about the mating habits of emperor penguins has out-grossed Bowling for Columbine in the US and is on the way to becoming the most popular documentary ever. Not surprising - who doesn’t like penguins?