Drive on the wrong side!
Discussion
A speeding debate broke out on a mailing list I subscribe to, and all the pro/anti arguments that PistonHeaders have ever made came out. It resulted in a humourous post by one of the members that I thought you'd appreciate
person 1 said:
> Who was talking about a safe speed? There is only a legal speed limit.
person 2 said:
That's the crux of the matter.
If you speed, there are only two possible explanations -
1) You lack the skills to maintain sufficient control, or
2) You feel that you can choose which laws apply to you.
I think I'll go and drive with 20% of the car over the center line.
person 3 said:
> So you feel that driving INTO oncomming traffic is no more dangerous than exceeding a speed limit?
comedian in New Zealand said:
1. Other people will compensate for the behaviour so it's safe. (Works extremely well in Bangkok)(I kid you not).
2. It makes other people MUCH more alert so they will then drive MUCH more safely.
3. As long as you have a fast modern car it's OK.
4. As long as you are more skilled than the average driver and understand and can compensate for the consequences of your actions it's OK.
5 Other people who can't handle this are a danger to all of us and should be retrained or taken off the road.
6 Modern roads are much wider than they need to be. Centrelines were drawn and are designed with old fashioned auto technology in mind. The planners are hopelessly out of date and don't realise that you can do this safely in a good car if you are a good driver.
7 Lane markings are just a government plot to extract revenue from motorists when they fail to comply with their stupid archaic limitations.
8 Government keeps saying that failure to stick in lanes on one side of the road is the reason for accidents and painting bigger centrelines and more yellow lines and more warning signs. all the time
they are missing the point. It's people's inattention while driving that's the problem. if they paid adequate attention to my driving then where I am relative to the centreline would not be an issue. if they insist on smoking, talking on cell phones, talking to people in the car, or adjusting their radio then OF COURSE they will have trouble with cars sitting across the centre line. How obvious can it be and how long are we going to be saddled with stupid restrictions when the real cause of the problem is ignored.
9 I have driven with my wing 30% of the way across the centreline all the way from Auckland to Palmerston North with no problems at all. It's clearly not a problem!
10 Driving across centre lines doesn't kill people - people kill people.
(And, fwiw, if I and the oncoming traffic drive slow enough the energy involved becomes utterly negligible and there's never a problem even if we both drive across the centreline - why is it that i have to keep explaining this? - why can't people accept the obvious when i state it???)
spacecat said:
The thing is, I wasnt sure if RM was serious or not.
It always supprises me how many of the "list" are so anti speeding.
Me too, I thought engineers were likely to have more common sense than average and would also tend to question if "assumptions" were actualy valid.
I think RM was simply making a point in a humourous way
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