Nuxx:2f4b8afb-2fce-4038-b8f3-d90276025c78@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <2f4b8afb-2fce-4038-b8f3-d90276025c78@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Chapman: One Of Many Ridiculous Statements Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:50:53 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 39 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.145.93 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1217346653 11958 127.0.0.1 (29 Jul 2008 15:50:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:50:53 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.145.93; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3268 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:659563

From http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk:8080/Web/public.nsf/printerfriendly/Paul_Smith:

"I am reluctant to leave the judgement of appropriate speed to the driver, for two excellent reasons: first, the driver is not impartial - any benefit from going faster accrues to them, and most of the danger accrues to others; and second, most drivers overestimate their skill."

So, Crapman is "reluctant to leave the judgement of appropriate speed to the driver"? That's strange, because even if every metre of road in this country was covered by speed cameras, drivers would *still* have to judge the appropriate speed within the speed limit. (And they do it very well, which is why (for example) you get millions of queues at traffic lights every day without drivers ploughing into the back of the queue or anything else like that.)

So, why has Crapman made such a statement on a pro-speed camera page? I can think of two possible reasons.

1. Crapman's understanding of the driving process is so woeful that he really believes that speed cameras (coupled with stupidly low speed limits) cause the driver not to need to judge appropriate speed.

2. Crapman knows perfectly well that judging an appropriate speed is a fundamental part of driving. He knows that you can't have driving without drivers judging an appropriate speed; therefore, since he's against drivers judging an appropriate speed, he is against driving full stop. Which, of course, has been obvious for a very long time.

Personally, I think it's probably 2. I also like the pompous anti- motorist bollocks that follows, which basically makes out that all motorists are so selfish that they'll routinely and quite happily put other people in genuine danger just so that they can get to their destination quicker. If that's not anti-motorist rhetoric then what is? How dare he claim that all motorists hold the lives of other road users in such scant regard? The hypocrisy is unbelievable, considering that it's Chapman who actually holds the lives of road users in scant regard; we know that because he supports cameras despite knowing that they kill people.