Pro-motorist legislation
From ChapmanCentral
It is asserted by some militant motorists that road taxation and legislation restricting speeding and other common driver behaviour is anti motorist.
I disagree. In fact, I think it is arguably pro-motorist. Here's why.
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Society and risk
Society permits people to do many things which put themselves and others at risk. And where that risk exceeds a certain level, society has historically attempted to mitigate the risk with controls. There are many examples, but you might want to consider as examples the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Where there is benefit, or no overwhelming evidence of disbenefit, the restrictions are light. Where the risk is high, as with alcohol in combination with youth or operation of a motor vehicle, restrictions are more aggressive.
Overall, then, society meddles in our private lives in a way which, by and large, we accept, because we are co-beneficiaries of the safer environment this brings.
Sometimes the reaction gets silly, as with "dangerous trees" - as John Adams points out, the level of tree-related fatality is below the level of one per million annually which They (i.e. we) consider an acceptable benchmark for a statistically ignorable risk.
Sometimes the reaction lags behind the real danger, as it did for a long time with smoking.
Sometimes (mostly, actually), the controls fail the standard Adams test for an effective risk control mechanism, exhibiting "bottom loop bias" (see Risk). But perhaps this is an overly harsh judgement; the legislation and penalties applied to drink-driving have succeeded in making drink-driving socially unacceptable in most contexts, and that cannot be bad.
Private motoring
Private motoring is a divisive, elitist activity that is necessarily and permanently denied to a substantial minority of the population, and functionally denied to a much larger group due to economic and other constraints. Some of these have-nots may benefit some of the time, through lifts or family, but they also suffer disproportionately the disbenefits of private motoring, including road traffic danger and the decline of public transport.
Motoring, our private convenience, is gained at the cost of increased inconvenience and danger for the most powerless and vulnerable in society. Children in particular are adversely affected by a culture of widespread private car use, in reduced fitness, lost freedom, and increased danger when travelling independently (something increasingly denied to children in the UK).
Motoring legislation
Motoring legislation is aimed at achieving a number of goals:
- Mitigating the risk drivers pose to themselves and others
- Recovering some the costs of motoring to the economy, including
- Health costs
- Injuries
- Lost tax and earnings from fatalities
- Policing
- Repair of damage to infrastructure (pollution damage to buildings, wear and tear)
- Loss of commons
- Environmental degradation
And so on. Most credible evidence suggests that it is only in the last decade or so that private motoring has come anywhere close to paying its way, and it has a lot of historical deficit to make up. For at least half a century, private motoring was heavily subsidised from the public purse, often at the expense of public transport.
Pro-motorist legislation
So, how is legislation restricting or imposing costs on the motorist anything other than anti-motorist?
Consider.
What would happen if we allowed absolutely everybody to drive a car? Regardless of competence? An absurd idea, of course, and not very likely. So we have a test, abysmally inadequate, and licensing.
What would happen if we allowed people to drive a car until it fell to pieces? Silly. The MoT test, for all its faults, was a reaction to a genuine problem.
What would happen if we let everyone, however incompetent, drive as fast as they liked wherever they liked? Ludicrous. The carnage would be beyond imagining, you have only to listen to the clamour of parents for 20mph limits outside their schools to realise that drivers can be shockingly inconsiderate of the environment around them. It's too easy to forget where you are and who else is there.
In my experience the most militant petrolheads are also the most unassaibaly convinced of their own superiority as drivers. And why not? Over 80% of drivers are above average, at least according to their own assessment.
The false perception
So why does speed legislation, say, fail the "yeah, but..." test? Why are so many motorists so determined that speed control legislation is an insupportable restriction of their liberty? Because, of course, risk is culturally constructed. What we perceive as safe cannot possibly be dangerous. Even if, objectively, it actually is.
And that is why legislation controlling and regulating private motoring is actually pro-motorist. It enables us, the selfish underskilled overconfident haves, to gain all the benefits of private motoring (even if we would rather it were somewhat less widely available, particularly on the way to and from work) without completely destroying the society and common space in which we live.
