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January 21, 2008
Safety unsafe ...
I was recently listening to a news programme and almost choked on my tea. Now the "Raod Safety" nutters want to make it a custodial offence to use a mobile phone while driving. It seems that the fines aren't detering people. Doesn't this tell these morons something? Doesn't it tell them that people are being forced to break the law because the law is out of proportion already?
Yes, there is a safety problem with using a mobile phone while driving, but what the Whitehall Wankers and their chaffeur driven pals in Westminster, or their cycling "safety" advisers in the National Road Safety Association haven't asked is why are people obliged to. The bigger question is - how can it be made safer since it seems inevitable that people will be forced to at some stage. OK, so the argument is that you are distracted (Theior research says so anyway), and I would certainly agree that there are people who use a phone while driving in the most stupid conditions. Surely the sensible thing is to make it compulsory for every car to be fitted with a phone dock which is completely hands free and barrs outgoing calls? Yet, if it is a distraction to have a phone, why is it considered perfectly OK for some idiot to drive around in a car fitted with a stereo system that can be heard four blocks away? Or to have any passengers and to hold conversations with them? In fact, the last close call I had was not caused by someone using a phone or their stereo, but a woman with a car load of kids, who was so busy arguing with the backseat passengers that she wandered across two lanes and only my horns alerted her to the fact that she was heading for the armco barrier in the central reservation as she cut across the front of my car.
And if you are reading this madam, the V sign you flashed was the wrong way round.
The latest target of these so-called "safety experts" is the GPS now fitted or used by many of us. "Distraction" they scream, "Ban it", or, "Make it a criminal offence to use on!" Well, as long as they stick to riding the old fashioned sit up[ and beg bicycles or their broomsticks, they probably don't need them. But, as someone who has had to navigate around this country solo (and remember I have only been living here for the last twenty years) I have found the GPS an absolute godsend. I can concentrate on the traffic around me and rely on the GPS to find the turns, the addresses and so on. What would the "safety" twits prefer? That I drive at 5 mph while looking for the street names and sign posts they have had so cunningly concealed so that they are visible only from one approach and not the other? Far from making motoring safer, banning the use of GPS will make a return of the moron driving with a map book on his or her steering wheel far more likely - and believe me, I have seen quite a number of those.
Frankly, it should be made a criminal offence to lead a "safety" campaign from now on. It is time to restore the application of Common Sense. It beats the hell out of all this stupid legislation and nannying idiocy any day!
Posted by The Gray Monk at January 21, 2008 02:04 PM
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