Note for next week and other random musings

[stellar_muddle]

Torchwood is not on the same channel as Dr Who. This should be remembered when programing the video (yes, I know, how quaint...).
Sigh. Fairly certain I saw it in Au, but still...

And mentioned in the seminar today:
http://www.ecodrive.org/
Personally less interested in the CO2 emission implications as the minor side effect of reducing the road crashes... Cause people will drive more slowly in better maintained cars to reduce their carbon footprint rather than cause it is cheaper and less people might die when they crash... Silly people.

You never did get the rant that resulted from attending the road safety bit of the police research symposium last week (appart from those of you at lunch on Sat the following weekend:)).

Brief summary/random remembered bits:
Blood alcohol limit. Just don't drink then drive. Your risk of crash is quite a few times your normal risk level when not pissed, at just under the legal limit (see the pdf linked off here for details, 1st graph, front page). Even at lower levels such as Australia's 50 mg/100ml limit, you still have a much higher risk. Being at the limit doesn't really mean you are "safe" to drive, you are just somewhat less likely to kill or injure anyone. Just don't.
It might also just be a bit safer if no one under 20 years old were allowed to drive (but that may just be me examining too many age crash profiles). People are capable of stupidity at all sorts of ages though.
You only have so much attention to spread around. Use it wisely.
We shall save speed for another time.

And in case anyone is wondering, after a little over 6 months in the job, yes I am quite enjoying it, though it can occasionally get a little depressing. And it is a very good group of people to work with.

Comments

[cataragon.livejournal.com]

The problem I have with the "under-20 year olds maybe shouldn't drive" is that I have a theory that some of that demographic isn't to do with immature responses or youth culture or whatever, but simply lack of experience. I think people are more likely to have crashes when they've been driving for less than four years. So I wonder, if the driving age moved up, whether the crashes would move up too?
On the other hand, it could be more that young people can be idiots. I don't know.

C.

[stellar-muddle.livejournal.com]

I have the nasty suspicion that a lot may have to do with risk accessment ability and brain hardwiring in terms of where you are at that age with respect to brain development (and possibly testosterone levels but that is something else entirely). But I don't have any references to hand so that should be taken with a grain of salt. It definitely isn't a "youth of today/they weren't like that in my day" thing. And as with any population, there will be the extremes of the bell curve at either end; some perfectly safe and sensible, others not.

But experience will play a major role (eg in training/hardwiring in the appropriate actions etc), especially in reactions when things do go wrong so as to not make the situation far far worse.

Mind you, says the person with sod all driving experience (I might have made to to 10 hours before we left Australia...)