The Burghers of Swindon (a dead town famous only for its page 3 models) have apparently decided to give up speed cameras and spend the money on some other, unspecified method of traffic control. Naturally, the mad petro-apologists are out in force again, claiming that speed cameras cause more accidents than they prevent, specifically, by causing a 'concertina-effect' as traffic speeds up between camera areas, then slows suddenly as it approaches them.
This argument that cameras cause people to drive recklessly is invariably made by the same people who claim that the poor are not forced by poverty to steal. That that the individual is always responsible - for the behaviour of their children, for their income, for all their misery - but not for driving too fast and for ignoring the safety of others while driving a car. Many drivers see speed limits as recommended doses, or serving suggestions, rather than rules which are there for the benefit if everyone and which, sadly, are there to be obeyed - Jeremy. The individual is always to blame - except when in a car as powerful as 100 horses - which may well be true.
Human beings granted superhuman power have a record of becoming monsters. The same principle that Power Corrupts is just as true about Joe Soap in his Vauxhall Sinatra as it was about messrs Schickelgruber and Djugashvili with their shock troops and tank battalions.
Happily, there is some hope in the coincedental news today that drivers who kill with their cars are now more likely to face possible prison sentences. They are still to be allowed to reduce you to a vegetable, or put you in a wheelchair for life, or indeed shorten your life drastically, and still only face a fine of just over £2000. But if they manage to kill you, your death is to be treated a bit less like an overhead of the transport system and more like a murder.
B.R.A.K.E.
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