Yesterday's news

[j4]

Another of those news-article-with-comment fragments (believe it or not, I'm deleting more than I post: down to 113 once this one's been exorcised). Again, unedited except that I've made the URL into a hyperlink for convenience.

Lib Dem transport spokesman Norman Baker said: "Young drivers could face legal problems because they have had a couple of drinks the night before or used alcohol in cooking. The answer is a lower limit for all drivers."

The reference to "young drivers" make it sound as though being a "driver" is something inherent, essential, rather than merely a choice on a case-by-case basis to perform an action. In fact, in that sense, it's a bit like drinking: so why don't we say that young drinkers could face legal problems just because they have a couple of car-journeys? They're equally absurd. Neither drinking nor driving is essential or irreversible; there's nothing illogical about legislating to make them mutually exclusive choices.

The question of why it should only apply to "young" people is another matter entirely, and seems to me to be supporting the idea that drink-driving is something you can do when you're a better driver: this may indeed be true, but who decides who "counts" as a "better" driver? Older drivers, who (may) have more experience? Younger drivers, who (may) have quicker reflexes? Either way, since the majority of people believe they're above average competence as drivers, this seems like a dangerous idea to propagate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7505018.stm

The reason I never post these things at the time is that I feel I can't post them without hedging around everything a bit more, making sure that every possible argument is covered, making sure I'm not categorically stating anything that isn't 100% verifiable fact. Not being interpreted as categorically stating anything, etc. Not apparently being interpreted as, etc. Endlessly backing off, bent double with différence. The more I start to hedge, the more arguments come crawling out from under the stone, the more it all unravels, until I'm incapable of saying anything. Every thought is just a flamewar that I haven't been burned by yet: in the acorn, the tree; in the tree, the dead wood, the pyre.

Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I fear - and consider it an informed fear worth worrying about - that every post, and every comment, I make is wrong, or a mistake, somehow. You are not alone.

There's a quote that I'm going to mangle that runs along the lines of "If ((humanity)) waited long enough to do anything so that no ((human)) could find fault with it, nothing would ever get done", and part of me feels that that has to be the spirit in going ahead and making imperfect but better-than-nothing contributions, give or take a bit of doubt over the anthropocentricity.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I feel I can't post them without hedging around everything a bit more,

I know what you mean. The ironic thing is that I do it on both sides; the problem is partially in the situation as well as in the people.

I find myself critiquing a post for essentially irrelevant stuff, which is often interesting, but frustrating for whoever made it. But conversely, I'm torn between being bold and sweeping, and striving to be unimpeccably correct.

I get a visceral sense of satisfaction from being sweeping (cf. http://maddox.xmission.com/), and it's often more interesting to read. And yet, I always value correctness, and always feel guilty when some pedant comes along and says "when you said X was ALWAYS useless, in fact, it's often useful in [long list of edge cases]". I've heard the same thing from big bloggers: sometimes the most interesting stuff is when they had a small audience and felt free to let rip with their opinions: now people expect them to be RIGHT and every minor point generates 100s of pedants who quibble with it.

[shermarama]

I think there is a specific problem with younger drivers, in that the 17-20 age group are the ones it costs a bomb to get insurance for because they're always bloody crashing, and governments always seem to be perplexed by this and constantly try and introduce new bits of legislation to do something about it, regardless of whether the thing they do is any use or not. There's probably alcohol involved in a certain number of accidents involving 17-20 year olds, so they say hey, let's ban it, and the only way I can see that leading to improved figures is because a certain number of young drivers who have had something to drink but not enough to actually affect their concentration will get caught out and taken off the road, while the younger drivers who get trollied and crash because they're young and think they're bulletproof will still get trollied and crash because they're young and think they're bulletproof. This is surely provable because it's not a limit being proposed for new drivers; why should someone who's 24 and just got their licence be magically more competent on the roads than a 17 year old? And yet they are; the insurance costs a lot less. So the logical thing to do is just raise the age people can get a driving licence at, but then there are bits of the UK where a car is the key to being able to get to work, so that really wouldn't help with youth unemployment, or with bringing about the sort of maturity and responsibility that leads to 24 year olds being much less likely to crash their car than 17 year olds...

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Being a driver is apparently something inherent, essential. When I responded to the DFT consultation on changes to the driving test, I was asked to identify myself as a driver or... "pre-driver".