There are many things about cars which you are legally obliged to do, or not do, despite you owning the car. It would be difficult to see how is significantly different.
Cars are big, hard and move fast. It's not unreasonable that there are limitations put on these devices so that they are safe for everybody else.
Drink-driving laws current exist and are fairly punitive; stopping it up front sounds like a good thing. Of course, the system has to work well, not be intrusive, not have false positives and so forth. All of these seem good reasons to object.
The slippery slope argument, or "it's my freedom" argument are fine, but then they apply reasonably well to pretty much anything. Makes them pretty weak as an specific argument as in this case.
Years ago, we used to have ring pulls. Now, we have ring pushes. No longer are cities and countries covered with ring pulls. No longer do you risk lacerations from ring pulls on the beach.
Do we still have rubbish in our cities? Well, yes. Can you still get your feet cut on broken glass on the beach? Well, yes. But it is better than it was, and this is no nothing, it is a good thing.
Getting rid of plastic cutlery is a small thing also. But, it is probably a good thing, unless it becomes an excuse for not doing other things. But, let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It is signalling virtue, because it is virtuous. Not very virtuous, but a little bit.
We've just switched to using compostable, biodegradable materials, either plastic like materials for the knifes and forks, and paper based materials for the plates. They are different in feel, and touch. They last as well for the duration of the meal and they get the food into your mouth. It all works perfectly well.
Is it window dressing? A little. It's drinking bottles are the real problem. But, still, it is better than nothing and big things are made of lots of small things.
Amsterdam and the entire Netherlands is the best example, of course. Copenhagen is very human-transport friendly. Barcelona is taking very radical strides with its superblock structure. London is trying. A bit. With patchy success.
In the US, there are no real beacons, but some cities are better than others. San Francisco, Portland, for example. On the East Coast, Boston in parts, and some of New York could be given the low rates of car ownership. But, yes, there is a long way to go here.
In terms of pollution, China is electrifying its entire bus fleet and adding more. Even in India, cities are converting their Tuk-Tuks to LPG and electric.
"People drive the safest when they are at a speed that they feel comfortable at. "
I think that you have very little evidence for this. The slower cars drive, the safer they are. It's works better if all the cars in the vicinity drive at about the same speed, and if there are limitations of lane swapping. The literature and support for this is extensive; it is the basis for the "smart motorway" developments in the UK.
Curiously, by reducing the speed limits on motorways, you actually increase the throughput as well; this is because people drive more smoothly, there is less jumping on the breaks. This is before you factor in the additional time taken by people when there is crash which can involve extremely long delays for many people. As well as dead people.
"It is also important to remember that people don't always have great choices here either."
Yes, indeed. Some countries have been good at ensuring that people have choices; others have just gone the car route.
"That employer now tells me that I am working out of an office 30 minutes away (best case) by car, way out in the sticks somewhere, and I can like it or lump it."
Or expect a reasonable redundancy package; at least that would be how it would be in a country with sensible employment rights.
"As a side note, I routinely find myself going 80 mph+ on the highway with a posted limit of 55 mph. Fuck speed limiter devices."
If you crash, with luck you will survive or kill only yourself.
Yes, well, I come up with a clear counter example to your statement. And then you say, "ah well, that doesn't count because of something else that I have just thought of".
There are many cities that have started to put in more enlightened transport policies that more cars, going faster, killing more people. In answer to your question "how small is my world", well, the bit that I live in at any one time is probably about the same size as yours.
5mph is a (fast) walking pace. 8-9 is a slow walking pace. Cyclists travel at about 12 on average. Fit cyclists can maintain 18-20 for elongated periods of time.
For comparison, 12mph is around about the average speed of a car in a city, and 3mph is about the length of an average journey.
"Likewise, your freedom to quiet, peaceful, unpolluted cities with high-quality pavements and good bike routes contradicts my freedom to a hustle-bustle, high-GDP, high-income and high-tech economic powerhouse city."
Yes, indeed. I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks, and I was really struck by the poverty, by the total lack of development, and complete lack of technology. Lets not head in that direction.
Of course, none of that is true. Having a high-quality pavements and good bike routes help to enable high-income, high quality of living environments, rather than contradict it. Cities have become noisy, polluted, unpleasant environments because we chose to make them that way, not because it is a necessary part of their function.
"How about you stop trying to spin your selfish desires as "MUH FREE-DUMBS"?"
Indeed, I was just responding to the idea that speed limiters are "anti-freedom". This is not a question about freedom, it's a question about what sort of place we want to live in. We've followed an urbanisation model for many years that more cars makes better cities. That was wrong and it is time that we changed it.
"How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"
You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.
"And then of course there is the emergency aspects of this - you're being chased, or you're attempting to get the H out of the woods before it burns down entirely, or you're just keeping in front of the mile-wide tornado, etc. etc."
That's more complicated. You make the mistake, I think, of assuming that this will keep your more safe, but of course, people die in road accidents when there is wildfire or a tornado also.
"And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space"
There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road. So both have a risk. The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive.
"one of the biggest reasons we have 350 million privately owned firearms in a country"
Yes, indeed, and you are prepare to accept the extraordinary numbers of gun related deaths that this causes. It's your country, all up to you. I am pleased to see that Europe is moving in a more positive direction.
That's the point of a goal -- something to aim toward. I think it is a goal we should have, rather than the current situation where we consider the deaths of many people an acceptable compromise.
"No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."
Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.
I think that argument cuts both ways to be honest. People who want to commute long distances tend to pretty vocal about societies providing them with good roads, about having parking spaces in the other end, and asking the people in between to put up with the pollution, the noise and the risk of death that they cause.
I think that this argument has held too much credence for a long time, and it is time we should stop. It not an argument about liberty but about what we want our cities to be for.
This is true to an extent, but learning to relax and not stressing out is a somewhat effective way of treating stomach ulcers. Not terrible effective, but it does work.
Diseases with a physical cause can still be cured without medicines and sometimes this is the best we have. Telling someone with a cold to sleep and take plenty of fluids is not to suggest that the cold is psychosomatic. It's just the best we have.
The problem is that fixing tool affects lots and lots of other people. Change the tools, and you break lots of other projects that many not thank you for it, even if it's for long term good. Or, alternatively, some of them use your new versions of tools and some of them do not. Then you have fragmentation.
It's not only debian which has these problems of course. Old mature projects are slow, slow, slow to change.
Probably not many, and probably not it won't. Probably that is because Volvo is trying to put in place this kind of measure to avoid any actual legislation.
So, is this a good idea? At 112mph, no I am pretty indifferent to it. At 70mph, for all cars, its a good idea. Geofencing would be better (assuming the technology works).
This is a really, really silly argument. In the UK, several thousand people a year die when a car driver hits them with their vehicle. Speed is a factor in 20 or 30% of those cases.
You can find one counter example to most things. A single counter example is a strong argument in maths. Outside of this, it is a trivial anecdote.
So, if you want to drive down the motor way with a 6 foot long sharp iron spike on the front of a car with no breaks, that's fine?
Cars kill lots of people. We have, over the years, putting a significant number of safety restrictions on cars. This is right and proper. I don't know why they haven't had speed limiters fitted years ago. Simple, easy to do and would have a small but measurable impact on peoples life.
Small, because speeding cars mostly kill people at much lower speeds than this.
The problem with the "I want to live in a free society" argument is that you can use it to justify anything you like at all. Including one person taking risks and another person paying the price for it.
Let's be clear here; the article is about limiting a 1000kg of metal to move less than 112mph. This is way, way, far away from safety scissors or butter knifes.
Of course, these things are not good, and producing more pollution is a bad things.
But, I think, it's hard to argue really, that a speeding car is political correctness, snowflakism or what ever other alt-right phrase is flavour of the month.
A speeding car is actually, a large and fast moving lump of metal. These lumps of metal are responsible for a large number of deaths every year; there is very little that an individual can do to protect themselves from the risk that other people driving cars badly can cause. As the energy of a collision goes up very quickly with speed, excessive speed significantly increases the risk of death of anyone hit.
Speed limits are good. Enforcing speed limits is good. Having cars do this more intelligently might be good if it works properly.
Photosynthesis does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere, unless the total amount of biomass increases. Or, alternatively, you take the biomass, turn it into charcoal (which is no longer biomass) and then, for example, bury it, or dump it at sea. The advantage with a chemical process for doing this rather than growing trees is that the chemical process is likely not to take up much land.
Maybe. But, green energy production has grown massively and consistently out performs expectations for its growth. Nuclear technology has not. It's difficult to argue that it scales; theoretically, yes, but in practice no.
"Don't tell me that nuclear power is too expensive because the governments of the world are certainly willing to spend gobs of money on worthless wind, solar, and other "green" energy. They are also certainly willing to spend gobs of money fighting over the scraps of carbon left on the table."
Green energy is not worthless. And the idea that it is heavily subsidised is out of date -- Coal, for example, in the US is subsidised and most of it would not be viable without.
You are right about nuclear power in other ways, I think. There is a case for it. But, it's probalby too late now. Nuclear power plants take a long time develop and much of the energy grid is being re-worked so not require single large sources (i.e. make it better for renewables).
Okay, so you cannot see any evidence that global warming and climate change is affecting you, even though the evidence is there, it is overwhelming and the effective is very significant.
That's fine, so here is how it is affecting you in your daily life. Another people are concerned about the massive impact that fossil fuels are having on the world, that economics is changing and their lifespan as a viable source of energy is limited. So, everything that you do that depends on fossil fuels is already and will increasingly change. Is that going to change your life? I think it will.
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There are many things about cars which you are legally obliged to do, or not do, despite you owning the car. It would be difficult to see how is significantly different.
Cars are big, hard and move fast. It's not unreasonable that there are limitations put on these devices so that they are safe for everybody else.
Drink-driving laws current exist and are fairly punitive; stopping it up front sounds like a good thing. Of course, the system has to work well, not be intrusive, not have false positives and so forth. All of these seem good reasons to object.
The slippery slope argument, or "it's my freedom" argument are fine, but then they apply reasonably well to pretty much anything. Makes them pretty weak as an specific argument as in this case.
"Virtue signalling that accomplishes nothing."
Years ago, we used to have ring pulls. Now, we have ring pushes. No longer are cities and countries covered with ring pulls. No longer do you risk lacerations from ring pulls on the beach.
Do we still have rubbish in our cities? Well, yes. Can you still get your feet cut on broken glass on the beach? Well, yes. But it is better than it was, and this is no nothing, it is a good thing.
Getting rid of plastic cutlery is a small thing also. But, it is probably a good thing, unless it becomes an excuse for not doing other things. But, let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It is signalling virtue, because it is virtuous. Not very virtuous, but a little bit.
We've just switched to using compostable, biodegradable materials, either plastic like materials for the knifes and forks, and paper based materials for the plates. They are different in feel, and touch. They last as well for the duration of the meal and they get the food into your mouth. It all works perfectly well.
Is it window dressing? A little. It's drinking bottles are the real problem. But, still, it is better than nothing and big things are made of lots of small things.
Amsterdam and the entire Netherlands is the best example, of course. Copenhagen is very human-transport friendly. Barcelona is taking very radical strides with its superblock structure. London is trying. A bit. With patchy success.
In the US, there are no real beacons, but some cities are better than others. San Francisco, Portland, for example. On the East Coast, Boston in parts, and some of New York could be given the low rates of car ownership. But, yes, there is a long way to go here.
In terms of pollution, China is electrifying its entire bus fleet and adding more. Even in India, cities are converting their Tuk-Tuks to LPG and electric.
"People drive the safest when they are at a speed that they feel comfortable at. "
I think that you have very little evidence for this. The slower cars drive, the safer they are. It's works better if all the cars in the vicinity drive at about the same speed, and if there are limitations of lane swapping. The literature and support for this is extensive; it is the basis for the "smart motorway" developments in the UK.
Curiously, by reducing the speed limits on motorways, you actually increase the throughput as well; this is because people drive more smoothly, there is less jumping on the breaks. This is before you factor in the additional time taken by people when there is crash which can involve extremely long delays for many people. As well as dead people.
"It is also important to remember that people don't always have great choices here either."
Yes, indeed. Some countries have been good at ensuring that people have choices; others have just gone the car route.
"That employer now tells me that I am working out of an office 30 minutes away (best case) by car, way out in the sticks somewhere, and I can like it or lump it."
Or expect a reasonable redundancy package; at least that would be how it would be in a country with sensible employment rights.
"As a side note, I routinely find myself going 80 mph+ on the highway with a posted limit of 55 mph. Fuck speed limiter devices."
If you crash, with luck you will survive or kill only yourself.
Yes, well, I come up with a clear counter example to your statement. And then you say, "ah well, that doesn't count because of something else that I have just thought of".
There are many cities that have started to put in more enlightened transport policies that more cars, going faster, killing more people. In answer to your question "how small is my world", well, the bit that I live in at any one time is probably about the same size as yours.
5mph is a (fast) walking pace. 8-9 is a slow walking pace. Cyclists travel at about 12 on average. Fit cyclists can maintain 18-20 for elongated periods of time.
For comparison, 12mph is around about the average speed of a car in a city, and 3mph is about the length of an average journey.
"Likewise, your freedom to quiet, peaceful, unpolluted cities with high-quality pavements and good bike routes contradicts my freedom to a hustle-bustle, high-GDP, high-income and high-tech economic powerhouse city."
Yes, indeed. I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks, and I was really struck by the poverty, by the total lack of development, and complete lack of technology. Lets not head in that direction.
Of course, none of that is true. Having a high-quality pavements and good bike routes help to enable high-income, high quality of living environments, rather than contradict it. Cities have become noisy, polluted, unpleasant environments because we chose to make them that way, not because it is a necessary part of their function.
"How about you stop trying to spin your selfish desires as "MUH FREE-DUMBS"?"
Indeed, I was just responding to the idea that speed limiters are "anti-freedom". This is not a question about freedom, it's a question about what sort of place we want to live in. We've followed an urbanisation model for many years that more cars makes better cities. That was wrong and it is time that we changed it.
"How do you pass a car doing 45 mph on a road limited at 55 mph?"
You wait. Safety compromising convenience seems reasonable to me.
"And then of course there is the emergency aspects of this - you're being chased, or you're attempting to get the H out of the woods before it burns down entirely, or you're just keeping in front of the mile-wide tornado, etc. etc."
That's more complicated. You make the mistake, I think, of assuming that this will keep your more safe, but of course, people die in road accidents when there is wildfire or a tornado also.
"And its FAR more difficult to attempt that by slowing and dropping into a space behind that car, as there may not be such a space"
There may not be a space in front either. Slowing down, speeding up, both have the same effect of changing your speed relative to the car which is in your way, and both of them leave you going at a different speed relatively to the bulk of cars on the road. So both have a risk. The advantage of slowing down is that if there is a collision, you'll be going slightly slower, so more more likely to survive.
"one of the biggest reasons we have 350 million privately owned firearms in a country"
Yes, indeed, and you are prepare to accept the extraordinary numbers of gun related deaths that this causes. It's your country, all up to you. I am pleased to see that Europe is moving in a more positive direction.
That's the point of a goal -- something to aim toward. I think it is a goal we should have, rather than the current situation where we consider the deaths of many people an acceptable compromise.
"No, it's being able to go where and when you want. If you're stuck on foot or relying on others you're not going to get far."
Your freedom to go where and when you want, unfortunately, contradicts my freedom to go how I want. I'd like to have a quiet, peaceful, unpolluted city, with high quality pavements and good bike routes for long distances.
I think that argument cuts both ways to be honest. People who want to commute long distances tend to pretty vocal about societies providing them with good roads, about having parking spaces in the other end, and asking the people in between to put up with the pollution, the noise and the risk of death that they cause.
I think that this argument has held too much credence for a long time, and it is time we should stop. It not an argument about liberty but about what we want our cities to be for.
This is true to an extent, but learning to relax and not stressing out is a somewhat effective way of treating stomach ulcers. Not terrible effective, but it does work.
Diseases with a physical cause can still be cured without medicines and sometimes this is the best we have. Telling someone with a cold to sleep and take plenty of fluids is not to suggest that the cold is psychosomatic. It's just the best we have.
The problem is that fixing tool affects lots and lots of other people. Change the tools, and you break lots of other projects that many not thank you for it, even if it's for long term good. Or, alternatively, some of them use your new versions of tools and some of them do not. Then you have fragmentation.
It's not only debian which has these problems of course. Old mature projects are slow, slow, slow to change.
I think that was the point. He used to use gmane which does give a threaded interface, but gmane is not maintained reliably as it once was.
So, it's a question of someone finding the will to do it, I guess.
Probably not many, and probably not it won't. Probably that is because Volvo is trying to put in place this kind of measure to avoid any actual legislation.
So, is this a good idea? At 112mph, no I am pretty indifferent to it. At 70mph, for all cars, its a good idea. Geofencing would be better (assuming the technology works).
This is a really, really silly argument. In the UK, several thousand people a year die when a car driver hits them with their vehicle. Speed is a factor in 20 or 30% of those cases.
You can find one counter example to most things. A single counter example is a strong argument in maths. Outside of this, it is a trivial anecdote.
So, if you want to drive down the motor way with a 6 foot long sharp iron spike on the front of a car with no breaks, that's fine?
Cars kill lots of people. We have, over the years, putting a significant number of safety restrictions on cars. This is right and proper. I don't know why they haven't had speed limiters fitted years ago. Simple, easy to do and would have a small but measurable impact on peoples life.
Small, because speeding cars mostly kill people at much lower speeds than this.
The problem with the "I want to live in a free society" argument is that you can use it to justify anything you like at all. Including one person taking risks and another person paying the price for it.
Let's be clear here; the article is about limiting a 1000kg of metal to move less than 112mph. This is way, way, far away from safety scissors or butter knifes.
Of course, these things are not good, and producing more pollution is a bad things.
But, I think, it's hard to argue really, that a speeding car is political correctness, snowflakism or what ever other alt-right phrase is flavour of the month.
A speeding car is actually, a large and fast moving lump of metal. These lumps of metal are responsible for a large number of deaths every year; there is very little that an individual can do to protect themselves from the risk that other people driving cars badly can cause. As the energy of a collision goes up very quickly with speed, excessive speed significantly increases the risk of death of anyone hit.
Speed limits are good. Enforcing speed limits is good. Having cars do this more intelligently might be good if it works properly.
Photosynthesis does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere, unless the total amount of biomass increases. Or, alternatively, you take the biomass, turn it into charcoal (which is no longer biomass) and then, for example, bury it, or dump it at sea. The advantage with a chemical process for doing this rather than growing trees is that the chemical process is likely not to take up much land.
Maybe. But, green energy production has grown massively and consistently out performs expectations for its growth. Nuclear technology has not. It's difficult to argue that it scales; theoretically, yes, but in practice no.
"Don't tell me that nuclear power is too expensive because the governments of the world are certainly willing to spend gobs of money on worthless wind, solar, and other "green" energy. They are also certainly willing to spend gobs of money fighting over the scraps of carbon left on the table."
Green energy is not worthless. And the idea that it is heavily subsidised is out of date -- Coal, for example, in the US is subsidised and most of it would not be viable without.
You are right about nuclear power in other ways, I think. There is a case for it. But, it's probalby too late now. Nuclear power plants take a long time develop and much of the energy grid is being re-worked so not require single large sources (i.e. make it better for renewables).
Okay, so you cannot see any evidence that global warming and climate change is affecting you, even though the evidence is there, it is overwhelming and the effective is very significant.
That's fine, so here is how it is affecting you in your daily life. Another people are concerned about the massive impact that fossil fuels are having on the world, that economics is changing and their lifespan as a viable source of energy is limited. So, everything that you do that depends on fossil fuels is already and will increasingly change. Is that going to change your life? I think it will.