Nuclear power simply has not killed very many people in its 52-year history.
Yet it has displaced more people than any other power source. You could include wars for resources on coal and oil's list, but then someone would only bring up nuclear weapons and uranium mines as well.
A WORKING coal-fired electric plant is catastrophic environmental damage and there is no way to clean it up.
Yes there is. Carbon Sinks. A nuclear meltdown is also "cleanable", but to a much lesser degree. Long term, the area around a melted down reactor is largely a writeoff.
If you analyze it on a per passenger-km basis, planes are much safer than cars.
Yet despite all the world's car bombs, people accept far more restriction on their lives due to two plane crashes into two skyscrapers. Plane crashes, like nuclear meltdowns, have a certain Gran Grenoble factor to them.
When people today say that 1. "Current reactor designs are a lot safer than the 30+ ones we use now"; and 2. "The risk is very, very small", people will say that 3. "You lied through your teeth to get us where you wanted the last time, and we bet you're doing the same this time around"
And people would be flat out correct. There is no absolute 100% guarantee that a "modern" reactor will not meltdown.
There's much talk of the pebble bed reactor, but at the end of the day, it is a system that can fail, just like any other. Jammed pebble, coolant leak/comtamination. I don't know what could go wrong. But I do know the worst case scenario.
Chernobyl. 300,000 people forced out of their homes, and a major city essentially written off forever. Now that's a disaster. Imagine what would happen if a reactor in the Rhineland region melted down. Global economic disater.
Compare and contrast to worst case scenario for oil and gas power. Buncefield oil depot explosion. That paticular incident had zero fatalities. Some refinery explosions do have more, but essentially any oil and gas explosion's effects will largely dissipate withing a fortnight. Chernobyl is still uninhabitable.
Nuclear power is cheap. Nuclear power is "clean" if you can handle the waste properly. Nuclear power also carries with it a small probability of catastrophic risk. That's the catch. Risk of accident is small. Effects of accident are huge.
If Governments are prepared to take the risk, which it seems they will, fair enough. I'd still rather they built the main reactor deep underground, where they should all be in the first place.
I don't know. $1200 per month seems very low for someone as highly skilled as a professional marine. Compare the job to something like unskilled construction work, then to skilled construction work. I doubt plumbing requires as much training as military service, yet it probably pays signifigantly more.
everyone's always insulting the Simpsons these days, but I honestly don't see why they're so bad.
Look, I'll be straight with you. Nowaday's, the Simpsons sucks. It's that simple. Personally, I feel the final shark was jumped when they killed off Ned Flander's wife. Since then it's been straight to the gutter, with Fox urging them on episode after episode.
I'm sure there is a reason for this seeming incompetance at Fox. Most likely, poor TV shows simply do better than good ones. The reasons for this, largely escape me, but I would suspect it has a lot to do with Fox's real product, i.e. the audience, not the show itself.
So if someone illegally paints a swastika on my house, is it censorship for me to remove it? I hope someone could explain the difference to me.
Microsoft removed the blog at the behest or under pressure from, the chinese government. Thus this is a form of, slighly indirect Government censorship.
Your decision to remove the swastika however, is made by you and you alone. The Government is not involved. In fact, it may be illegal for them to request you remove it.
Similarly, if DeCSS is censored at the behest of a private company, this is a form of government censorship, as the government has sanctioned the censorship, and indeed enforces it.
Just wait for a Chinese communist to apply what he thinks is moral to US laws.
Well he can if he's voted in. That's what democracy is all about.
Osama is already doing it, and he feels just as righteous as you do.
You are only half correct. Osama Bin Laden has had a huge influence on US law. Possibly more so than anyone else in the last 50 years. However, I don't see how you feel he is applying his morality to US law. Unless you think, that Osama thinks it is moral to capture him, photograph his anus and then try him before a court martial in Cuba.
Morality is a flawed concept grounded in nothing but history. It is the residue of pre-scientific religious laws, just like ID is the residue of creation myths.
Actually morality seems to be based in large part on natural human behaviour. Just like murder, love, commerce, etc... Many argue that we have evolved to be moral creatures in response to the evolutionary benefits it provides. For example, almost all human societies believe that murder, theft, lying and rape are wrong. Even those societies without written history have various oral traditions that reinforce this.
As a counter example to your point, even societies with histories can be highly amoral. I won't mention any lest a certain law be invoked.
Morality can do nothing, except excuse your disrespect for Chinese law, but it is itself the only reason why you feel you should excuse that.
Morality can do many things, chief amoung them is to provide societies with a basic working framework. Morality can also be the foundation of law, but in many cases, such as in Chinese law, this is not the case, and in fact the law itself is immoral. The long term effects of this can be readily observed by Googling "The French Revolution".
At least China's "Great Firewall" is administered by the government, which is theoretically accountable to the people, and watched by other governments around the world.
"In Theory, Marge!! In Theory!" Dude, the Chinese Communist party is about as far from accountable to the people as any modern, bureucratic government has ever gotten!
The Internet filters required by law in US libraries are controlled by random private corporations that aren't accountable to anybody at all.
Except of course, to the contracts under which they were hired to do the job. Not to mention the librarians. And their shareholders. Oh, and the laws of the land.
The Chinese Government is accountable to none of these things.
What about General Electric? They supply variously; the chair, the straps, the wire, the generator plants, the damp cloth, the TV cameras, the paper, the pen, the ink, the telphone line to the Governer, the telephone, the software, the lights, the plasterboard, the gum and the banks loans to pay for it all.
Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?
Because China is soon to be one of the worlds largest markets, and no company can afford to lose its foothold there, lest their more unscrupulous competitors use the China advatage to squeeze the life out of them.
Besides that, secretly, corperations love the Chinese Government. It's essentially a kind of facist state, which by and large means a corperate dreamland where workers have no rights, regulations are lax, corruption is the accepted means of business and there is stil a large enough rich people at the top to ensure that luxuries can be sold. In the case of China, these rich people often outnumber entire countires in former markets.
I fully expect unscrupulous corperations to be hugely successful in China. So successful, that the Chinese model will be lauded as superior, and we will all be pressured to convert to it, becoming dictartorships instead of democracies.
The articles insn't really very clear on exactly how the blog was removed from MSN Spaces.
Was it simply the case that Chinese IPs were blocked from accessing it, or in fact was the entire blog simply removed from MSN Spaces altogether.
Either way is shameful, but if private companies begin to censor the web for everyone, worldwide, at the (implied) behest of autocracies, where will that leave us?
No I think you are being an assanine child taking pleasure in watching people get hurt.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm not quite sure why you consider me some kind of sick voyuer sadist. Let's take a look at the relevent quote.
Quite frankly it secretly delights me when I see these stereotypes involved in collisions with one another, because I know that after that "accident", everyone around me is now actually safer in their cars.
Now, I felt my meaning here was quite clear, if delivered with less tact than some might say was required. It's not the collision itself, or the direct injuries or deaths resultant from it that "delights" me so. It's the fact that two dangerous, life threatening people have temporarily or permenantly, stopped being a threat to other innocent people around them. I think everyone should be relieved when this happens. It's like two maniacs knifing one another to death in a barfight. Messy, disturbing, perhaps even tragic for friends and loved ones, but at least they won't kill anyone else. It's a good analogy, because like manaiacs, bad drivers kill and main people every day.
You have somehow taken this to mean that I take sadistic pleasure in all accidents. I don't. But when two grown adults, who have made a decision to put their lives and the lives of those around them in mortal danger for no good reason, end up killing or otherwise injuring only themselves, I'm afraid I'll have to say it couldn't have happened to a nicer pair.
Which is absolutely not to say that I would be happier if they died horribly; screaming in agony as the exposed marrow of their shattered bones slowly froze in the morning mist, or if their last breaths were of stagnant ditch water, as they lay trapped, contorted in a slowly sinking car. I certainly would not. What would make me happiest of all is if these two bozos simply totalled their respective death mobiles and walked away blinking without a scratch. That would be perfect. But if they die or are severly injured, to be honest, there's only so much sympathy I can have.
Fisher Price transmission, how very cute and educated.
I felt it was relatively witty. And I'll stand by it. I've heard lots of people tell me that automatic transmission is safer than manual, and that it enables the driver to pay more attention to the road. Yet the only people I know who have automatic transmissions are boy racers.
Now that is a personal observation. But it is the case that in the UK, where manual transmission pervades, per capita road deaths in 2003 were 5.81 per 100,000, while in the same year in the US, where automatic is the trasmission of choice, roads deaths were 14.75 per 100,000. [Source] Now that's just comparing two countries, but it would be interesting to compare stick vs shift on similar data.
Guess what, when you have a proven driving record your rates go down, when you get older you get better rates, being married gets you better rates, and various other indicators of being a responsible adjusted adult. Well I'm sorry you feel so threatend and wish to respond in such a childish manner.
You need to read my first post again. My main point there was that due to poor drivers, I have been in effect priced off the road, despite the fact that I am not one of these sterotypical reckless drivers. Consequent of this, and because of teh way insurance works, as you say, once I do start driving, i will be paying more insurance that these individuals. thus in effect, I am subsidising their behaviour. I do not feel threatened by this. I feel robbed.
My point is without knowing anything about the situation about the wreck in the parent post your immediate response is about how incompetant they both are.
Actually the original poster decribed the situation rather well. The first driver was reported
It worries me a little that you react like this when someone tells you that being happy that people get injured or die in an accident. There are plenty of accidents that aren't caused by blatant irresponsibility, and you are certainly making broad blanket statements about accidents that do happen.
Excuse me? You must be mistaking me for all those people that complain about your lurch prone car. I only expressed satisfaction at watching irresponsible drivers taking themselves off the road. Permenantly.
The car lurching has nothing to do with defects, large heavy vehicles tend to do these sorts of things given they often have larger engines to get them moving.
Nope. The car lurches because it's been badly designed, or designed for people who can't drive properly, or you can't use the clutch properly. I'd tell you to stay in first gear, but since mustangs most likely don't actually have gears, instead preferring the fisher-price automatic method, it would be a bit of a waste.
(You know, because city designers cut down every bush and tree that might obscure signs, and replace old corner stop lights with modern over the street ones with lightning speed when they find them, and they NEVER change a stop sign, to a yield sign, and then back to a stop sign, and then ending once again at a yield sign in the period of 6 months.)
Yak, yak yak. Sounds to me like you're just sore because roads signs are interfering with your classic car pleasure cruise. What a tradgedy.
Then you go on to say you have missed signs, but somehow that doesn't make you the same idiot hotrodder you are telling me I obviously must be.
Want to know why? It's because, as I said, when I miss a sign, I accept responsibility. I don't go making excuses about city planning, bad signposting, or how everyone should take into account the idosycracies of my 33 year old car.
You may be wondering exactly why I'm not taking your comments as you would like. The reason is simple. I'm not putting up with lame excuses for bad driving. Cars are powerful machines. People get killed everyday. Most of them die, not because of mechanical failure or weather conditions, but because someone else just didn't bother to learn how to do anything other than get their vehicle in motion.
When some AC posts a reply telling me that he drives about in an old classic barge and thinks I'm being too harsh with bad drivers, you'll forgive me if I'm not entirely affable to his point of view. I'll repeat by basic point, which is that if two bad drivers get themselves killed, I won't shed too many tears, because quite frankly, I'm not too sympatheic to their cause on the roads; namely, complete disregard for everyone else on it.
If someone can't drive properly, they should learn how. If they are completely unwilling to learn how to do so, then they should either get off the road, or put themselves off it, preferably without taking innocent lives in the process. I don't think this is a paticularly harsh viewpoint. Road death statistics will largely back me up.
I have a 72 Mach 1 Mustang with a 429 in it. Big ol heavy loud car. Older cars like that often don't come off the line like the modern plasticy cars.
Their aluminium cars, not plastic ones. Clearly you're idolising your outdated rig which should probably have been decommissioned long ago. I shudder to think of the safety hazards of simply sitting in such a vehicle. No doubt the six layers of wax you've applied give some kind of illusion of saftey.
It generally does not take a whole lot of pressure to get cars like that to jump a little and make alot of noise, even without being considered reckless.
Now you're just making excuses. If the car is essentially defective, why are you still driving it, and why is it still allowed on the road? If the car lurches every time you take off, then that is one _serious_ defect. Go faster stripes and a muscle car image are no excuse for poor engineering.
But to rant about him disobeying signs is innane and childish. He honestly probably missed it and it cost him his life. I know in unfamiliar parts of town I have missed various signs because they have been placed in odd positions or near other obstructions.
So I shouldn't complain when you blunder, wild eyed, through unfamiliar territory? Lurching heedlessly through professionally placed signs and markings in your lumbering antique, as you grumble about "ridiculously placed" traffic markers and how it is so unfair that the local city planners have not created lane upon lane of shimmering concrete railroad that your lug can adequately locomote through without the bother of these outrageous "stop signs". I mean, it takes you a full 50 yeards just to bring the beast to a full stop from your usual "acceptable" speed right?
I highly doubt you have NEVER missed a sign or anything else on the road EVER, so gleefully ranting about how you are glad is pathetic. Maybe your story will change when you miss something, get hit, hit some black ice and go into a tree, or some other purely accidental (gee I wonder why its called a...) accident, and lose a family member, or even your own life.
I have missed signs. You know why? It was my own fault. I was the one to blame. I need to improve my driving. The road signs don't have to be better placed. The system doesn't have to take into account that my car lurches like a zombie. I didn't need to grow younger, or suddenly gain "confidence" on the road. No. I needed to become a better driver. That means slowing down, paying attention, and not driving a 33 year old artefact older than I am. By the time I get as old and the great-grandparents recently deceased, I sincerly hope I'll have have learned that.
The hood in front of the car is lifted a few inches after 40 or so milliseconds so the pedestrian gets lifted as well and won't get run over by the car but lands on the softer hood and might hit the car glass.
Wow! That's great! Now instead of plebs getting messily caught in my undercarraige, they'll just hit the bonnet and windshield and bounce right off! I can just turn on the sprinklers and wash the blood right off while I sip on my latte! This is genius!
The only downside I can think of is that they may be inconsiderately be wearing metallic objects that might scratch my paintjob. That's a serious issue with this system. Perhaps it would be better if they were bumped to the side instead, preferably to the sidewalk, as that way they wouldn't fly into any oncoming drivers, thus exacerabting the problem.
So basically what you've got here, is two incompetants that cannot drive properly. One couldn't bring the car into motion competantly, and the other was unable to obey one of the most basic rules of the road.
I see these guys that lurch their cars into motion and heave them around corners at unreasonable speeds. I've also seen feckless individuals with complete disregard for stop signs, right of way and even indicators. Both irritate me no end. Quite frankly it secretly delights me when I see these stereotypes involved in collisions with one another, because I know that after that "accident", everyone around me is now actually safer in their cars.
Of course they had lives, families, etc, etc. But look. I'm not their babysitter. They knew exactly what they were doing, took a risk that they would be involved in a crash, and got involved in a crash. My sympathy for them only extends so far.
Of course when other, completely innocent people get slammed into by one of these incompetants, I'm not so much sympathetic as I am completely enraged. Usually these guys will have the nerve to blame in on the otehr driver, for not being quick enogh to get out of the way. I would throttle them, but that woul make _me_ the bad guy.
Of course, most of these incompetants are male, and since I am male, this only adds insult to injury as my car insurance soars to levels at which I simply cannot afford to drive at all. This despite the fact that I've make considerable efforts to drive considerately and safely. I really can't help how I was born, but these guys can help the way they drive. Nevertheless, because most of these incompetants will break their bank to start dangerously driving before I do, by the time I begin to drive in earnest, their insurance will be lower than mine. thus I end up subsidising their bad habits.
I for one, sincerly hope that their are more victimless accidents like the one you describe. In fact, there should be a new law that states anyone can run a red light or a stop sign in they simply remove their side impact safety systems. I think that would work out just fine.
Or do the editors simply select those articles, for reasons that aren't clear to the rest of us?
The Slashdot Random Story Submission Selection System is above your petty indignations. It is completely unbiased, to any factor. And that includes quality!
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear power simply has not killed very many people in its 52-year history.
Yet it has displaced more people than any other power source. You could include wars for resources on coal and oil's list, but then someone would only bring up nuclear weapons and uranium mines as well.
Realistically, how much of our current power can we expect to be able to get out of these PC alternatives of yours?
In potencia. A Lot.
Realistically? How much are you prepared to spend in R&D and initial cost?
A WORKING coal-fired electric plant is catastrophic environmental damage and there is no way to clean it up.
Yes there is. Carbon Sinks. A nuclear meltdown is also "cleanable", but to a much lesser degree. Long term, the area around a melted down reactor is largely a writeoff.
If you analyze it on a per passenger-km basis, planes are much safer than cars.
Yet despite all the world's car bombs, people accept far more restriction on their lives due to two plane crashes into two skyscrapers. Plane crashes, like nuclear meltdowns, have a certain Gran Grenoble factor to them.
When people today say that 1. "Current reactor designs are a lot safer than the 30+ ones we use now"; and 2. "The risk is very, very small", people will say that 3. "You lied through your teeth to get us where you wanted the last time, and we bet you're doing the same this time around"
And people would be flat out correct. There is no absolute 100% guarantee that a "modern" reactor will not meltdown.
There's much talk of the pebble bed reactor, but at the end of the day, it is a system that can fail, just like any other. Jammed pebble, coolant leak/comtamination. I don't know what could go wrong. But I do know the worst case scenario.
Chernobyl. 300,000 people forced out of their homes, and a major city essentially written off forever. Now that's a disaster. Imagine what would happen if a reactor in the Rhineland region melted down. Global economic disater.
Compare and contrast to worst case scenario for oil and gas power. Buncefield oil depot explosion. That paticular incident had zero fatalities. Some refinery explosions do have more, but essentially any oil and gas explosion's effects will largely dissipate withing a fortnight. Chernobyl is still uninhabitable.
Nuclear power is cheap. Nuclear power is "clean" if you can handle the waste properly. Nuclear power also carries with it a small probability of catastrophic risk. That's the catch. Risk of accident is small. Effects of accident are huge.
If Governments are prepared to take the risk, which it seems they will, fair enough. I'd still rather they built the main reactor deep underground, where they should all be in the first place.
I don't know. $1200 per month seems very low for someone as highly skilled as a professional marine. Compare the job to something like unskilled construction work, then to skilled construction work. I doubt plumbing requires as much training as military service, yet it probably pays signifigantly more.
You forgot to mention lousy pay.
everyone's always insulting the Simpsons these days, but I honestly don't see why they're so bad.
Look, I'll be straight with you. Nowaday's, the Simpsons sucks. It's that simple. Personally, I feel the final shark was jumped when they killed off Ned Flander's wife. Since then it's been straight to the gutter, with Fox urging them on episode after episode.
I'm sure there is a reason for this seeming incompetance at Fox. Most likely, poor TV shows simply do better than good ones. The reasons for this, largely escape me, but I would suspect it has a lot to do with Fox's real product, i.e. the audience, not the show itself.
Most Slashbots wouldn't know Common Sense if it came and shat in their breakfast cereal.
Most Slashbots don't eat breakfast, so this is a moot point.
So if someone illegally paints a swastika on my house, is it censorship for me to remove it? I hope someone could explain the difference to me.
Microsoft removed the blog at the behest or under pressure from, the chinese government. Thus this is a form of, slighly indirect Government censorship.
Your decision to remove the swastika however, is made by you and you alone. The Government is not involved. In fact, it may be illegal for them to request you remove it.
Similarly, if DeCSS is censored at the behest of a private company, this is a form of government censorship, as the government has sanctioned the censorship, and indeed enforces it.
Just wait for a Chinese communist to apply what he thinks is moral to US laws.
Well he can if he's voted in. That's what democracy is all about.
Osama is already doing it, and he feels just as righteous as you do.
You are only half correct. Osama Bin Laden has had a huge influence on US law. Possibly more so than anyone else in the last 50 years. However, I don't see how you feel he is applying his morality to US law. Unless you think, that Osama thinks it is moral to capture him, photograph his anus and then try him before a court martial in Cuba.
Morality is a flawed concept grounded in nothing but history. It is the residue of pre-scientific religious laws, just like ID is the residue of creation myths.
Actually morality seems to be based in large part on natural human behaviour. Just like murder, love, commerce, etc... Many argue that we have evolved to be moral creatures in response to the evolutionary benefits it provides. For example, almost all human societies believe that murder, theft, lying and rape are wrong. Even those societies without written history have various oral traditions that reinforce this.
As a counter example to your point, even societies with histories can be highly amoral. I won't mention any lest a certain law be invoked.
Morality can do nothing, except excuse your disrespect for Chinese law, but it is itself the only reason why you feel you should excuse that.
Morality can do many things, chief amoung them is to provide societies with a basic working framework. Morality can also be the foundation of law, but in many cases, such as in Chinese law, this is not the case, and in fact the law itself is immoral. The long term effects of this can be readily observed by Googling "The French Revolution".
At least China's "Great Firewall" is administered by the government, which is theoretically accountable to the people, and watched by other governments around the world.
"In Theory, Marge!! In Theory!" Dude, the Chinese Communist party is about as far from accountable to the people as any modern, bureucratic government has ever gotten!
The Internet filters required by law in US libraries are controlled by random private corporations that aren't accountable to anybody at all.
Except of course, to the contracts under which they were hired to do the job. Not to mention the librarians. And their shareholders. Oh, and the laws of the land.
The Chinese Government is accountable to none of these things.
What about General Electric? They supply variously; the chair, the straps, the wire, the generator plants, the damp cloth, the TV cameras, the paper, the pen, the ink, the telphone line to the Governer, the telephone, the software, the lights, the plasterboard, the gum and the banks loans to pay for it all.
Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?
Because China is soon to be one of the worlds largest markets, and no company can afford to lose its foothold there, lest their more unscrupulous competitors use the China advatage to squeeze the life out of them.
Besides that, secretly, corperations love the Chinese Government. It's essentially a kind of facist state, which by and large means a corperate dreamland where workers have no rights, regulations are lax, corruption is the accepted means of business and there is stil a large enough rich people at the top to ensure that luxuries can be sold. In the case of China, these rich people often outnumber entire countires in former markets.
I fully expect unscrupulous corperations to be hugely successful in China. So successful, that the Chinese model will be lauded as superior, and we will all be pressured to convert to it, becoming dictartorships instead of democracies.
Greed is Good.
It's called "Hypocritical sheep like mentality combined with a poor grasp on reality."
Most slashdotters would like to call it "Common Sense".
The articles insn't really very clear on exactly how the blog was removed from MSN Spaces.
Was it simply the case that Chinese IPs were blocked from accessing it, or in fact was the entire blog simply removed from MSN Spaces altogether.
Either way is shameful, but if private companies begin to censor the web for everyone, worldwide, at the (implied) behest of autocracies, where will that leave us?
You can't beat longer battery life and better performance.
Yes you can! Just spend more on advertising.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm not quite sure why you consider me some kind of sick voyuer sadist. Let's take a look at the relevent quote.
Now, I felt my meaning here was quite clear, if delivered with less tact than some might say was required. It's not the collision itself, or the direct injuries or deaths resultant from it that "delights" me so. It's the fact that two dangerous, life threatening people have temporarily or permenantly, stopped being a threat to other innocent people around them. I think everyone should be relieved when this happens. It's like two maniacs knifing one another to death in a barfight. Messy, disturbing, perhaps even tragic for friends and loved ones, but at least they won't kill anyone else. It's a good analogy, because like manaiacs, bad drivers kill and main people every day.
You have somehow taken this to mean that I take sadistic pleasure in all accidents. I don't. But when two grown adults, who have made a decision to put their lives and the lives of those around them in mortal danger for no good reason, end up killing or otherwise injuring only themselves, I'm afraid I'll have to say it couldn't have happened to a nicer pair.
Which is absolutely not to say that I would be happier if they died horribly; screaming in agony as the exposed marrow of their shattered bones slowly froze in the morning mist, or if their last breaths were of stagnant ditch water, as they lay trapped, contorted in a slowly sinking car. I certainly would not. What would make me happiest of all is if these two bozos simply totalled their respective death mobiles and walked away blinking without a scratch. That would be perfect. But if they die or are severly injured, to be honest, there's only so much sympathy I can have.
Fisher Price transmission, how very cute and educated.
I felt it was relatively witty. And I'll stand by it. I've heard lots of people tell me that automatic transmission is safer than manual, and that it enables the driver to pay more attention to the road. Yet the only people I know who have automatic transmissions are boy racers.
Now that is a personal observation. But it is the case that in the UK, where manual transmission pervades, per capita road deaths in 2003 were 5.81 per 100,000, while in the same year in the US, where automatic is the trasmission of choice, roads deaths were 14.75 per 100,000. [Source] Now that's just comparing two countries, but it would be interesting to compare stick vs shift on similar data.
Guess what, when you have a proven driving record your rates go down, when you get older you get better rates, being married gets you better rates, and various other indicators of being a responsible adjusted adult. Well I'm sorry you feel so threatend and wish to respond in such a childish manner.
You need to read my first post again. My main point there was that due to poor drivers, I have been in effect priced off the road, despite the fact that I am not one of these sterotypical reckless drivers. Consequent of this, and because of teh way insurance works, as you say, once I do start driving, i will be paying more insurance that these individuals. thus in effect, I am subsidising their behaviour. I do not feel threatened by this. I feel robbed.
My point is without knowing anything about the situation about the wreck in the parent post your immediate response is about how incompetant they both are.
Actually the original poster decribed the situation rather well. The first driver was reported
It worries me a little that you react like this when someone tells you that being happy that people get injured or die in an accident. There are plenty of accidents that aren't caused by blatant irresponsibility, and you are certainly making broad blanket statements about accidents that do happen.
Excuse me? You must be mistaking me for all those people that complain about your lurch prone car. I only expressed satisfaction at watching irresponsible drivers taking themselves off the road. Permenantly.
The car lurching has nothing to do with defects, large heavy vehicles tend to do these sorts of things given they often have larger engines to get them moving.
Nope. The car lurches because it's been badly designed, or designed for people who can't drive properly, or you can't use the clutch properly. I'd tell you to stay in first gear, but since mustangs most likely don't actually have gears, instead preferring the fisher-price automatic method, it would be a bit of a waste.
(You know, because city designers cut down every bush and tree that might obscure signs, and replace old corner stop lights with modern over the street ones with lightning speed when they find them, and they NEVER change a stop sign, to a yield sign, and then back to a stop sign, and then ending once again at a yield sign in the period of 6 months.)
Yak, yak yak. Sounds to me like you're just sore because roads signs are interfering with your classic car pleasure cruise. What a tradgedy.
Then you go on to say you have missed signs, but somehow that doesn't make you the same idiot hotrodder you are telling me I obviously must be.
Want to know why? It's because, as I said, when I miss a sign, I accept responsibility. I don't go making excuses about city planning, bad signposting, or how everyone should take into account the idosycracies of my 33 year old car.
You may be wondering exactly why I'm not taking your comments as you would like. The reason is simple. I'm not putting up with lame excuses for bad driving. Cars are powerful machines. People get killed everyday. Most of them die, not because of mechanical failure or weather conditions, but because someone else just didn't bother to learn how to do anything other than get their vehicle in motion.
When some AC posts a reply telling me that he drives about in an old classic barge and thinks I'm being too harsh with bad drivers, you'll forgive me if I'm not entirely affable to his point of view. I'll repeat by basic point, which is that if two bad drivers get themselves killed, I won't shed too many tears, because quite frankly, I'm not too sympatheic to their cause on the roads; namely, complete disregard for everyone else on it.
If someone can't drive properly, they should learn how. If they are completely unwilling to learn how to do so, then they should either get off the road, or put themselves off it, preferably without taking innocent lives in the process. I don't think this is a paticularly harsh viewpoint. Road death statistics will largely back me up.
Ford will feature me in their document at the auto show for those interested.
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I bought two ford cars after the accident
These facts are completely unrelated.
I have a 72 Mach 1 Mustang with a 429 in it. Big ol heavy loud car. Older cars like that often don't come off the line like the modern plasticy cars.
Their aluminium cars, not plastic ones. Clearly you're idolising your outdated rig which should probably have been decommissioned long ago. I shudder to think of the safety hazards of simply sitting in such a vehicle. No doubt the six layers of wax you've applied give some kind of illusion of saftey.
It generally does not take a whole lot of pressure to get cars like that to jump a little and make alot of noise, even without being considered reckless.
Now you're just making excuses. If the car is essentially defective, why are you still driving it, and why is it still allowed on the road? If the car lurches every time you take off, then that is one _serious_ defect. Go faster stripes and a muscle car image are no excuse for poor engineering.
But to rant about him disobeying signs is innane and childish. He honestly probably missed it and it cost him his life. I know in unfamiliar parts of town I have missed various signs because they have been placed in odd positions or near other obstructions.
So I shouldn't complain when you blunder, wild eyed, through unfamiliar territory? Lurching heedlessly through professionally placed signs and markings in your lumbering antique, as you grumble about "ridiculously placed" traffic markers and how it is so unfair that the local city planners have not created lane upon lane of shimmering concrete railroad that your lug can adequately locomote through without the bother of these outrageous "stop signs". I mean, it takes you a full 50 yeards just to bring the beast to a full stop from your usual "acceptable" speed right?
I highly doubt you have NEVER missed a sign or anything else on the road EVER, so gleefully ranting about how you are glad is pathetic. Maybe your story will change when you miss something, get hit, hit some black ice and go into a tree, or some other purely accidental (gee I wonder why its called a...) accident, and lose a family member, or even your own life.
I have missed signs. You know why? It was my own fault. I was the one to blame. I need to improve my driving. The road signs don't have to be better placed. The system doesn't have to take into account that my car lurches like a zombie. I didn't need to grow younger, or suddenly gain "confidence" on the road. No. I needed to become a better driver. That means slowing down, paying attention, and not driving a 33 year old artefact older than I am. By the time I get as old and the great-grandparents recently deceased, I sincerly hope I'll have have learned that.
The hood in front of the car is lifted a few inches after 40 or so milliseconds so the pedestrian gets lifted as well and won't get run over by the car but lands on the softer hood and might hit the car glass.
Wow! That's great! Now instead of plebs getting messily caught in my undercarraige, they'll just hit the bonnet and windshield and bounce right off! I can just turn on the sprinklers and wash the blood right off while I sip on my latte! This is genius!
The only downside I can think of is that they may be inconsiderately be wearing metallic objects that might scratch my paintjob. That's a serious issue with this system. Perhaps it would be better if they were bumped to the side instead, preferably to the sidewalk, as that way they wouldn't fly into any oncoming drivers, thus exacerabting the problem.
So basically what you've got here, is two incompetants that cannot drive properly. One couldn't bring the car into motion competantly, and the other was unable to obey one of the most basic rules of the road.
I see these guys that lurch their cars into motion and heave them around corners at unreasonable speeds. I've also seen feckless individuals with complete disregard for stop signs, right of way and even indicators. Both irritate me no end. Quite frankly it secretly delights me when I see these stereotypes involved in collisions with one another, because I know that after that "accident", everyone around me is now actually safer in their cars.
Of course they had lives, families, etc, etc. But look. I'm not their babysitter. They knew exactly what they were doing, took a risk that they would be involved in a crash, and got involved in a crash. My sympathy for them only extends so far.
Of course when other, completely innocent people get slammed into by one of these incompetants, I'm not so much sympathetic as I am completely enraged. Usually these guys will have the nerve to blame in on the otehr driver, for not being quick enogh to get out of the way. I would throttle them, but that woul make _me_ the bad guy.
Of course, most of these incompetants are male, and since I am male, this only adds insult to injury as my car insurance soars to levels at which I simply cannot afford to drive at all. This despite the fact that I've make considerable efforts to drive considerately and safely. I really can't help how I was born, but these guys can help the way they drive. Nevertheless, because most of these incompetants will break their bank to start dangerously driving before I do, by the time I begin to drive in earnest, their insurance will be lower than mine. thus I end up subsidising their bad habits.
I for one, sincerly hope that their are more victimless accidents like the one you describe. In fact, there should be a new law that states anyone can run a red light or a stop sign in they simply remove their side impact safety systems. I think that would work out just fine.
Yes this post is sarcastic, but bitterly so.
What more is you lookin' for?
Cheap fuel.... and lower taxes!
Or do the editors simply select those articles, for reasons that aren't clear to the rest of us?
The Slashdot Random Story Submission Selection System is above your petty indignations. It is completely unbiased, to any factor. And that includes quality!