This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/04/driverless-cars-boris-johnson-stallion-road-safety
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Driverless cars will geld the dangerous stallions of the road | |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| With its new report suggesting the removal of speed bumps, among various proposals for reducing lethal levels of air pollution, Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) finds itself, possibly for the first time, the toast of British motorists. Finally, the health experts have realised what speed enthusiasts have known all along – that being knocked down by an overkeen motorist is a vastly superior way to die than slow extinction by particulates. At last, someone out there comprehends the level of suffering when speeding drivers, presumably to advertise disdain for bumps, as opposed to cognitive impairment, refuse to slow down to 20mph and must then pay for the self-generated repairs. | With its new report suggesting the removal of speed bumps, among various proposals for reducing lethal levels of air pollution, Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) finds itself, possibly for the first time, the toast of British motorists. Finally, the health experts have realised what speed enthusiasts have known all along – that being knocked down by an overkeen motorist is a vastly superior way to die than slow extinction by particulates. At last, someone out there comprehends the level of suffering when speeding drivers, presumably to advertise disdain for bumps, as opposed to cognitive impairment, refuse to slow down to 20mph and must then pay for the self-generated repairs. |
| “Hooray,” writes a bump-hater in the Telegraph. “They have for years been damaging car springs, tyres and headlights.” It has long been a token of faith, among members of the Top Gear community, that such damage is quite unconnected with speeding drivers, but entirely the fault of council busybodies determined to restrain all drivers, not just the sociopaths to whom all rival traffic must yield. | “Hooray,” writes a bump-hater in the Telegraph. “They have for years been damaging car springs, tyres and headlights.” It has long been a token of faith, among members of the Top Gear community, that such damage is quite unconnected with speeding drivers, but entirely the fault of council busybodies determined to restrain all drivers, not just the sociopaths to whom all rival traffic must yield. |
| As so often, no one puts it better than the current foreign secretary, and self-styled “speed freak”, Boris Johnson. In Life in the Fast Lane, composed around the second time he was sacked for lying, he expatiates, much in the vein of his soulmates, Mr Toad and the late Alan Clark, on the revolutionary significance of car use for a person identifying as a “king of the road” (despite being then on the brink of losing his licence). He writes: “The more widespread a liberty becomes, the more necessary it seems for government to regulate, trammel and constrain.” In an ideal world, no government, no bump, parking ticket or “evil, money-grubbing Gatso” would dare come between Johnson and his freedom to accelerate to 130mph in a borrowed Nissan Skyline. Of driving the Ferrari F430, he reported: “It was as though the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion.” | As so often, no one puts it better than the current foreign secretary, and self-styled “speed freak”, Boris Johnson. In Life in the Fast Lane, composed around the second time he was sacked for lying, he expatiates, much in the vein of his soulmates, Mr Toad and the late Alan Clark, on the revolutionary significance of car use for a person identifying as a “king of the road” (despite being then on the brink of losing his licence). He writes: “The more widespread a liberty becomes, the more necessary it seems for government to regulate, trammel and constrain.” In an ideal world, no government, no bump, parking ticket or “evil, money-grubbing Gatso” would dare come between Johnson and his freedom to accelerate to 130mph in a borrowed Nissan Skyline. Of driving the Ferrari F430, he reported: “It was as though the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion.” |
| Although, where delusions about vehicular speed and sexual potency are concerned, Johnson’s is clearly an extreme case (the word stallion appears 24 times in a short book), his attitude is sufficiently commonplace to explain why speed calming and restrictions will never represent anything other, to millions of his fellow pound-shop libertarians, than outrageous persecution. Nothing, from road casualty statistics to the fixed horror of their passengers, upon realising that their driver imagines himself to be a rutting horse, will convince such individuals that they do not deserve special treatment, special respect, special exemptions from punishments that would, in any other circumstances, be imposed on the aggressive use of a lethal weapon. | Although, where delusions about vehicular speed and sexual potency are concerned, Johnson’s is clearly an extreme case (the word stallion appears 24 times in a short book), his attitude is sufficiently commonplace to explain why speed calming and restrictions will never represent anything other, to millions of his fellow pound-shop libertarians, than outrageous persecution. Nothing, from road casualty statistics to the fixed horror of their passengers, upon realising that their driver imagines himself to be a rutting horse, will convince such individuals that they do not deserve special treatment, special respect, special exemptions from punishments that would, in any other circumstances, be imposed on the aggressive use of a lethal weapon. |
| Drivers and carmakers being powerful, noisy lobbies, policymakers have needed no encouragement from Johnson to collude with all the above. A charity such as Brake would not need to exist if the current punishment for a man who kills two younger men, while using his phone at the wheel of a 38-tonne HGV, were not six years, with a seven-year driving ban. Spiralling cycling injuries have yet to bring about a law enforcing minimum passing distances. | Drivers and carmakers being powerful, noisy lobbies, policymakers have needed no encouragement from Johnson to collude with all the above. A charity such as Brake would not need to exist if the current punishment for a man who kills two younger men, while using his phone at the wheel of a 38-tonne HGV, were not six years, with a seven-year driving ban. Spiralling cycling injuries have yet to bring about a law enforcing minimum passing distances. |
| The risks of being intimidated, injured or killed by an aggressive or culpably careless driver are ones British authorities have normalised for so many years that motoring bodies confidently denounce evidence-based safety measures, such as 20mph zones, the only possible rationale being that the right to speed trumps the one to life. Campaigning, recently, against the introduction of a 20mph limit in Croydon, the Alliance of British Drivers depicted a potential 21% reduction in collisions as “minimal” and complained “there are no other real benefits”. | The risks of being intimidated, injured or killed by an aggressive or culpably careless driver are ones British authorities have normalised for so many years that motoring bodies confidently denounce evidence-based safety measures, such as 20mph zones, the only possible rationale being that the right to speed trumps the one to life. Campaigning, recently, against the introduction of a 20mph limit in Croydon, the Alliance of British Drivers depicted a potential 21% reduction in collisions as “minimal” and complained “there are no other real benefits”. |
| Possibly because technology has for so long been their friend, supporters of libertarian driving have been uncharacteristically muted, so far, on the potential threat to their world that – we can only hope – is represented by driverless cars. Though a Top Gear writer, while acknowledging their safety, regretted that they would take the “fun” (illegal speeding) out of driving, the impact on the culture celebrated by car advertising, Autocar and the lads mags could surely be still greater than that. If enough of the country’s worst drivers reluctantly conclude that protection from human error, along with time saved and reduced insurance, outweigh the surrender of their road mastery to a law-abiding machine, driving will not only be safer, the whole activity could ultimately be separated from the performance delusions of the average Johnson. | Possibly because technology has for so long been their friend, supporters of libertarian driving have been uncharacteristically muted, so far, on the potential threat to their world that – we can only hope – is represented by driverless cars. Though a Top Gear writer, while acknowledging their safety, regretted that they would take the “fun” (illegal speeding) out of driving, the impact on the culture celebrated by car advertising, Autocar and the lads mags could surely be still greater than that. If enough of the country’s worst drivers reluctantly conclude that protection from human error, along with time saved and reduced insurance, outweigh the surrender of their road mastery to a law-abiding machine, driving will not only be safer, the whole activity could ultimately be separated from the performance delusions of the average Johnson. |
| Given the still heavily gendered driver behaviour that makes male under-25s the most dangerous motorists, and men almost twice as likely as women to crash because of poor driving habits, there are reasons for women, in particular, to welcome the coming deliverance from tailgating and speeding road-users and the cessation of driving, orienteering and parking hints from male passengers. Not forgetting, with driverless cabs, permanent escape from the often dismaying conduct of taxi drivers in the little kingdoms that are their front seats. | Given the still heavily gendered driver behaviour that makes male under-25s the most dangerous motorists, and men almost twice as likely as women to crash because of poor driving habits, there are reasons for women, in particular, to welcome the coming deliverance from tailgating and speeding road-users and the cessation of driving, orienteering and parking hints from male passengers. Not forgetting, with driverless cabs, permanent escape from the often dismaying conduct of taxi drivers in the little kingdoms that are their front seats. |
| Although some women even dream of liberation from garage mechanics, when manufacturers bear insurance costs, that may be utopian. And, to be realistic, monarchs of the road will presumably be those most resistant to what can only amount, according to their world view, to mass emasculation. Among the chief obstacles to driverless cars, it is predicted, will be bullying by drivers who refuse to let autonomous vehicles into traffic or who repeatedly cut in, knowing that the machines will timidly give way. In other words: business as usual. | Although some women even dream of liberation from garage mechanics, when manufacturers bear insurance costs, that may be utopian. And, to be realistic, monarchs of the road will presumably be those most resistant to what can only amount, according to their world view, to mass emasculation. Among the chief obstacles to driverless cars, it is predicted, will be bullying by drivers who refuse to let autonomous vehicles into traffic or who repeatedly cut in, knowing that the machines will timidly give way. In other words: business as usual. |
| For Johnson, being 'overtaken by a lady driver in a little car' brings on 'a crisis of virility' | For Johnson, being 'overtaken by a lady driver in a little car' brings on 'a crisis of virility' |
| For some speed freaks, it emerges, their misgivings are based on principle. The imminent arrival of machines that will have to make ethical choices in an emergency, such as whether to save, say, two blameless occupants or five pedestrians crossing at a red sign, has moved the Grand Tour savant, Jeremy Clarkson, to wrangle over the moral case for relying on these devices as opposed, say, to a driver who knows exactly when it is right, or not, to punch a co-worker in the face. | For some speed freaks, it emerges, their misgivings are based on principle. The imminent arrival of machines that will have to make ethical choices in an emergency, such as whether to save, say, two blameless occupants or five pedestrians crossing at a red sign, has moved the Grand Tour savant, Jeremy Clarkson, to wrangle over the moral case for relying on these devices as opposed, say, to a driver who knows exactly when it is right, or not, to punch a co-worker in the face. |
| In a recent survey, enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles was outweighed by the participants’ reluctance to buy self-driving cars with a utilitarian mindset, ie, one that might not put the owner’s survival first. That’s supposing they’re not taken over by evil powers. Then again, it is already rare to go any distance without encountering a vehicle that has fallen victim to a malign force, maybe one such as Johnson, for whom being “overtaken by a lady driver in a little car” brings on “a crisis of virility”. | In a recent survey, enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles was outweighed by the participants’ reluctance to buy self-driving cars with a utilitarian mindset, ie, one that might not put the owner’s survival first. That’s supposing they’re not taken over by evil powers. Then again, it is already rare to go any distance without encountering a vehicle that has fallen victim to a malign force, maybe one such as Johnson, for whom being “overtaken by a lady driver in a little car” brings on “a crisis of virility”. |
| Perhaps the one real downside to self-driving cars is, perversely, that drivers such as Johnson will one day abandon a form of self-expression that serves, I have found, as a supremely reliable measure of gittishness. If Theresa May was unacquainted with Johnson’s GBH-plotting past, just a horrified skim through Life in the Fast Lane would have told her everything she needed to know about his fitness for office. | Perhaps the one real downside to self-driving cars is, perversely, that drivers such as Johnson will one day abandon a form of self-expression that serves, I have found, as a supremely reliable measure of gittishness. If Theresa May was unacquainted with Johnson’s GBH-plotting past, just a horrified skim through Life in the Fast Lane would have told her everything she needed to know about his fitness for office. |