🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter <think@world.net> wrote:

>My impression of a democracy is that when a majority of peoples of a 
>nation act in a certain way it is a governments duty to ensure
>that laws are enacted to provide people with the rights to continue 
>to act in this way

A (partially) valid point.  However, people are always pushing the
limits of what they can and can't do.  And if we let those that
transgress get away with it all the time, the less adventurous ones
will think, "Hey, no one cares if I do X" and will go do it.  Soon,
everyone will be doing it.  To see what a scary scenario this is, just
think of a few examples of limit-pushing that aren't really beneficial
to the majority, such as shop-lifting, or some of the less social
behaviours espoused by many of the younger people around today.

Oh, and don't think I'm an old fogey or anything - I only turned 23
last month.

>Wern a majority of all road users exceed the speed limit, (prove this for 
<snip>
>motorway or freeway in Australia), the law is wromg not the people and to 

The law is there to protect drivers who are not trained to drive at
high speeds.  Even at 60 km/h, the distance a car will travel between
the driver sighting a hazard and pulling to a complete stop can be in
excess of 50 metres, or about eight to ten car lengths.  Now, who here
can honestly say they keep an eye on what's happening even five cars
in front when cruising through city traffic?  All the time.  Even at
6pm on a Friday, after a difficult week at work/uni/etc.


>You will find in  places like Germany responsible infrastructure spending 
>that has allowed the building of cars capable of travelling at speeds 
>approaching aircraft velocity in a safe manner. 
>Imagine if you could tavel Sydney to Brisbane at 200 kph on a road 
>designed for it!! 6 hours!! Why would you take a plane???

Driving for six hours straight is not safe.  Driving at 200 kph for
six hours straight is almost suicidal.  Not only will your reactions
slow down due to fatigue, but if, for example, a 'roo hops onto the
road (yeah, I know, it'd be fenced off, but hey, fences have a habit
of falling down) in front of you, say 200 metres.  Well, you'd have
about three seconds to react and stop before you hit it.  If you're
driving at night, visibility is not really any better than about that,
even with high beam - you have to be able to recognise an object as a
threat, and not just a shadow on the road.  So you could be driving
right at, hey lets be imaginative, a dead cow.  At 200 kph.  Now, lets
say you've got *really* good brakes, and good ABS, and can pull the
car to a stop in, oh, lets say 50 metres.  Which is asking a lot, at 
about 3 g's, especially considering a fast stop from 60 kph pulls
about 1 to 1.5 g's.

But if you could stop that quick, you'd still only have a little over
2 seconds to assess the hazard, and decide what to do about it, and
lift your foot off the accelerator, and depress the brakes.  If you're
fatigued, expect at least 1 second slower reactions.

Now, what happens if we assume a 1.5 g decel?  Stopping distance
increases to a bit over 100m.  Leaving you with just 1.7 seconds to
react and hit the brakes.  And if you don't, well, I imagine you'll be
blessing the person who invented airbags.  If you have them.

Oh, and if anyone wants to dispute my figures, well, if you can come
up with some more accurate ones, that's fine - I just pulled these off
the top of my head, and off my trusty HP calculator.

The sum of it:

Speed limits are there to protect people who think they are immortal
and are such good drivers that they can handle a car at speeds far in
excess of what they can *really* control.

Actually, no, they're there to protect the rest of us from people like
that.

Besides, consider what happens when a car has a mechanical problem,
like a tyre blowout, or some other failure.  I knew a guy who was a
bit of an idiot, and who thought driving at 150 kph was just normal.
He had a ute.  Ute's tailshaft snapped just behind the gearbox.  No
more ute.  If I recall, his mates reckoned it flipped end over end
about seven or eight times, maybe more.  The guy himself doesn't know
how may times it flipped; he's just glad he survived.


One last point - who the hell wants to sit behind the wheel for six
hours, when for not much more than the cost of fuel and maintenance,
you can fly in comfort?
I know which is safer.
(Did you hear about the insurance company, who's actuarial tables
listed meteor strike as a more probable cause of death than plane
crash?) (No, that's not a joke.)  (Unless, of course, you're flying
Aeroflot, or some of the Chinese carriers...:)

Anyways, enough.

Enjoy.

Walshy.
-------
Bernard Walsh         walsh@sun.mech.uq.oz.au
Dept of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Queensland 4072 Australia

Don't let the world grind you down - make it hone you to a razor's edge...