🚀 go-pugleaf

In <36673F0E.C0F21C32@hp.com> Tedd McHenry <tedd_mchenry@hp.com> writes:

>Rahul, I have to admit that I didn't understand your thought
>experiment.  When you said, "
>Each month make lange changes at a faster rate then you did the previous
>month," did you mean to change lanes more quickly, or to change lanes
>more frequently?  In either case, your argument is not supportable, but
>for different reasons.

The rate of lane changes being discussed was lane changes per minute
(or per second, per hour, etc., whichever is more convenient).

>I'll deal with "more frequently" first.  The problem with the assertion
>that more frequent lane changes, during the experiment, will result in
>more accidents is that it assumes a relationship between lane changes
>and accidents--the very thing that the thought experiment is supposed
>to "prove."  So the argument is circular.

My assertion is that a higher rate of lane changes will cause a higher
rate of accidents.  Nothing circular so far, right?  Now how do we test
this?  Just keep increasing your rate of lane changes, and see what
happens.  If you observe a higher accident rate, you have established a
correlation.  Unless you can find some third variable that causes the
two under discussion to both change, you are forced to conclude that
there is a causal relationship between the two under disussion.

In a previous posting you said that there is a correlation between
driving at a speed different from the speed of other vehicles and
accident rate.  Driving both too fast and too slow will result in a
higher accident rate.  Now think about a typical situation on the road.
What happens when you drive much faster than others?  You weave through
traffic -- and thus have a higher rate of lane changes.  What happens
when you drive much slower than others?  Everybody else changes lanes to
get around you and thus experiences a higher rate of lane changes.

Thus we have established a correlation between a higher rate of lane
changes and a higher accident rate.  The question now is whether there
is a causation.  I contend that *something* is causing the higher
accident rate.  My intuition tells me that if vehicles stay in their own
lanes, a speed differential between two lanes is unlikely to cause
acidents.  Thus it must be the higher rate of lane changes, not just the
speed differential, that causes a higher rate of accidents.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@spams.r.us.com>
a2i communications, a quality ISP
    "Any idiot can avoid automobile accidents that are his own fault.  It
     takes skill to avoid accidents that are the *other* person's fault."