🚀 go-pugleaf

In <slrn74i9rn.j3.joel-garry@home.com> joel-garry@nospam.home.com (Joel
Garry) writes:

>>"Safe" vs "unsafe" is not a boolean choice.  There are degrees of
>>safety.  Your degree of safety while staying in your lane at a steady
>>velocity is greater than your degree of speed while changing lanes.
>>Simply attacking me proves nothing -- if you have a real argument to
>>make, make it.

>I don't see that the degree of safety of changing lanes justifies a law
>against it.  Every one of the millions of trips on the freeway every day
>that doesn't get involved in an accident has changed lanes at least twice.
>Tony attacking you just proves that you haven't communicated your arguments
>particularly effectively.

I see three questionable assertions above.

1.
>I don't see that the degree of safety of changing lanes justifies a law
>against it.

Most laws are based on drawing arbitrary lines.  Few will question the
need to draw the line; the real argument is almost always about where
the line should be drawn.  As simple examples, I doubt that anybody
would argue that a speed limit of 500 mph on highways in the USA is too
low, or that a law against 10 lane changes a second is too restrictive.
All that remains for us to do is find a speed limit which is not too
restrictive, but low enough that it will significantly dminish the
accident rate.  Likewise, we need to find a rate of lane changes that is
not too restrictive, but will still significantly diminish the accident
rate.

So, your statement is too simplistic in that it does not recognize that
we are trying to draw a line at the right place.  I purposely left out
any specific rate of lane changes (I used symbols M and N) because I did
not have sufficient information to make a sensible guess at good
numbers.

California already has a law against reckless driving, and the most
common interpretations of this in the field are (a) too high a rate of
lane changes and (b) too small following distance.  So an explicit law
codifying an acceptable rate of lane changes does not add any new
restrictions -- it only make them more explicit and more objectively
enforceable.

2.
>Every one of the millions of trips on the freeway every day
>that doesn't get involved in an accident has changed lanes at least twice.

I think what you are saying is that since many trips involve at least
two lane changes, we should not have a law that prohibits two lane
changes.  What I proposed would not prohibit two lane changes, so your
concern is unnecessary.

Your comment also does not address the fact that it's not the total
number of lane changes that I am discussing, but the rate of lane
changes.

3.
>Tony attacking you just proves that you haven't communicated your arguments
>particularly effectively.

No, it does not prove this in general.  It only proves that I haven't
communicated effectively to Tony.  The next obvious question is whether
I care about communicating anything effectively to Tony.  The answer is,
not really.  Based on his writing style, I conclude that he is not
interested in new ideas.
-- 
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."