Aw, that’s okay. They do a pretty good job keeping the site running. We can handle the rest. A good spar now and again keeps me alive.
Have you noticed they seem to have improved the log on problems? A big “high five” to the web lackys.
Mountainbike–
Did you notice that a certain forum member’s posts are now missing?
Perhaps the garden has been trimmed of a particularly noxious weed.
I have for years advocated that licences be issued with limitations and be posted on the rear of the vehicle as predominantly as the license plate. Learners permits, restrictions for teenage drivers, restrictions for poor vision, DUI probation, etc should be prominently displayed to be easily identified by other drivers and law enforcement. And drivers with years of accident free and citation free driving might have a license making that obvious to fellow drivers and law enforcement.
Being a safe driver is more about having good judgement than it is about having good vehicle handling skills. If you teach proffesional race car driving skills to someone who is completely devoid of judgement, all you get is someone who loses control of his car at higher speeds than previously possible.
Perhaps a driving test should include testing the ability of someone to stay calm when driving on a closed course along with hired shills who’s job it is to be complete jerks to the person taking the test.
I know, in high school I was taking a course in aviation. I enjoyed it so much I started taking private lessons, went on about a ten or so orientation/instructional flights. Unfortunately college came along and I had to put the aviation on the shelf. I hope to get back to it someday.
Though in my post I was referring to a driver’s license, not a pilot’s license.
Mountainbike’s suggestion about retesting based on accidents, tickets, etc. is a good one in my opinion but I have several reservations about this.
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What about someone who has been in accidents through no fault of their own? I’ve been in half a dozen serious ones over the years with none being my fault.
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What if someone is ticket-prone and during a retest does the usual; drives on eggs, sucks up to the examiner, the examiner (if male) is prone to allowing that pretty young lady to get a pass, etc.?
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What if someone has a ton of tickets with the majority being undeserved? I fall into this category. In a perfect world the police do not pick on anyone but in reality in happens all of the time. Over the years I quit counting how many I’ve had at around the 35-40 mark. Some were deserved, no doubt about it but about 90% of them were not.
Long hair, beard, and a hot rod car or motorcycle draws tickets; earned or not.
An example, and no ticket in this case, but…
Rolled my Harley out of the garage one Sun. afternoon for a little normal maintenance. The bike had not even been started in a week. About 10 minutes later several friends dropped by and we were standing around chatting bike stuff, etc. At one point some kid on a crotch rocket flew by about a block away at high speed and we were commenting that this kid was going to buy the farm doing that speed in a residential neighborhood.
About 10 minutes later a cop stops at the end of my drive and out of the blue says he’s going to write me a ticket for speeding after asking who the bike belonged to. This led to some harsh words with the cop with my telling him to go find the punk on the rice rocket.
The cop got even more belligerent (still in his cruiser) and I told him to get his donut hiney out of the car and lay a hand on my bike’s engine, which he would find is stone cold.
He refused at that point and drove off, sticking his head out the window and stating that he was going to be “hanging around for a while”.
I’ve actually received a number of tickets other equally similar, shaky situations and in one bad example I spent the entire night in the Oklahoma City jail on 3 trumped up traffic violations. At the time they put me in jail (they even put a K9 on me at the station to assure I would not move until locked up) they were not even telling me what for. This was only discovered the next morning when I was bailed out. When I showed up for court some weeks later the DA’s office did not EVEN want me in the courtroom, refunded the bail money, dropped all tickets, and apologized “for any inconvenience I may have suffered”.
Things like this do affect one’s attitude.
I don’t think we need to test more frequently or do anything that would cost more money. All we need to do is increase the standards for the tests. We did it in education long ago. 40 years ago, a “D” was a passing grade. Now you can’t pass with anything lower than a “C.” If you want to continue to study, and enter graduate school, you will probably discover you can’t pass with anything lower than a “B.” All we need to do is raise the passing grade for a driving test from “C” (or 70%) to “B” (80%). It shouldn’t cost taxpayers any extra money, and it should make the roads safer.
ZW’s post was apparently flagged. I started ignoring him/her a long time ago. Its the best thing to do, as suggested. Useless is one thing. But in ZW’s case, bordering on inflammatory troll is more like it.
I think cars should be equipped with a device ,that while the engine is running,defeats the use of hand held phones.
If not the phone option, at least text messaging. The phones would be equipped with the software that interfaces with the vehicles device.Maybe the emergency/parking brake needs to be engaged to allow text messaging.
for the dui’s start them at 5 mile walk back 2nd time 10 mile there ar countrys that the first dui is last one( death) not much drinking + driving there
OK4450, you make some interesting points.
- fault determinations would have to be a factor in the rating system.
As regards (2) and (3), you know I have only the utmost respect for you both technically and as a person, but I have a hard time with the idea of someone receiving a ton of tickets most lf them undeserved. Most of us who’ve been driving for many years have had a bogus ticket, myself included, but a ton of them suggests a cause. Of course, I’ve never ridden a bike in Oklahoma City so I admit to not being privy to their biases there. But in the rating system I suggest, tickets that are thrown out of court or successfully contested would not count toward the rating that would require retesting.
I admit that such a system would need some work to design. But if the issue is retesting, to me it makes more sense than across the board retesting.
Kudos to the weed trimmers.
I guess there’ll always be a few weeds in any garden, but the fruits of the garden make the gardening worth the effort even though occasional weeding is needed.
Requiring re-testing or re-licensing of “senior citizens” (of whom I am one) is nearly as big a political “third-rail” as Social Security reform. This country is so wedded to the automobile that taking away the “right to drive”, in most of this country, is equivalent to imprisonment without possibility of parole. My daughters want Herself and me to move closer to them in Texas; Herself doesn’t drive, and what happens when I am no longer able to drive? We now live where there is plenty of relatively cheap public transport, a thing not commonly met with in Texas. I’ll bet a proposal there to re-test drivers would be met with extreme resistance.
Testing for seniors is controversial throughout the country. I myself have mixed emotions about it.
This past weekend I did travel behind an elderly lady on a secondary road that was clearly a danger. She stopped and waited at green lights, straddled lanes, went slow and then fast and then slow, and was driving as if she were confused. But she was on the extreme end of the curve. It’s very possible that if testing were institited many seniors who are actually safe drivers, and actually need their cars, would lose their licenses.
Seniors generally know when their faculties begin to fail, and they generally develop compensating behaviors that can make them safe, behaviors such as not driving anywhere but the corner store and not on busy days. I watched my mom develop compensating behaviors as she aged.
Again, I have mixed emotions. I have to believe that driving records are the best approach, albiet not perfect, but I respect that opnions vary on this. I also believe that the money would be far better spent getting drunks off the road permanently. There was an article in today’s local paper about a lady with four prior DUI convictions that drove drunk into the rear end of a police car. let’s spend the money to stop the carnage of the drunks first, than consider other issues.
if the penalty is severe enough they will not do it again.
I agree with OK4450. Since tickets are issued based sometimes on quotas, and stepped-up enforcement activity is random in nature, as are traffic patterns of any given individual, and since nobody really knows how many undeserved tickets are issued, it is statistically a virtual certainty that some unfortunate citizens will be subject to more than their fair share of unfair tickets.
Join the NMA. Fight every ticket, whether guilty or not. Make traffic-ticket revenue-enhancement less attractive, and make law enforcement focus on actual safety, and not on stupidity like how long you pose stopped at a camera-equipped red-light for a right turn.
Perhaps your approach is overkill. Imagine it is -40 degrees outside (wind chill) and you are stuck in snow. Do you want to have to turn your engine off to make a call for help? Texting while waiting for passing trains or long red lights should be OK without having to set the parking brake. How about transmission in park or neutral?
Many studies show that it isn’t whether or not you hold the phone that makes it dangerous, but that your eyes are diverted from the road for too long, and/or that you are engaged in full-duplex (meaning you can hear and perhaps understand the person on the other end, while you are talking). Use of two-way radios with push to talk switches don’t seem to be a problem like the phones are.
Lots of good points and issues here.
Politics plays perhaps way too much of a part in use and regulation of motor vehicles and roadways. No apparent solution there.
It is amazing how most seniors do compensate very well, know their limitations, and cause no problems. However, a relative of mine who had had a fairly major stroke was convinced even though she couldn’t walk or use her left hand, that she could still drive. (She couldn’t.) So, a few drivers exhibit no compensating behavior, and they are the most dangerous. How do you accurately determine which drivers these are? You can’t just leave it up to doctors. Doctors (and FAA) drive up the cost of flight physicals like crazy after a pilot has had some issues, forcing many pilots to retire way too early, yet true medical incapacitation is a factor in an absurdly small percentage of aircraft accidents.
Yes, drunk and incapacitated drives should be exterminated. There are some problems. China has figured out how to make breathalyzers for under $100 (with very poor accuracy), and groups like MADD (who really want total prohibition) make extreme political pressure to focus exclusively on arbitrary BAC levels, and so law-enforcement has a field day issuing revenue-enhancement DUI tickets to drivers whose alcohol-related impairment level is far less than that of a mild sinus headache. Don’t attack my motives now. I don’t drink - ever. However, I still fear DUI checkpoints, Field Sobriety tests (because nobody ever passes one), and breathalyzers that can read .08% based totally on unrelated hydrocarbons.
There’s plenty of money to attack the carnage now. There’s so much money, politicians can’t resist this innocuous sounding form of taxation. The solution lies in forcing politicians to leave driving and roadway issues to the engineers, and leave revenue-enhancement out of it. If I knew how to do that, I’d be doing it. Any ideas?
What if we had graduated driver’s licenses?
Your first license would qualify you to drive a low-power car only on surface roads. The next step up would be freeway privileges. As you gain in skills and pass the required tests, you’d graduate up to larger and more powerful vehicles.
Or the feds could pass a law requiring the purchaser of a vehicle to be able to demonstrate that they can parallel park it before they’re allowed to buy it.
This wold take virtually all the SUVs and large trucks off the road.
Airline pilots are routinely tested to make sure that they can handle normal flight and unique situations. They also know enough about mechanics so that they can improvise when procedures don’t exist (UAL 232).
The idea of testing regular drivers at the frequency faced by airline pilots is to ensure that everyone is habitually doing what they are supposed to. Things such as signaling, checking for blind spots, coming to a complete stop, turning into the correct lane, and looking far ahead instead of braking every 5 seconds are few things most drivers ignored.
Regular drivers do not care about how their cars work and don’t know the proper procedures for handling mechanical problems. Just in the last decade, we’ve seen tipsy Explorers and runaway Toyota. Both vehicles were perfectly capable of surviving their respective malfunctions had they been handled properly. I’m not saying everyone must like cars, but just as airline pilots are in the sky, drivers are all alone until their car is at the shop. Not knowing how the machine works had proven lethal.
I don’t think this testing is intended to remove the privilege to drive. But some people shouldn’t be on the road until they get their acts together. If their livelihood depends on it, then they better do it.