Over 30s Shouldn't Drive

The Institute of Alcohol Studies says[pdf]:

After drinking, the brain works inefficiently, taking longer to receive messages from the eye; processing information becomes more difficult and instructions to the muscles are delayed. Alcohol can slow down reaction time by 10 to 30 per cent.

 If this is a reason to ban drink driving then many over 30s should not be allowed to drive. A research paper entitled "Simple reaction time, duration of driving and sleep deprivation in young versus old automobile drivers" reports that the median reaction time for drivers under 30 was 236ms. If that is increased by 30% we have 306.8ms.

In other words, the law currently assumes that someone whose reaction times are over 306.8ms should not be driving. The problem is that the median reaction time for over 30s is 262ms with a standard deviation of 81ms (the slowest recorded was 448ms). This means that quite a lot of drivers over the age of 30 are driving with reaction times equivalent to being drunk while driving.

Obviously I'm being facetious. But the point is that the law is far too arbitrary. As it stands people are being punished without any evidence that they (as individuals not statistics) are incapable of driving properly.

Not Everything's Political Correctness

The phrase "political correctness gone mad" is perhaps one of the most annoying (followed closely by "it's right that..."). A dinner lady got into trouble with her school after giving a biscuit to a relative of hers who was a pupil at the school. Apparently she was told by the head that "she could be seen to be grooming the boy."

Obviously the whole thing is stupid. But so is this:

"Chair of the Stormont Education committee Mervyn Storey described it as "political correctness gone too far".

What has it got to do with political correctness? Nothing. It's got to do with a country that is whipping itself up into a frenzy over paedophilia and politicians writing and passing hasty and bad laws because of it.

Law that Targets Only the Innocent

Via Longrider I read that 19 year old Oliver Drage has been sent to prison for 16 weeks for refusing to give police his 50-character password. He was found guilty under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This strikes me as a law that can ONLY target the innocent.

The aim of the law is to coerce people into allowing police to examine their files so that they can determine whether a real crime has been committed. Now, either the files contain incriminating evidence or they do not. If they do then as Longrider puts it:

maybe he weighed up the odds and decided to take the hit for non-compliance as opposed to providing the Bill with evidence of sexual misdeeds, eh?

RIPA has no coercive power over the guilty because the prison sentence for non-compliance of RIPA will always be less than for the crime he is suspected of. The innocent on the other hand can be coerced.

You might argue that without RIPA the guilty guy gets away scot-free. True, but the law fails do achieve its aim. It can, in fact, never achieve its aim. So the argument becomes akin to suggesting that we lock up all people suspected of a crime (regardless of whether we can prove they are guilty) because otherwise some guilty people will get away.

DfT Finds No Need for Speed Limits*

The Englishman links to an article from The Telegraph about a report from Atkins written for the Department for Transport (got that?). The report concerns a scheme implemented in Portsmouth to reduce the speed limit to 20mph in residential steets, rather than 30mph. The Englishman is concerned with the results that indicate that the change had limit impact, other than costing £500,000.

What struck me from the Telegraph article, though, was this:

"Motorists' average speeds reduced by 1.3mph, from 19.8mph to 18.5mph, as a result of the scheme, according to the report, which tested speeds at 223 locations across the city." 

So the report found that people ignored the speed limit when it was 30mph and just drove at a speed that was safe and sensible. Basically, it found that we don't really need speed limits.

And logically why would we? The only real crime you can commit when driving is causing an accident. To prevent that we have laws about dangerous driving and driving without due care and attention. Why would we need an arbitrary law about how fast you can go?

Isn't it obvious that different roads and different conditions require different speeds? As this report shows, most people realise this and drive appropriately. Those who don't can be prosecuted anyway under dangerous driving laws even if they are below the speed limit.

Is it going too far to suggest that the only reason for speed limits is to make it easier for the police and courts to convict people without having to worry about considering the actual circumstances of the case? Are speed limits a bad law?

*The post title may not accurately reflect the intention of the report's authors