Danny's Weblog

Letters

This section is for my letters to newspapers and magazines which *didn't* get printed. I've often checked a newspaper to see if my wonderful incisive, witty and elegant letter got printed, only to find a mishmash of routine, pedestrian cliches by a parade of oafs. Now you have a chance to see the kind of letters which the newspapers *do not dare to print*! I have decided to predate these letters to the date when I actually sent them, rather than the date when I post them on the site. I am too lazy to post all my letters at once, but eventually there will be letters to the following: Bangkok Post
The Nation (Thailand)
International Herald Tribune
and any others I can't think of right now.

2004 Jan 13 [ Tue ]

The LondonSpectator 2004-01-10 p12 "Speed cameras..."

To: letters email at spectator.co.uk (Spectator Magazine) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 02:07:52 -0500 (EST)

I'm not a fast driver. Indeed, I haven't owned a vehicle for two years. (Perhaps I should add that my license is clean.)

But I'm not in favor of government meddling in general and speed limits in particular. So I was pleased to find many non-sequiturs in Ross Clark's article "Speed cameras are good for you". I was particularly pleased with the paragraph "The first argument is fallacious..." because the causes listed for accidents, which Clark insists are "speeding by another name", have no particular relationship to speeding, and the logical confusion in Clark's mind which this exposes is at the heart of the socialist perfectionism which drives the anti-speeding fanatics.

"In a hurry" – "aggressive driving" – "reckless behavior". Is it really impossible to be in a hurry without speeding? "Speeding" means exceeding a posted speed limit. If you are in a hurry you may indeed take risks, but is it logically necessary to thereby exceed the speed limit?

"Aggressive driving" – again that could mean a lot of things. How about tailgating, for instance? You can tailgate at 15 mph and cause an accident. Will speed cameras stop tailgating?

"Reckless behavior" – if I remember rightly I was fined for this once because I turned right without realizing that my vision was blocked and a car was approaching rapidly but invisibly. Well, it was indeed my fault but I can assure you I was doing no more than ten miles per hour when I made the turn.

People like Clark just assume that speed cameras and indeed speed limits have some relationship to dangerous driving, but that has not been proven because it is logically very hard to prove.

Personally I suspect that people like Clark really like speed limits because they annoy people, although that would be hard to prove.

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