A few months locked up for a teenager would probably help ruin his future attempts at getting work, expose him to more crime and drugs and really do bugger all for society.
Jail should be to protect society from criminals who are a danger thereto - the guy drove a bit wild, he maybe deserves a ban - I reckon he's driven for less than two years so 11 points on his license would be quite a nice punishment, he'll have to resit a test, insurance will be a nightmare and he'll have to drive everywhere at under the limit for three years.
Wouldn't it have been easier to post "Ek = 1/2 mv^2" ;)?
Paul Smith's (of uk.rec.driving infamy) braking distance spreadsheet is pretty handy for demonstrating this sort of thing. I've not checked his maths (it's all in bloody imperial for a start :P) but the figures it comes out with seem reasonable enough. It'd be fairly simple to make it come up with a speed vs braking distance graph to show the curve.
Spose you might be right there. OK a big ban, fine, community service and condemned to driving a 1 litre mk3 Fiesta for the next 20 years should do it :)
...or he'll just end up driving with no insurance, and knowing my luck would probably drive straight into the side of my car at warp speed.
I don't know the area in question, as stated. I do, however, realise the kind of logic you are employing and I can agree with that to a certain extent.
60mph is the figure you gave.
Whilst that may be perfectly achievable, and may even be done in perfect 'relative' safety, but - as a generalisation - going through junctions at twice the limit *is* a fuckwitted thing to do[1].
Which area? AFAIK we're talking about doing 60 in a 60 zone.
Well yeah, the speed limit in quite a few places, including dual carriageways, motorway junctions / slip roads / etc is 60 or even 70. I don't have a problem with that.
I'm being told that travelling at that speed limit is fuckwitted and stupid, and I should "slow down" from my "high speed". The figure offered was 40 mph, i.e. what people usually travel around residential areas at, which is faster than I travel around residential areas at because there the issue isn't high speed, it's short stopping distances and kids on bikes. Which I'm sure shouldn't happen on the M25 and it's not the fault of the driver when they run own a pedestrian on the motorway, IMHO.
Ok. The 120 mph driver is bang to rights and has absolutely no excuse, I agree with him being described as a f****it. 'specially as he's doing 120 in a 40 zone, not on a motorway.
What I'm objecting to is being described as fuckwitted by driving through traffic lights on a 60-restricted dual carriageway at 60. I don't accept that that is fuckwitted behaviour, and wouldn't agree with it even if I was in the habit of doing a fair bit more than that, although I'd not argue with being done for speeding if I were to get caught doing that higher speed.
No. Read my post again. I'm not saying it's ok - the guy is clearly a complete dumbass, and he deserves a right royal kicking. But he CERTAINLY doesn't deserve to go to jail !
Assuming you fired the gun up into the air, you wouldn't expect a punishment as harsh as if you shot someone and killed them in the street !
No I don't. I'm simply stating my opinion that it is ridiculous to send someone to jail, for a crime with no consequence, that didn't harm anyone in the slightest, for the reasons stated above. Do you disagree ?
But clearly the actions of the driver don't necessarily contribute to the example you give - what if the kid just ran out right in front of him ? Even if he was going 10mph, he would still have hit the child, who may still have died.
I completely agree.
You day to jail if you murder somone, or rape someone, or smash seven bells out of someone, or lots of other equally heinous crimes. Driving stupidly fast without causing any trouble at all, is hardly in the same ballpark !
Bullets don't just fly out of the upper atmosphere and disappear into the vastness of space you know. There have been a fair few people killed by bullets that dropped out of the sky after some noggin decided it'd be a good idea to shoot their gun into the air :P.
And, of course, the stated limit is always safe, isn't it?
Argh! Can't you understand that just becuase the limit is posted as
60mph, doesn't mean it is safe and sensible to do that speed?
But we're not talking about doing 60mph on the M25. We're talking about doing that speed on a roundabout. Even if the posted limit for the roundabout is 60mph, and you are capable of taking it at 60mph, doesn't mean that it is _safe_ (I'll stress the word _safe_ here, as you don't seem to understand it).
What has this got to do with being able to assess the road conditions and hazzards and drive at an appropriate speed?
You seem to have absolutely no understanding of hazzard analysis. A posted limit for the circumstances doesn't mean that the limit is a safe speed. Driving at the limit through a rounabout / traffic lights is rarely a safe thing to do. Especially as you've already commented on having to pull off a tricky emergency stop to avoid flying through a set of lights (and yes, I appreciate that they're mistimed, however, you should adjust your speed so as to be able to stop / take evasive action safely should you need to). Junctions are hazzardous enough as it is, without having to think about fuckwits flying through them at 60mph.
The idea is that the earth has a surface area of about e+15 square meters and people are generally about a quarter of a square meter when viewed from above, so the odds don't look particularly high.
Not that it's a smart thing to do, of course, especially as a bullet has pretty fair odds of falling back on you with quite a bit of speed. Also, the terminal velocity of a bullet is high, but it's nowhere near the muzzle velocity and you're trying to penetrate a pretty hard bone to reach most of the vital organs.
Obviously the odds aren't high, but there are definately a fair few people who've died from bullets dropping on them. I'm not suggesting that it's a fair few in relation to the number of bullets fired into the air :).
You have to look more at where and when guns are fired into the air, it's custom in some places to do it at parties, funerals, weddings and some carnivals. If you have the streets packed with people for a big carnival with a significant number discharging AKs into the air the chances of someone getting hit is higher than a man wandering round the centre of Birmingham shooting a Makarov once or twice.
If said actions result in nothing at all, and the same said actions result in 58 people dying, then it seems a bit silly to dish out the same punishment in both cases (ie, a squillion years in jail).
I agree.
So : Causing the death of a child. You say : "Does he deserve to go to jail? Probably not".
This guy caused the death of nobody - infact he didn't even harm anyone at all - and you say he deserves to go to jail ?
Do you have a reference to this? It's news to me, and I couldn't find any mention of a 30 mph speed limit applying to junctions in either the highway code or the road traffic act 1988, despite looking. If it's true, that would be worth learning about.
If you mean that most junctions have 30 mph signs before and NSL signs after, that's not especially relevant and I think we'd all agree there was a 30 zone to travel through, not a NSL.
We're talking about a straight dual carriageway, which is signed 60. I gather it's signed different now but the specific road doesn't matter all that much. Take as the "junction" a dual carriageway with a traffic light controlled crossroad on it. Which one and where doesn't really matter.
Travelling at the speed limit? Or going through junctions? Travelling at the speed limit while going through junctions?
I'm stating that going through a junction at the legally permitted speed is not fuckwitted, and is, in fact, quite normal. Some roads, like country lanes, are de-restricted but you'd be mad to speed on most winding, single track country lanes, not that that's part of the debate.
Since the lights are supposed to be set to the speed limit, travelling faster than this will make you more likely, and at some speed inevitable, to run a red light or fail to stop in time / distance available.
There's some slack built in to add a margin so it's not actually perilous until you are well above the legal limit, as I would think the statistics would demonstrate. There's not much point in speeding through lights, though, doesn't make much odds to your journey time but does add a goodly chance of a fine through the post.
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