MAG: European Bandwagon Moves Against Motorcycling

[northwind]

Originally Posted by Carl PO51 MYV

but the point should be that its our choice to make, not theirs

That's fine if you live on an island by yourself... But if people are gettign on (or in) machines they can't handle, there's a good chance they hurt other people. It's also our tax that pays to put them back together, and our insurance that goes up to cover the costs of incompetents killing their transport.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by Flamin_Squirrel

It's not the governments job to absolve people of that responsibility what so ever. Unfortunately noone wants to accept any responsibility anymore.

Exactly right. But though I agree with your statement, I don't agree with your conclusion. I think the drive towards legislating these things more tightly is a result of, not a cause of, people's decision not to take responsibility. There's no point saying "It's the individual's job to take responsibility for their actions" when in the real world, many people simply won't. And if they won't, someone has to, because it's not just for their protection. If it was, I'd be quite happy with halfwits killing themselves, there'd be more parts in breakers and less halfwits reproducing

Originally Posted by northwind

That's fine if you live on an island by yourself... But if people are gettign on (or in) machines they can't handle, there's a good chance they hurt other people. It's also our tax that pays to put them back together, and our insurance that goes up to cover the costs of incompetents killing their transport.

Yeah but where do you draw the line? We'd all be much safer if we were confined to padded cells.

Anyway, if you want to make an impact on casualty figures you go for the greatest source, and that isnt people newly qualified crashing outrageously powerful machines.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by Flamin_Squirrel

Yeah but where do you draw the line? We'd all be much safer if we were confined to padded cells.

And when you have someone who's incapable of making decisions for themselves, that's exactly what you do with them

Totalyl agree with your other point, but I'd say that's more an argument in favour of more legislation, not against this one, myself.

Originally Posted by northwind

And when you have someone who's incapable of making decisions for themselves, that's exactly what you do with them

Totalyl agree with your other point, but I'd say that's more an argument in favour of more legislation, not against this one, myself.

I see where you're coming from, I just think legislation is too blunt an instrument and should only ever be used as a last resort. There are alternatives, educating new riders of the dangers of high powered machinery for a start.

[northwind]

You have more faith in humankind than me, it seems I did 5 CBTs, on the grounds that I was utterly incompetent, so met about 25-30 other learners. Maybe 5 of them would have been interested in being educated... But most would obey legislation, to some extent. Everyone knows about the dangers of riding a bike at 150mph, they just don't believe it applies to them.

I'm with the personal responsibility gang - as long as the test guarantees a minimum level of competence it's up to you to know your limits. All this does is change the level of competence required, and makes the, arguably false, assertion that age will equal greater sanity on the road. It is NOT possible to stop people hurting themselves with machinery be it a car, motorbike, mountain bike, skateboard.... To try and do so sets an impossible task.

I guess the question is, do you believe that current competency standards for passing test are too low? Or are we trying to legislate against people harming themselves?

For example, after riding my bike for four years I had an accident, I'd done 12K on the bike I was on at that point, had ridden in all weathers in London and the countryside and put in a huge numbers of hours on it. But I still had an accident, if your going for reducing injury accidents to zero then on these criteria I still wasn't ready to be on the road.

So your competence requirement has now got to be > 28, 4 years experience comprising a minimum of 12000 miles in dry, bright, misty, wet, snow and ice. XXX hours ridden. (all of which supervised or off public roads)

If everyone believes that the test centres are turning out incompetents then it needs addressing, but if we're trying to solve the problem of human beings that a) like going quick and b) don't know their limits - it ain't gonna happen!