Daily Review 09/10/2017

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, October 9th, 2017 - 51 comments
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Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

51 comments on “Daily Review 09/10/2017 ”

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  1. Anne 1
    9 October 2017 at 6:52 pm

    lols. I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for Theresa May – not.

  2. Carolyn_nth 2
    9 October 2017 at 6:57 pm

    Carnage on our roads.

    So far 293 people have died on our roads this year. By this time last year it was 251.

    Motor vehicles are dangerous weapons technology.

    • Bearded Git 2.1
      9 October 2017 at 7:01 pm

      Yep so National is proposing to put the speed limit up to 110 kmh on some roads. Brilliant.

      • Cinny 2.1.1
        9 October 2017 at 7:16 pm

        Speed is not the greatest factor in road fatalities, not wearing a seatbelt is

        Really sad what happened around the corner this morning, a fatality at an intersection in a 50km zone.

          • Cinny 2.1.1.1.1
            9 October 2017 at 8:20 pm

            Thanks Ad, that’s really interesting. 50% of those who were killed in a vehicle last month weren’t wearing a seat belt. Crikey that a fair chunk.

            Down the bottom where it says ‘Behavioural Measures’ then lists speed and alcohol, then it has a section on seatbelts with percentages, would that be the percentage of people who were or were not wearing a seat belt please? I’m confused on that bit of the table. Thanks.

            • Carolyn_nth 2.1.1.1.1.1
              9 October 2017 at 8:37 pm

              “Too fast for the conditions” is listed as a major cause of crashes.

              Not wearing seatbelts = 50% at the time of the crash for those killed.

              But my understanding is, the higher the speed when a car crashes, the more damage that can be done to persons.

              “Loss of control of the vehicle” doesn’t really say much about causes or crashes or deaths.

              • Andre …
                9 October 2017 at 9:00 pm

                Go on and flame me to a crisp for being insensitive, but I take a Darwinian view of adults that die in crashes that weren’t wearing seatbelts. They’re such a quick, simple and effective safety measure with no downside to putting it on.

                Yes, the higher the speed the a body impacts something hard, the more damage is done. But the object a human body is most likely to impact in a crash is something inside the vehicle. So if the human is fully restrained to the seat, then it’s much less likely to impact something else. Hence safety features like explosively tensioning seatbelts that yank you hard into your seat when a crash is detected. Look at racing car drivers that are locked into their seats with six-point harnesses and head restraints, walking away from utterly horrendous crashes.

                • chris73 …
                  9 October 2017 at 9:28 pm

                  You must be doing something wrong as I agree with you

                  • Andre …
                    9 October 2017 at 9:35 pm

                    I think we should tax carbon, tax income from capital, and raise the income tax rate on top earners much higher. We also need to do much more to protect the natural environment, with unwinding farming intensification as a priority.

                    There, has that reset things back to normal?

                • Carolyn_nth …
                  9 October 2017 at 9:28 pm

                  Yes, but that’s fine for those inside a car. But, even though the majority of deaths and injuries are to drivers and passengers, there are also a fair amount where a pedestrian, motorcyclist or cyclist is killed or injured. And, in those cases, more speed = more damage to the person.

                  Also, 5 of the 29 deaths in August involved a truck. A racing car would be unlikely to be in a collision with a much bigger vehicle, also travelling at a reasonable speed.

                  I deduce from the stats that no truck drivers or passengers were killed – the 29 deaths include 20 car or van drivers, 4 car or van passengers, 3 motorcyclists and 2 cyclists.

                  • Andre …
                    9 October 2017 at 9:48 pm

                    When it comes to pedestrians, front end design of a car has a huge effect on pedestrian survival. Modern design tries to ensure the pedestrian goes onto the bonnet, with a controlled crumpling of the bonnet into space above the engine. Even those awful plastic covers they put on top of engines play a part in improving pedestrian survival. It’s a world away from older designs that often as not would knock the pedestrian down to the ground in front of the car to subsequently get run over.

                    Racing cars will often have impacts into solid walls, at much higher speeds than happen on public roads. So in a lot of cases with trucks, it’s that the design of the truck means a car’s safety features don’t absorb the impact the way they’re designed to.

                • Kevin …
                  9 October 2017 at 11:49 pm

                  But they dont just kill themselves.

              • Andre …
                9 October 2017 at 9:07 pm

                I’d also be curious about injury data for not wearing seatbelts. Coz if half the fatalities are from not wearing seatbelts, but only 3% of drivers don’t wear seatbelts, then it looks like not wearing a seatbelt is probably a good predictor of a driver that’s likelier to crash.

              • Craig H …
                10 October 2017 at 7:19 am

                Yes, that’s basic physics. Specifically, the damage is 1/2mv^2, or in words, half the mass in kg multiplied by the speed in metres per second squared. The faster you go, the bigger the mess indeed.

      • james 2.1.2
        9 October 2017 at 7:56 pm

        Yep – on extremely safe roads that meet a strict criteria.

        A bloody good idea.

    • james 2.2
      9 October 2017 at 7:57 pm

      Cars dont kill people. People driving cars kill people.

      • Cinny 2.2.1
        9 October 2017 at 8:08 pm

        Exactly and that’s why rules for foreign/visiting drivers need changing, enough fatalities, they should have to sit a test and be banned from driving for a set time if stepping off a long haul flight.

        • james 2.2.1.1
          9 October 2017 at 8:15 pm

          and how many of the 293 deaths are related to foreign/visiting drivers?

          Also why should foreign/visiting drivers be banned from driving for a set time if stepping off a long haul flight and not Kiwi’s?

          • Cinny 2.2.1.1.1
            9 October 2017 at 8:32 pm

            Does the average person get enough sleep on a long haul flight including any stop overs in order to be able to drive safetly on a foreign road as soon as they get here?

            In the south island tourist drivers make up around a quarter or more of road crashes…. location, location, location.

            Here’s the report….
            http://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Research/Documents/Overseas-drivers2016.pdf

            2012 (rugby world cup) was a bad year, almost 10% of fatalities involved a tourist driver.

            With that in mind, tourism is booming, more tourists, more fatalities, prevention is better than a cure, especially when it involves the finite, death.

          • Bearded Git 2.2.1.1.2
            10 October 2017 at 8:15 am

            95% of crashes are caused by Kiwis

        • ScottGN 2.2.1.2
          9 October 2017 at 8:28 pm

          Apart from a few celebrated cases that received lots of media attention foreign/visiting drivers aren’t killing us on the roads Cinny. It’s NZers (and a particular cohort at that) who are killing themselves.
          Rather than imposing an impractical test on tourists we should do more to make our roads safer to drive on. I drove through Italy last year on plenty of narrow, windy roads much like ours really. The difference was the amount of signage and roading infrastructure employed to make the journey safer. This is really just another example of National opening the doors and not backing it up with a coherent policy to deal adequately with the ensuing influx.

      • Robert Guyton 2.2.2
        9 October 2017 at 8:24 pm

        “Cars don’t kill people…”
        Pfffffffftttt!
        One name, bud: Christine!

    • tc 2.3
      9 October 2017 at 8:18 pm

      Yes and the police weigh in, according to buzzfeed, with an epic piece of social media buffoonery.

    • millsy 2.4
      9 October 2017 at 11:44 pm

      You still have to remember that the road toll in 1987 was 795, so we have made a lot of progress over the past 30 years.

  3. ScottGN 3
    9 October 2017 at 8:08 pm

    In case anyone thinks Winston, Jacinda and Bill are taking too long. Its 208 days since the Dutch election and Mark Rutte is just now poised to announce a pretty frail coalition.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/09/dutch-politicians-ready-form-government-election-coalition

  4. Sanctuary 4
    9 October 2017 at 9:07 pm

    Listen up, y’all. Get along to IMAX and see why Blade runner is going to win all the Oscars.