Það hefur verið mikil umræða um hættur hraðaksturs á Huga undanfarið. Ég rakst á þessa grein á www.4car.co.uk og ákvað að senda hana inn á Deigluna. Ég sendi hana ekki inn á bílar af því að ég er umsjónarmaður þar og mér er almennt mein illa við “copy/paste” greinar. Með því að senda þetta á deigluna fær hlutlaus aðili að ákveða hvort birting þessarar greinar er réttmætur. Auk þess finnst mér þessi umræða allt eins eiga heima á deiglunni eins og bílar enda um þjóðfélagsmál að ræða.

Hér kemur greinin:

***

It's official: Height Kills. It must be true. Heights are inherently dangerous. After all, if you fall from a second-storey building, you'll be doing 30-odd miles an hour by the time you spank the ground. That's quite fast.

What else kills? Guns Kill: they must, else they wouldn't be banned. Knives kill too. And cricket bats could as well. Revolving doors are a bit dodgy, now I think about it. So are big dogs with pointy teeth. In fact, everything on the planet - toothbrushes, for instance - should be considered a danger. Let's put some signs on them and limit their use.

How do I know these things, you might wonder? What exceptional perception on my part has helped me draw these extraordinarily insightful conclusions? Well, it must all be true, for the government has told me that Speed Kills, the implication being that the faster you go, the more dangerous you are. Ergo, the higher you are above the ground, the greater the likelihood you'll die falling from it. The sharper the knife, the more dangerous it is. And the heavier the cricket bat, the more likely you'll get smacked about the head with it.

To all of which, I say cobblers. And again, cobblers. And thrice cobblers. Speed is merely a measurement of the time it takes to travel a particular distance. This cannot be considered dangerous.

Units of measurement - and inanimate objects - contain no inherent danger whatsoflippingever. Even a gun never killed anybody of its own accord - it's the stupidity or determination of the person wielding it that results in death.

An ornament does not get broken unless handled by unsympathetic fingers. A cricket bat is not an offensive weapon unless swung at you by a thug. And height does not kill unless you are thrown from a great one.

The natural, and right, conclusion, therefore, is that speed does not kill. Stupidity kills, madness kills, under-education kills, drunkenness kills, and being a damned moron kills. But speed? No. Think about it: driving at 45 mph in a heavily urbanised area is more dangerous than driving some 50 mph faster than that on a motorway. Speed per se is not the problem.

Now, I'm not advocating speeding. I'm not suggesting you go out there and drive fast, let alone too fast for the conditions. But remember this - it is not just your speed of which you should take note. I have accompanied slow drivers who terrify me and fast drivers in whom I place complete trust. And the best drivers I know (and I know some exceptional ones) make safe, smooth, swift progress.

It is people that kill. Don't be one of those people by driving your car too fast but, more importantly, don't assume that by driving slowly you consequently become a safe and good driver. There's a lot more to driving than that.

***

Ég hafði hugsað mér að skrifa sjálfur grein um efnið en hreinlega nennti því ekki. Þessi grein finnst mér prýðileg og nálgast skoðun mína. Ég á hinsvegar varla eftir að nenna að verja eitthvað sem annar maður skrifaði í þessu tilfelli, auk þess sem ég hef skrifað ansi mörg svör við öðrum greinum um sama mál.