On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:41:55 +0100, David Hansen
wrote:

On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 23:12:36 +0100 someone who may be Chris Davies
wrote this:-

A lot of practises are
institutionalised. To give an example, most couriers get paid by the
number of drops they make. If any driver consistently took longer to
make
a journey than the rest of his colleagues, he would in all likelihood
lose
his job.

Then they are taking part in a conspiracy with their employer to
break the law.



Let's take this up another level. What do you think would happen to the
company that took longer and cost more for each drop? If it is a
conspiracy, we are all part of it, not just individual companies.

I bought a stereo off ebay last week, and paid £10 to the seller to have
it delivered from Watford to Reading. It was done the next day. How far is
that, 70 miles? Assuming the seller charged £2 for packing materials
(there were a lot in the package) that's £8. Assuming you have a courier
firm, after you've paid for a fleet of vans, diesel and wages how much
will be left over? And that's just an example off the top of my head. We
are always happy to pay less money, hence this "conspiracy" is kept going.

--
|C|H|R|I|S|@|T|R|I|N|I|T|Y|W|I|L|L|S|.|C|O|M|
Remove the bars to contact me

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004, Chris Davies wrote:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:41:55 +0100, David Hansen
wrote:

On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 23:12:36 +0100 someone who may be Chris Davies
wrote this:-

A lot of practises are institutionalised. To give an example, most
couriers get paid by the number of drops they make. If any driver
consistently took longer to make a journey than the rest of his
colleagues, he would in all likelihood lose his job.

Then they are taking part in a conspiracy with their employer to break
the law.

Let's take this up another level. What do you think would happen to the
company that took longer and cost more for each drop? If it is a
conspiracy, we are all part of it, not just individual companies.

No. We're not given a choice - we have no way of knowing if a delivery
company had law-abiding drivers or not, so we never have the chance to pay
more for safety.

What this is really about is that the costs of breaking the law aren't
internalised; the drivers' illegal actions cost time, money and lives, but
the costs are borne by other road users, the state, and cyclists and
pedestrians. If the costs could be transferred to the delivery companies,
then it would be in their economic interests to have good drivers. This is
well nigh impossible to do perfectly, but covering the country in smart
CCTV with automatic fines for any traffic offence would be a start.

tom

--
Crazy week so far, which at one point involved spewing down the inside of my jeans! -- D

Tom Anderson wrote:

What this is really about is that the costs of breaking the law aren't
internalised; the drivers' illegal actions cost time, money and
lives, but the costs are borne by other road users, the state, and
cyclists and pedestrians. If the costs could be transferred to the
delivery companies, then it would be in their economic interests to
have good drivers. This is well nigh impossible to do perfectly, but
covering the country in smart CCTV with automatic fines for any
traffic offence would be a start.

....and who pays for the 'smart CCTV' system? Answer; road users, the state,
and cyclists and pedestrians.

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004, Stimpy wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

What this is really about is that the costs of breaking the law aren't
internalised; the drivers' illegal actions cost time, money and lives,
but the costs are borne by other road users, the state, and cyclists
and pedestrians. If the costs could be transferred to the delivery
companies, then it would be in their economic interests to have good
drivers. This is well nigh impossible to do perfectly, but covering
the country in smart CCTV with automatic fines for any traffic offence
would be a start.

...and who pays for the 'smart CCTV' system? Answer; road users, the state,
and cyclists and pedestrians.

Ah, well, yes, ahem, details, my good man, details.

I don't know how expensive it would be to do, i admit. It will get cheaper
over time, though (information technology is good like that). Also, it
would be raising revenue through fines, so it might be able to pay for
itself after a while.

Incidentally, if we did have something like this, i'd like to see cyclists
display registration plates too, and be policed to the same strictness as
motor vehicles (although i'd hope that the rules they were held too
would be more relaxed where appropriate).

tom

--
GOLDIE LOOKIN' CHAIN [...] will ultimately make all other forms of music both redundant and unnecessary -- ntk

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 22:55:16 +0100, "Stimpy"
wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

What this is really about is that the costs of breaking the law aren't
internalised; the drivers' illegal actions cost time, money and
lives, but the costs are borne by other road users, the state, and
cyclists and pedestrians. If the costs could be transferred to the
delivery companies, then it would be in their economic interests to
have good drivers. This is well nigh impossible to do perfectly, but
covering the country in smart CCTV with automatic fines for any
traffic offence would be a start.

...and who pays for the 'smart CCTV' system? Answer; road users, the state,
and cyclists and pedestrians.


Most other industries pay for their own safety and monitoring systems
so let's assume motoring to be no different and the costs are raised
from the users; with fines from offenders being one mechanism.

There then becomes an economic and business case to run a safe
operation. If costs of the infrastructure are also raised via usage
charges, there may be the added benefit that it becomes financially
sensible to use other transport modes.

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 22:44:29 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:


No. We're not given a choice - we have no way of knowing if a delivery
company had law-abiding drivers or not, so we never have the chance to
pay
more for safety.

What this is really about is that the costs of breaking the law aren't
internalised; the drivers' illegal actions cost time, money and lives,
but
the costs are borne by other road users, the state, and cyclists and
pedestrians. If the costs could be transferred to the delivery companies,
then it would be in their economic interests to have good drivers. This
is
well nigh impossible to do perfectly, but covering the country in smart
CCTV with automatic fines for any traffic offence would be a start.

tom

You said "well nigh impossible to do perfectly" yourself, Tom. I would
love to see measures like this come into place, but I know it will not
happen.

--
|C|H|R|I|S|@|T|R|I|N|I|T|Y|W|I|L|L|S|.|C|O|M|
Remove the bars to contact me