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