Unsafe at Any Speed - Vehicle and Driver Safety Discussion

Not sure what you are doubting, but facts are not debatable.

The myth that Clinton had a surplus is widely reported and based upon accounting games.

If you look at National debt data from the treasury here
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm

Which is reported by fiscal year you can see a small reduction in the national debt between September 1999 and September 2000. So a reduction, right?

Not so fast. If you look at the more detailed monthly data you find an increase in the National Debt from January 1999 to January 2000ā€¦ Just like every other year since Hoover and the Great Depression startā€¦ The monthly data is available from here

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/mspd.htm

January 1999 $5,610,117,000,000
January 2000. $5,711,285,000,000

What causes this difference? Well it appears that the Treasury department chose to shift the payment of National debt service in 2000 till AFTER September 2000. Why? Well, canā€™t point to a memo stating this, but a cynic would say it was because the Clinton administration wanted to lie to the public and claim they had balanced the budget.

And despite the data prooving otherwise being readily available, people still choose to believe the lieā€¦

So how did this thread go from vehicle safety to the national debt?

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Iā€™d respond with the acronym ā€œWAā€ but then Iā€™d probably get called out for it :slight_smile:

Because the government regulations are NOT about safety but rather about revenue generation. The original premise that a vehicle was ā€˜unsafeā€™ was used to create legislation that allowed the collection of revenueā€¦

What Walter said and the same way ā€œTalkā€ causes posts to stray from a simple post or question to the length of a metric inch etc.

Iā€™d say the answer to ā€œhow did we get from vehicle safety to national debtā€ is ā€œthrough the cudgel of overgeneralization that is typically swung by people who think the democratically defined rule of law is somehow equivalent to oppression.ā€ Anything that forces me to live by a law I donā€™t like, you see, is a ā€œgameā€ or a ā€œfraudā€ ā€“ whether thatā€™s the ā€œgameā€ of setting and using a consistent accounting calendar that, gawd forbid, doesnā€™t align to January and so ā€œconfuses meā€ enough (aka: gives me enough excuse) to juuuust squeeze in a conspiracy theory regarding one of the most painfully, over-data-shared agencies of the federal government, or itā€™s the ā€œfraudā€ of regulations which have cut per-capita vehicle deaths by 80% since the creation of the associated regulatory agency (the NHTSA, created by a law signed 10 months after the publishing of the book).

See, hereā€™s the really dumb thing about ā€œregulation increases revenue:ā€ and to whom, exactly, do you think that money goes? Can anyone point to a government official that is paid by commission? Anyone that gets a percent cut of revenue, so theyā€™re upselling your traffic ticket - ā€œwould you like deferred adjudication with that? Thanks for your order!ā€ to bump up revenue?

Salaries are not tied to revenue in government ā€“ which is unsurprising, because the government is basically the largest nonprofit corporation in the country. Out of every penny of revenue added, exactly 0% of that direct funding goes to somebodyā€™s dividend, or a percent increase in salaries or benefits. It goes back into the company ā€“ which is in the business, in this case, of providing us public services. Every penny of that ā€œrevenue machineā€ of regulation? WE GET IT ALL BACK.

Well, I guess you could say if you violate the regulation, you donā€™t directly get it all back ā€“ public services paid by revenue are something you get, but so does the guy beside you and the guy beside him. Fair enough. But you know what? You should be paying for that. I should be getting a cut of the revenue you just ā€œgeneratedā€ for the government. Because, and this is the nifty thing about regulation: when you violate them, typically you are costing me money. Those regulations ensure even baseline playing fields across particular industries, and if you comply with them, guess what, gubā€™mint doesnā€™t ā€œgenerate any incomeā€ ā€“ you just comply with the same requirements as everyone else in your industry, and nobody suffers competitive disadvantage. But try to game the system, sneak a little something by to water down or cut a corner on that requirement ā€“ all of the sudden, Iā€™m getting an inferior product and you, due to the illicit competitive advantage you gained, retain your price due to the rest market being bound to it and pocket the profits.

Regulations only ā€œgenerate revenueā€ to any significant degree if you violate them. There is value to ensuring that there is a baseline of requirement for product safety, in evening the playing field by making sure one canā€™t ā€œcompeteā€ on how many kids choke on your product or houses are set on fire by your productā€™s flammability. Violate those baselines, and damn right, you should be ā€œgenerating revenueā€ for the nonprofit that I own, along with a third of a billion other citizens of my country. Youā€™re breaking our rules. Breaking our rules means we have to pay the socioeconomic costs of your laziness and greed ā€“ every family that loses their house, every person overcrowding an ER that canā€™t actually cover their way but isnā€™t thinking about that when theyā€™re entering the ER because theyā€™re busy dying from asbestos/heavy metal/take your pick poisoning, every regulatory decision you decide youā€™re too much of a Special Flowerā„¢ for costs me and my country money. Donā€™t complain when we send you the bill.

Makes me think back to Dale Earnhardt and his protesting, fighting against, and refusal of the very device that wouldā€™ve saved his redneck life.

Personal choice ā€“ itā€™s a good thing. Just donā€™t expect me to pay for anyoneā€™s hospital bills.

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Yes, the self-weeding feature of the gene pool is an awesome one.

At least his son uses the HANS device. His concussion and vision problems from his last wreck are far better than death by internal decapitation.

Ah, but since we are forced to pay for peopleā€™s Hospital bills we have a reason to deprive them of personal choice donā€™t we? This is one of the many arguments that get made to justify Government involvement in ā€˜safetyā€™ issuesā€¦ It has also been used to try and force fast food places to stop ā€˜biggie sizingā€™ those lunchesā€¦

Actually, death is usually the least cost outcome for such scenarios. If you severely injure someone, you (or your insurance company) are likely to end up paying more then if you actually kill themā€¦

Personally, I think letting natural selection work is best for the speciesā€¦

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That is a very cynical view.

Everyone has their blind spot. The CEO of Segway drove his right off the grand canyon. Iā€™m sure he felt that he knew enough not to do that.

We donā€™t get to be experts on everything, and Iā€™m glad that there are people who are smart in areas that I am not helping me make good decisions on things I know nothing about ā€“ and helping the market make decisions that help me stay safe when I might not know any better.

Just within what I am good at, electronic design, there are thousands of little regulations to comply with. Yeah, itā€™s annoying and expensive, but looking at the regulations, NOT complying with them is actually pretty scary. They are only somewhat conservativeā€¦ and the failure mode is severe electrical shock or death. I canā€™t imagine a world where UL/ETL wasnā€™t a thing ā€“ as cheap as everyone wants to be, thatā€™s a big standard-holder on safety and quality in electronics.

arenā€™t UL/ETL ā€œindependent testing laboratoriesā€?
i.e., not governmental?

Segway + Grand Canyon. Who would have thought that would be a bad idea?!?!?!

I agree with Walter: Iā€™d like life to be a bit more lethal, as this would help weed out the idiots. Our society has effectively stopped natural selection of the fittest organisms.

Idiocracy is now.

We are not talking about people ā€˜helpingā€™, we are talking about people FORCING others to do what they consider safe.

You are forced to wear a seatbelt
You are forced to drive a more expensive car with ā€˜safety featuresā€™
You are forced to pay tickets when you speed (and they decide to boost their revenue by actually enforcing the law).

The number of these place where people are ā€˜helpingā€™ is a real issue.

When you start hiring employees and have to deal with those additional rules, regulations, and fees then we can talk about how reasonable you think they are.

BTW, you do have your Texas business license donā€™t you? You donā€™t actually do your design work from home, do you? (If you do, you are likely violating several regulations)ā€¦

Oh, and those electronics safety regulations will do nothing to protect you when/if some idiot desides to take a bath with your product and electrocutes himself. You will still likely be found liableā€¦

Considering that in 30+ years of working with government officials I have never met one who was both competent and honest, I just consider it realistic.

P.S. I have actually had a government official tell me ā€œWhat are you going to pay me out of the contract if I award it to you?ā€

The very first company I worked for was involved in wearing a wire into a meeting with a state Department of Transportation officials where they were recorded (for the FBI) demanding that ā€˜contributionsā€™ be made to the Governerā€™s campaign if we wanted to ā€˜successfullyā€™ negotiate the contractā€¦ This made the press after I had been at the company only a month. I have never had a contact with a government lacky that improved the opinion I formed of them then.

Yes, but compliance is often mandated by law ā€“ usually the NEC which is created by another non-governmental body as a model law/code ā€“ and is accepted wholesale as law almost everywhere in this country.

Segway tours are quite common, and despite what people think about them being a scary nerdy scooter, I have taken one both down AND up stairs. Iā€™ve also bailed off of one doing something pretty normal. They tend to go where you tell them pretty reliably until they donā€™t, so itā€™s not as obvious as it may seem.

These are all things that have demonstrably improved the safety of our transportation system. In the case of speeding, you are endangering others as much as yourself. Admittedly there are cases where the local enforcement racket ignores the advice of the traffic engineers who come up with appropriate speed limit numbers and traffic light timings. Their goals are throughput balanced against safety. The philosophy of how to make that decision has shifted as well, leading to different engineering conclusions over the years.

I do everything I can to operate my business within the law. Unless you want to either

  1. make this extremely personal
    or
  2. make a complaint to the board of engineering

I suggest you donā€™t bring this up again.

If the theoretical idiot has GFI outlets in their bathroom as required by the NEC, thereā€™s a good chance that it will trip and no harm will come. NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS


Iā€™m sorry you have such a bad experience with government contracting in ā€¦what sounds likeā€¦ Mexico. There are bad apples in every bunch, people who are on the take government or private sector. But that doesnā€™t mean that every rule is made based on its revenue potential.

GFCI usually fail such that they become too sensitive, but they can fail such that they stay closed, and often fail to get detected until the next time the house is sold, and the home inspector actually tests them.

I suspect that a real world failure like this just puts you as co defendant with Leviton.

It seems that for most manufacturers, this is sufficient

I agree, GFI technology does have issues, but I think it falls into the category of ā€œway better than nothingā€.

Hereā€™s a google answer that shows how big of a drop: from 18 electrocutions per year to 4ā€¦
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=738460

And the article/answer also points out that hair driers are independently required to have GFI ā€“ so thatā€™s not exactly the same thing, but my point stands as made.

Sorry, but no they have not ā€˜demonstrablyā€™ improved safety. And traffic engineers have nothing to do with speed limits. Those are set by politicians, who could care less about ā€˜safetyā€™.

Wasnā€™t making it personal. Just pointing out that if you operate a business you are violating regulations and laws. The complexity of the system of regulations and laws, and there occasional self-conflicting interactions guarantee that.

BTW, the Board of Engineering in a state is only ONE of the MULTITUDE of regulatory agencies a business must deal with. And frankly one of the least important.

The example was just that. The fact is that if/when someone misuses one of your products and sues you, your compliance with the law and regulations in designing it will mean absolutely nothing is the outcome of how much it costs you.

Sorry, not Mexico, but 31 of the 50 states (including Texas), and the Federal Government. I havenā€™t said every rule is made for revenue potential, just the traffic laws. Now it is also true of MANY of the others, but perhaps not all. Particularly when one considers that the revenue generation may be for a constituent.