It’s Back to Driving School for Halton Police
Says the Toronto Star.
Me? I’d rather their editors started work.
The leading text of the article says it all:-
So many Halton police cruisers have been involved in crashes that the force has instituted mandatory driving training for its officers.
In the first six months of this year, police cars were involved in 70 accidents, …
Yep!
- In paragraph one they are “crashes”.
- By paragraph two they are “accidents”.
And note that it’s NOT about the number of events.
It’s the muddled thinking that allows us to drop into an irresponsible pit of reduced responsibility.
One again, cars don’t crash; drivers crash cars.
Paragraph three:-
Most of this year’s crashes, 41 of the 70, were classified as preventable.
I’m prepared to bet that, when the analysis is made, 100% of collisions are foreseeable and therefore preventable.
I understand the sometime-urgent nature of police calls.
I accept the speeds sometimes-necessarily above speed limits of regular prudence.
But always, police or not, they are crashes or collisions.
They are not accidents.
Tags: Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Driving, Element, Google, Greaves, Halton, It’s, Loading, Paragraph, Police, Says, School, Star, Talk, Toronto
Another Satellite Set To Hit Earth In Coming Weeks
Didn’t we do this just a couple of weeks ago? The School bus fell in the Pacific Ocean, pretty good odds, 70% of the earth’s surface being covered by water (we are, after all, an ocean-planet with a half-dozen very large islands lying surrounded by water).
Now a two-and-a-half ton German research satellite (I suppose that that’s a school bus) is predicted to crash. And I suppose a significant part of it will burn up before it hits earth.
Two weeks ago I did some quick thinking, based on a refrigerator crashing to earth.
I have a refrigerator in my kitchen, and am in there far too often; I am supposed to be dieting to lose a bit of weight myself.
So I tend to park the car well away from the mall entrance and walk a bit extra across the shopping mall parking lot.
Saturday 4pm is, perhaps, the most zoo-like time here; people are frantically getting shopping done before the world comes to an end (that is, the stores close at 6pm not to re-open until 8am Sunday!), and the parking-lot is about as crowded as it ever gets.
I visualized a refrigerator dropping from the sky from a jumbo jet that was coming in to land at the airport a few miles north of here.
Admittedly dropping from a plane flying at 4,000 feet isn’t quite the same as dropping out of orbit, but there is a terminal velocity for large objects dropping out of orbit.
In the case of an out-of-orbit object (as distinct from an it-came-from-outer-space object), the refrigerator will be dropping pretty well vertically.
So I imagined a refrigerator dropping from the plane, and looked around me in the parking lot.
Crowded as it was, I figured that the ‘fridge would probably render four cars as write-offs, but looking at people walking across the parking lot, the chances of them being hit appears minimal. Something like three dozen people in five acres of land.
People in cars would be shielded from much of the debris.
There’s be shock; a few fender-benders as people stared or panicked. Much horn-blowing, but then, that’s typical on a Saturday afternoon.
All in all it seems not a great cause for worry.
P.S.
Probably the worst place for it to fall would be on the 19-lane wide portion of highway 427 nearby, where most folks seem to be exceeding the 100 Km/hour speed limit, with attendant collisions when the unexpected occurred.
Tags: Admittedly, Chris, ChrisRewards, Coming, Crowded, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Didn’t, Earth, Element, German, Google, Greaves, Loading, Ocean, Pacific, People, Probably, Satellite, School
It’s Back to Driving School for Halton Police
Says the Toronto Star .
Me? I’d rather their editors started work.
The leading text of the article says it all:-
So many Halton police cruisers have been involved in crashes that the force has instituted mandatory driving training for its officers.
In the first six months of this year, police cars were involved in 70 accidents, …
Yep!
- In paragraph one they are “crashes”.
- By paragraph two they are “accidents”.
And note that it’s NOT about the number of events.
It’s the muddled thinking that allows us to drop into an irresponsible pit of reduced responsibility.
One again, cars don’t crash; drivers crash cars.
Paragraph three:-
Most of this year’s crashes, 41 of the 70, were classified as preventable.
I’m prepared to bet that, when the analysis is made, 100% of collisions are foreseeable and therefore preventable.
I understand the sometime-urgent nature of police calls.
I accept the speeds sometimes-necessarily above speed limits of regular prudence.
But always, police or not, they are crashes or collisions.
They are not accidents.
Tags: Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Driving, Element, Google, Greaves, Halton, It’s, Loading, Paragraph, Police, Says, School, Star, Talk, Toronto
Another Satellite Set To Hit Earth In Coming Weeks
Didn’t we do this just a couple of weeks ago? The School bus fell in the Pacific Ocean, pretty good odds, 70% of the earth’s surface being covered by water (we are, after all, an ocean-planet with a half-dozen very large islands lying surrounded by water).
Now a two-and-a-half ton German research satellite (I suppose that that’s a school bus) is predicted to crash. And I suppose a significant part of it will burn up before it hits earth.
Two weeks ago I did some quick thinking, based on a refrigerator crashing to earth.
I have a refrigerator in my kitchen, and am in there far too often; I am supposed to be dieting to lose a bit of weight myself.
So I tend to park the car well away from the mall entrance and walk a bit extra across the shopping mall parking lot.
Saturday 4pm is, perhaps, the most zoo-like time here; people are frantically getting shopping done before the world comes to an end (that is, the stores close at 6pm not to re-open until 8am Sunday!), and the parking-lot is about as crowded as it ever gets.
I visualized a refrigerator dropping from the sky from a jumbo jet that was coming in to land at the airport a few miles north of here.
Admittedly dropping from a plane flying at 4,000 feet isn’t quite the same as dropping out of orbit, but there is a terminal velocity for large objects dropping out of orbit.
In the case of an out-of-orbit object (as distinct from an it-came-from-outer-space object), the refrigerator will be dropping pretty well vertically.
So I imagined a refrigerator dropping from the plane, and looked around me in the parking lot.
Crowded as it was, I figured that the ‘fridge would probably render four cars as write-offs, but looking at people walking across the parking lot, the chances of them being hit appears minimal. Something like three dozen people in five acres of land.
People in cars would be shielded from much of the debris.
There’s be shock; a few fender-benders as people stared or panicked. Much horn-blowing, but then, that’s typical on a Saturday afternoon.
All in all it seems not a great cause for worry.
P.S. probably the worst place for it to fall would be on the 19-lane wide portion of highway 427 nearby, where most folks seem to be exceeding the 100 Km/hour speed limit, with attendant collisions when the unexpected occurred.
Tags: Admittedly, Chris, ChrisRewards, Coming, Crowded, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Didn’t, Earth, Element, German, Google, Greaves, Loading, Ocean, Pacific, People, Satellite, School, Something, Talk, There’s, Tweet
