I heard on the news yesterday that Opposition MLA Leanne Rowat introduced a private members bill to amend the HTA to ban passengers riding on the exterior of a vehicle. Primarily, this is intended to make it illegal to ride in a pickup box.
Over the years a number of people have been killed while riding in the back of pickups generally due to being thrown out in an accident. I’m unaware of specific statistics on such fatalities, but my intuition is that they form a relatively small part of overall traffic fatalities. However, these type of accidents tend to receive a great deal more attention than others which may lead to a perception of more significance than is warranted.
Regardless of that, I really don’t like the whole idea of this legislation. Yes, riding in the back of pickup truck is more dangerous than riding in the cab, but it is also obviously so. In other words, for a sensible person to ride in the back of a pickup it requires consciously accepting some risk. I often ride in pickup boxes, usually because I’m helping to transport items that need to be steadied. I do this well aware of the risks and in what I regard as a safe manner.
In my view, we need to apply a common sense measure to things like these. Just because someone died doing something a little bit or a lot foolish doesn’t mean that activity needs to be banned. Of course, one look around shows that we’ve gone a long way down this road already. Keeping on this way will only lead to more regulation of our lives.
This is one of the problems of having “professional” legistlators: if we pay people to make laws they will have to find things to make laws about whether such laws are truly required or not. A politician on the campaign trail wants to be able to demonstrate that they’ve done something. Creating laws to ban some kind of dangerous and foolish activity are a notably effictive way to achieve that goal.
Unfortunately for me, all indicators point to the majority of my fellow citizens disagreeing with me on this point. I can rant and rave all I want, but my view effectively irrelevant.
This entry was written by the proprietor, posted on 13 December 2005 at 12:06 am.
Making Danger Illegal
I heard on the news yesterday that Opposition MLA Leanne Rowat introduced a private members bill to amend the HTA to ban passengers riding on the exterior of a vehicle. Primarily, this is intended to make it illegal to ride in a pickup box.
Over the years a number of people have been killed while riding in the back of pickups generally due to being thrown out in an accident. I’m unaware of specific statistics on such fatalities, but my intuition is that they form a relatively small part of overall traffic fatalities. However, these type of accidents tend to receive a great deal more attention than others which may lead to a perception of more significance than is warranted.
Regardless of that, I really don’t like the whole idea of this legislation. Yes, riding in the back of pickup truck is more dangerous than riding in the cab, but it is also obviously so. In other words, for a sensible person to ride in the back of a pickup it requires consciously accepting some risk. I often ride in pickup boxes, usually because I’m helping to transport items that need to be steadied. I do this well aware of the risks and in what I regard as a safe manner.
In my view, we need to apply a common sense measure to things like these. Just because someone died doing something a little bit or a lot foolish doesn’t mean that activity needs to be banned. Of course, one look around shows that we’ve gone a long way down this road already. Keeping on this way will only lead to more regulation of our lives.
This is one of the problems of having “professional” legistlators: if we pay people to make laws they will have to find things to make laws about whether such laws are truly required or not. A politician on the campaign trail wants to be able to demonstrate that they’ve done something. Creating laws to ban some kind of dangerous and foolish activity are a notably effictive way to achieve that goal.
Unfortunately for me, all indicators point to the majority of my fellow citizens disagreeing with me on this point. I can rant and rave all I want, but my view effectively irrelevant.
This entry was written by the proprietor, posted on 13 December 2005 at 12:06 am.
Filed under Commentary Unbound and tagged politics.
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