Should "the law be the law"

[jules21]

The lesson being that we, as a cycling community are happy to not take the moral high ground.

we are not a community!

it's not us against them.. cycling is a mode of transport, like taking the train. it doesn't define you. nor should we be judged on that basis.

[VRE]

The lesson being that we, as a cycling community are happy to not take the moral high ground.

we are not a community!

it's not us against them.. cycling is a mode of transport, like taking the train. it doesn't define you. nor should we be judged on that basis.

Agreed, and so we shouldn't feel the need to accept responsibility for how other cyclists behave, Mick, any more than motorists would feel responsible for other motorists' bad driving.

[human909]

The lesson being that we, as a cycling community are happy to not take the moral high ground.

You are forgetting mick that people have different morals and different ethics. I am also quite wary of the ethical judgement of people who have an attitude like yours that the "law is the law".

Plenty of clearly unethical acts are legal. There are plenty of clearly ethical actions that are illegal. I don't want to live in a society that merely follows rules with no concern for ethics.


I don't obey road rules because it is law. I obey it because it usually keeps me safe, it keeps others safe and keeps order on the roads.

[oxonabike]

And I'll bet your aviation safety management system does not have too many 'generally speaking' provisions. Or does it? Like MB, I too work in rail in a safety critical environment of which human factors play substantial role. The prescribed standards are richly endowed with paragraphs containing shalls and musts and overly specific dot-pointed procedures. Such paragraphs are then inevitably followed by the exceptions.

I think you'll find most (if not all) of the people involved in this discussion do obey all the laws and rules. Generally speaking.

one of the most important terms in rail safety law is "so far as is reasonably practicable". this allows for people to use common sense when prescriptive rules may be judged as unnecessary/unsafe.

ALARP comes into play when the operator risk assesses proposed changes or new procedures (to address standards). Actually, we were lucky to be able to keep that provision as WPH&S types wanted their 'ensure safety' mantra introduced into the recent legislation. However day to day ops are informed by and worked to the prescribed standards of the network manager. With the myriad of exceptions of course.

[find_bruce]

I was going to finish with the quote from Douglas Bader "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools."

Thank you Bruce for being so articulate. Tho' my searches for the quote you attributed to the great Tin Legged one hit me with about 93 possible origins. Don't ever recall reading it in any works on the great man either

Are you saying I bend in the middle ?

Like many quotes, I don't expect that Bader was the origin of the quote, merely that he adopted it as his own.

Wikiquotes gives a reference as Brickhill, Paul. Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader DSO, DFC at page 44. The book attributes the quote to a flying ace of World War 1, but I suspect he wasn't the origin either.

[Mulger bill]

I've read Reach For The Sky probably half a dozen times since I was 8yo and it's never stuck Time to dust off that 1963 copy...

[GeoffInBrisbane]

What I'm talking about is things like in the initial conversation about the truck video - people defending the speed of the vehicle taking the video, "because everybody does it"

That was a completely different country mick. The attitudes and enforcement of speed limits are significantly different. Your inability to understand context and risk is a little disturbing.

People weren't defending breaking the speed limit. But you need to keep things in perspective.

Further to this, as I was the one that stated "Good luck finding a car sticking to 70mph on the motorway", I take exception to the post above since I went out of my way to state that I wasn't condoning breaking the speed limit, just stating that as police enforcement of the UK motorway limit is pretty much non-existent, the general population do not stick to it. At no point did I say it was okay because everybody does it. Words/my mouth/stop putting!