Muriel (please excuse the first name usage, we're very casual most times in
Australia),
I find myself agreeing with or appreciating your argument on almost all of
the points, thanks for the thorough response and the wonderful image of some
unlucky sod pedalling away to provide my power (it's very Gilligan's
Islandesque don't you think?).
On one point though i do find problems with your approach. If you wish to
take a thoroughly post modern point of view, then you may need to expand
your arguments to include the victim of a truck accident, not just the value
to society of the type of truck and the product it carries. What sort of
people are more worthy of being saved from a truck accident? Perhaps the
guy at 7-11 isn't quite as valuable as the the woman who's saving lives at
the hospital? If DRL's or any innovation are shown to save lives, perhaps
we should only run them in areas with high concentrations of doctors? I
think you see where i'm heading. Maybe to you potato chips are less
significant than beans, but to the farmer who's livelihood depends on chips
they're more important, and what about his mother who needs an operation to
remove her tumour which 20 years from now is found to be caused by certain
beans and curable from a derivative of GM modified potato chips?:-)
Am i being ridiculous? Where do you draw the line? Where do i draw the
line? What can we actually agree on? You can see i draw the line at the
non-product defined truck hitting or being hit by the non-value defined
victim as it exists now on my road down the street. Irrespective of all the
social ramifications of that truck, and they ARE worth considering, i'd
still like to think i'm not going to get killed by it. And so back to the
question, do DRL's help me at all to avoid getting killed? If they do, then
i'll be happy to start to explore the social and economic ramifications of
introducing them and powering them.
cheers all,
Craig
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