At 2:53 PM +0000 31/10/06, D F J Wood wrote:
>But the other thing is that these people are not Winston Smith's ...
Agreed. As a sometime cyclist, and a sometime motor-cycle rider, I
understand the far greater immediacy of the environment, and the
risks involved in coming into contact at unnatural speed with various
hard objects.
But that's not what I was concerned about. (If it had been, I'd have
invoked a variant of the old aphorism 'a conservative is a liberal
whose kid's bike has just been stolen').
I'm concerned about the ease with which originally two and
subsequently several further members of the list were prepared to
treat surveillance as 'just another technology', and to invoke that
daft old fallback of 'technology is neutral; it depends what you do
with it'.
_____
Re the less significant part of the discussion:
As for the suggested effectiveness, during recent visits to the UK, I
was appalled at the utter dysfunctionality of the speed-camera policy
there. All of the visible cameras I came across, in their scores in
the south-east, were in stable-speed / low-accident-risk locations.
They were designed purely as revenue-collectors.
I'm also highly sceptical about a 2.2mph reduction in average speed
being (a) statistically significant, (b) worth having, and (c) worth
measuring by itself. The risk of acccident in the vicinity of
speed-cameras is greatly increased by vehicle-wander and sudden
braking, as driver attention is diverted to things extraneous to the
driving task, viz. scanning the environment for boxes that may
contain cameras, and adjusting the focus and pupil-size to be able to
see the speedo.
--
Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:[log in to unmask] http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre Uni of NSW
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