Morality of driving

Zaph0d

Before embarking on a journey, a rational person evaluates the transport options, often subconsciously. The factors involved range from the purely practical:

• frequency
• speed
• reliability
• cost

to softer factors such as:

comfort
• likelihood of being couped up with unpleasant people
• amount of physical effort required
• exposure to poor weather

I suspect that safety factors are a lesser concern. Yet even a whimsical journey -say driving half a mile to get a pint of milk, may result in the death of another person. This death may occur through no fault of the victim or mistake by the driver. The risk can be minimised but not removed. For many people, driving is the activity that causes the most risk to others.

Choosing to live in a location where driving is the only practical option for every journey has a moral dimension.

What do you think?

Is this all nonsense?
Will individuals ever take the risk of harming others into account when choosing a transport option?
Is one-off housing immoral?


I'm not religious but for those Christians amongst you:
http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org/resources/paper/action.php

ChipZilla

Jesus would probably drive a Toyota Yaris or something similarly inoffensive. :eek:

As for the moral implications of driving around the corner for a pint of milk? Meh. Obviously it would be different if the driver had sank half a bottle of vodka before driving to the shop, but anyway... I'd be more worried about the environmental implications, or the would-the-walk-do-me-some-good implications.

andyhunt

The destruction of the historical balance of Irish society (already well underway and causing horrific transport problems in Dublin) would be exacerbated by wholesale uprooting of long established communities that this would require to be effective. Arguments like this ALWAYS eminate from Dublin while not accepting the horrendously badly planned over-development of that city is the main problem. With a population slightly less than urban Manchester an integrated national transport policy could have been feasable in Ireland some years ago, now it is probably too late. Who dictates that rural communities are not as important a priority as the Dublin region which is the originator of 1/3 of all road traffic anyway. The Western Rail Corridor should be a bigger priority than the next hugley expensive phase of Dublin rail investment whatever form it takes.

Stark

I wouldn't label a person who chooses to live a good bit outside the city immoral. It's about the only place where you can get away from the scumbag population. Also the bus service in many cities including Cork, the second largest city in the country is notoriously unreliable and outside Dublin there are no alternatives other than bus.

Personally I wouldn't drive half a mile for a pint of milk, the hassle of getting my car out my driveway avoiding kids at play and double-parked cars as I go, then navigating the twists and turns that a half mile journey through city brings, followed by trying to find parking near the shop would outweigh the incovenience of walking the half mile IMO.

ChipZilla

Stark, even moving to the sticks won't get you away from the scumbag population. They're everywhere...

chewy

andy i thought you in favour of impriving roads as priotrity now you seem to be saying rail is more important? i think it is

Imposter

I notice there was no questioning of urban folks who have 2 or 3 cars in the driveway/on the road beside the house (Dublin especially as they have somewhat of a public transport 'service')!

Capt'n Midnight

Where I live it's a 15 minute walk to the nearest shop. If it wern't for the cul-de-sac ghetto designs of modern housing estates it would be about 10%. Anyway that means half an hour exposed to the elements with NO Shelter on the route, so you have to bring a coat or umbrella most days.

When driving, I have to go three sides around a square so the journey is longer than it should be. But you have to add in the costs of CO2 emission etc.

But part of the problem is that no bank will give you a higher mortgague if you say you won't need a car if you live in a more expensive area. - Insurance costs + repayment costs for ~ €2,000 per year excluding running costs, if it's a couple it will be double this, add in tax free allowance for mortgagues and dispensing with cars would free up a load of income to buy a better place - but you are still stuck with the bank's limits..

Zaph0d

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Where I live it's a 15 minute walk to the nearest shop...

Same for me. I reckoned the other day that if you add up all the little journeys for which I choose to drive that my chances of mowing someone down were fairly high. Also, I'd be surprised if any of my car-owning neighburs ever choose to walk. If my car tax and insurance were proportional to my mileage, I might think twice.

For the lad from the country who thought I wanted to uproot his community, I was asking whether he would see a moral choice between living in a village where he could do a lot of stuff on foot or living five miles outside the village in a car dependent house.

Morality is never going to get me to walk to the shops because I am too lazy. The only thing that would make me walk is having no choice.

I think Jesus would have lived in town and used a bike, because he would have had a hard time explaining how he was so holy when his brakes failed and he ran down a child.

andyhunt

All I'm saying chewy is that reality is what we have to deal with. I am in favour of rail and roads where each mode makes sense. We don't live in the South of France so for a lot of the time the car is going to be the mode of choice for most people. We have to face up to the fact that Ireland will always be heavily car dependant and apart from a pol pot style mass relocation we're stuck with it. The right decisions need to be made and that includes providing a high quality road network which will save lives and encourage investment. It also means providing a reliable and frequent inter-city rail service and commuter rail. I'm not an idiologue for one form or the other, we need both. The point I was making about the moral choice for country people is that most people living in the country do not have a choice, it is not a moral question, unless you ask yourself if it is moral to require people to depopulate their home areas to fit a perceived better transport system (which I would disagree with anyway). I'm from London originally, not a culchie

And Jesus Christ Superstar rode into town on his... Yamaha

chewy

but andy the current balance between investing in either road or rail whether local or nationwide is skewed unfairly towards roads so if you really want to be fair you'd have to campaign for a reduction in roads investment and a increase in rail investment then you would be fair.... you'd get your increase in gdd and reduction in death

Andrew Duffy

andyhunt wrote:

The Western Rail Corridor should be a bigger priority than the next hugley expensive phase of Dublin rail investment whatever form it takes.

Exactly the same attitude as that of the rural politicians who tore apart Dublin in the 1970s and 80s and caused this crap in the first place.
What will three trains a day taking five hours to travel along an unpopulated strip of farmland do for this country?
On the other hand, what will a radically improved network of short- and medium-distance commuter rail lines in Dublin which also frees up space for more frequent long-distance rail services do for this country? For that matter, what part of this country contributes the enormous majority of corporation tax, capital gains tax, stamp duty, income tax, VAT and rates?

fletch

In a climate where we can experience all 4 seasons in the space of a few hours, walking is not always the best option. Suggesting that we all live in towns & villages is ludicrous, what do the farmers do when they want to harvest their crops, feed their livestock etc... Villages in the country can often be 10's of miles apart & as mentioned already, the weather does not always lend itself to a nice bike ride.
Suggesting that we don't take the car for a half mile journey to pick up a pint of milk is fair enough but if we were to all have the attitude before we leave that it may result in the death of another person, then we would all stay wrapped up in cotton wool & never leave our homes.

andyhunt

Andrew Duffy wrote:

Exactly the same attitude as that of the rural politicians who tore apart Dublin in the 1970s and 80s and caused this crap in the first place.
What will three trains a day taking five hours to travel along an unpopulated strip of farmland do for this country?
On the other hand, what will a radically improved network of short- and medium-distance commuter rail lines in Dublin which also frees up space for more frequent long-distance rail services do for this country? For that matter, what part of this country contributes the enormous majority of corporation tax, capital gains tax, stamp duty, income tax, VAT and rates?

Continued overdevelopment of Dublin will make things worse and worse and worse. It doesn't have the density to support decent rail services. 2/3 of the population do not live in the Dublin area, they should at least be considered.

sliabh

andyhunt wrote:

Continued overdevelopment of Dublin will make things worse and worse and worse. It doesn't have the density to support decent rail services. 2/3 of the population do not live in the Dublin area, they should at least be considered.

Well as road infrastructure spending is four times higher than everything else, and the vast majority of that is national routes outside Dublin, the rest of the country is doing okay.

Rail in Ireland (outside Dublin) is a marginal proposition at best because we just don't have the population densities to make it economic. This is why all the regional rail lines were shut by the 60's. And that was when there was less car ownership and a much greater rural population.

Zaph0d

OK, going half a mile by car has a tiny chance of killing someone but...

Say you have a 5 mile work commute and you are deciding between bus or car. The bus is on a QBC so between the walk to the stop and the wait, the journey time is about equal. You are not too bothered about cost as you already have a car and a parking space at work and you can afford the fuel.

You work 200 days a year and you expect to have the job for 10 years. So, you expect to do 20,000 commuting miles in that time.

What's your chance of killing someone in this time (including yourself)?

The CSO says 376 people were killed in road accidents in 2002, and that there were 1.45M registered cars. Assuming average annual mileage of 10,000 miles, we get one death for every 38.5M miles. So, your 20,000 commuting miles gives you a chance of about 1 in 1925. That's a high chance when a life is involved but, on the other hand, your car has air conditioning and a CD player and you don't need to remember a raincoat.


2002 data source:http://www.cso.ie/publications/northsouth/transportandtourism.pdf

Capt'n Midnight

Zaph0d wrote:

Say you have a 5 mile work commute and you are deciding between bus or car. ....

You work 200 days a year and you expect to have the job for 10 years. So, you expect to do 20,000 commuting miles in that time.
... we get one death for every 38.5M miles.

Try doubling the comuting distance for Dublin (don't forget that about 1/4 of the milage is avoiding traffic as people go the long way around and some of the milage is also longer due to one-ways and "cul-de-sac" design of most estates"). Also your working life is ~ 40 years 'cos if you change job you will still have to get there.

so we get 200 x 40 x10 x 2 = 160,000 miles - You are now down to 1 in 240

Also the death rate is ~ 10 per 10,000 per year
assuming a life expectancy of 70 years gives a 7% chance of dying on the road.

sliabh

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Try doubling the comuting distance for Dublin (don't forget that about 1/4 of the milage is avoiding traffic as people go the long way around and some of the milage is also longer due to one-ways and "cul-de-sac" design of most estates"). Also your working life is ~ 40 years 'cos if you change job you will still have to get there.

so we get 200 x 40 x10 x 2 = 160,000 miles - You are now down to 1 in 240

Also the death rate is ~ 10 per 10,000 per year
assuming a life expectancy of 70 years gives a 7% chance of dying on the road.

Or you could go to thw Central Statistics Office published figures of vital statistics:
http://www.cso.ie/publications/VitalStats/vstats.pdf

and see that "Motor Vehicle Traffic Accidents" were 100 of the 7,225 recorded deaths for the 4th quarter of 2003. That's 1.3%