Sorry. I should be taking more care.
He didn't go that far, but enough to make him stay away from his stuff next time.
The trouble is that the loss of his tools meant him leaving the job for the rest of the day and borrowing lower quality (occassional diy) tools from family so that he could work before having to spend a fortune replacing them when he had the time and money available.
SteveW
No. My (true) story was quite clear. He himself saw the tools being stolen and who took them. Not second hand identification - the "rumour" I mentioned. In your scenario, it is obvious that the son cannot know for sure. As the tools are actually there, there is no problem with calling the police and waiting - noting the van's reg. in case he drives off.
SteveW
I sense no clue about "it might be me"
Immediately you make a judgement and have no clue why they needed to do it.
Except that by resorting to illegal means to acquire someone else's property, and potentially putting others at risk at the same time, they were unlikely to have been acting for the benefit of anyone but themselves. You may condone their actions, perhaps because you perceive that they had some overriding "need" that "forced" them to take this action, regardless of the needs of anyone else, but I have my reservations.
Unless she was senile (in which case she should not have been given the position of carer), then yes, I would certainly expect *any* adult to realise that they might not hear the alarm that was fitted, and to arrange for an improvement.
And even if the woman herself did not realise the deficiency, it seems that *you* did, and could have informed the woman and have suggested possible remedies. You can buy devices off the shelf for under £20 that will effectively increase the volume of an alarm so that nobody could sleep through it.
In another post you stated that the woman was in her 80's, so you have obviously invented an unlikely scenario that you believe would make it impossible to keep the sick person safe.
If the life of someone I cared about depended on it however, I assure you that I would be able to find a solution PDQ. I can think of several possible solutions to the situation you pose, but if I suggest any you would simply counter with a different scenario.
I have always been able to find some way to manage without long-term state assistance or charity. Perhaps because I don't *expect* anyone to look out for me except myself.
My response was to the suggestion that judges etc. should live on a sink estate for 2 years. I took that to mean that they should live
*in the same conditions* as the people on such an estate.Anyone who lives their life at a standard that is visibly and considerably different to their neighbours is likely to be victimised. It would be little different if a person who had lived all their life on a sink estate were to inherit a house in a "posh" estate. Unless they could and did alter their lifestyle considerably, it would set them apart and they would be resented by their neighbours. Maybe they would not have their windows smashed or car keyed (though it is not all that unlikely that those things would happen), but they would probably be subjected to forms of harassment that are just as bad - even if they are legal forms of harassment.
You miss the point. In my scenario, your relative would have seen
*exactly* the same thing, and so been just as certain that his tools were being taken by a thief, when in fact the person taking them fully believed that he was perfectly entitled to take the tools.The point is that even when it *appears* to be absolutely certain that a crime is being committed, occassionally the witness is mistaken and what they see is not what it appears to be.
I disagree that failing to see the camera necessarily makes a person a bad driver. A good driver should focus their prime attention on everything that is likely to be a risk factor, and other things that are not a safety issue should be of secondary concern. In some cases the driver will quite correctly be fully focussed on moving objects that are obviously far more hazardous than a piece of stationary street furniture, and have insufficient spare capacity to notice the colour of the roadside flowers, the bright advert on the side of a bus shelter or a square yellow box.
There was an inquest a year or so back when the coroner remarked that a driver's reaction to a pedestrian stepping out in front of his car was quite possibly slowed due to having just spotted a speed camera and becoming focussed on ensuring he did not pass it too fast. The pedestrian's death was ruled as being an accident with no blame to the driver, who forensics found was travelling below the speed limit at the time the pedestrian stepped into the road. The position of the camera was however considered to be a contribitory factor
According to what you have stated however, a driver who had spotted the pedestrian and given full attention to avoiding hitting that pedestrian, but who had not spotted the bright yellow camera would be a worse driver.
Whether there is a law or not is beside the point. The person doing it knows that it is wrong, and the act is dangerous enough to be fatal.
IIUC however, trespassing *on railway property* is indeed a crime, BICBW.
Many elderly people who experienced the days before there was an NHS are grateful for what help they get and aren't overly critical of its failings.
*I* only found out about the problem after they'd had the period of worry about the works installing cable TV in the area.SteveW
I gave an actual case about the couple in question. You responded with a comment about carers making arrangements when they need to go out. I gave a perfectly reasonable and likely scenario - yes, it was not related to that couple, but there are carers of all ages, many of them with young families of their own and jobs to juggle. Even elderly carers can have vital hospital appointments to keep and arrangements for care can fall through.
Good for you. But have you had to juggle normal life and caring for someone 24/7. I can say that I have not first hand, but certainly second hand. Even caring for my family when my wife was ill (not requiring 24/7 care) was enough to lose me my employment and saddle me with massive debts which I am now working extended hours to clear. A couple more months and we would have lost our home.
SteveW
Wrong. Taking the property of an innocent man because you are acting on
*rumour* is still theft. In your scenario, the *thief* is still a thief, even if by mistake, while my uncle was quite clearly an innocent victim.SteveW
And where have I suggested that they wouldn't be, as, if they were living on the estate they'd be in similar housing to everyone else. However, not everyone wants to conform by displaying tattoos, shaving their heads, buying a pit bull terrier, running an unlicensed motor vehicle and saying f*ck for every third word. They will consequently stand out and get their windows smashed and their car scratched.
Obviously you're too stupid, or too distant from real life to understand that such things are triggered by far less than obvious signs of wealth.
It would, however, be a salutary lesson for such a member of the judiciary and would probably harden his or her resolve to clamp down even harder on the hoi poloi.
In the end, it comes down to whether your uncle supports the status quo in which so many people are driven to crime. If he promotes that status quo, then he has little moral justification, and will probably get his own extra-legal comeuppance which will be similarly difficult to condemn in moral terms. If he demands systemic change, but must protect himself in the meantime, then that is justifiable.
For non-impulsive crimes, there generally has to be some punishment associated with being caught, at least enough to disgorge any clear profit from the activity, but Cynic is quite right that, given the status quo, criminals are far more sensitive to an increase in the risk of detection than an increase in the severity of the punishment.
I dare say at least some of the reason for this, is connected with what I said in an earlier post, that many criminals can now only be dealt with by incapacitation. A greater risk of detection means that many more will be caught in the act and sent to jail - not to teach them a lesson, but to physically disable those who will never learn to forfeit their reasonable human needs.
An increase in severity here would only lead to the dynamic I described earlier, where criminals continue to flout the threat, and then the state must either fold, or it must then actually impose a punishment that is extremely costly to itself. That is the worst of all worlds, because the severe punishment was one that the state had quite hoped it would not have to impose, because it hoped criminals would be scared of it and would be deterred.
Also, where criminals are deterred from non-impulsive crimes, there is also the risk of displacing them into more impulsive crimes (types that tend to have more collateral damage). For example, those who would be shoplifters and who are successfully deterred, might well then be forced into street robbery when they get more desperate for cash or goods, or even personal violence or other antisocial acts which are not economically motivated but simply an expression of excessive psychological stress.
How does the driver know what he can ignore it if he doesn't see it?
I would not have come to that verdict and the coroner should be re-educated as it was obviously poor driving. If you can't take in all the information that you need to drive safely then you are driving too fast for your abilities!
Yes, he would have been a worse driver than one that didn't need to worry about the speed camera because he knew how fast he was going and what the speed limit was. You would be amazed at how easy that is.
Do you have a problem when you drive?
Because he can ignore the object based on its position in the visual field - and also whether the object is moving.
Interesting things don't normally happen off to the left above head- height, even less so when those things are not moving into the path of the vehicle, and so where there is excessive demand for visual processing, that capacity will be allocated to certain areas that have, by experience, been found to be the places where interesting things happen.
No, it was intentional on the part of the agency that installed the speed camera, that the driver should have reacted in that way - that he should have devoted more attention to his speed, and therefore necessarily less attention to anything else.
This is where people like yourself wander off into fantasy land. No driver can take in all the information at all times that they need to drive "safely" in all possible circumstances. Even people on foot, moving by definition at walking pace, manage to fall off kerbs into traffic, or even simply walk straight into traffic, or even fall down uncovered manholes.
In the end, people like yourself hold drivers to impossibly high standards simply because you don't like cars and want to drive them off the roads, not because you have any legitimate safety (or otherwise humanistic) agenda. When drivers react adversely to your ploys, as the driver clearly did in this case, you use that to try to argue for further restrictions, when in fact it was the restriction that worsened road safety in the first place.
I've pointed out myself before now that the prevalence of red-light cameras in particular (and combined speed/red-light cameras), simply means that I have now reallocated attention away from checking the junction and road ahead (including the behaviour of pedestrians at any associated crossings), to carefully scanning the side of the road for the presence of a camera whilst actively inhibiting my desire to accelerate, and being braced for an emergency stop on a much more cautionary basis than usual.
If a pedestrian then steps out and gets run down, then that is the choice that people like yourself have made - you can't have my attention allocated to both tasks, because I do not have enough of it to allocate to all possible factors, and you've made it clear by installing a camera and imposing draconian penalties, that you want my attention to be focussed first and foremost on maintaining a lower speed, and stopping earlier at the amber, than I would otherwise choose to do without the presence of the camera.
Drivers like yourself (I assume you are a driver in the first place) are simply dickheads.
The fact is, most of us do not spend all our time on the roads monitoring speed limits and our compliance with them - even by your own logic, it is easier to observe the speed camera and make a temporary adjustment of speed, than to observe every change of posted limit and keep one's speed constantly in accordance with that limit.
And contrary to what you imply, knowing how fast you are going and what the posted limit is, is a significant intellectual task, demanding both careful visual observation and memory capacity (and therefore require compensation by demonstrating a lower standard of overall driving skill and progress, or by a reduced amount of stamina for driving due to the high intellectual demands of your driving behaviour - or even possibly both of these).
The general observed nature of the road at any time, is enough for most drivers to infer what is an acceptable speed, with a much greater degree of accuracy and appropriateness than any crude posted speed limit can achieve. It is the hallmark of a good driver to be able to do this.
I wonder, do you ever have any trouble on unrestricted rural roads, given that the posted limit will be of little guidance in choosing an appropriate speed? If you have no trouble inferring an appropriate speed from general observation, then why do you feel the need to rigidly follow posted limits at all?
The only problem I tend to have on the roads, is with pillocks like yourself.
Like I said how can he know if he hasn't seen it. It isn't even above and to the left when he is a few cars length away and he should be looking that far ahead to be safe.
Like in the road in front of you where all gatso cameras have white lines painted?
8<The driver should always be aware of his speed and the limit. If he can not do so while still paying attention to other things he is not capable of driving safely and will have an accident. The case you quote proves this to be true.
Then they shouldn't drive in those circumstances.
They don't have to pass a test to show they are competent. You also missed out falling through manhole covers which is what happened to me.
It was poor driving, plain and simple. If it were the case that the camera did cause the crash then how come nearly every other driver can manage to drive past it without problems.
IME the biggest problem with cameras is that the speeders see them and then jump on the brakes to about 5-10 mph below the limit. They don't spend lots of time looking at their speedo so that they run into an object in the road. The problem is easily solved by hiding the cameras.
Why, if you are driving legally there is no need to worry about the cameras. There are millions of drivers who don't have a problem with cameras because they don't speed and don't try to jump amber lights. Hidden cameras would remove the drivers that do have a problem with speeding and jumping lights.
You are driving beyond you abilities then. You need to slow down and stop being an idiot.
I haven't, I would hide them. However I can't see why they are a problem to anyone who knows how to drive properly.
I don't have a problem with knowing how fats I am going or what the limit is. I don't see why another driver should either. If they do then they have a problem with their ability and need to address it by either getting better or by changing how they drive. If that means they have to drive at 20 mph then so be it.
Balls, its insignificant effort.
A good driver obeys the rules. that way nobody gets caught by him doing something he should not.
I don't. The limit is a maximum not a required minimum.
Its normal for poor drivers to act in the way you do. Its always someone else's fault that they have problems.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.