Category - Bad Drivers

This story has cropped up on a few feeds, and it is highly misleading (that’s even before the Daily Mail has offered its own interpretation).

It would appear that “dumbing down” is reaching even places like the London School Of Economics (LSE) and Carnegie Mellon University, the inmates of which establishments now appear incapable of identifying suitably robust data as the source of alleged scientific studies. They can’t even refrain from trying to give witty titles to their papers.

Basically, they have concluded that using a mobile phone while driving doesn’t increase your chances of crashing.

The “study” is flawed beyond belief. To begin with, it harvested data from phone masts for conversations which jumped between cells (i.e. were assumed to be made by people on the move in cars). The calls monitored were made only after 9pm, and so were skewed towards those users using special free tariffs (yes, it is American data only) offered by many carriers. The calls only involved voice – no internet traffic was monitored. And there was no way of knowing how many of the calls were made using hands free devices.

This has all the hallmarks of first year students cutting their teeth in learning how to publicise their “research”, no matter how amateurish the actual data. It’s just like when kids paint a picture with daubs of of colour and people pretend it is good – sometimes straying beyond normal parental encouragement and foisting the artwork on the wider public.

There are plenty of studies – proper ones, and anecdotal “survey” types – which say exactly the opposite, and a proper scientist would be very cautious in drawing extreme conclusions from results like those generated in the current story. This is especially true where the results fly in the face of everything that is obvious.

Driving and farting about at the same time with things in the car (such as phones, satnavs, and babies) is absolutely guaranteed to increase the risk of something going wrong. After all, you can drive around for years in a car with defective brakes or tyres and not have an accident – but that doesn’t mean defective brakes and tyres don’t increase the risk of an accident.

The report – both the original “research” and the press interpretation – is highly irresponsible. It shows what happens when you dumb down education and allow people to think they’re something they’re not. In this case, people like Saurabh Bhargava (Carnegie) and Vikram Pathania (LSE), who apparently consider themselves to be scientific researchers.

In Chelmsford, a learner driver on a motorbike did a wheelie in a snow storm, overtook a car, and then crashed. He suffered what are described as “life changing injuries”.

George Harding, 18, admitted driving dangerously, driving without insurance, driving without an MoT, and driving outside the conditions of his licence. He was not displaying L plates, even though he only had a provisional licence. You’ll note in the story that the bike was a 510cc model – considerably outside the maximum engine size allowed for provisional holders.

Incredibly, his lawyer said:

It was a moment of madness. It was out of character, a moment of utter stupidity.

As a result he has paid a very high price in terms of his injuries suffered and his family.

Well, if he knew how to do a wheelie in the first place it was hardly as “out of character” as this comedian suggests. Likewise the fact that he had such a large bike and was not displaying L plates – it was absolutely and completely premeditated behaviour. The only word we can all agree on in that first sentence is “stupid”.

And as for the second sentence regarding his “suffering”, arrange the following three words into an appropriate sentence: right, him, serves.

He was banned for 12 months, ordered to take an extended test, and fined £525.

This report from Scotland tells how police are seeking (link now dead) a driver who punched another in the face and walked away after narrowly avoiding a collision.

The report doesn’t say anything about who was to blame for the near miss, but if the guilty party was the man who ended up being punched… well, sometimes people do such stupid things on the roads you can see why things like this happen. It doesn’t make it right, but you can understand it.

Unfortunately (and that’s a joke before “angry woman from Manchester” chimes in again), doing what many people simply dream of being able to do when confronted by idiots is against the Law.

Remember: if someone cuts you up, or nearly causes you to have a fatal accident while you’ve got your kids in the car, you are wrong if you in any way show resentment towards the other driver.

The picture below shows an example of pond scum. The one on the right is some stinking green stuff that grows on stagnant water.

This report tells how Shiad Mahmoon, who is 24 and unemployed, was spotted driving a hired Audi R8 Spyder (worth more than £100,000) at speeds estimated to be in excess of 165mph. This was measured from a helicopter – police believe Mahmoon could have been going much faster.

He was found guilty, banned for 3 years, ordered to take an extended test, and fined a paltry £515.

He said in court:

I’m still going to drive- catch me if you can.

He defended himself, and in what must be the worst attempt at mitigation in the history of the world he tried to claim that he couldn’t remember the incident because of “a brain injury”. I’d certainly have to agree that there is something wrong with his brain, but I’d put the problem much further back in his pathetic little lifetime. Somewhere around the point of conception.

Shiad Mahmoon clearly has a few chromosomes missing. Police will undoubtedly catch him again.

Adam Pembridge, 22, was close to 3 times the legal limit and had traces of cocaine in his body when he tried to drive away from a police car and crashed, killing Joshua Williams, 20, who was in the car with him.

I can’t quite get my head around him being found guilty of “driving without due care and attention while over the prescribed alcohol limit”. He was guilty of dangerous driving whilst pissed and whacked out of his skull at the very least. He’s been jailed for 5 years.

Pembridge’s car was a Rover MGF convertible – just about the most classic pratmobile available (apart from a Corsa or any model of Audi). Even without alcohol he was an accident waiting to happen. Naturally, everyone is crowing about Joshua Williams and how nice he was, great sportsman, and so on. He was still a willing passenger in that car at 4 o’clock in the morning, and was quite possibly as drunk as Pembridge – that accident could, and does, happen to far too many young drivers who think they’re brilliant when, like Pembridge, they absolutely are not.

The solution is a curfew and strict controls on carrying passengers. And mandatory black boxes.

I saw this on the BBC website, where two people in Manchester tried to use the McDonalds drive-thru on horseback. Initially, it raised a smile.

However, these days – and particular in places like Manchester – people seem to be sufficiently mentally challenged that they go too far without passing through any of the more traditional intermediate stages first.

In the story, a woman tried to order from the drive-thru lane at a McDonalds branch on horseback. Staff refused to serve her, no doubt because there are numerous food hygiene and safety regulations such food outlets are supposed to adhere to. But it then gets nasty. The pathetic Mancunian chavette in question decided to take her horse INTO the restaurant. That in itself is pretty bad, since even dogs are not allowed in there. But then the horse did the inevitable and dropped a load on the floor.

This was while people were eating, you understand. Can you imagine tucking into your lunch, only to have some vile little bitch drag a horse into the restaurant while you’re eating and allowing it to defaecate right next to you just because she’d not got her own way over something? I wish she’d been named in the story, because I’d happily repeat it here (edit: Her name was Christine McGrail – see the Mail story below).

To make matters worse, it appears that she may already have been allowed to breed. She was accompanied by a girl on a pony, who quite frighteningly could have been her daughter. Mind you, it is even more frightening to think that she could have been someone else’s daughter, having dangerously been left in the care of this example of the lowest caste of society.

The woman was issued with a fixed penalty notice by police. She should have been made to lick up the mess.

And the RSPCA should have been informed. First of all because she took a horse and pony to a McDonald’s outlet in the first place (they tend to be located in busy areas with major roads and lots of traffic, and the animals would almost certainly have been distressed), and secondly because she forced the horse through the electric doors into an enclosed space with irate and frightened people in it. The horse must have been terrified, and anything could have happened. She isn’t fit to own one.

As a footnote, the story has been picked up by various sources. This one is from Horsemart. Note the comments at the bottom – particularly the one from a so-called “Business Intelligence Developer”. The word “intelligence” is a classic example of an oxymoron given his opinion on the matter. What a prat.

More detail in The Telegraph (but still no names). It seems McDonalds staff merely asked her to tie the horse up outside – they just wouldn’t serve her whilst mounted in the drive-thru lane. This makes her even more of a vicious and seriously disturbed individual.

A-ha. Trust The Mail. The unfit parent in question was  Christine McGrail. It seems that she allowed her daughter to take her pony inside – clearly, then, a deliberate act as she left her own full-sized horse outside. The imbecile admits she…

…acted ‘rashly’ after the pony opened its bowels in front of diners but claimed the treatment of horse riders was inconsistent.

Too right she did. An unfit mother who clearly coerced her daughter into leading a pony through the doors of a McDonalds restaurant, unfit to own a horse herself, and clearly dangerous to all when allowed outside without close supervision. An absolute mental case.

Another “new” story reckons that:

…young motorists should be banned from driving at night, carrying a certain number of passengers and after drinking any amount of alcohol to reduce the number of fatal road crashes, a new report has recommended.

It isn’t new at all. It goes back to last year at the very least, and the same issues have been discussed almost continuously for as long as I can remember.

Everyone knows – and has known for many years – that most accidents involving new drivers tick all or most of the following boxes:

• driver aged 17-24
• occur at night
• on rural roads
• on bends
• with passengers in the car
• with no other vehicle being involved
• excessive speed is identified

Everyone also knows that although young drivers only make up about 12% of the driving population, they account for 33% of all road fatalities.

It all comes down to two main factors: inexperience and stupidity (aka attitude).

Every new driver who has ever lived has been inexperienced when they passed their test. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about that, and even if they had to take more lessons or extra post-test training they would still be inexperienced. You see, inexperience is a function of time, and time cannot be made to run any faster in spite of what politicians and newspaper editors might think. And we’re not talking about a few hours of extra “experience” – it requires years of on-road practice to become a completely safe driver. But you can be a responsible driver from the first moment you go out.

So, anyone with any sense would decide to attack the stupidity/attitude issue. After all, none of those drivers was ever taught to drive the way they do now back when they were taking lessons, so why try to blame those lessons for the way they choose to behave now?

Having said all that, I am all for anything which puts the brakes on stupid behaviour. If you want to be treated as an adult, act like one first.