Category - News

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.