Soldato
- Joined
- 11 Sep 2013
- Posts
- 12,308
"Back in my day you could have a few pints and drive home, no worries".Wow... just wow. That really is being a complete **** about something that people genuinely think they are in the right and could be resolved with an approach with that in mind - these people aren't being intentionally awkward and like 90% would adapt their approach made properly aware.
That's basically paraphrasing something my own dad has said, himself a professional driver of 80-ton double trailer HGVs, and who continued to flaunt the law like that until cancer robbed him of his licence. Truth was, unless you tested him, he drove so well that you'd never know... but he knew darn well it was wrong.
But even today, despite ALL the campaigns, adverts, angles, and the like, we STILL get people drink-driving.
Awareness campaiging helps a little, but nowhere near as much.
People have their own blind spots are are acutely aware of them, as evidenced by the number of people ranting about others sitting in theirs, yet just you watch them do the exact same thing...
I'm fairly sure people know not to break the speed limit too, especially past speed cameras... but guess what!!
Either you are gulible enough to believe all the people who claim ignorance (in similar estimation of your own person, I wouldn't have thought you were), or you're a solicitor trying to get your idiot client off a nasty charge.I really had a higher estimation of you as a person than that.
Look to the very 90% of people you're championing, if you want to talk about overestimating - They've been peppered with awareness campaigns about all sorts of things on all possible media platforms, they know DAMN WELL what they're doing is wrong.
I'd say maybe 5-10% are the ones completely unaware of what they're doing and then only because they do not care, as Sixes says.
I'm talking the ones who derive no pleasure from driving at all, perhaps even hate it and only do it as a means to get to work and back... perhaps shouldn't even be driving in the first place.
Show them the Highway Code all you like. We do several such initiatives every year here at work - They'll pay it as much attention as they do the Owners Manual section covering what maintenance they're supposed to do... the fact that it's in the Owners manual is the clue as to who's supposed to do it.
Difference is, if they're lazy about the manual, people like me can make money off doing it for them or fixing it when they don't. If they're lazy about some road laws, people will scam them for it... and if they're lazy about some others, people die.
We have campainged and campainged and campainged. It's not effective enough. We now need to clamp down and actually give them a reason to make sure they're in the right:
^ Very much so!The problem lies in trying to change opinion without a relatable, proven detrimental effect to the individual. Without that, people just don't care. Its doubly hard in this case because you have to get these people to admit that they are wrong and have been wrong the whole time.