In one of the last issues of The Classic MotorCycle there was an interesting collumn about road test for vehicles in general. The author Roy Poynting hold the view that due to these the individual resposibility of the majority of vehicle owners would suffer, creating a negative influence on the technical standard that counterweights the effects of a road test.
Well, looking at my neigbours and their knowledge of cars I´m not sure if he´s exactly right. The days when automobilists and motorcyclists were keen mechanics and aware of the fact that a failure could have devastating effect are probably over. The inflationary use of the terms "security" and "safetiness" has washed away most awareness, as the biggst part of customers bought a "safe" car with tons of airbags together with multiple electronic systems that will erase any driver´s error, just in case.
The basic motivation is the thought, that your safe homecoming is mainly, or at least in a decisive way, dependent on technics, so you´re free to make some mistakes or beeing distracted by mobiles or navs - your car will take care of that. That seems like a contradiction to the issue I tried to decribe above.
But these security systems cannot fail! That´s what the makers tell their customers constantly in order to sell them. And they´re right! The electronic components of help systems are surprisigly stable with very little numbers of failures, campared to, err, the wiring of a RE, for example.
Obviosly there are other components of vehicles that do need driver´s attention more often. like tires, lighting or the general care for wearing parts. Here there are the negative effects on driver´s security Roy Poynting described, caused by th believe that safe cars cannot fail.
The other negative effect created by this kind of misbelieve is the assumption that it´s possible to buy security by simply purchasing legion of help systems combined with a centralized controll of all parts used in vehicles. All customers buying any part of a vehicle shall be absolutely positive about the flawlessness of it - tested by officials, valued to official criteria.
From the market´s perspective that makes perfectly sense, as customers will be more eager to buy parts if they can be sure that it´s officially branded as "legal", especially when their technical knowledge is rather flat. According to this logic it´s a good idea to brand any other parts as "illegal" and forbid it´s purchase. This way it´s unlikely that an ignorant customer will buy some untested part by accident.
And here we are: in the process of protecting the dumb costomers from themselves it´s only a side issue that well skilled people are not allowed to use whatever part they´re confident about anymore, only because it´s not officialy branded "legal". Anyone who feels treated like a four-year-old raise his/her hand!
But the more tragic effect is that you cannot buy security, whatever wonder the electronic world will ever offer. The decisive factor is the human beeing that should be aware of it´s responsbility. Unfortunately the well-intentioned statly measures do destroy exactly that awareness, suggesting that technics overtake.
IMHO any penny invested in driver´s training classes is a much, much better investion in comparision to the costs for technical survellance.
Sorry Martyn for highfacking your treat. I´m keen on your opinions. Best regards!
Topic: MOT, UK (Read 7242 times)