Vehicle as a murder weapon

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Cugel
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Cugel »

Within those libertarian circles that like to argue for no control of guns, knives or any other murdering technology, you will always hear the cry, "Guns/knives/H-bombs don't kill people, people kill people". The implication is that the technologies are innocent and unwitting accomplices of a few psychopaths.

In reality, various technologies are huge amplifiers, enablers or even instigators of murderous acts. The design of the technology (inclusive of all it's intents, purposes and capabilities) will be a contributory cause of the human user's murderous act. To give an example from the (current) far end of the spectrum: you can't commit easy, remote and large scale genocide in an instant unless you have an H-bomb or similar.

A car is designed, in part, for non-murderous intents (i.e. for transport). However, it would be foolish to ignore the design elements of a modern car that compose it's ability to amplify, enable or even instigate a (semi)murderous intent within the human user. Consider the nature of a modern car. It's part transport-determined but also includes those macho elements of the power-control-sex-death kind that are all too present in many driving "accidents" of a road-raging kind. This is, in part, what sells cars. This is why many people often regard driving as a great pleasure rather than merely a necessary and tedious procedure for going from A to B.

Power corrupts. Motorised power corrupts in rather specific and often unpleasant ways.

Cars should be redesigned to be purely transport, without these added sales inducements that appeal to and encourage mad macho men (and their post-modern female counterparts) as they go thrusting about at others. Personally I would just like to see them banned. Life without cars would be so much less dangerous, dirty, stressful and frantic. Perhaps many other socio-economic systems, services and goods would be transformed for the better?

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Bonefishblues
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Bonefishblues »

Cugel wrote:
In reality, various technologies are huge amplifiers, enablers or even instigators of murderous acts. The design of the technology (inclusive of all it's intents, purposes and capabilities) will be a contributory cause of the human user's murderous act. To give an example from the (current) far end of the spectrum: you can't commit easy, remote and large scale genocide in an instant unless you have an H-bomb or similar.


How can the technology be an instigator, I'm wondering?
reohn2
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by reohn2 »

Bonefishblues wrote:
Cugel wrote:
In reality, various technologies are huge amplifiers, enablers or even instigators of murderous acts. The design of the technology (inclusive of all it's intents, purposes and capabilities) will be a contributory cause of the human user's murderous act. To give an example from the (current) far end of the spectrum: you can't commit easy, remote and large scale genocide in an instant unless you have an H-bomb or similar.


How can the technology be an instigator, I'm wondering?

It's a cop out.
The human being is very good at not accepting blaim for his/her shortcomings and failures in respect of others of the same species,not to mention that our environmental impact,we do it every day.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
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Cugel
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Cugel »

Bonefishblues wrote:
Cugel wrote:
In reality, various technologies are huge amplifiers, enablers or even instigators of murderous acts. The design of the technology (inclusive of all it's intents, purposes and capabilities) will be a contributory cause of the human user's murderous act. To give an example from the (current) far end of the spectrum: you can't commit easy, remote and large scale genocide in an instant unless you have an H-bomb or similar.


How can the technology be an instigator, I'm wondering?

A technology is a human artifice, with built-in intents, unlike a boulder or a flood. For example, the purpose of a weapon is to maim and kill. No surprise, then, that some of those with access to weapons will find themselves maiming and killing in situation wherein, were they weaponless, they would not.

So works the technology of the car. It isn't just designed to transport you and yours. It's designed also as a macho power tool for demonstrating your prowess, aggression and all the other lovely virtues associated with rabid individualism of the solipsistic ilk commonly found in our various cultural enclaves these days.

Of course, not all gun or car owners will go the whole hog to "off" some offender of their overweening pride or ideological itch. But plenty will and do. They are prompted by the nature of their technological demon, as it whispers into their mental ear concerning what it can do to assuage their boiling, roiling angsts.

Cugel, blaming Pandora or possibly Adam & Eve.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
thirdcrank
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by thirdcrank »

As I keep saying, it's not the car that kills, it's the driver, but that doesn't mean to say that killing isn't easier with the right equipment. I saw something on wiki recently suggesting that people killed with guns in the US exceed the UK in the order of something like 50 times. They weren't all murdered and many will have been accidents but dead = dead. We simply have fewer guns available to kill people, whether intentionally or by accident.
Bonefishblues
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Bonefishblues »

Cugel wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:
Cugel wrote:
In reality, various technologies are huge amplifiers, enablers or even instigators of murderous acts. The design of the technology (inclusive of all it's intents, purposes and capabilities) will be a contributory cause of the human user's murderous act. To give an example from the (current) far end of the spectrum: you can't commit easy, remote and large scale genocide in an instant unless you have an H-bomb or similar.


How can the technology be an instigator, I'm wondering?

A technology is a human artifice, with built-in intents, unlike a boulder or a flood. For example, the purpose of a weapon is to maim and kill. No surprise, then, that some of those with access to weapons will find themselves maiming and killing in situation wherein, were they weaponless, they would not.

So works the technology of the car. It isn't just designed to transport you and yours. It's designed also as a macho power tool for demonstrating your prowess, aggression and all the other lovely virtues associated with rabid individualism of the solipsistic ilk commonly found in our various cultural enclaves these days.

Of course, not all gun or car owners will go the whole hog to "off" some offender of their overweening pride or ideological itch. But plenty will and do. They are prompted by the nature of their technological demon, as it whispers into their mental ear concerning what it can do to assuage their boiling, roiling angsts.

Cugel, blaming Pandora or possibly Adam & Eve.

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.
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Cugel
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Cugel »

Bonefishblues wrote:
Cugel wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:How can the technology be an instigator, I'm wondering?

A technology is a human artifice, with built-in intents, unlike a boulder or a flood. For example, the purpose of a weapon is to maim and kill. No surprise, then, that some of those with access to weapons will find themselves maiming and killing in situation wherein, were they weaponless, they would not.

So works the technology of the car. It isn't just designed to transport you and yours. It's designed also as a macho power tool for demonstrating your prowess, aggression and all the other lovely virtues associated with rabid individualism of the solipsistic ilk commonly found in our various cultural enclaves these days.

Of course, not all gun or car owners will go the whole hog to "off" some offender of their overweening pride or ideological itch. But plenty will and do. They are prompted by the nature of their technological demon, as it whispers into their mental ear concerning what it can do to assuage their boiling, roiling angsts.

Cugel, blaming Pandora or possibly Adam & Eve.

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.


Think of it this way: if there are books, newspapers, TV and similar, you learn to read and thus suck in all sorts of notions that make you do this rather than that.

All technologies have similar effects on their users. They suggest you behave in certain ways in order to employ them to some advantage. You do so, including the behaviours that may be peripheral (like using a car as a macho-man weapon as well as transport). You do so because the technology means you can. Humans like to explore what they can do. Some go to extremes.

But I think you know this, really. How could you not, being as how you (like all of us) have a life and behaviours utterly transformed from those of out primitive ancestors ... because of technology. :-)

Cugel.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Bonefishblues
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Bonefishblues »

I now understand the words. I shall report back as to my success in explaining to the nice officer that it was my car that was the instigator of my offence and should be punished severely.
Mike Sales
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Mike Sales »

Cugel wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:
Cugel wrote:A technology is a human artifice, with built-in intents, unlike a boulder or a flood. For example, the purpose of a weapon is to maim and kill. No surprise, then, that some of those with access to weapons will find themselves maiming and killing in situation wherein, were they weaponless, they would not.

So works the technology of the car. It isn't just designed to transport you and yours. It's designed also as a macho power tool for demonstrating your prowess, aggression and all the other lovely virtues associated with rabid individualism of the solipsistic ilk commonly found in our various cultural enclaves these days.

Of course, not all gun or car owners will go the whole hog to "off" some offender of their overweening pride or ideological itch. But plenty will and do. They are prompted by the nature of their technological demon, as it whispers into their mental ear concerning what it can do to assuage their boiling, roiling angsts.

Cugel, blaming Pandora or possibly Adam & Eve.

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.


Think of it this way: if there are books, newspapers, TV and similar, you learn to read and thus suck in all sorts of notions that make you do this rather than that.

All technologies have similar effects on their users. They suggest you behave in certain ways in order to employ them to some advantage. You do so, including the behaviours that may be peripheral (like using a car as a macho-man weapon as well as transport). You do so because the technology means you can. Humans like to explore what they can do. Some go to extremes.

But I think you know this, really. How could you not, being as how you (like all of us) have a life and behaviours utterly transformed from those of out primitive ancestors ... because of technology. :-)

Cugel.


Drivers often complain that it is difficult to keep their speed down to 20mph. I think I read this on another thread about excuses. Car manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making their products easy to drive. It seems that this means easy to drive fast, but not easy to drive more slowly.
We should legislate to force car companies to make cars which tend to encourage gentle driving. Their advertisements ought not to glorify the exhilaration of speed.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Bonefishblues
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Location: Near Bicester Oxon

Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Bonefishblues »

Mike Sales wrote:
Cugel wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:I'm sorry but I don't understand that.


Think of it this way: if there are books, newspapers, TV and similar, you learn to read and thus suck in all sorts of notions that make you do this rather than that.

All technologies have similar effects on their users. They suggest you behave in certain ways in order to employ them to some advantage. You do so, including the behaviours that may be peripheral (like using a car as a macho-man weapon as well as transport). You do so because the technology means you can. Humans like to explore what they can do. Some go to extremes.

But I think you know this, really. How could you not, being as how you (like all of us) have a life and behaviours utterly transformed from those of out primitive ancestors ... because of technology. :-)

Cugel.


Drivers often complain that it is difficult to keep their speed down to 20mph. I think I read this on another thread about excuses. Car manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making their products easy to drive. It seems that this means easy to drive fast, but not easy to drive more slowly.
We should legislate to force car companies to make cars which tend to encourage gentle driving. Their advertisements ought not to glorify the exhilaration of speed.

Those drivers are talking nonsense, as they know. It's perfectly easy to do that, irrespective of the vintage of the vehicle.

How would car companies make cars that encouraged gentle driving I wonder? Would you advocate making cars harder to drive?
Mike Sales
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Mike Sales »

Bonefishblues wrote:How would car companies make cars that encouraged gentle driving I wonder? Would you advocate making cars harder to drive?


I would advocate making them slower to accelerate. I would make them slower generally. Less H.P. would do this. Certainly they should have something like a throttle setting which would maintain the speed at the current limit. Speeding would then be impossible without deliberately setting the illegal speed.
Making the driver less safe would encourage less risk taking too. Off the top of my head, the old spike on the steering wheel should help.
Now I have slept on it I remember more possibilities.
A black box recording driving behaviour, coupled with dashcams, to be analysed after any incident would make it easy to take the licences of unfit drivers. The effect on driving behaviour ought to moderate drivers' aggression.
This is just an extension of the boxes insurance companies can install.
I know some motorists dislike the idea of robot cars taking over the "fun" of driving, but maybe this is the way to go. No more fallible humans in charge of all that dangerous power. All power corrupts...
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
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Cugel
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Cugel »

Bonefishblues wrote:I now understand the words. I shall report back as to my success in explaining to the nice officer that it was my car that was the instigator of my offence and should be punished severely.


The likelihood is that the nice officer is also a car addict and equally ignorant of the effects of cultural artefacts on human behaviours and notions. Also, he is victim (like all of us in the Western World) of the dominant ideology & associated myth of self-governing rational individuals who are able to choose between right and wrong on a continuous basis, only choosing wrong if they are "bad".

Now, you may prefer the politics, laws and associated institutions based on the above. I do so myself, having been brought up in these traditions. (New or alternative ways might well be worse). However ....

Even though I would continue to apprehend and punish mad car drivers, I would at the same time be doing things like those suggested by another poster just here, to disarm some fundamental causes of traffic "accidents", a prime example of which is the design of car-as-weapon ("weapon of choice" as the Yanks like to call not just cars but also bicycles, in a not-so-Freudian slip).

This would include not just means to reduce the car's inbuilt aggression-amplifying aspects such as top speed, acceleration and general mirkin-like aspects but all the advertising that points out those potentials to the slavering infant-men who then buy and use a car as recommended by the fools vrooming about in the adverts.

Moreover, the punishments would be aimed not at retribution but rehabilitation - and a lot more prevention of similar (future) behaviours to those that caused the arrests.

And Clarksons would be the first to be arrested and rehabilitated under the new scheme!

So there. :-)

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
reohn2
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Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by reohn2 »

Mike Sales wrote:
Drivers often complain that it is difficult to keep their speed down to 20mph. I think I read this on another thread about excuses. Car manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making their products easy to drive. It seems that this means easy to drive fast, but not easy to drive more slowly.
We should legislate to force car companies to make cars which tend to encourage gentle driving. Their advertisements ought not to glorify the exhilaration of speed.

My car is a Ford Cmax 2ltr turbo diesel(sorry),it has a 6speed gearbox,can go like the proverbial off a shovel if I wish and has the power and torque to tow a 1370kg caravan easily at 60mph where conditions and restrictions allow.
I can drive it at walking speed upwards,no problem.The problem is irresponsible drivers or the 'monkey' behind the wheel and the way the law doesn't deal with that particular monkey effectively enough to make it not worth their while.
To complain that because cars are easy to drive or that that manufacturers advertising makes for bad drivers is fallacy,the problem lies with the lack of policing and the punishments handed down by a soft and inadequate judicial system.
If a driver thought there was a good chance they'd be caught and it costing them dearly if they were there'd be far more responsible,courteous and law abiding drivers on the roads.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Mike Sales
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Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by Mike Sales »

reohn2 wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:
Drivers often complain that it is difficult to keep their speed down to 20mph. I think I read this on another thread about excuses. Car manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making their products easy to drive. It seems that this means easy to drive fast, but not easy to drive more slowly.
We should legislate to force car companies to make cars which tend to encourage gentle driving. Their advertisements ought not to glorify the exhilaration of speed.

My car is a Ford Cmax 2ltr turbo diesel(sorry),it has a 6speed gearbox,can go like the proverbial off a shovel if I wish and has the power and torque to tow a 1370kg caravan easily at 60mph where conditions and restrictions allow.
I can drive it at walking speed upwards,no problem.The problem is irresponsible drivers or the 'monkey' behind the wheel and the way the law doesn't deal with that particular monkey effectively enough to make it not worth their while.
To complain that because cars are easy to drive or that that manufacturers advertising makes for bad drivers is fallacy,the problem lies with the lack of policing and the punishments handed down by a soft and inadequate judicial system.
If a driver thought there was a good chance they'd be caught and it costing them dearly if they were there'd be far more responsible,courteous and law abiding drivers on the roads.


Advertising and the properties, handling of cars can certainly exacerbate regrettable tendencies in some drivers. Ones like you who have the insight to behave well are less common than need be.
Something does need to be changed, whether law enforcement, cars, or both.
We have all seen the ads which boast of "handling" which means a car that can go fast round corners, and the accompanying pictures illustrating a car on winding mountain roads.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: Vehicle as a murder weapon

Post by reohn2 »

Mike Sales wrote:Advertising and the properties, handling of cars can certainly exacerbate regrettable tendencies in some drivers. Ones like you who have the insight to behave well are less common than need be.

I disagree that responsible drivers are 'less common' or are a minority group,IME the minority group are the idiot irresponsible drivers

Something does need to be changed, whether law enforcement, cars, or both.
We have all seen the ads which boast of "handling" which means a car that can go fast round corners, and the accompanying pictures illustrating a car on winding mountain roads.

Irresponsible driver behaviour is governed by what they can get away with,which is governed by a lack of effective policing,which is in turn restricted by bad government that operates on KSI statistics which only tells part of the story.
Government only spends what it can get away with in order to keep taxes low so it can get in office again and repeat the 4 or 5 year cycle.....
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
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