Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Un-fact
A few days ago the DT carried a peice about the dreadful number of deaths - 300 or so a year in GB (we suppose) - attributable to people who had only recently passed their driving test. In consequence, there was said to be all-party agreement about the need to do something about the driving test, which had not been reorganised for some disgraceful passage of time. There was even talk of abandoning the dreaded reversing backwards around a corner (something which almost scuppered me ever so many years ago) and relying on driving instructors to do that sort of thing. I then start to wonder how all this cross party agreement was justified and turn up what turns out to be a very helpful ONS web site (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/) and rapidly learn that in 2002 (the last year for which data was available in this form) there were about 3,500 deaths from road accidents in GB. So less than 10% of these involve these recent passers? So what proportion of road traffic users are they? Is this an excess proportion? Does the DT or anyone else know?
Perhaps I should have stayed with OPCS - one of the outfits which merged into what is now the ONS - and participated in this great web development!
As a consolation prize, I participated yesterday in the revenue protection scheme operated by Transport for London. Having forgetten to carry my oyster card and not having change smaller than a fiver, the bus driver eyed me very suspiciously. After a suitably impressive pause, during which time I thought my options were either to cough up a fiver or to get off, he comes up with a pad of yellow forms and laboriously checks one lot of boxes and then invites me to check another lot, in this way recording my name and address. I then carry off the yellow counterfoil into the bowels of the bus, a counterfoil which invites me to send £2 to the revenue protection department of Transport for London. My cheque now awaits my daily trip to Cheam to be posted. I am pleased that such a quaint and trusting scheme is still operated - despite transaction costs which much far exceed the amount involved. So as a good citizen I must remember to carry my Oyster card.
I was impressed by the much lower-tech solution operated on Florentine buses. While, as an alien, a bit vague on details, there appears to be a flat fare scheme operating within the Florence area. You buy tickets at a tabacconist (which action is not, in Italy anyway, construed as aiding and abetting the evil tabacco industry. Tantamount to advertising sale of same to under age persons). You get on the bus without any form of control or turnstile and you cancel your ticket by sticking it into what looks like a very cheap machine, of which there are two or three in the bus. Your ticket is then good for 70 minutes. You get off the bus without any form of control or turnstile. We presumed that if you got caught without a cancelled ticket you would be in deep trouble and it was alleged that there were teams of undercover agents roaming the bus system hunting for villains. All in all, it looked like a simple low cost solution, one step short of simply making the buses free. Why did it take us so long to arrive at the vastly more complicated oyster card solution?
I think it may also be the case that the buses were run by the municipality for the benefit of their citizens, rather than by Southwest trains for the benefit of their shareholders. Maybe these Italians do know a thing or two after all.
Perhaps I should have stayed with OPCS - one of the outfits which merged into what is now the ONS - and participated in this great web development!
As a consolation prize, I participated yesterday in the revenue protection scheme operated by Transport for London. Having forgetten to carry my oyster card and not having change smaller than a fiver, the bus driver eyed me very suspiciously. After a suitably impressive pause, during which time I thought my options were either to cough up a fiver or to get off, he comes up with a pad of yellow forms and laboriously checks one lot of boxes and then invites me to check another lot, in this way recording my name and address. I then carry off the yellow counterfoil into the bowels of the bus, a counterfoil which invites me to send £2 to the revenue protection department of Transport for London. My cheque now awaits my daily trip to Cheam to be posted. I am pleased that such a quaint and trusting scheme is still operated - despite transaction costs which much far exceed the amount involved. So as a good citizen I must remember to carry my Oyster card.
I was impressed by the much lower-tech solution operated on Florentine buses. While, as an alien, a bit vague on details, there appears to be a flat fare scheme operating within the Florence area. You buy tickets at a tabacconist (which action is not, in Italy anyway, construed as aiding and abetting the evil tabacco industry. Tantamount to advertising sale of same to under age persons). You get on the bus without any form of control or turnstile and you cancel your ticket by sticking it into what looks like a very cheap machine, of which there are two or three in the bus. Your ticket is then good for 70 minutes. You get off the bus without any form of control or turnstile. We presumed that if you got caught without a cancelled ticket you would be in deep trouble and it was alleged that there were teams of undercover agents roaming the bus system hunting for villains. All in all, it looked like a simple low cost solution, one step short of simply making the buses free. Why did it take us so long to arrive at the vastly more complicated oyster card solution?
I think it may also be the case that the buses were run by the municipality for the benefit of their citizens, rather than by Southwest trains for the benefit of their shareholders. Maybe these Italians do know a thing or two after all.
# posted by Jim @ 12:12 AM 
