> I'm pretty sure studded snow tires aren't going to make it safe to drive 
> if you get the kind of conditions that let the car slide sideways at a 
> sedate speed without slowing for fifty meters (like at 1:02 into the 
> video).

You've never seen cars racing on ice then?  They have metal studs that dig 
into the ice and create grip - it's amazing how much grip they have.  I was 
in a taxi once in Finland and was pretty unbelievable how hard he could 
brake on the snow/ice and how fast he could go round a corner without 
skidding at all.

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> Yes it is actually - repaving every single road "once in a while" would 
> cause orders of magnitude more chaos than a few accidents when it's icy. 

  Yes, losing lives is a small price for not having one lane of a road
closed for a couple of days.

  Also, car accidents often close the *entire* road instead of closing
just one lane.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Yes it is actually - repaving every single road "once in a while" would
>> cause orders of magnitude more chaos than a few accidents when it's icy.
>
>  Yes, losing lives is a small price for not having one lane of a road
> closed for a couple of days.

As much as you may dislike it, there is a price on human life, as well as a 
price on disruption and delays.  Would you choose that 60 million people 
were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single life? 
Where do you draw the line?  The line has already been drawn, and it's not 
worth countries that get snow/ice infrequently using studded tyres.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> 
> A lot of them use "all-weather" tyres, which are better than summer 
> tyres in winter, but not as good as proper winter tyres.  The benefit is 
> you don't need to swap tyres twice a year, the disadvantage is the 
> rubber is so hard that the grip is terrible compared to proper summer 
> tyres in summer.  So long as everybody uses them and knows how grippy 
> they are it shouldn't be a problem.

Lose-lose -situation, since the tires are bad at winter and terrible at 
summer ;).

> FWIW here in Germany we use winter/snow tyres, but not studded tyres.  
> The winter tyres help a lot in snow, but are just as useless as summer 
> tyres on ice.  It looks in that video to be ice, only studs will help 
> you there.

Nope. Of course there are different kinds of unstudded winter tires, but 
ie. the examples I took earlier (Nokian RSi and Bridgestone Blizzak) 
perform surprisingly well even on ice, waaay better than summer tires. 
Naturally studded tire is even better on ice, I'm not going to deny that.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> Would you choose that 60 million people 
> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single life? 

  Yes?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 26 Feb 2008 07:41:22 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
>> Would you choose that 60 million people 
>> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single life? 
>
>  Yes?

Double Yes
It gets my vote.

Regards
	Stephen

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>> Would you choose that 60 million people
>> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single 
>> life?
>
>  Yes?

Because you are looking at the problem selfishly and not the whole system. 
Of course, if you said to an individual that if they were forced to wait an 
extra 30 minutes every day to save a life, they might say yes.  But 
goverments need to look at the whole system in order to make a decision, try 
the following:

How much would someone have to pay you if it meant you lost 30 minutes each 
day to being stuck in traffic?

Ask 60 million people that question and add up all their answers, what do 
you think the total would be?  I'd guess around $10 per person on average, 
so say $600 million.

A hospital near you wants to buy some new piece of equipment that will save 
more lives than the old bit.  It's very expensive, let's say it will save an 
extra 10 lives, and costs 10 million dollars.

So, what you are effectively saying is that you'd rather waste $600m of 
peoples time, to avoid having to spend $1m to save a single life.  Good job 
you aren't an economic adviser for your government ;-)

BTW you can substitute the hospital equipment for anything that puts a value 
on human life.  Actually, whenever you buy or use anything that is not 100% 
safe, you are putting a value on your life.

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>>> Would you choose that 60 million people
>>> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single 
>>> life?
>>
>>  Yes?
> 
> Because you are looking at the problem selfishly and not the whole 
> system. Of course, if you said to an individual that if they were forced 
> to wait an extra 30 minutes every day to save a life, they might say 
> yes.  But goverments need to look at the whole system in order to make a 
> decision, try the following:
> 
> How much would someone have to pay you if it meant you lost 30 minutes 
> each day to being stuck in traffic?
> 
> Ask 60 million people that question and add up all their answers, what 
> do you think the total would be?  I'd guess around $10 per person on 
> average, so say $600 million.
> 
> A hospital near you wants to buy some new piece of equipment that will 
> save more lives than the old bit.  It's very expensive, let's say it 
> will save an extra 10 lives, and costs 10 million dollars.
> 
> So, what you are effectively saying is that you'd rather waste $600m of 
> peoples time, to avoid having to spend $1m to save a single life.  Good 
> job you aren't an economic adviser for your government ;-)
> 
> BTW you can substitute the hospital equipment for anything that puts a 
> value on human life.  Actually, whenever you buy or use anything that is 
> not 100% safe, you are putting a value on your life.

I hate it when people put economics in the way of human lives. The "it's 
not worth saving them" conclusion after doing maths with money.

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> I hate it when people put economics in the way of human lives.

Then you haven't completely understood.

> The "it's not worth saving them" conclusion after doing maths with money.

That's not the conclusion at all.  The conclusion is that instead of 
"spending" $600m on traffic jams to save a single life, we might as well 
spend $600m on hospital equipment to save 600 lives.

The maths is only showing you how bad a decision it is to spend $600m on 
saving one life.  The fact that we put a price on a life helps us save more 
lives by spending wisely.  If you put an infinite price on life, you end up 
with all sorts of stupid decisions, because there isn't an infinite supply 
of money.

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> How much would someone have to pay you if it meant you lost 30 minutes each 
> day to being stuck in traffic?

  Let's ask this in another way:

  How long would you be ready to be stuck in traffic if it means that one
life is saved because of the wait?

  Also, you assume that traffic accidents are cheaper for the government
than having to re-pave once in a while. Do you have any hard numbers on this?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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