“Unfortunately, the current Labour government, like every unpopular administration before it, has reached for the oldest trick in the book, persecuting the law-abiding. Sunak did it with smoking bans and talk of national service, Starmer is doing it with the motorist. The plan includes mandatory eye tests for older drivers, stripping pensioners of their independence and dumping the cost onto the already-buckling adult social care system when Dad now needs a taxi just to get to the shops. It lowers the drink-drive limit from 35 to 22 micrograms, despite Britain already having the second-lowest drink-driving deaths in Europe. There is even talk of slashing the national speed limit in the countryside to 50 mph — a direct attack on rural life, where the car is not a luxury but a necessity.”
One of the problems with certain types of new regulation is getting them enforced. If the cops are too busy going around pinching people for saying mean things on social media, how are they going to enforce some of this nonsense?
Unfortunately, Sir Keir Starmer, who is not exactly loved in the rural parts of the UK, is still in thrall, as far as I can tell, to a form of the Precautionary Principle when it comes to risk and safety. And he may think that he might as well stick it to rural people who need to use a car as they will be very unlikely to vote for him. There may be a sort of “damn you bastards” reflex here. I recall that he was a fan of lockdowns, and while he remains in power, there is a risk that he’d impose them if international organisations demand it. The authoritarian itch is powerful in “Capt. Hindsight”.
Less negatively, there may be a warped kind of mistaken desire to improve humanity going on here (shades of the old “nudge” issue I wrote about a few days ago, although we are now in open coercion territory.) According to this way of thinking, it is better to pile on costs and inconvenience to everyone if it saves a single life, whether that means cutting rural speed limits, making granddad check his eyes regularly (I have some sympathy for this, after all, pilots are regularly checked out) and reducing alcohol. There is a sort of cost-benefit analysis that can be done to figure out what the unintended consequences of certain measures are. Unfortunately, fatal/near-fatal car accidents make for horrible headlines (and they are horrible, period), while the increasing drudgery and cost of living in a heavily regulated country does not translate so well into news stories. That is a factor that explains the rise of Big Government more generally: the whole issue of “what is seen and what is unseen”, as Bastiat described it.
All this heavy-handedness is is a reason, I think, why we need more of the pro-safety elements at work to come from insurance. If an elderly person does not get their eyes tested and they are involved in a crash, or they don’t have tyres with a minimum grip, or they haven’t had an MOT test, then that means an insurance policy does not pay out, etc. Let those who make a living out of correct risk assessment drive such things (pardon the pun) and not a political class that seems to crave this sort of micro-management of our waking hours.
But then as long as we have “our NHS” socialist model of healthcare, it will always be argued, by those of a communitarian bent, that those who fail to minimise risks to others impose unwanted costs on innocent third parties, and to “save” the NHS, such regulations, however far-reaching, must be enforced. But this, in my view, is an argument against socialised medicine, not for increasing regulation.
I’m sixty seven. I have my eyes checked regularly and have done so for several years. I would expect that most people who wear glasses have their eyes checked regularly too. It seems obvious to me that drivers should have their eyes checked but how many in the older age bracket aren’t doing so anyway?
But the trick to understanding this is that a favoured someone will make money out these regulations.
There will be special testing centres set up for mandatory eye tests or extra payment to opticians carrying them out. Yet as Stonyground points out most older people already have eye tests and opticians will tell people if their eyesight is too poor for driving.
Changing drink driving laws and speed limits just punishes the law-abiding as the law breakers will ignore the laws – and will rarely be caught.
But it will give the law makers a thrill. And I will laugh my socks off if they get caught breaking the laws they foist on us.
“The more laws there are – the more corrupt the state is” Tacitus.
Some argue that Tacitus did not mean that the “laws” (really edicts – expression off state power, the will of the state, rather law in the Common Law, natural justice, sense) corrupt society – but, rather that corrupt people need lots of laws – but that does not work as all the edicts do not improve society, otherwise China under the “First Emperor”, when the “Legalist” philosophers were followed, would have been reasonable place – and it was Hell-On-Earth.
The idea behind making just about everything (every action or inaction) a “crime” is not really to put everyone in prison (or, in the case of the First Emperor, to have everyone killed by many slices, cuts, over quite a few days) – that would not be practical – the idea is to make each person know that they COULD be put in prison (or whatever) quite “legally” at any time – because they have committed a “crime”.
They have committed a “crime” because just about ever action or inaction has been declared a “crime” – so we are all “criminals” which the state can now “legally” hit at any time.
I do not believe that many people, even people in government, actually think all these edicts (“laws” if we take the Bacon-Hobbes-Hume-Bentham definition of that word – i.e. expressions of state power) improve society, or make people behave better – but that is not the point, the point is to put people into a condition-of-fear and allow the state to “legally” smash any person the authorities dislike – at any time.
Is there any data to support the view that more regular eye tests for older drivers or reducing the DUI limit to one molecule per liter of blood actually reduces accidents, injury or death? As the OP points out, if there were that would quickly be reflected in insurance rates since insurance companies are driven by data and math rather than governments being driven by tick tok and twitter.
But this, in my view, is an argument against socialised medicine, not for increasing regulation.
In Britain, where your every word and thought are monitored by the police, isn’t arguing against socialized medicine thought crime; a crime punishable by hanging drawing an quartering? Didn’t you know that the NHS is the apotheosis of all that is good and right? Next you’ll be arguing that puppies aren’t cute and that Sunday roast shouldn’t come with Yorkshire pudding.
A teenager that I used to work with managed to get a speeding ticket while out on his little 125cc motorbike. When it came to renewing his insurance he declared his speeding offence and was surprised that this caused a slight reduction in his premium, he was expecting the opposite. Apparently people who had incurred only one ticket tended to drive or ride much more carefully afterwards. Only repeat offenders saw their premiums going up.
The problem in the People’s Islamic Republic of Bradistan is not drunk drivers, its the balloon heads and skunk drivers. The Police don’t give a flying one because of protected status
Shirley, Starmer isn’t doing another “Will do as I’m told by my masters” in changing common law – Everything is permissible unless we tell you it isn’t – into Napoleonic, or Soviet law – Everything is forbidden unless we tell you it isn’t? His puppeteers in the WEF must be running their hands in glee at the way things are turning out
From where I sit, it seems that it is rapidly getting less free, and more subject to government intrusion in pretty much everything in britain. And it seems that for all practical purposes there are no means by which the british people can bring their government under control.
Subotai Bahadur
“it is better to pile on costs and inconvenience to everyone if it saves a single life”
I think you are being overly generous.
Starmer hates the rural areas because they’ll never vote Labour. It’s that simple.
Obviously, apart from the rural areas he’s going to half-arsed quasi-suburbanise by stealing people’s farms. Even then he might be in for a rude awakening.
I view Starmer as being just as incompetent as the rest of his government. Whether or not NickM is right that he hates rural areas I don’t believe anyone in it is capable of producing a half decent cost benefit analysis. See net zero for the ultimate in unspeakably bad and delusional cost benefit analysis.
I am happy to tell Fraser Orr that at present you are allowed not only to think bad thoughts about the quality of the NHS but also to speak them and write them. Of course with the present government that may not remain the case.
Ironically though, through a combination of circumstances too tedious to describe, I am currently receiving high quality treatment from the NHS. The truth is that it is and always has been a curate’s egg; rather good at dealing with emergency health issues and rather poor at dealing with longer term health problems that are not emergencies. The main current problem is long and lengthening waiting periods to see specialists; the UK’s aging population and the availability of more advanced and expensive treatments to keep people alive are gradually overwhelming the system.