Moving to the right
Published: Fri, 06/19/15
When Roland picked us up from the airport on our arrival in Sweden last month the first thing I did was try to get into the drivers seat even though I was going to be a passenger. Yes, an English person confronted with a left hand drive Volvo, very confusing. Roland reminded me that Swedes used to drive on the left just like we do in the UK. The change over took place at 0500hrs on Sunday the 3rd of September 1967, I do remember it being on the news in the UK at the time. My father commented that there must have been a lot of accidents as a result. Apparently his assumption was wrong. In fact there was a significant drop in the number of road accidents in the period after the change over. This may be because nearly all the cars on Swedish roads were left hand drive anyway and therefore intended to be driven on the right. Also a great many Swedes would have had regular experience of driving on the right each time they crossed a
border into Norway, Denmark or Finland. Apparently quite low speed limits were imposed for a period following the change over which may also have helped. I think there was also a case of risk compensation theory in action in the sense that the change made drivers concentrate harder. Apparently it was not long before the accident rate returned to nearly the same level as before the change over.
So does it really matter which side of the road you drive on? Is driving on the right safer than driving on the left? Or vice versa? I am not aware of any conclusive evidence one way or the other. If it could be proven that one side or the other was significantly safer then that would be the norm. In fact, taken world wide the choice between right and left is fairly evenly split. Yes, mainland Europe and the USA drive on the right but parts of Africa, Japan and India drive on the correct, sorry, left side like the Brits. So there would be plenty of statistical evidence to establish an argument one way or another if a tendency could be shown. (In 2007 130,000 people did die on the roads in India but that is put down to a general disregard for any rules of the road rather than which side they are supposed to drive on.)
So, it seems that driving on the left or the right is a completely arbitrary decision based on no scientificly proven benefit or moral imperative what so ever.
So it doesn’t matter at all which side of the road you drive on, except you will cause a few problems for yourself and other people if you don’t drive on the same side as everyone else in the locality. Just because a law is arbitrary doesn’t always mean it can be flouted with impunity. You are absolutely free to exercise the thought that left is as good as right but when in Rome (or anywhere else on mainland Europe, even Sweden), your liberty to decide for yourself is constrained for very good reasons of public safety.
The question raised by this issue is: How do you make a coherent philosophical case for liberty?
Freedom is a state of mind, if you allow someone else to control your thoughts then you really have only yourself to blame. However, liberty is opportunity to act and move according to the thoughts and intentions we create for ourselves. The problem is that once the argument has been established that the common good requires a legal enforcement of which side of the road to drive on the flood gates get opened to legal restriction on all aspects of our liberty. If the government can save lives by imposing which side to drive on why stop there? Every time there is an argument against a restriction of liberty the counter argument comes back. ‘Well it might save lives.’
If there is going to be a genuine concern for liberty there have to be just three commandments and any law or regulation beyond these should be regarded as oppressive and unjustified. I will just list them for today and pick up on this theme again next week. In the meantime have a think and see if any rule, regulation or law that really matters is not covered by one of these three.
1. Thou shall not harm another’s person
2. Thou shalt not take or damage another’s property
3. Thou shalt not defraud in freely undertaken contract
I will also share with you a Druid Priestess’ two principles for ethical behaviour.
Have a good weekend, we are having a fairly quiet one with a couple of my local Stav students coming over tomorrow for a special Mid-Summer training to look at Fylgia and some other aspects of Stav that we don’t usually cover in weekly classes. Lots of training available over the next three weeks though, see http://iceandfire.org/calendar.html if you can make it to Salisbury, Crewekerne, or the Stav Camp.
regards
Graham