I just returned from a few weeks touring around New Zealand. There was a lot of driving involved (we averaged over 1,000km a week) and this provides plenty of time for reflection.
Our holiday was cut short partly by bad weather and partly because we wanted to attend a memorial for the father of a friend who had passed suddenly and unexpectedly just prior to Christmas.
At the memorial I was in conversation with another friend and I said in reference to the deceased “he was old-school”. The other person agreed and then he paused and said “but it’s a pity to call it that isn’t it? Why should common courtesy and decency be seen as old-fashioned?”
I was suitably chastened and started to think about my experiences on holiday in the weeks before.
While I wasn’t driving, I had plenty of opportunity to keep in touch with the news. Two things intruded on my relaxation during those weeks.
The first was the tech industry announcements on 3 January 2018 of the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities (more on that later, and can someone please come up with a better phrase to describe this?). The second was the regular tick of reports of fatal accidents interspersed with plaintive noises from the Police about how the road toll is getting worse and it’s all the fault of drivers.
I don’t agree with some commentary that describes New Zealand drivers as monstrous. I think the vast majority of drivers on our roads are in fact competent and courteous, regardless of where they come from - despite the opinions of some who should know better than to voice them.
That said my experience is that travelling the NZ highways in any region at or slightly under the speed limit will eventually result in someone tail-gating in a most discourteous and often dangerous manner. Now I know that tail-gating is what Kiwis do to signal that they want to pass, and the majority will realize when passing isn’t possible or safe and will drop back to a more appropriate distance. A minority, who always seem to drive either late model European cars or massive utilities, will sit as close as they can to one’s rear bumper at any speed apparently thinking this is demonstrating good driving skills.
It is I suspect the same people who are making the other dangerous maneuvers that occasionally lead to the tragedies that make the news. We have no idea of the number of near misses that could have resulted in tragedy but didn’t, purely through luck.
On our tour the Police were noticeably absent, compared to when we did a similar trip some years ago. It was rare to see a squad car anywhere and on at least one occasion that we did see one they were contributing to the problem, instead of mitigating it.
It’s no surprise to me that the road toll has gone up following periods when Police have openly acknowledged that they don’t use fixed speed cameras any more, they don’t put as many officers on traffic patrol and they are distinctly loose on enforcing the speed limit.
How would it be if the Police actually used a decent business intelligence tool to work out how many officers, squad cars etc would need to be deployed to ensure that every driver who exhibits discourteous behavior is pulled over for that, given a lecture at a minimum, fines for the serious safety breaches and taken off the road for the worst cases? Yes it would probably need more resources, but every business leader has to find the resources they need to do what they want to do. And they're not lying around on the ground waiting to be picked up. This means you have to have a clear vision and enroll stakeholders in it. I don’t see why government should be any different. Money and resources are always made available to make great visions a reality.
Of course there would always be those that would oppose this as being nanny state or spoiling everyone’s fun, like the guy I read about who reportedly swore at a lifeguard who was trying to keep him and his child safe. I bet those kind of people probably don’t worry so much about whether what they call fun is seriously impacting others, so I’m willing to ignore that point of view.
Which brings me to the Meltdown etc announcements. I suspect a lot of people are going to be complaining that this is just useless bureaucracy, revenue gathering, tech workers being control freaks, fun police yadda yadda and I get that, in fact I share that view at some level in my pragmatic heart.
It remains to be seen what the effect of these vulnerabilities will be, and a bit of time needs to go by before we will know, but any business leader who is complacent that this is no different to what we’ve heard before has failed to grasp the significance of the situation.
This time it’s different. We are no longer in a world where we can afford to be complacent, and treating essential services like those that enable your digital presence with the same casual attitude we apply to personal devices is increasingly risky.
When we are talking about matters that affect everyone, the greatest good of the greatest number has to be our guide. The majority would I think be more comfortable with the idea that our highways are a means to transport our families and our goods efficiently and safely, not a place for petrol-heads to have fun - there are racetracks for that. Equally if someone “chooses” a device or a behavior that affects the entire business where they work and potentially the ones next door as well, I don’t think we would be sensible to allow or ignore that.
One of the last stretches of our journey took us over the Napier-Taupo Highway. It’s a beautifully scenic drive but it’s also notoriously dangerous and it was pouring with rain when we started. Perhaps for those reasons, most of the traffic we encountered in our two-hour journey travelled at or under the limit, and otherwise behaved with great courtesy. The effect was we got where we needed to go faster than would otherwise have been the case and it was almost entirely stress free despite the conditions.
It was a great example of what can happen when everyone does the right thing at the same time.
This post was originally published on www.designertech.co.nz