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sml7285
Joined: 26 Apr 2012
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 Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:20 am Post subject: |
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My friends and I used to make mini flamethrowers with bug spray and matches. This was in the US.
Kids are stupid. Adults can't always hold their hands. Minimize dangers, don't try to completely take them away - that's impossible. |
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motiontodismiss
Joined: 18 Dec 2011
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:56 am Post subject: |
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| murmanjake wrote: |
The seatbelts get me. I see fewer kids wearing seatbelts than not. Sometimes it'll be a toddler standing in the passenger seat, hands on the open passenger window. That stuff infuriates me. All it takes is a little fender bender. Doesn't matter how good of a driver you are.
Don't parents get how dangerous it is?
Maybe Korea needs one of those uber-graphic seatbelt campaigns, with a slow-motion shot of a toddler crashing around the driver's compartment, broken and bloody. That might shock some sense into people. |
I honestly think the police need to get off their lazy butts and start ENFORCING seatbelt laws. If they don't want to do it, they can go ahead and submit their resignations right now because that's part of their job....ENFORCING THE LAW. No greater incentive than a $100 ticket. Oh and if the officer takes a bribe of any kind, he/she will immediately be fired and banned from any public sector job for life. Maybe some prison time. A year for every $1 should work.
Oh and one more thing, I'm sick of people complaining about safety features in their cars when they won't even take the most BASIC of safety precautions....it's called defensive driving and fastening your seatbelt. You don't get to talk about how the airbags in your Hyundai are second generation or whatever (or the ones that the ones exported to the US have) if you drive like a drunken salior without your seatbelt on in your black car in the dead of night WITH NO HEADLIGHTS on. Yeah, I've seen it here. People in Busan are the worst drivers in all of Korea, I swear. Now I understand road rage. |
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pangaea
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:22 am Post subject: |
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I don't have time to read all 9 pages, but the lack of child safety, especially when driving, is something that drove me crazy in Korea. I saw so many kids riding on scooters with their parents without helmets, toddlers standing up in the seat while their parents were driving, small children left in cars unsupervised and not in safety seats while their parents ran some errand, etc. I even saw a lady driving with her tiny baby in a front carrier on her chest. I don't want to think about what would happen if she got in an accident and the airbag deployed.
I know kids have to be kids and can't be wrapped in cotton wool all the time. They will get scraped knees and sports injuries and fall off a bike every now and then. But it is the responsibility of parents to use common sense and provide for their children's safety as much as possible. I have never seen such lack of common sense when it comes to children's safety as I have seen in Korea.
wishfullthinkng wrote:
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Smithington wrote:
failing to put children in safety seats,
but tossing little billy bob, billy sue, billy willy and billy jean (who was not my lover) in the back of a pickup truck is a non-issue eh? |
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The difference there is that putting children in the back of a pick up truck is illegal in the US and the law will be enforced. All it will take is one state trooper seeing it or one concerned citizen calling 911 and the problem will be taken care of. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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| I honestly think the police need to get off their lazy butts and start ENFORCING seatbelt laws. If they don't want to do it, they can go ahead and submit their resignations right now because that's part of their job....ENFORCING THE LAW. No greater incentive than a $100 ticket. Oh and if the officer takes a bribe of any kind, he/she will immediately be fired and banned from any public sector job for life. Maybe some prison time. A year for every $1 should work. |
Yeah, plans like that worked real well in overcoming police corruption related to Prohibition. Just write a law and everything will work out fine!
Do you have any idea how the real world works? If bribes are a part of the force, and you threaten every cop with prison for taking bribes, all that you'll be left with is no cops or the police officers union plotting your removal from office. In order to do something like this you'd need a serious crackdown and some sort of borderline fascist apparatus behind you OR an alternate source of revenue, such as illegal drug use, that the officers can use to make their under the table income OR substantially increased wages, which means either increased taxes or cutting spending from other sources, say education or health care.
So every cop taking bribes is in prison? How are you going to replace 90% of your police force? How are you going to replace the expertise and connections they have acquired over the years? You do realize that cops often take bribes and do dirty things in exchange for information and cooperation in going after the nastiest of nasty criminals. You know, the ones that don't just one seedy brothels and sell drugs to lowlifes, but the ones that kidnap children and try and sell hard drugs to college students. Who are you going to hire to be cops? Who would want to be a cop if there was this massive anti-police bribery wave and cops accused of taking bribes (and this would be easy to falsely accuse someone of) would be thrown in prison?
Usually police bribery scandals involve large amounts of traceable income. A 50 dollar cash bribe isn't that traceable, so all it would take for a citizen with a grudge to get a cop accused of bribery and facing prison is noticing the cop has 50 dollars and hoping that one night while out drinking he forgot his receipt at the restaurant/bar and hasn't accounted for all his money.
Stop thinking about laws using your anger, and how things should be and start thinking about them in the context of how things work and how things are.
Seriously people, the world isn't some place with some magic wand and where money grows on trees and interest groups do whatever you say. Laws don't work the way you write them. |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| pangaea wrote: |
| The difference there is that putting children in the back of a pick up truck is illegal in the US and the law will be enforced. All it will take is one state trooper seeing it or one concerned citizen calling 911 and the problem will be taken care of. |
Unless you're driving down a rural road surrounded by farms. Pretty common sight where I'm from. |
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JustinC
Joined: 10 Mar 2012
Location: We Are The World!
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| jvalmer wrote: |
| pangaea wrote: |
| The difference there is that putting children in the back of a pick up truck is illegal in the US and the law will be enforced. All it will take is one state trooper seeing it or one concerned citizen calling 911 and the problem will be taken care of. |
Unless you're driving down a rural road surrounded by farms. Pretty common sight where I'm from. |
I remember us coming back from a farm with a few tons of manure in the back of a hired 5 ton truck, my sister and I stood, hanging on, in the back and watching the traffic over the cab. It was through a prosperous town where we lived and no one batted an eyelid.
This was a while ago, before the nanny State decided it was better at looking after kids, through ridiculous laws, than your parents  |
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crescent
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: yes.
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
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| I honestly think the police need to get off their lazy butts and start ENFORCING seatbelt laws. If they don't want to do it, they can go ahead and submit their resignations right now because that's part of their job....ENFORCING THE LAW. No greater incentive than a $100 ticket. Oh and if the officer takes a bribe of any kind, he/she will immediately be fired and banned from any public sector job for life. Maybe some prison time. A year for every $1 should work. |
Yeah, plans like that worked real well in overcoming police corruption related to Prohibition. Just write a law and everything will work out fine!
Do you have any idea how the real world works? If bribes are a part of the force, and you threaten every cop with prison for taking bribes, all that you'll be left with is no cops or the police officers union plotting your removal from office. In order to do something like this you'd need a serious crackdown and some sort of borderline fascist apparatus behind you OR an alternate source of revenue, such as illegal drug use, that the officers can use to make their under the table income OR substantially increased wages, which means either increased taxes or cutting spending from other sources, say education or health care. |
You'd make a great diva.
What point do you hope to make when you criticize others for not knowing 'how the real world works' and then engage in your own special interpretation of it, avec extremes?
LOL @ the organized crime bribes = middle class family seat belt bribes. |
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pangaea
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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I'm less concerned about kids riding in the back of a truck in a rural area than I am if it happens on the highway.
JustinC wrote:
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I remember us coming back from a farm with a few tons of manure in the back of a hired 5 ton truck, my sister and I stood, hanging on, in the back and watching the traffic over the cab. It was through a prosperous town where we lived and no one batted an eyelid.
This was a while ago, before the nanny State decided it was better at looking after kids, through ridiculous laws, than your parents |
"Ridiculous" laws have to be written if people don't have enough sense to take care of their children. Just because you rode standing up in the back of a 5 ton truck when you were a child doesn't mean it's a good idea. The reason it's illegal is because a child can fall out of the back of a truck and die. The reason it is illegal to not put a child in a safety seat is because a child has a higher chance of being seriously injured or killed in a car accident if it is just hanging out in the car unrestrained. I would like to think most parents would choose to do the safest thing and buy a car seat for their baby. The sad fact is, if it were not a law to keep a child in a safety seat, there are parents who would choose not to use one for a variety of reasons and put their children at risk. You can whine about the "nanny state" all you want. The fact is there are people out there who need laws that will force them to make good decisions. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| "Ridiculous" laws have to be written if people don't have enough sense to take care of their children. Just because you rode standing up in the back of a 5 ton truck when you were a child doesn't mean it's a good idea. The reason it's illegal is because a child can fall out of the back of a truck and die. The reason it is illegal to not put a child in a safety seat is because a child has a higher chance of being seriously injured or killed in a car accident if it is just hanging out in the car unrestrained. I would like to think most parents would choose to do the safest thing and buy a car seat for their baby. The sad fact is, if it were not a law to keep a child in a safety seat, there are parents who would choose not to use one for a variety of reasons and put their children at risk. You can whine about the "nanny state" all you want. The fact is there are people out there who need laws that will force them to make good decisions. |
It's when people start talking about the scooters and people who work on farms having their kids in the back endangering children and such that I really take issue. Look, I know you believe that the moderately affluent suburban way of life is normal, where everyone can afford a car and children don't work unless they want to, and food comes from the supermarket, but the way the most of the rest of the world lives is completely different and often driven by economic necessity. Much of the world gets around by cramming 20 people on a pickup truck and many families can't afford transportation beyond scooters. Scolding parents for stuff like that is like saying they don't care about their child's education because they don't send them to some expensive music camp or buy them a brand new set of encyclopedias.
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You'd make a great diva.
What point do you hope to make when you criticize others for not knowing 'how the real world works' and then engage in your own special interpretation of it, avec extremes? |
Cops selling drugs for cash, cops being bribed during alcohol prohibition, and cops being members of powerful unions is extremist? The idea that if you fired 90% of cops, their union would hit back hard is extremist?
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| LOL @ the organized crime bribes = middle class family seat belt bribes. |
I'm saying in some countries cops make their dirty money on common bribes from normal people- stuff like traffic laws and business ordinances. Others sell/take confiscated property and/or drugs.
Again, what does a cop in a bribe-happy country call a new fine? A raise. Now you can talk about firing all the cops, but remaking a department requires a MAJOR effort and doesn't always work. Often in order to get cops "clean" it requires giving them massive benefits packages. The kind that can saddle a government with extensive costs and drive a city into debt. Remember that thread about the cops having $100,000+ a year pensions? That's what it takes to get cops off of taking money for traffic tickets.
Now what decision do you want to make? |
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JustinC
Joined: 10 Mar 2012
Location: We Are The World!
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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| pangaea wrote: |
I'm less concerned about kids riding in the back of a truck in a rural area than I am if it happens on the highway.
JustinC wrote:
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I remember us coming back from a farm with a few tons of manure in the back of a hired 5 ton truck, my sister and I stood, hanging on, in the back and watching the traffic over the cab. It was through a prosperous town where we lived and no one batted an eyelid.
This was a while ago, before the nanny State decided it was better at looking after kids, through ridiculous laws, than your parents |
"Ridiculous" laws have to be written if people don't have enough sense to take care of their children. Just because you rode standing up in the back of a 5 ton truck when you were a child doesn't mean it's a good idea. The reason it's illegal is because a child can fall out of the back of a truck and die. The reason it is illegal to not put a child in a safety seat is because a child has a higher chance of being seriously injured or killed in a car accident if it is just hanging out in the car unrestrained. I would like to think most parents would choose to do the safest thing and buy a car seat for their baby. The sad fact is, if it were not a law to keep a child in a safety seat, there are parents who would choose not to use one for a variety of reasons and put their children at risk. You can whine about the "nanny state" all you want. The fact is there are people out there who need laws that will force them to make good decisions. |
I never said it was a good idea. A good idea is not allowing 15 or 16 year old kids to drive 2 tonnes of metal at 50mph, another is to ban drink drivers for a year the first time they get caught. Another idea that isn't good is allowing citizens to go overseas and kill brown people for the sake of an oil industry. Another good idea is to not deregulate banking so much that they're allowed to gamble with savers' money and risk the collapse of capitalism.
But is was fun, no one got injured (my brother, who was driving, and my sister who was riding with me both made sure I held on tight). We're allowed to parascend, sky dive, ride horses (which is the most dangerous of all sports), go out on jet skis, bungee jump, all without (obvious) government regulation beyond common sense, but day-to-day activities have to be regulated so they're absolutely devoid of any fun - says our 'caring' governments.
I stopped drinking the Health & Safety cool aid years ago. It's proven that the safer cars get the more recklessly people behave when in them. That takes some smarts to be able to recognize you can drive worse because you have airbags, enough to know when you're putting your loved ones at risk. The west has discovered it can cow it's population into being OK with a state that tells it how to look after its children, regardless of the situation. People mistake a comfort blanket for handcuffs*, but I don't.
*metaphorical, obviously |
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b-class rambler
Joined: 25 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 8:41 pm Post subject: |
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| motiontodismiss wrote: |
| murmanjake wrote: |
The seatbelts get me. I see fewer kids wearing seatbelts than not. Sometimes it'll be a toddler standing in the passenger seat, hands on the open passenger window. That stuff infuriates me. All it takes is a little fender bender. Doesn't matter how good of a driver you are.
Don't parents get how dangerous it is?
Maybe Korea needs one of those uber-graphic seatbelt campaigns, with a slow-motion shot of a toddler crashing around the driver's compartment, broken and bloody. That might shock some sense into people. |
I honestly think the police need to get off their lazy butts and start ENFORCING seatbelt laws. If they don't want to do it, they can go ahead and submit their resignations right now because that's part of their job....ENFORCING THE LAW. No greater incentive than a $100 ticket. Oh and if the officer takes a bribe of any kind, he/she will immediately be fired and banned from any public sector job for life. Maybe some prison time. A year for every $1 should work.
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I think you're missing the point in 2 ways here.
Firstly, you say that the police need to "start enforcing seatbelt laws". No, what the police need to start doing is actually wearing their seatbelts themselves.
Secondly, making people wear seatbelts "because it's the law" just isn't ever going to consistently work in Korea. You might make little inroads here and there, but Koreans generally tend to ignore rules that they think are just there for the sake of it.
That's why I think murmanjake's suggested approach of educating people, and shocking them if need be, through tv commercials is a much better way to go. I know a few Koreans who think that way too and I even recall a tv news item here a year or so ago that suggested this approach used in other countries was worth copying. |
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Savant
Joined: 25 May 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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| b-class rambler wrote: |
| motiontodismiss wrote: |
| murmanjake wrote: |
The seatbelts get me. I see fewer kids wearing seatbelts than not. Sometimes it'll be a toddler standing in the passenger seat, hands on the open passenger window. That stuff infuriates me. All it takes is a little fender bender. Doesn't matter how good of a driver you are.
Don't parents get how dangerous it is?
Maybe Korea needs one of those uber-graphic seatbelt campaigns, with a slow-motion shot of a toddler crashing around the driver's compartment, broken and bloody. That might shock some sense into people. |
I honestly think the police need to get off their lazy butts and start ENFORCING seatbelt laws. If they don't want to do it, they can go ahead and submit their resignations right now because that's part of their job....ENFORCING THE LAW. No greater incentive than a $100 ticket. Oh and if the officer takes a bribe of any kind, he/she will immediately be fired and banned from any public sector job for life. Maybe some prison time. A year for every $1 should work.
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That's why I think murmanjake's suggested approach of educating people, and shocking them if need be, through tv commercials is a much better way to go. I know a few Koreans who think that way too and I even recall a tv news item here a year or so ago that suggested this approach used in other countries was worth copying. |
I don't think shocking Koreans into seeing that there are dangers to not wearing a seatbelt would work here. Koreans don't like to be shocked into action. There would be far more complaints about the shocking aspect of the commecrial rather than any acknowledgements of a behavior change that's needed. |
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b-class rambler
Joined: 25 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| Savant wrote: |
I don't think shocking Koreans into seeing that there are dangers to not wearing a seatbelt would work here. Koreans don't like to be shocked into action. |
I doubt if anyone anywhere particularly likes being shocked into action. I do get what you're saying and you might be right that the tactic wouldn't have the desired effect and would only have only unwanted negative ones - we wouldn't know until it was tried.
However, note that I said "educating", and shocking them only if need be. A lot of people simply don't understand why it's important to wear a seat belt and how doing so or not doing so can make a difference. Often I hear people respond with "well, it's my body so it's no concern of yours." I'll often try to point out that it's isn't just your body as an unbelted passenger could injure others in the car in an accident so you belt up for their safety as much as your own. I've also tried to demonstrate that it's not just on the expressway that you need a seatbelt, as unfortunately a large number of people seem to think.
A lot of those folk may not need shocking, they might just need having it clearly explained why and how. But they haven't even had that. |
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Savant
Joined: 25 May 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:59 am Post subject: |
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| b-class rambler wrote: |
| Savant wrote: |
I don't think shocking Koreans into seeing that there are dangers to not wearing a seatbelt would work here. Koreans don't like to be shocked into action. |
I doubt if anyone anywhere particularly likes being shocked into action. I do get what you're saying and you might be right that the tactic wouldn't have the desired effect and would only have only unwanted negative ones - we wouldn't know until it was tried.
However, note that I said "educating", and shocking them only if need be. A lot of people simply don't understand why it's important to wear a seat belt and how doing so or not doing so can make a difference. Often I hear people respond with "well, it's my body so it's no concern of yours." I'll often try to point out that it's isn't just your body as an unbelted passenger could injure others in the car in an accident so you belt up for their safety as much as your own. I've also tried to demonstrate that it's not just on the expressway that you need a seatbelt, as unfortunately a large number of people seem to think.
A lot of those folk may not need shocking, they might just need having it clearly explained why and how. But they haven't even had that. |
I am not arguing against the need for showing shocking commercials. In fact, I think like you, that Korea needs them just to see if it can provoke any reaction in the people who see them. However, having seen how riled up Korean netizens get about the slightest of controversies, I don't see such commercials lasting that long on TV. |
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crescent
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: yes.
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| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 4:16 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| Cops selling drugs for cash, cops being bribed during alcohol prohibition, and cops being members of powerful unions is extremist? The idea that if you fired 90% of cops, their union would hit back hard is extremist? |
I said extremes, not extremist. Pretty simple difference. You keep using them. 90% LOL!
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| I'm saying in some countries cops make their dirty money on common bribes from normal people- stuff like traffic laws and business ordinances. Others sell/take confiscated property and/or drugs. |
No. Read what you wrote again. You equated the huge bribes that organized criminals used during prohibition to the bribes that middle and lower class families would pay to get out of seat belt fines. You continually make these asinine connections like they make sense.
Organized criminals did it because it was part of doing business, and they made much more money in return.
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Again, what does a cop in a bribe-happy country call a new fine? A raise. Now you can talk about firing all the cops, but remaking a department requires a MAJOR effort and doesn't always work. Often in order to get cops "clean" it requires giving them massive benefits packages. The kind that can saddle a government with extensive costs and drive a city into debt. Remember that thread about the cops having $100,000+ a year pensions? That's what it takes to get cops off of taking money for traffic tickets.
Now what decision do you want to make? |
LOL! I'm not saying this is the right or wrong way to go about it. I'm calling you out on the constant fabrications you concoct. Ever show proof of these extreme claims? Don't tell me it's common sense. |
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