Still not feeling 100% and the blog is suffering a bit in consequence. I intend to return to my Think anew, Act anew series as soon as I get a bit of peace and quiet. In the meantime I had one of those nightmare journeys yesterday driving north to Yorkshire tired and having to stop at every service station to walk around the car a couple of times to wake up. It was worth it for a good meeting, then a mad dash down south to see my 17 year old (well he will be tomorrow) play rugby for the school. Now there were two major frustrations/irritations in that process.
Firstly, I was delayed by 45 minutes (and this missed the first half) by a major hold up on the M6. Nothing south bound, but a pretty significant crunch on the other side. Now there was a thirty mile tail back northbound as you would expect. Police clearing the road, mopping up spilt oil etc. However the only reason for the hold up south bound was rubber necking. People slowing down to stare at the misfortunes of others. Why do people do this? Aside from the frustration of the delays caused its sick. I suppose its the same sort of thing that attracted people to public hangings, which sort of makes it worse rather than better.
Secondly, due to the inability of Wiltshire RFC to provide a neutral referee the visiting team provided a substitute (My son's team St Johns, Marlborough were playing at home). This is a serious tournament not a friendly so a neutral should be there. Now I have seen a lot of school games teachers referee matches and they always to a degree act in in favour of their own charges, but normally it's only on 50-50 calls. Today however it was crazy. I watched for 20 minutes before the visiting team were found at fault in anything, while St Johns were penalised every few minutes. After his own players had entered the ruck from the side be blew up and we thought finally there would be penalty. There was, but for the offending team and shortly after he sent a St John's player to the bin for dissent. Now the kids were getting frustrating and their negative comments were ill advised but understandable. Overall St Johns were simply too powerful, and despite a 90% penalty count and a yellow card still won easily. What is it that drives an adult to behave that unfairly (it really was extreme, even the visiting schools parents were embarrassed). What is more important, teaching the boys to play good rugby or getting your school through to the next round of a competition regardless or fair play?
Rants over, now back to work.
Comments (7)
Rant or not, couldn't rubber necking accidents be explained by the point that we learn more from what doesn't work than what does? (Evolutionary pressure to malicious gossips, etc.)
To put that another way, we learn more from seeing the aftermath of one accident than we do from seeing hundreds of cars driving along smoothly.
As much as I also wish that people wouldn't do it, it could be that we're simply hired wired to.
Posted by Steve holt | December 10, 2008 11:39 PM
Posted on December 10, 2008 23:39
Dave, I can totally sympathize with your frustration at the behaviour of the rubber-neckers. I even went as far as designing portable screens that could be carried by the emergency services and errected on the central crash barriers to obscure the view from the opposite carriageway. I'm sure this would have safety benefits too, as I suspect there are likely to be several minor incidents in the queues that ensue. I never got round to doing anything about it though, but if anyone is interested in developing it, please let me know!
Posted by Dave | December 11, 2008 12:26 AM
Posted on December 11, 2008 00:26
"...hired wired..."?? Surely I meant to say "hard wired"
I'm sure it would have been a correct sentence in another context, but it wasn't for this one.
Posted by Steve Holt | December 11, 2008 3:15 AM
Posted on December 11, 2008 03:15
Well, this might teach an important lesson, life is not fair, and sometime the best player/team does not win....
Posted by luca letizia | December 11, 2008 12:46 PM
Posted on December 11, 2008 12:46
I believe we also learn differently from extreme events. I'm talking really about 2 things which I don't have a lot of time to rant about here.
1. The normal distribution and how much 'information' is contained in extreme events (anyone remember signal detection theory??)
2. The release of adrenaline/noradrenaline in the body and how it affects learning. Ever notice how vividly you recall certain aspects of extreme events in your life? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine
Posted by Ray MacNeil | December 11, 2008 2:39 PM
Posted on December 11, 2008 14:39
I didn't know the term rubbernecking till i your post. But we do have rubberneckers in the Netherlands. So much so that a leading newspaper in combination with the ministry of transportation has asked its readers to come up with solutions for this problem. One of the ideas was to place hedges in the mid-section of the roads so the opposing lanes can't se each-other.
The ministry will start testing this idea somewhere net year.
Posted by J.P. Kuiper | December 19, 2008 1:40 PM
Posted on December 19, 2008 13:40
Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.
I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.
God will appreciate it.
Posted by OverveMox | January 22, 2009 5:09 AM
Posted on January 22, 2009 05:09