You see, we know where we are with a set of rules. We like it. We like limits.
Why do we stop at red lights if we can see there's nothing coming?*
What would happen if red lights were treated as a Give Way rather than a Stop? Possibly not a huge amount, although if it did happen I'd take out shares in insurance companies.
Is the primary reason we stop at a red is because we are afraid of being caught? That the unseen police vehicle will jump out from behind a stack of paperwork and nee-naw you into submission, or that this set of lights is one of those evil HAL 9000 ones which record your transgression, and then if you try and get it to let you off just says "I can't do that Dave." in its monotonic yet strangely camp voice.
In some countries street signs, road markings and street furniture have been removed from towns as an experiment to see what happens to the accident rate, which is a noble pursuit and one I would heartily agree with as long as such a trial wasn't carried out in my home town. No one has right of way, no one knows where a street ends or begins, and the traffic lights were all taken offline.
Rather than the carnage one might expect, the accident rate dropped.
To zero.
Ostensibly, this was because drivers took more care, drove more slowly and were far more observant than if they blindly assumed they had right of way and therefore couldn't be blamed for any nastiness that might occur.
So, no rules makes people more careful, more considerate maybe?
Interesting argument for anarchy there.
Of course, the police have generally got far more important things to do than wait for red-light transgressions, and the lights themselves are usually empty of film, haven't had their memories erased for two years or are covered in graffiti, so it's unlikely that you will get caught should you decide to take your first foray into the criminal underworld in this fashion.
I do like to think though, that we don't generally burgle or murder other people (no matter how much we want to sometimes) solely because we're afraid of the consequences, but more because we realise it's intrinsically wrong, ethically as well as legally.
Policing the law depends on our goodwill, and our belief that, in general, we fair better with the rules, despite their occasional hindrance to us at a personal level, than without them. So we'll stop at the red light, even at three in the morning, when sensible people are having a kip.
So we should not obey our laws through fear, but because we think they are reasonable limits to our liberties that allow us to live together relatively happily.
The police are then faced with only a relatively small number of transgressors, which they can invest more resources into bringing to justice for us, and also making shows where they show lots of bad drivers being caught, and suspiciously few bad drivers getting away with it.
Because we have to live with them, it's important not to accept any old laws our glorious leaders put before us, especially those disguised as "for our own safety", or "to ensure our continued freedom". If something comes from authority, it is almost certainly untrustworthy, so it is vital that one questions its origins, its merits and its possible consequences.
This mindset seems rare today, with too many people letting the tabloids do their critical analysis for them, effectively letting sales-driven humanities graduates decide what's important in society. Do we really want someone who got a third in Communication Studies trying to tell us what laws are important, what homeopathic medicines cure cancer, and what science that they barely comprehend is going to save/destroy us, just because they have a loud voice in a paper?
Sorry, ranted a bit there.
Anyway, security is so ingrained in us that this supermarket I went to the other day realised it could save money by not actually having security guards in place, but just by placing their hats in a prominent position as you walk in, reminding us that they could totally secure our arses if they wanted to, even if security's not actually present at that moment in time:
Hats are better than real guards. They don't sleep, need breaks, choke shoplifters to death and rarely steal Double Deckers from the confectionery aisle and blame teenagers.Just a quick buff and a peak-tweak and they're ready for the shift.
Unfortunately, there is a significant minority in the populace who feel that they can parasitize the rest of us, who can't compete with legitimate enterprise so they have to nick stuff. This is particularly a problem when items of extreme value are at stake:
Someone who desperately wanted a nice tin of Pussy drink but was too embarrassed to pay for it might very well take it into their dehydration addled brain to shoplift, and then what would the shop do?
Sometimes, you need more than hats.
*Most of the time, anyway.
