The first casualty in the war on motorists' wallets as we show in the other pages is the truth. However bare lies are not the only technique used by the revenue raising cartel. They are clearly prepared to stoop to anything to be able to milk increasing amounts of revenue from compliant cash cows.
Division to conquer is an obvious ploy. They demonise truck drivers so that motorists think that something needs to be done about them. They demonise riders so that other motorists consider that something needs to be done about them. They even try to convince car drivers that the cartel's exploitation protects them from other car drivers.
Mainly however they try to convince people that their exploitation of motorists is for safety.Unfortunately some people do accept their ridiculous propaganda. This is called the "Stockholme Syndrome". Having us under their control and subject to being terrorised and punished for doing nothing wrong is analogous to being held captive. Bizarre beliefs which favour the aggressors have been documented in captive situations.
The "Stockholme Syndrome" was first documented in a hostage situation that resulted when Jan-Erik Olsson entered the Credit Bank in the Swedish capital on the morning of 23 August, 1973, with submachine gun blazing. Olsson, a career criminal and prison escapee, took three women and one man hostage and held them in a vault for 5 days. While they were held hostage a phone call was allowed between the hostages and the Premier Olof Palme.
One of the hostages surprised the premier by telling him that the robbers were protecting them from getting harmed by rescuers. They had been convinced that it was not the robbers who were the bad guys but the people trying to liberate them.
A similar technique was employed by North Vietnamese prison guards who tried to convince American POWs that they were protecting them from the general populace. The purpose was to make them more open to exploitation.
It is a lot harder to effect the "Stockholme Syndrome" without locking people up for days. However some people actually do come to believe that exploiting motorists with speeding tickets is protecting us from the 'dangers' of people exceeding the speed limit.
Note that these people should not be confused with those who mistakenly believe that speeding tickets are aimed at hoons. When they get booked they think it is a necessary sacrifice to catch the excessive speedsters. These people have no psychological syndrome and often come to properly understand the situation when they find out that most speeding tickets are for slight breaches of the speed limit.
Because psychological warfare is a well used tool of the revenue raising cartel - they even have psychologists on their pay roll - on this page we consider the way that identifiable illogical arguments are used. We hope this will prepare people and prevent them being tricked when they face these types of arguments.
THE STRAW MAN ARGUMENT
"Straw man argument" is a term used by scientists and experts in logic,
It means that the arguer chooses not to argue against an opponents' ACTUAL arguments
and accusations. Instead they create a grotesque stereotype of an opposition argument and proceed to demolish that. By grossly distorting the views of the opponent they make the opponent’s argument appear to be to be incredibly weak and stupid. In their hands, the arguments of the opposition become "straw men" - which are easy to blow over, with even the flimsiest and illogical of arguments.
It is easy to use the straw man argument when your opponents are unable to reply easily. The revenue raising cartel traditionally squander huge amounts of public money in advertising campaigns which give them an exclusive voice and some elements in the media neglect their ethical duty to provide balanced reporting. This provides a haven for the revenue raising cartel to use this approach.
An example of a straw man argument is used to argue that speeding tickets are for safety.
the public view All but the most gullible members of the general public label speeding ticketing as “revenue raising”. They point out that speed enforcement is conducted in areas where there is no safety issue involved. Weather conditions are good, traffic density is medium to low, roads are wide, and there is a clear view ensuring that there is no unexpected intrusion by pedestrians. The tickets issued in these areas for tiny breaches are unrelated to safety.
The lack of correlation with safety is highlighted by the fact that while police resources are allocated in that fashion takes them away from roads which aren’t as forgiving of extra speed. Hoons have free reign in the residential streets. The public also point out the cost of speeding fines and the vast sums of money accumulated from speeding enforcement. In a single state tens of millions of dollars are accumulated. There is a clear motive for not promoting safety.
When introducing speed cameras the public are often told that they are for black spot areas. The public soon notice that this is incorrect. In South Australia official figures were used to compare ‘black spot’ areas with the most popular speed camera locations. This showed that there was minimal overlap.
The straw man The revenue raising cartel take the argument that it is safe to go slightly above the speed limit in the types of situations where people are really getting booked and misconstrue it as an argument that it is always safe to go faster as long as it isn’t much faster. They counter the argument that it is always safe to go faster as long as it isn’t much faster with advertisements showing the types of areas where speed enforcement is unlikely and depict an unexpected intrusion of an unseen vehicle or more commonly child pedestrian. They then argue that it would have been safer to go slower in that situation and claim that we are just being selfish by complaining because speeding tickets are for safety.
FALSE DILEMMA: two choices are given when in fact there are three (or more) options
Research has indicated that going slower than the flow or faster than the flow increases crash risk and the fact that the flow is often above the speed limit. The corollary is that it is actually safer to match your speed with the flow even if the speed of the flow is above the number on the speed limit sign.
The revenue raising cartel have responded to the fact that ‘speeding’ doesn’t increase crash risk so it isn’t dangerous by using a false dilemma approach.
The possibilities for motorists include driving much too fast and getting away with it, driving much too fast and crashing, driving too fast but without greatly increased risk of crashing and crashing, driving too fast but without greatly increased risk of crashing and not crashing, driving within the speed range which minimizes crash risk and not crashing, driving within the speed range which minimizes crash risk and crashing, driving too slowly but without greatly increased risk of crashing and crashing, driving too slowly but without greatly increased risk of crashing and not crashing, driving so slowly you are a major hazard and crashing, driving so slowly you are a major hazard and getting away with it.
The revenue raising cartel however argue that "speeding" is a danger whether or not it increases crash risk. The possibilities presented are crashing faster and crashing slower. They conclude that increased speed adds danger by increasing the severity of a crash.
Clearly, there are other possibilities as tediously described above and, since driving in the speeding ticket range (close to the 85th percentile) reduces the risk of a crash, it is hard to say that this makes things more dangerous. Not crashing at all sure beats crashing more softly for avoiding injuries and death.
APPEAL TO FORCE: the reader or listener is persuaded to agree by force
If you exceed the speed limit you are breaking the law and should be dealt with accordingly. In a democratic society we are free to be critical of unjust laws. Don't be bluffed or we'll lose the right.
PREJUDICIAL LANGUAGE: value or moral goodness is attached to believing the speaker or writer
By ripping us off with speed cameras they claim to be "saving lives". An organization which calls for slowing motorists down (which could not prevent 96% of crashes on official statistics) is labelled a “road safety organization”. An organization that calls for better driver education (which could impact on the large proportion of crashes due to “inexperience”) does not attract that label.
APPEAL TO POPULARITY: a proposition is argued to be true because it is widely held to be true
The use of dodgy opinion polls is a useful tool here. The public is presented with a survey which doesn't ask any questions until you have read enough propaganda to feel pretty foolish if you would dare give any other view then theirs. The results are collected and they pretend it reflects pubic opinion.
Alternatively, people have been asked to think of dangerous types of driving and their first response recorded. Whether they say driving too fast for the conditions, hooning around, excessive speed or something silly like speeding or exceeding the speed limit the only choice for recording the data is a category of speeding. Thus even the responses of people who share our view and are very careful about their response would be used to say that most people think speeding is dangerous.
FALSE ANALOGY: two things being compared are relevantly dissimilar
An example is comparing braking distances at different speeds. The faster you drive in a given set of conditions the more alert you become and the faster you react. Thus driving at two different speeds in the same conditions are relevantly dissimilar with respect to alertness and reactions. Braking distances are a product of reaction and post-reaction stopping distance. These trade off against each other at different speeds. However ignoring the relevant dissimilarity is used by the revenue raising cartel by assuming reactions equate and calculating braking distances accordingly.
POST HOC: because one thing occurs after another, it is held to cause the other
An example is the introduction of speed cameras in Victoria. Because the road toll went down afterward they make out that it must have been caused by the speed cameras. Naturally they don't use similar illogic when road deaths go up 14% and speed cameras are used more resulting in a 20% increase in bookings (Qld '98-'99 financial year).
Another example is using common sense to determine which treated black spots will experience a dramatic decrease in crashes, using a speed camera there, and then taking before and after crash statistics to demonstrate that speed cameras reduce crashes. For example finding a multilane highway with a dirt road exit/entrance creating a hazard. The dirt road is closed off. The speed camera is introduced. The crash statistics are compared.
IGNORANTIA ELENCHI (IGNORANCE OF CONCLUSION): Proving a point that is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
An example of this is getting a statistic which doesn't show anything about the issue of revenue raising and continuing on as if they have proved something. Holiday seasons tend to have less crashes presumably due to large numbers of commuters not on the roads thus reducing density. However people don’t tend to realize this because holiday seasons tend to be a slow news time for media and they traditionally tend to focus on road deaths. When NSW commenced using double fines the figures provided were not a comparison between before and after but a comparison between holiday season and non-holiday season to show the benefits of the double fines.
EQUIVOCATION: Using an ambiguous word or expression in one sense in a premise and in another sense in the conclusion.
The word "speeding" is used in different ways at different times by different people. They include driving below the speed limit for the purpose of gathering crash statistics. However statistics including people driving below the speed limit are then waved around while claiming that it is dangerous to exceed the speed limit. Other parts of this website explain the ‘speed related’ or ‘speed is a factor in’ terminology which flags this approach.
FALLACY OF COMPOSITION: because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain property, it is argued that the whole has that property. Presuming of the whole what is true of a part.
An example is that a tiny minority of people exceeding the speed limit are going dangerously fast. Most of us drive in the optimal range because it feels right. This is usually slightly above the speed limit. They argue that because a teenager was killed doing 200kph in a 60 zone that this shows that exceeding the speed limit is dangerous. They therefore have to increase speeding ticketing to stop crashes. Note that speeding ticketing is almost exclusively focussed on minor breaches. If someone really is driving dangerously and get caught they'll get charged with dangerous driving.
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National Motorists Association Australia - Representing motorists in all state of Australia - Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, ACT, and NT.