[quote=“sbarton” post=72995][quote=“Ranger” post=72991][quote=“swolfe” post=72978][quote=“Ranger” post=72967]Re. opposite conclusion. Point well made.
The problem with the rules and these examples is that they are oriented towards the braking zone of a turn. The actions of the passee are predictable in the braking zone and the rules dictate things that the passer has to take into account as he is planning and then executing his pass.
This incident was not in a braking zone. We all try to read each other’s minds, but I certainly would not have expected Rob to come across the track so I’d have been caught be surprise too. One of the purposes of rules is that they help us predict each other’s actions. They are not intended, to reference a hypothetical I created earlier, to allow me to ram a passer because he looked at my sister wrong.[/quote]
What prevents that – beyond common sense, sportsmanship, and general not-being-a-dick?[/quote]
That’s my point. That kind of reckless behavior is prevented by the knowledge that a decision-maker is going to look at the circumstances of the incident, look at the rules, and determine that “altho the rules fit the situation imperfectly, it was not reasonable for me ram the other guy.” Therefore I get penalized. It is always wrong to reflexively apply rules, any rule, with zero attention to the circumstances of the incident. Rules cannot possibly take into account every detail. That’s where human interpretation comes in.[/quote]
The problem is that is not the case. As Tom said, he had no choice but to rule the way he did and give the penalty that he did, because he MUST follow the rules strictly. There is no room for leeway or judgement. Regardless of the situation, the rules say this, so this is what someone making the judgement must do.
A rule change would be needed for them to rule the way Scott suggests.
-Scott[/quote]
I entirely disagree. This “MUST follow the rules strictly” is complete BS. A human decision maker uses the agreed upon rules, the precise circumstances of the incident, and their own wealth of experience to render a fair and responsible judgement. It took us the last 100million years to add the forebrain to it’s reptile underpinnings. As a result we are now capable of making reasoned decisions, as opposed to responding reflexively to external stimuli. I vote for the former over the latter.
Ethnically I’m 3/4 German. I spent much of the '90’s there and loved the place and the people. But the Germans are nutjobs about rules. They, as a culture, find much comfort in being surrounded by rules and when faced with a choice between a “rule” and “the Right thing to do”, end up in a terrible quandary. Americans, in contrast, when faced with a rule that prevents a clearly Right action, generally don’t feel like they’re in much of a quandary. They’ll just shrug their shoulders, blow off the rule and do the Right thing.
We had an expression in the military…“Regulations are for the “guidance” of the commander”. That means that the expectation is that the commander do his/her very best to do the Right thing. Hopefully there’d be a way to do the Right thing that was congruent with the regs, but if not, so be it. As the commander you were ultimately responsible for everything. The regs were handy guidance, but your job was to DO THE RIGHT THING. If you had to break the Regs to do THE RIGHT THING, if you f**king had to kill people to do THE RIGHT THING, then you did it. You just had to be emotionally prepared to stand in front of your boss and justify your actions. And if he wasn’t impressed, it was your ass waving in the breeze.
Said another way…the purpose of rules is to make things run fairly and efficiently. Occasionally you will find that a rule impedes fairness and efficiency. When that occurs, the officious bureaucrat will sacrifice fairness and efficiency on the altar of their treasured rule. In contrast the self-actualized type will see how the peculiar circumstances that lay before them put the rule, and the rule’s objective, in conflict, and find their own reasoned way to meet the rule’s intent.
Think about what that means…if a rule leads to something that’s just crazy, do you really blindly follow the rule? If following the rule ensures that you don’t meet the rule’s intent (safe behavior), we still follow the rule? Have we lost our minds?
We cannot mindlessly follow rules that lead to bad outcomes. Mindlessly following anything, defined as strictly following as opposed to thoughtfully following, is a really bad idea.
Always do the Right thing. Rules are meant to be thoughtfully applied.
There’s some good ideas for rule changes here that would cover the situation, so lets adopt one of those ideas. Easy enough to submit a rule change.
