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Comment by mhh__ | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of cultural arguments for xyz can't "build" (that word really grinds my gears as it reminds of me of smug pseudo-classicists on twitter) are basically bullshit.

The issue the UK has as far as I'm concerned is that we have a political and managerial class who are basically disinterested in the grand scale.

We don't spend much money, we try to shelve what little we do spend (e.g. we have two aircraft carriers rather than the one that was rumoured for a while, has the world blow up?), Our government is one of the happiest to sell off state assets ever, and now our current government ran out of ideological steam about 7 years ago so we are stuck with a collection of lunatics and retards in power.

I used to be pretty firmly in the "don't tell people they're voting against their own interests" camp, but I was wrong. Our electorate is given a sword to fall on (FPTP), but chooses to jump on the sword rather than make a fuss.

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Politicians love big projects. It is much more tangible than most government programs. Your draw a line of a map and then a real change happens in the world. And this government have put much more money into infrastructure than you might expect given their ideology. In fact industry have trouble getting enough capacity to support projects like HS2. And often in less sexy areas like rail electrification, smart motorways etc.

Also in my experience the human aspect of projects is always the most difficult part. The most amazing thing about a company like SpaceX is not the technical achievement. But getting thousands of people to work together on a single goal. And arguably this kind of thing is less problematic in large projects than in the rest of society. But the effects of bad communication is far more visible and explicit. Engineering cuts through and delivers because it actually simplifies things.

"And this government have put much more money into infrastructure than you might expect given their ideology... And often in less sexy areas like rail electrification, smart motorways etc."

On what basis? They've scaled down HS2 and the Northern Rail Plan. Smart motorways is purely a way to avoid expensive, complicated, often necessary road widening with an unsafe technological solution. A lot of the safety issues of smart motorways has also been due to cutting costs - less frequent emergency refuge areas, less cameras than are needed to detect accidents. Now the press has caught up to them they have stopped rolling them out entirely.

Its more that I am surprised they started these projects in the first place.

I agree that smart motorways are less safe, and there are better ways to reduce demand (like road pricing). Having said that motorways are still very safe compared to other roads, even after being made "smart". I think a modest reduction in safety is an acceptable price to pay if billions can be saved. Invest that money in reducing death from emissions, pedestrian safety, or even our far less safe A road network.

Bear in mind that the average motorway user already has a death wish, safety has already gone out of the window, what we're adding is just capacity.

The stats don’t reflect your assertion. KSI of car occupants is far lower per mile and per hour on motorways than other roads

You are correct, you much more likely to be killed on a regauar A road. My comment was really about the attitude of drivers rather than the statistical/actual risk.

I absolutely hate smart motorways. Dangerous and a proven killer at the worst possible time. Even emergency services can't get through quickly if the traffic is backed up and there's been a bad traffic collision as there's no hard shoulder for them to use.

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