Lowering the speed limit to 50 kmh in residential streets has led to 13 per cent drop in the number of deaths and serious injuries from car accidents... Pedestrian deaths and serious injuries were cut by 46 per cent in 50 kmh zones.- The Age 16th April 2002
I would say much of this drop is because of people avoiding 50kph zones... which is an excellent thing... but dropping the speed limit on other streets may not have the same effect... much as I would like it to.
From a Herald Sun graph, page 10 April 17 2002. It's not very well explained so I may be wrong here. Some numbers on the number of crashes pre (Jan 96 to Jan 2001) and post (Feb 2001 to Jun 2001) 50kph limits.
Current 50kph Zones -
Average fatal crashes pre-50kph : 2.54
Average fatal crashes post-50kph : 1.50
Current 60kph Zones -
Average fatal crashes pre-50kph : 5.62
Average fatal crashes post-50kph : 6.00
All zones over 50kph -
Average fatal crashes pre-50kph : 13.98
Average fatal crashes post-50kph : 15.80
Soooo... 50kph zone areas have had many less fatal accidents, but other zones have more... which may be explained by more cars being pushed into the faster zones.
The average numbers for "serious accidents" has gone up in non-50kph zones but dropped a little in 50kph zones (60.64 to 55.40).
However... over all all areas have had less of all types of accidents since the 50kph zones have come in... but what you're really after is the average number of fatal or serious accidents, and from what I can get from the numbers, they've actually increased since the 50kph zones came in.
50kph zone areas fatal crashes drop 2.54 to 1.50. All other areas up from 13.98 to 15.80. So that's 17.3 fatal accidents now and 16.52 then.
Serious accidents in 50kph areas 60.64 to 55.40. Other areas 237.30 to 241.60. 297.94 then to 297. A drop.
It's all numbers and the same time for "now" is very small (only 6 months compared to 5 years for the "then" sample). You can't really drop any conclusions at all...
...except you could say that pushing people from 50kph zones to other zones is causes more accidents in other ares.
And now for some useful numbers:
Since 1970, when there were eight deaths per 10,000 vehicles, the ratio has fallen to 1.5 deaths per 10,000 vehicles, and the numbers of deaths per million km travelled has fallen from 4.4 to 1. The number of fatalities per 100,000 of the population has fallen from 30.4 to 9.5.- The Australian 2 April 2002
It works on the assumption that every single one of those people would have purchased the songs they downloaded. Crap. The whole ease of downloading music means millions of people can download and listen to music they'd never buy otherwise.
Sure, a lot of people now download instead of buying. Often this is because they only want two or three tracks from an album, not the whole $20 blob. But the record industry is phasing out the CD Single because of bad sales, they're pushing consumers toward buying a whole album. Maybe that's because your average CD single costs $10. Ask anyone and they're say they're often pissed off they have to buy the whole album when they only want one song.
You know why you keep hearing that damn "I'm Not Pretty Enough" song? Because the single was only $1 so EVERYONE who thought they might maybe like it purchased it.
What's with all this news on CD sales dropping? Because of piracy, strong competition from DVD and slow economy. Gee, I've heard that already. Boring.
Meanwhile:
An author prooves that try-before-you-buy online books work. With real figures.
Price fixing by record companies adds to lower sales.
Jerry's Corner
We (frequent internet users) all argue that just because WE increased our CD purchases because of Napster and the such, that therefore everyone else who downloads music did too. It's easy to forget we are a very small minority. There are a lot of people out there who happily download music, burn it to CD and don't even think about buying it. There is no way I'd download a whole album off the net, burn it to CD and be happy with just that. It's too much effort for not enough. It's easier to pop into the music store and spend $20 on the proper product, and I feel happy that maybe the muscian may end up with a bit of cash from it. But I'm a record collector. I collect records. I like plastic.
Record Collecting
Went to the Camberwell Collectables fair a couple of weeks ago. I used to go to these years ago, back in my Uni days and they were huge. This was before Napster. Often you'd find people happilly spending hundreds of dollars for an old 12" of Random Band because it had a slightly different version of Random Song that you couldn't get anywhere else except some crappy expensive bootleg. The whole hall used to be records. This was back when bootlegs were still a grey area and freely advertised. Not anymore.
These days the fairs are half comics and toys and half records/CDs, with only two thirds of the hall being filled, and less every time I go. When talking to stall operators they say sales are way down and people aren't buying the expensive collectable as much anymore. They're after second-hand cheap CDs.
That rare b-side is readily available online if you look hard enough. For free.
Sell It
I wonder how well an online CD store would go if it specialised in
b-sides, live and rarities. ie. stuff you can't get anywhere else anymore. And they promised that X% of their sales went directly to the artists. I'd go there.
But, think about how much something like this would cost. Do you know how much it costs to keep a 5+Meg file available online, and how expensive it is to pay for the bandwidth of said track being downloaded. Plus the software and programming expenses. An online shop like this could only work if tracks were 50-cents or so, but I can't see how that could possibly cover costs.
Rant
I'm ranting again on an old old old problem. It's boring. The change is taking too long. No-one is happy. Kill them all.