By Peter Cochrane, 11 March 2004 09:40
COMMENT Do the realms of science and technology offer some respite from everyday, repeated stupidity? Peter Cochrane has some idea...
It is a midwinter Sunday evening on the M4 motorway and Im heading west from London to Bristol. The headlights of the oncoming cars, and tail-lights of those in front, snake across the countryside far over the horizon. Six lanes of tightly packed cars are cruising nose to tail at 7080mph.
I start counting and estimating. I reckon we are looking at around 48,000 to 60,000 cars an hour with an average of two occupants. A human pipeline transporting around 110,000 people every hour towards and away from London.
Of course the politically correct (PC) view is that I should have taken the train and under normal circumstances I would have. But this evening's track repairs increase the normal one way journey of two different trains to a combination of four trains and two coaches. The journey time by train is also indeterminate and more expensive than using a car. So I dont feel too guilty, even though I also have a driver so I can still sit and work the entire journey. In fact the difference in cost is marginal when taxis and other extras are entered into the equation. And I must be on time. I cannot afford to be late. So PC = 0, Common Sense = 1.
Our politicians and leaders believe that the train should be our primary choice and we must reduce the number of cars on our roads. Would it work? How many trains would we need, even if we could get them to be both reliable and on time (which we cannot).
An InterCity train might typically carry 700 people and I am estimating here too. So on this Sunday we would require around 110,000/700 = 157 trains an hour between London and Bristol. But the best we might achieve would be one every 10 minutes say 12 an hour six to come and six to go. And at this level such a train service would only contribute an insignificant 6 per cent relief. So is it remotely feasible that any train system could make a real difference? Not with todays technology, for sure.
Many such instances of obviously incorrect doctrines and beliefs, plus the varied behaviours of people and managers in companies, schools, hospitals and homes have led me to conclude that human stupidity is fractal. That is, stupidity looks and behaves the same everywhere, in every organisation and at every level of society. At some point a view is formulated, it gradually becomes accepted as holy writ and thereafter it becomes an unchallenged truism.
Lets try a few more examples to illustrate my point. In modern management parlance it is a well-known maxim that 'what you cannot measure, you cannot manage'. As a result, we see control and measurement systems, performance monitoring and metrics have become all the rage. But look at how the numbers are manipulated and fiddled to satisfy social, political and financial needs.
So it is interesting to ponder. Is Enron any worse than governments that arrange their GDP figures, education and healthcare statistics to meet market and social expectations, to win voters and exert influence?
Adjusting exam pass rates to achieve a few percentage points improvement year on year soon sees compound interest taking a hand and employers moved to complain grade A students arent what they used to be.
Building health care systems that see staff and managers inherently needing to fiddle numbers to survive the political climate are equally irresponsible. To allow political forces to further manipulate waiting and operation times to show acceptable levels of service without actually addressing the real problems, soon sees more administrators than beds. Worse, the doctors, nurses and patients quickly realise the truth and start taking action to sidestep and sideline the unnecessary bureaucracy. The whole system becomes top-heavy, over-expensive and still fails to deliver as promised.
In the worst cases we see important decisions taken on the basis of manipulated or ignored information. And all too often people get hurt or killed as a result. Skimping on maintenance routines and failing to invest adequately in new and replacement plant are all common occurrences. Honest mistakes and accidents are difficult enough to live with; PC- and ignorance-induced tragedies are in another league.
It is always a temptation to take the actual data and manipulate it to the way you (or your boss) would really like it to be. My advice is always the same: Dont do it, no matter what. Sooner or later someone is going to pay the price and it might be very high.
There is no immunity from the desire or opportunity to fiddle the figures and it may even be the ultimate temptation. But in science, technology and engineering there is not only a price, there is a fast response time to any such action. Fortunately we tend to use machines to do the job of data gathering and analysis and reserve human intelligence for the interpretation of the data. We are also pretty high on repeatability, peer review and multiple, parallel and often competing teams. If something goes wrong we tend to find it reasonably quickly. If someone makes an error or tries to adjust the figures they are generally identified quickly.
Somehow we need to get the same automation and discipline into our social fabric and systems so we can really manage with confidence. Until we do, we are all going to witness the cost of fractal human stupidity...
Mrs Smith washing bottles and beer cans in hot water to be transported by car to the bottle and can bank - saving the planet by wasting 100-fold more energy than we can recover.
Transport policies that see 100-fold more pollution from traffic jams than would result for a wise road building programme.
The continued exploitation of oil and destruction of reserves while R&D into alternative remains grossly under-funded.
Health and security programmes that address non-issues and neglect the real risks to satisfy public opinion.
The list is endless - and fractal.
Originally typed on flight FR509 flying between Bristol and Dublin. Revised on FR292 en route to Stansted and finally despatched to silicon.com from my home via a Wi-Fi link some time later.
Comments
There are 29 comments. Join the discussion
1. Tim Courtney
An interesting story. It is just a shame that the maths is bogus in a story about not massaging figures. Taking the 70mph estimate and 60000 cars per hour (10000 per lane) gives 2.8 cars per lane per second. At 70mph this gives 11.1m in between cars. Looking at a Ford Focus with length of 4m, this leaves an average inter-car gap of 7.1m. This is unrealistic (even for the M4!)
2. anonymous
Mr Cochrane's advice "Don't do it [manipulate figures], no matter what" just doesn't work in the real world.
In my previous job at the NHS I was responsible for the production of waiting list figures.
Had we published actual figures rather than what the NHS Executive / Minister wanted to hear our Chief Executive would have lost his job.
In political environments like the NHS, bad news does not travel upwards. The policy is "go and get me more acceptable figures or I will find someone else who can".
If you want to keep your job you tell people what they want to hear. Common sense 1 Moral High Ground 0.
3. Dominic Tristram
While Peter makes some good points, I believe that he is wrong when he says that driving from London to Bristol is cheaper than the train. Say what you want about reliability and capacity, but the train easily wins on cost.
From Bath (only 10 minutes from Bristol) and Apex Return to Paddington is 18 pounds. Driving would cost me more than that in petrol, and then of course the true cost of taking the car includes owning, taxing and insuring it in the first place. People forget about these fixed costs when they complain about the price of public transport.
The main reason why I always choose to take the train into London though is the speed. I can get into Paddington in 90 minutes (and I usually do - it's more reliable than the press make out). By car it can take three times as long with bad traffic.
4. Mark Hosey
Despite the ropey arithmetic Mr Cochrane, I agree whole heartedly.
And to Mr Anonymous, anyone who puts his signiture to or supplies knowingly incorrect information would be liable for dismissal and possible criminal prosecution, depending on the severity of the fraud and the consequences there of. That is to say, if you lie for them it's your job that's on the line, not theirs. You don't owe them anything, but please be polite when you tell them where to go!
You cannot get dismissed for telling the truth and if they do try to dismiss you or make working life difficult for you, you will have grounds to make them answer for their transgressions at a tribuneral. Take notes and insist on memos and E-mails. Do not let them them brow-beat or bully you!
5. anonymous
(QUOTE) Six lanes of tightly packed cars are cruising nose to tail at 70?80mph. (UNQUOTE)
This is scandalous and outrageous behaviour. The Highway code gives the safe stopping distance for a car travelling at 70MPH to be 96 metres. By ignoring this stopping distance, these hundreds of thousands of drivers are putting their lives and the lives of their passengers at immense risk.
6. Will Eastbury
Anonymous,
Your comment illustrates Peter's point exactly, he's absolutely correct when he says that about stupidity.
Your's is a prime example.
7. Gareth Williams
"only a fool breaks the 2-second rule". On that basis you get 1800 cars per lane per hour. I can believe one car per second per lane at peak flow, but surely no more (and I was on the M4 at 9.00am this morning) I also doubt an average occupancy of 2. If there were as many cars with 2 occupants as one this would still average only 1.5, and I guess single-occupancy is by far the more common.
So I would guess 16,000 people per hour each way, not 70,000. That's only
about 20 of Mr Cochrane's trains per hour. So the postulated 6 trains (each way, please!) could take about 30% of the traffic not 6%.
The conclusion that we can't grass over the motorway still holds, but let's be a bit more careful with the assumptions! How many freight trains we would need to replace all the lorries, may be more to the point.
8. anonymous
Is driving to the recycling point an example of stupidity? Well, where I live the recycling points are all at supermarkets, or at the local tip, so people would be making those journeys anyway, Peter. So products are recycled at no extra cost to the environment.
9. anonymous
How many wash cans and bottles in hot water?
Methinks someone could be manipulating the figures to get their prefered result here.
Mmmm.
10. Mike McCreadie
Do the right thing or do the popular thing? The right thing gets you targeted for termination (Jesus, Gandi, the bloke in front of the tank, Sarah Connor). The popular thing gets you laid, gets you loads of mates, gets you promotion, gets you elected, and makes you rich (possibly). Mmmmm, the choices. Roll on evolution.
11. Albert Einstein
Thanks to Gareth Williams for debunking the assumptions in this piece. It's quite staggering that an article about the risks of massaging the figures could be based on such risible assumptions!
I heard a piece on quite a serious radio programme not so long ago which solemnly stated that, on average, a murder takes place in the USA every two minutes. Even by my calculations, that equated to 30 people an hour, 720 a day, or 262,800 a year.
My dodgy mental arithmetic suggested that, given an average lifespan of 50 years spent living in the country, something like one in every twenty inhabitants should expect to become a homicide victim!
(Footnote: Apparently the current homicide rate in the USA is something like 5.5 per 100,000. Or an average of about 15,950 poor souls a year.)
12. Reed Howey
An interesting article designed more to provoke thought than to promote truth.
Peter Cochrane sets the scene by painting a cosy picture of a car trip, pulling in some figures from the ether, well the M4 at least. He then goes on to extrapolate the data and draw some alarming conclusions, or does he.
He then propounds that human stupidity is fractal and describes the 'holy writ' and the 'unchallenged truism' and supports this with several well chosen examples.
But then he pulls the rug from beneath our feet and decries the way that data is manipulated.
At the end of the article, the first precept of the cosy car journey is set aside where it now shows that the article was compiled and modified in-flight and dispatched from home.
How many fractally stupid have read this 'holy writ' and let it go as an 'unchallenged truism'? Or am I paranoid in the belief that Peter Cochrane is playing word games with us?
13. anonymous
I have to agree with the former NHS IT Manager and Mike McCreadie who both pointed out that if you want to keep your job, you do not do the right thing but provide the answer that is required.
In my last job, it was the CEO himself who was blatantly manipulating pricing data. I was not willing to "deliver" the result he wanted which led to me leaving with a severance package. But the practice of manipulating data is so widespread that if everyone took the moral high ground, nobody would be left in a job.
14. Roger Brewster
QUOTE "But the practice of manipulating data is so widespread that if everyone took the moral high ground, nobody would be left in a job".
Surely if everyone really did take the so-called moral high ground, nothing changes the fact that employers need employees. The key is that EVERYONE takes the same stance that you did. I respect you for standing up to your superior's "marketing" requests, and I hope that you are in a better position in life than before.
15. Richard Harrison
Targets ALWAYS sub-optimise performance. What should be being measured in the NHS and other public and private services is capability. What is the system capable of delivering and how are we performing against that measure? To set arbitary targets and hold people accountable for achieving them is to encourage cheating, manipulation of the figures or redirection of resources away from what is important thus creating waste, sub-optimal performance. This is an unintended consequence of the current approach particularly in Government but also in industry too. The focus needs to be on the system and how it works not the people in the system who often have little or no control over how the work gets done. Call centres are classic examples. Peter Cochrane is not the first to make this point (see also John Seddon)but it is a well made point nevertheless.
16. B Collin
An example of flawed research giving bogus conclusions.
A few minutes research on Google gives a maximum daily flow on the M4 of about 140k vehicles per day. Dividing that by a generous 10 to give the peak hour, then Peter's vehicles come down by a factor of 5. That means that we only need 40 trains, not 200. If only FIVE trains were laid on the congestion on the motorways disappears.
Q.E.D.
17. Richard Gibson
Interesting thoughts but Peter should have checked some of the figures. A few seconds searching on Google brought up this document http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/downloadable/dft_transstats_023321.pdf which shows that M4 traffic volumes are quite a bit lower than Peter Cochrane's estimate of "60,000 to 80,000 per hour" - only 93,000 per day.
18. Ray Hooper
I would be extremely careful about manipulating data to fit in with what management wants to hear. If the information is vital to the future of the company or organisation and it's badly wrong it won't only be you looking for another job. Moreover, how do know that the management won't blame you when someone else finds out the data's false? You could be setting yourself up.
19. Jerry Schneider
Fractal stupidity or just not knowledgable? Peter Cochrane should have a look at the more than 80 different emerging transportation systems being developed around the world today. Some are operational, some are under development and some are still only conceptual. Headways of 10 minutes are not featured by any of them. For details, see http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans
20. anonymous
Sales Director and myself gave different sales/delivery outlooks. His looked better than mine by £1million. His was taken by the board. Result. £1million hole in the accounts. Delivery (not sales) people made redundant including me. Thats fractal boardering on criminal. Final Result, company no longer in business.Stupidity does have its own reward.
21. anonymous
The correct figure to look at is not how much of the auto demand can be taken up by trains. Ease in transport will always create more demand as history has shown.
The fact is one rail line can carry the same passenger volume over time as four lanes of highway. It does so while taking up significantly less land which is the key benefit. If our development patterns supported such an arrangement the demand for travel could be well accomodated. Buses on dedicated right of way however might better address your particular problem with maintenance delays as they are more flexible to necessary route changes.
My point is, a multi-modal network involves all the various systems and it is ridiculous to pit them against one another as if there must be a winner. Each component network should function efficiently at it's task, while integrating seamlessly with the other modes. That allows the consumer the most flexibility in meeting the need for mobility.
22. Pike Oliver
It would be impossible for six lanes of motorway to carry more than 11,000 cars per hour at the speed of 70 to 80 mph. Experience indicates that vehicle speeds decline dramatically once a lane of motorway is handling more than 1,800 cars per lane per hour.
23. Bob Lewis
Hmmm! I usually find myself in wholehearted agreement with the vast bulk of Peter Cochrane's Techno-views. I think however that this time he's made a big gaff and must have been using a slide-rule and got the decimal point wrong in the wrong place.
As Gareth Williams pointed out, the CORRECT way to measure the gap between moving vehicles is TIME related and NOT distance related (As per any police or other advanced driving manual) and the recommended minimum SAFE gap is TWO seconds in good, dry conditions, double that in the wet, and even more in icy conditions.
So this makes the formula for calculating the maximum number of vehicles per hour very simple:
No. Lanes / inter-vehicle gap (in secs) x 60 x 60 per hour = 1,800 per lane with a two second gap.
Work out the rest of the figures for yourself from this. If you doubt (or have never heard of) the "2-second rule" then check out for yourself the time gap (at 70mph) between the first and the third chevron on those M-ways (like the M6) that have then (i.e. keep 2 chevrons apart) - you'll find it's TWO seconds. If you find the time is significantly different than 2 seconds GET YOUR SPEEDO CHECKED!
Sorry Peter - time to dump your slide-rule and buy a good calculator - or use the one on your mobile! Your other arguments ARE sound however and ones with which I totally agree.
24. Steve C
It looks like Peter has fallen foul of his own argument.
Whilst trying to make a very good point, unfortunately fell into a common trap of incorrectly stating facts and figures and partial arguments like recycling not saving energy (I thought that the idea was to save paper, glass etc.).
I did like the bit about washing cans and bottles though as it reminded me of the sort of harmless conversation you might have after a few pints in the pub.
One thing we can be sure of is that a lot of what we do is based on incorrect information. The newspapers have been doing so for years. We all know that the Web is full of incorrect information, which many people like to quote as fact. There are millions of examples on the Internet (and I may not be exaggerating this).
However, there are some important points made, but basically life is a game of politics.
Fortunately the mistakes and poor process of my IT department do not affect anybody's health.
Unfortunately, those of us who don’t play politics don’t understand why others do and either give up and toe the line (like Mr. Anonymous) or are constantly frustrated.
25. anonymous
While I am in full agreement with the notion of human fractal stupidity, the suggestion that we embark on a road-building program in order to solve transportation problems is not only fractally stupid, it is utterly ridiculous. Countless research efforts have shown that new road capacity is quickly diminished by latent demand, doing little more than encouraging more people to travel via private automobile and thus furthering congestion, pollution, and the many social ills that are the product of the automobile.
Your article is littered with vastly inaccurate assumptions. The theoretical capacity of a single highway lane is about 2,000 vehicles per hour - beyond this level traffic slows to a crawl. Hence for a motorway with 6 lanes in each direction (and using your assumption of an average vehicle occupnacy of 2 people), the maximum theoretical capacity of the described motorway would be 48,000 people per hour, or about 1/3 of the 140,000 people per hour that you suggested.
As an example of train capacity, the Hong Kong West Rail Heavy Rail Line is designed to carry 47,000 passengers per hour PER DIRECTION...vastly more than any 6-lane highway could carry.
Of course, a more intelligent answer to the problem of travel would be to travel less - that is, orient work and other activities and residences such that the vast majority of trips can be served by walking and bicycling (the bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation that exists - more efficient than ANY other human mode of travel in terms of energy consumption).
An interesting article, but poorly researched and misleading.
26. Simon Heuristic
Basically, what everyone wants to say is that Peter Cochrane is prepared to speak a certain amount of tosh in order to sell copy. Someone mentioned the word "extrapolate". This is perfect to describe the genre. Often, he starts only a degree off beam. Close up, this isn't bad, a thousand miles away (where he rationalises to) the gap looks big. Ultimately, he suffers from the Jeremy Clarkson problem. Imagine what it's like for someone to be paid quite nicely for a small column once a week, month or whatever. Great to begin with, but then it's starts to grind.
(Ed note... at this point, can we point out Simon you are doing exactly what you accuse Peter of doing. You're getting further and further from the point and you are beginning to talk from a position of absolutely no knowledge whatsoever. You have no idea, what, whether, when or how much Peter gets paid for these columns. On what do you base you "quite nicely" comment? So who is really speaking "tosh" here?)
You've got to remain incisive and funny or thought-provoking whilst writing on Flight BA354867434324 to God-knows-where, followed up by faxing/emailing/ESPing Miss Moneypenny on terra firma. You actually end up needing to con people a little bit yourself or you get inexorably further (not deliberately) to the place where the sun doesn't shine. However, just like with Clarkson one ends up grudgingly having to admit that he's not bad at what he does. Peter Cochrane is not a lot cleverer than the rest of us who are involved in technology or its dissemination. He just travels a bit more than the majority of us and can provide an eclectic overview. He's brilliant at this and should stick to it. The other stuff, cost of trains versus car, "anally retentive" bottle washing; I agree with the other folk - all tosh.
27. Sherry McClellan
I find it amusing that as much as I wanted to call Peter up on his lack of objectivity, in editing his own thinking before putting it to paper, the more I try it I seem to commit the same offense by pointing at something to criticize we almost invariably point back at ourselves! I think that anything Peter may lack due to being a human is more than made up for by creating a venue or forum inviting us to do just what he does so well...think creatively, for ourselves...a trait, threatened with extinction and nearly dead already in most media!...Thanks, Peter!
28. Bob Huddy
Sir,
Gazing at the M-4 with all of six lanes, doesn't equate to 60,000 to 80,000 vehicles per hour. It does equate to about 12,000 or 2,000 per lane per hour (at or near the design capacity for a motorway or freeway lane). Transport Planners are, in fact, able count actual cars, in actual time, traveling through actual space. The annectdotal "numbers", "hypothetically" put forward by the author, bear no relationship to any observed volumes on any six lane facility, anywhere.
When one comments on the theory of things about which one doesn't know, one should do the minimum necessary homework to be taken seriously, at the points one is trying to make.
Bob Huddy
Pasadena, CA
29. Mike Bayliss
I am amused at the geeky responses contesting figures in the article - especially those from fellow american experts.
Chew over the details all you like but I have driven several times on the M4 for at least an hour towards London at a speed of almost 80mph with less than 35ft between me and the car in front and the car behind. Only the slow lane moving appreciably slower. Its scary but the choice is get home or drive at 55mph. The slow lane is also 'packed' btw. How many cars is that per hour? 'Design capacity' has nothing at all to do with what we experience every day on the roads around London other than to illustrate just how far a number can get from 'Required peak capacity.'
How many lanes on the M25 this year? I suppose 5 miles of stationary cars with engines idling at 800 rpm (average) is much more eco-friendly assuming you live in your car and dont actually want to move eventually.
Im tired of hearing 'experts' bleat on about demand rising to meet capacity - try working out the demand accurately in the first place and build the roads wide enough or go work in Norway.