Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: Texas Road Signs, Water Bottle Ban, Bachelor Tax (Vol. 7)
Good intentions, bad results
HD Download"Great moments in unintended consequences"—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series here.
Part 1: Road Kill
The year: 2012.
The problem: Driving fatalities on Texas roads!
The solution: Implement a simple, cost-effective awareness campaign by displaying crash death totals on highway message boards.
Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions, what could possibly go wrong?
In order to read these messages, passing motorists must look away from the road.
Accidents along roads with new displays increased by 4.5 percent within 10 km of the sign, according to one study—amounting to an additional 2,600 crashes and 16 deaths per year in Texas.
Not good news, considering more than half of states in the nation have deployed these signs on their roadways.
Part 2: Bottle Throttle
The year: 2013
The problem: Bottled water consumption at the University of Vermont creating waste!
The solution: Eliminate single-use bottled water from campus vending machines, give away reusable containers, and spend $100,000 to add filling stations around campus.
Sounds like a great idea with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?
Students don't always remember things, like their reusable water bottles. Faced with limited choices, a study revealed the demand for sugary drinks on campus surged 25 percent and plastic bottle use per capita had increased by 6 percent.
Some ideas shouldn't be recycled.
Part 3: No Way, Fiancé
The year: 1900
The problem: Argentine bachelors sucking up valuable resources without producing more citizens.
The solution: A bachelor tax! A strangely popular feature of the time, but with a special waiver for those gentlemen whose proposals were turned down. No need to pour salt in that wound come tax day.
Sounds like a bizarrely antiquated idea, with the best of intentions, what could possibly go wrong?
The tax exemption gave rise to an entirely new vocation: professional rejectors! These entrepreneurial ladies would swear to authorities that a gentleman tried—and failed—to win their hand. And all for a fraction of the cost of the tax itself.
Proving the old adage: you can't buy love, but rejection is on sale.
Written and produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg; narrated by Austin Bragg.
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Fuck Joe Biden
Fuck Be Unto Biden!
Fuck Joe Biden
That too is an unintended consequence.
Based on Reason’s coverage of Republicans as we near the midterms I’m thinking it was completely intended.
See, this is why peasants don’t deserve freedom. They refuse to comply with helpful laws in the right way.
Are we supposed to start calling them “proles” at some point?
Not that I am a fan of the road signs, but if the crashes in Texas increased within 10 Kilometers of the sign, how does the sign contribute to the accident? Who can be a distracted by the sign from that distance? Steve Austin with his bionic eye? Wouldn’t 100 Meters, say, be a better indicator of whether the signs were the cause of the accidents?
Could be the effect of the signs is so powerful that it persists in distracting drivers for a long time.
Could be that they’re travelling so fast that 10 kilometers (6 miles) is only a few minutes of time – less than 6 minutes at highway speeds.
Could be that the signs create microclimates that attract animals that run into the road causing drivers to swerve and collide.
Could be the effect of the signs is so powerful that it persists in distracting drivers for a long time.
Goodness! Are they displaying blood-and-guts accident pictures on the road signs, like they would in Driver’s Ed films?
Could be that they’re travelling so fast that 10 kilometers (6 miles) is only a few minutes of time – less than 6 minutes at highway speeds.
Still, you couldn’t see the sign 10 Kilometers before you came to it.
And 10 Kilometers after the sign would be a long time to be distracted by a road sign. Did the road sign include “a girl wearing nothing but a smile and a towel?” 🙂
Girl on the billboard · Del Reeves · Girl on the billboard 1965
https://youtu.be/Z7aGLPoYDv0
Could be that the signs create microclimates that attract animals that run into the road causing drivers to swerve and collide.
“Microclimates?” Is the sign packing a HVAC unit? Don’t tell Al Gore about that! 😉
One possible addendum: Maybe the road signs were 10 Kilometers long, like they would be in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This is Texas we’re talking about after all. 😉
In all seriousness, these are electronic billboards, similar to the old sports score signs. Nowadays, they are mostly used to announce road closures and major accidents. Far more useful.
Given that this occurred during the rise of smartphones (and the related increase of texting while driving) and so many highways had them that there wasn’t really a control, I have to question the cause and effect.
Yes, you are correct. And between smartphoning, texting, gaming, eating, drinking, changing stations or CDs, putting on make-up, changing clothes,, and giving or receiving oral sex, there are just too many variables to make a single causal connection.
CDs
Way to out yourself, grandpa.
Action at a distance. Quantum entanglement. Duh.
So they’re driving through a worm hole or a Stargate? The would make wrecks even worse!
Not that I am a fan of the road signs, but if the crashes in Texas increased within 10 Kilometers of the sign … Wouldn’t 100 Meters, say, be a better indicator of whether the signs were the cause of the accidents?
Maybe 10 km is the smallest distance over which they had data on number of accidents? Just a guess.
That would be my guess as well.
Psychological implantation. The signs make people think about crashes. Better to put up a sign that says “Drive Safely”.
The real question is why the fuck are they using the metric system? This is America!
You’d have to know Metrics to infiltrate the U.N. Blue Helmets and cause trouble.
The bulbs for the signs are all 10 billion lumen leds, blinding drivers instantly
Now that would make sense.
“we secretly replaced the light bulbs with laser beams, let’s see if anyone notices”
They’ll never see it coming.
And just how could bachelors have been a bigger drain on the so-called “National Resources” of Argentina than married couples with children?
And about these “Professional Rejecters.” Did the “Professional Rejecters” also *ahem!* give “test rides” for the bachelors before proclaiming their rejection to the court? Wouldn’t this be classified as “getting paid to leave?” 😉
And speakijg of Argentina, you know who else discouraged bachelors and was obsessed with National “Resources.?”
And speakijg of Argentina, you know who else discouraged bachelors and was obsessed with National “Resources.?”
Evita PeronMadonna?That’s a good one!…And I “Dont Cry” for either of them! 🙂
Children used to be an asset rather than a liability when you could put them to work. And you won’t have any useful national resources for very long if there isn’t a next generation to maintain a productive economy.
Accidents along roads with new displays increased by 4.5 percent within 10 km of the sign, according to one study—amounting to an additional 2,600 crashes and 16 deaths per year in Texas.
How do the overall numbers compare beyond 10km? Is this a short distance distraction, long distance benefit?
a study revealed the demand for sugary drinks on campus surged 25 percent and plastic bottle use per capita had increased by 6 percent.
They’re comparing fall to spring semester. This is invalid. Spring semester has more warmer months than fall semester. A proper comparison would be the previous spring semester to the current one.
Yes, I remember how there were always dozens of wrecked cars piled up around the old Burma Shave signs. It’s called the Burma Shave Effect — you can look it up!