The IAAF’s one-false-start-and-you’re-disqualified rule is the latest example of joy-killing by regulation-obsessed bureaucrats. The starting gun in athletics should fire at zero in a 5-second countdown. The current system is unpredictable, which prompts false starts. To solve the problem they caused in the first place, officials now punish the victims of their own defective system. In a similar way, priority rather than equality on the roads sets the stage for dangerous conflict, and produces a “need” for traffic regulation in a doomed bid to solve problems contrived by the “experts”.
The IAAF’s stupidity is matched only by FIFA, who should have introduced action replay years ago. Traffic managers and policymakers too, of course, should have reformed the high-cost, counterproductive traffic system by which we still have to live, and 28,000 people have to die, every year.
