Rookie Team impressions from Kettering

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Kimberly

The point is that the rule seems to have some unintentional consequences

I've thought about that, and I think the main problem is this: The only people that will ever get nailed by G22 were not intending to gain from breaking the rule. This is just a property of the rule's existence.

Why is this?
1) Accidents happen
2) The penalty value is high enough that it negates any potential gain from breaking it

Thus, nobody will ever break G22 trying to gain from it, and the only victims of G22 will be those who didn't intend to break it. This makes for quite the heartbreaker of a rule: threads full of people saying 'oh, it was only while we were turning' and 'I only ever saw people get hit by it when they were trying to turn and went over by accident'. This is, of course, because of the nature of the rule: nobody ever breaks it on purpose, because breaking it on purpose is literally pointless. I think if the point value was lowered it would become MORE controversial, because now the accidental victims would be lumped in with devious rule-breakers trying to gain a few more points. "#XXXX didn't even grab a trackball and got the same penalty as #YYYY who scored with one they STOLE from across the line " would be the refrain of the day.