My name is Peter Edwardson and I live in Stockport, Cheshire, very close to Junction 1 of the M60.
I passed my driving test in November 1976 and have owned a car since July 1980, since when I have driven over 300,000 miles. I have always enjoyed driving and valued the freedom and mobility it gave me, but it was something I tended to take for granted and have never been any kind of "car nut" or owner of overtly sporty or "high-performance" cars.
In my driving career I have so far (touch wood) only ever had one motoring conviction - and that was in January 1981, for speeding in a Morris Marina, which I feel should count as some kind of achievement.
However, it became clear to me in the mid-1990s that a variety of new restrictions were being placed on the motorist, including road humps, fixed speed cameras and reduced speed limits. These trends have greatly intensified following the election of the Labour government in May 1997 - although most were started under the Tories.
While I may have been personally irritated by these developments, at first I grudgingly accepted them as things that would, on balance, make the roads safer. When I looked into the subject more deeply, though, it became clear to me that the road safety justification for these kind of measures was extremely questionable, and very often their introduction was motivated less by a genuine concern to reduce accidents than by a desire to demonise car use and make it more frustrating and less attractive.
I firmly believe that real road safety will not be enhanced by placing ever tighter curbs and restrictions on road users, but by educating drivers to behave responsibly, and by building new, safer roads and improving the design and layout of existing ones. And that the motor car, all things considered, is unquestionably
A Good Thing.
I run the
SpeedLIMIT website which deals with the above topics and also includes listings of:
- speed cameras in and around Greater Manchester
- speed limit reductions in the Greater Manchester area
- Britain's Best Driving Roads - mainly culled from suggestions on the uk.transport Usenet group
I have been a member of the ABD since 1998 and am the local representative for the Stockport and Manchester areas.
I am also a national committee member of
SABRE - the Society for All British Road Enthusiasts, which is an organisation I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the history, development, nomenclature and design of the UK's road system.