Safe Speed Forums

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2732171

I happened to see this thread. There's a lot of rubbish in there, but around the bottom of page 1 theres an interesting tidbit that I bet our government wishes they could do.

Basically a guy in California got a ticket from a red light camera for $425 but they have outsourced the ticket processing to Arizona. In order to fight the ticket you now have to travel to Arizona which apparently will cost more than $425 in petrol. Of course you don't see this money back if you win.

Maybe that is why the government is so keen on pushing up the price of petrol here?

That is of course mighty unfair. $425 which you'll have to pay whatever happens...flippin' 'eck! But they don't need to do anything like the Arizona thing here; they've already ensured that pretty much everyone who can't employ Nick Freeman will lose their case against scameras.

Another thing on that thread which is worrying (if it's true) is authorities reducing the amber time to ONE SECOND to raise revenue. Apart from anything else it's incredibly dangerous. Thank goodness local authorities are stuck with 3 seconds here (not that we couldn't do with further advance warnings, particularly on roads above 40mph, as previously discussed on these forums).

At least in the States it's possible to combat anti-motorist measures at a local, democratic level, which in theory means that they can't smugly ignore the wishes of the majority in the same way as here ("Don't want speed cameras? Tough, we do....")

_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

Again, you make an assertion that it's a majority that don't want speed cameras.

I don't think governments are in the business of doing things that could get them voted out of office, even if individuals think the opposite.

Not purposefully (perhaps), but that's why they employ spin doct... I mean PR staff, their failures are made to look good (such as mixing speed camera effectiveness with RTTM, trend and Bias on Selection).

Yup, it's a complex relationship, but you've also got to concede that the opposition or pressure groups might also employ spin.

Governments these days dont actually have to worry about usetting the electorate any more. All they have to do is achieve Consensus


Consensus n

“the act of politicians stitcheing up the electorate”

When Politicians claim to have reached a Consensus on an issue it means that there has been a cross party conspiracy to deny the electorate any choice come election time.

Thus they have “stitched up the electorate”



The typical resopnse of the electorate to this is to have low turnouts at election time.

Considering how low turnout was last time, there must be an awful lot of Consensus going on!

Sooner or later something will crack (or at least I hope it will)

But in the mean time scumbag politicians achieving consensus in smoke filled back rooms (Smoking ban doesnt apply to the H of P IIRC) can and will still do a lot of damage!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Indeed, but any flaws from these opposition or pressure groups will easily be uncovered and demonstrated by those who expend an incomparably greater resource on PR. When it’s the other way around then you have to begin to wonder.

Indeed, two or three parties playing the consensus game may ALL end up out of favour if the consensus goes against the popular support.

BTW, I think current low turn out is more to do with football supporter mentality, i.e. people that will only ever vote for one party regardless who can't even bring themselves to do that.

Just like a football supporter who doesn't bother going to see their boring team play, but won't go to another match because they don't feel they would get enjoyment out of watching either team, even if the match is brilliant.

As far as the big scheme of things is concerned I think that is an overly optimistic view of the situation. It presupposes that the other team is any better!

As for me,

I think the reality is more like the scene at the end of "Animal Farm"

We (the dumb animals) can no longer tell the Pigs from the Humans any more. they all now look the same to us sitting round the table stuffing their faces!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

No. It is just as if the local council decided to pass a by-law banning athletics, football, Rugby and cricket. And decided that the only spectator sport allowable in the area would be bowls.

The only people who would bother to turn up would be those who like bowls. The low turnout would be dismissed by the spin doctors as proof that" even though the council provides the best facilities, hardly anyone bothers to turn up to watch."

_________________
www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Because it's true.

Have you ever seen a government or local authority survey that asked "Are you in favour of speed cameras", rather than something like "Do you think that lives should be saved with automatic enforcement"? Why do you suppose they are so reluctant to ask the former question? Maybe it's because, unlike some apparently, they know perfectly well that the majority loathe cameras for the revenue-raising killing machines that they are.

Have you ever seen an online survey, where you couldn't vote more than once or otherwise fiddle it (which Spindrift has been known to do many times), which asked "Are you in favour of speed cameras" and didn't get a negative result? What about this one? How are you going to explain that away? Are you even going to try? You haven't even got the excuse of the survey being on a "page mostly visited by speeders", and the article was predominantly pro-camera spin. It was an unbiased poll of a cross-section of society and the results are entirely clear. And that was a few years ago; cameras are almost certainly even less popular now, as more and more people are realising that they've been had.

What do you think would happen if you went into the average pub and announced that you were in favour of cameras? Do you think people would be impressed? Why not put it to the test if you're so sure? You might want to bring some means of self-defence. I don't condone violence, but people tend to get understandably irate about things like their lives and careers being needlessly and knowingly thrown away.

If you want to support cameras for whatever "reason" (and I'm starting to wonder what that reason is), that's up to you, but you really shouldn't kid yourself (or try to kid others) that the majority of the public are similarly deluded.


I'm glad you have such a rose-tinted view of politics in this country. We only get to choose between two parties once every 4-5 years. There are many policies (like speed cameras) that we don't want but the government does: let's call them "disagreeable policies". To win power a party just has to ensure that they are perceived as having fewer disagreeable policies than the other party. Furthermore, they can always break their promises once they're in, and there's diddly squat that we can do about it.

Have you honestly never felt that the government is thumbing its nose at us because it knows there's nothing we can do? If everything's as wonderful as you say and politicians are so keen to please us then why are they so often seen to be lying? As far as I'm concerned, the whole thing's unrelentingly negative, and we can't trust those who are supposed to represent us an inch. I wish it was like you say, and it should be, but it most definitely isn't. They do as many disagreeable things as they think they can possibly get away with, and then they use spin to persuade the more gullible of us that they're actually on our side. They're not, they're on their side.

_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

This seems very similar to my understanding of the Speed awareness course - e.g an Aberdonian caught doing 33 in a 30 in some southern county (AFAIK) can only take the course in the south.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Actually a lot of the areas that do speed awareness are now getting together and let you do one that is more local. For example if you live in Lancashire and get done in Devon you can take the course in Lancashire and vice versa.

If you think about it, it makes sense. They make nearly twice as much money from Speed Awareness, so it's better to make them accessible.

[quote="Lum

If you think about it, it makes sense. They make nearly twice as much money from Speed Awareness, so it's better to make them accessible.[/quote]

Didn't think sense came into it -thought it was all about "profit "

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

And getting more people onto the courses == more profit. It helps with the spin a little too.

...with no evidence that it is not an assertion to say that the majority don't support speed cameras.

Or perhaps with no evidence (as you say , so no real proof ) that the situation is reversed ,but that apathy is rife.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Not apathy, despair and depression !
The [dawning] realisation that no matter what they do, or vote for, their lives are always going to be at the beck-and-call of democratically elected despots.
Maybe, just maybe, they will realise that it isn't the people they vote for who make policy, but those who are full-time non-elected rulers ?

Democracy [English-version] is a joke, on us.

Perhaps the British voter is waking up to the fact that we do not control the decision makers - they are the unelected faceless people in Brussels , given power by a spineless british government.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Unelected?

Did you vote for you MEP?