Safe Speed Forums

Its no good, i've just got to have a rant.

Every day we seem to be bombarded by news reports about speeding yet no one talks about the norm. If the speed limit is 30 and someone does 70 then they deserve all they get. Most people though speed purely by accident and are usually just over the speed limit. I personally watch my speed limit like a hawk but even then as a human being with human flaws i sometimes creep over the limit and slow down as soon as i realise. Now if a police car was following me then they could see that it was a momentary lapse and do nothing but if its a gatso then your prosecuted with all the morons who deliberetly speed all the time. So many people waffle on about how they dont speed but i quarantee you that if you sat with them on any car journey they would speed every time even if its only by a couple of miles per hour. Someone close to me was caught speeding but was given the chance to sit through a safe driving course instead of a fine (excellent idea if only they would make it a national thing). Aterwards they swore they were better for it and no oonger drove fast and were much more aware of the road. RUBBISH!!!!! One week later they drove me to a pub and broke almost every speed limit bar the 60mph ones. I dont suppost it was on purpose but never the less each limit was missed and in a 30 drove at 40 etc etc. Upon telling them this they swore blind they had not broken any speed limit.

I recently watched a programme on SKY where the police had set up a road side trap for drink drivers down a country road at night. They could only breathalise the drivers if they suspected them to be over the limit so were using a hand held laser speed detecter. They pulled several people over as they were indeed speeding and gave them a breath test. All passed OK and were then allowed to carry on their way??????? Hold on a minute, they were speeding then allowed on there way. Do gatso's let off drivers every now and then ? I think not.
The other dangerous thing with watching your speedo as i do, is that you spend a vast amount of time with your eyes off the road. We are often told that at 40 mph you will almost certainly die but at 30mph a pedestrian will almost always survive. My argument is that even at 40 as long as my attention is on the road ahead then i am very unlikely to have a crash where as at 30 and my eyes constantly flicking from road to speedo to road etc etc then the chances are i will have a crash. Even if it only takes 2 seconds to look from road to speedo to road again and to focus then at 30mph you have still covered a long distance with your eyes off the road. I recently asked the wife to count how many times i looked at the speedo in a 1 mile strech of road through a 30 zone village. It was about 8 times. If this sounds a lot just try to keep at exactly 30 and see how many times you need to look down as you travel round bends and up and down hills. At 30 mph you travel about 23 feet a second ( roughly from memory so dont quote) 8 x 2 seconds = 16 seconds. 16 x 23 feet = 368 feet travelled in one mile with my eyes off the road. Lethal if you ask me but god forbid they ever catch me speeding.
In Norfolk the police realised that gatso were not the answer and so installed the active signs that tell you to slow down if your speeding. Now, every time i pass these signs everyone, and i mean everyone i have seen, has slowed down for the entire speed limit area where as with gatso's people seem to almost always slow down for the camera then speed back up again. The figures from Norfolk authorities stated reductions in average speeds, accidents etc where these active signs are used compared to the less effecive Gatso types. But of course these dont earn any money. There lies the answer.
On a final note for the minute (just until my blood pressure drops down) how dangerous and downright pathetic is that TV show with Quentin Wilson and those useless drivers. What a brilliant format ! Each week the person who has improved from being totally leathal to just slighly leathal is rewarded with a car. Shows like this raise many questions. On another show contestants had to drive round a track where cardboard pedestrians and other such hazards were suddenly sprung into the cars path. One woman didn't even twitch her foot off the accelerator onto the brake and after smashing the cardboard pedestrian to bits seemed totally oblivious to the incident. Oh what a laugh the viewers must have had at such entertainment. If I drank 5 pints and was well over the limit i guarantee you that i would have responded better than her but rightly so, drink driving is frowned upon, yet who would be safer?
Thats it for now. Hope to here from anyone with any points to make!

I think you're going to like it here...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I couldn't have put it better myself!

That program was like a compulsive horror movie. You had to watch, you couldn’t nip out to make a cup of tea. Fine where they were on a track hitting cars and caravans... but then they asked them to drive on the road

The producers should have been sectioned under the mental health act as a danger to themselves or others.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Welcome to the forum buddy!

Totally agree with what you've said. There have been several reported collisions near scamera sites, too many for it to be co-incidence.

The Scamera mafia claim that it is because the roads with cameras are dangerous anyway and that is why the cameras are there, but common sense tells us the distraction effect of the camera (including having to look away from the road to check the speedo) must have played a part.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Welcome to the forum. You will find lots of people agreeing with you.

I didn't actually think you were ranting but I hope you feel better now.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Beautifully and succinctly put. The image of driving 368 feet with your eyes closed is just a superb use of statistics....it is true but not true at the same time.
Just like jokes, why can I never remember stuff like this when I need to?

It's actually worse than that... 30mph is 44 feet per second, so the real distance in question is 704 feet... 13.3r% of a mile, per mile...

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev