Safe Speed Forums

It seems Radio Two's Vine programme has been debating the most flouted law in the UK and whittled it down to 5 - for which R2 listeners vote to decide which one.

So the short list is.....

1. Hunting Foxes with dogs...

well .. this entire family wathced an episode of "Countryfile and those involved in the local Hunt reckoned it "compromised their role as magistrates!"

Whether or not the most flouted law? Probably only amongst those who have been involved. As for the wording of the law - too many llopholes which make it open to a "flout" regardless of the emotions from both camps running behind the introduction of this law.

Speaking as a father whose daughter's pet rabbit was killed for pleasure by an urban fox - am a animal lover and dislike cruelty - dislike fox as this species does not kill just for survival but for a sadistic pleasure of the kill. That being said - would still rather them be disposed of painlessly. Do we enforce? Well.. we are required to...

2. Exceeding the speed limit on the motorway!

I knew speeding would crop up Perhaps we should hope this one wins hands down on basis that it may be increased if no one is sticking to it and not many are getting injured as a result on the motorways I reskon a likely contender for the "accolades"

3. Mobile phone use

- Bet we all know which two forummers will vote for this one in particular. Given the numbers who persist in using - probably a strong contender. - not really!


4. Litter louting

One close to my heart - they chuck out of car windows and I really dislike chewing gum on the pavement and fag butts

5. Under age drinking

[i] another one I feel more strongly about personally. Kids just do not realise the dangers of drink - can lead to all sorts. Joy riding, walking in front of cars, violence, thoughtless and risky and regretted sex...

By under age drinking - we are not talking of our children having a small sip of wine at the dinner table - with full parental control and being brough up with a healthy relaxed attitude to alcohol as a result (I'd agree with my Swiss relatives on this ) Rather we are talking about children who buy bottles of the stuff and drink it out on the streets and become a public menace as a result. and we end up arresting them, cautioning ...etc.

Surprisingly pavement cycling , riding without lights, red light tripping, driving in bus lanes, parking on double yellows, despite being mentioned on the show did not make it to the top five.

So - to the board's wisdom!

Have they got the right shortlist?

If not - what would be your choice and why?

Or - which of the above do you reckon? is flouted the most anyway.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I reckon speeding is the biggy. That law must be broken literally millions of times per day.

In terms of the proportion of people who break the law, speeding must be the winner. However I would say urban 30's are broken more often than the motorway limit. Many people never use motorways and I would say typically about a third of cars do under 70 anyway.

Parking on the wrong side of the road without lights is also very widespread.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Ditto. If I was coming up with five on my own I'd guess at:

1. Speeding - got to be top, and as has been already said, for a crime committed without incident millions of times each day it's must also rank at the top of any list of victimless crimes.

2. Littering - so much of it lying around that it's got to be near the top. It really p s me off to see crsip packets and sweet wrappers in our road when whoever dropped them had to walk past about thirty wheelie bins. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who wouldn't object to them (and it's usually kids from a local school) chucking it in my bin rather than drop it on the ground. I don't want a free for all so that I can't empty my own household rubbish, but if the alternative is litter all over the road I wouldn't object to a few wrappers and crsip packets in there each week.

3. Hand held phones in the car - nuff said. It's a rare day on the road when you don't see at least one person doing this.

4. Criminal damage - graffiti, smashed windows, broken payphones in public phone boxes that smell like urinals, keyed car bodywork and bent aerials. Mindless so-called petty vandalism. Has to be a fair amount of it going on for some areas to look like such s tholes. Probably only committed by a minority of the mindless, but bloody hell are they busy or what? Can't believe that the fox hunters outnumber the vandals.

5. Theft/shoplifting - used to work for a big retailer and have seen the losses for myself. What they like to call "shrinkage" after stock taking, since it includes things like goods returned for credit that no-one chased and damaged stock that got written off and not recorded properly as well as what actually got nicked. But we all knew damn well that a fair sized chunk is stolen, and I was shocked at how often it turned out to be the staff doing the nicking. Better opportunities for the light fingered I suppose, and very sad as it inevitably casts suspicion on all staff even though you can be sure that 95% or more were honest.

I'm amazed that the fox hunting thing was on the list at all. I'm sure it's only because the ban is recent and controversial and it's still newsworthy enough to have stayed in the limelight. And I still don't understand why they don't just go drag hunting instead and where the foxes are a pest simply shoot the bloody things. I don't pretend any expertise, but I'd have thought being hit in the ear by half an ounce of shot is a better way to go than being chased by dogs for miles and miles before being half eaten alive. Just my 2p worth.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Check these out....

http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/international/united-kingdom/

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Speed camera policy Kills

I asume they are talking about number of (prossecutable) offences?

Sure, fox hunting still goes on but I can't believe that even thousands of people would do it each day.

Males not practicing archery on sundays would be much higher! If that law still exists.

Purely on number of offences what possibly comes close to speeding?

Out of all the laws listed I would say that even the people who break them know that there is something wrong with what they are doing, except speeding which most people don't have a problem with.

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Andrew.

I would have thought smoking pot would feature fairly high on there too. Most of my friends do, but maybe that says more about me and my circle of friends than anything else

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I think that one was quietly done away with a few years ago. Not so sure about Oliver Cromwell's law prohibiting the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day though... That could be a very strong "one-day-wonder" candidate!

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

I don't understand this.

Surely there isn't a huge alcohol problem with the under-fives?????

Have you seen what they put in the gripe water?

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Not alcohol anymore thats for sure.

Is it a law?-- bit about "obey " in marriage vows

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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

I rekon. There was no smoking signs at Earls Court, but nearly floated out of there after seeing Foo Fighters on saturday. It was just the children doing it though. Over 30's gigs anyone?

And if I could just be allowed to drive the radio at work for one day I'd steer it away from Vine toward XFM.

In Gear I'm confused, how can you tell the fox killed your daughter's rabbit for pleasure? was it sitting there chortling at your emotional torment? Was your daughter's rabbit inedible to foxes, and were there clearly posted signs, in Fox language, stating the rabbit was inedible?

Did you beat a confession from the fox? Did you get a psychic reading of the fox's mental state at the time of the killing? Was the fox trained to kill rabbits on sight, wether hungry or not?

If your only evidence is that the rabbit's corpse was left, might the fox have been disturbed before removing / eating it?

In effect, are you not presuming sentience on the part of the fox? Malice of forethought? Motive?

I hope I'm never caught malicously and sadistically not wearing my seat belt in your neck of the woods!

If you dislike foxes then fine, humans kill and hate for all sorts of reasons, but don't kid yourself that fox hunting is natural, humane, or less cruel than an animal hunting its prey.

I agree with Molly. The fox was just following its instinct to kill, evolved over millions of years. It is that instinct that has let it survive over the ages.

Its a well known fact that foxes kill for fun. Why else would they decimate an entire chicken coop and just take one bird.

BTW have you ever seen a killer whale playing with a seal pup?

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Sixy_the_red has a fair point, and I'm sure sharks will kill whales when there is more than they can eat, but if a fox kills one pet rabbit, it is hardly slaughtering an entire nest of rabbits to get one, and hardly fair to impose our own values on animals

After all, Foxes weren't ment to be 'urban' in the first place.

Foxes do decimate entire chicken coops, that is a well known fact.
That they do it for fun has never been proven and I doubt it ever would. Their instinct to kill has overridden their need to conserve energy, no more and no less. Fun does not come into it.

As for the killer whale playing with a seal pup, this is similar to a domestic cat "playing" with a mouse. It is done purely to exhaust the prey to such an extent that it will not inflict harm on the attacker when it is finally killed.

It's called "superpredation"... It's the effect of putting an animal that has evolved as a "solitary" predator into an artificially target-rich environment. It effectively is caused by a glitch in the predator's "programming" - which is in essence "see prey, kill it.." - which for a fox or similar predator in the wild is an effective strategy, but when surrounded by prey, like the fox in a hencoop, it goes into the equivalent of a loop, and kills until there's nothing left to kill at which point the next part of the strategy falls into place "take the prey away to eat it..". The fault is the hen-coop's, not the fox's.


Although a much more intelligent animal, it's probably no different from a cat playing with a mouse/ball of wool or a dog chasing a ball. The Orca will "play" with something because it's an entertaining thing to play with, not because it's a seal pup. We sometimes over-anthropomorphise when looking at the activities of animals.

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

5 - a definite - good to see the law come in to ban buying it for the underage

Dog fouling - defiately on my hit list - get out of car - step in poo , walk in house ---too late on carpet - can you get it (and germs/eggs )out before todler gets to it.

pavement cycling , riding without lights -

badly adjusted headlights/not dipping( mind you can happen to any one - one night in town i slowed right down as a car came toward me on main beam, i flashed maddly - as he drew alongside we wound windows down - it was a Panda car , with a SGT driving - "whats wrong ".he said - "sorry ",said I,"thought it was some young plonker who didn't know where his dip was" - reply -"no ,it's an old plonker who can't see it, ")

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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