Safe Speed Forums

It's called politics - it's very similar to the scaremongering and hype tactics used by the trash media to boost circulation of their papers (q.v. the Murdoch papers 'peado' campaign that led to a Paeditrician being hounded out of a community).

So is higher standard of education required? If yes, then this is at least a start. If no, then strict controls are required to enforce behaviour.

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Thanks Paul

Inevitably - one of the links at the bottom of your page to DfT stuff now points at "can't find it" by the way

What happens to the figures if you ignore the miles travelled?

It seems to me that if, as a pedestrian, I am going to be killed on the footpath, that the number of miles travelled by the type of vehicle is irrelevant.

What is relevant is how many peds get killed and by what.

yes, and as with cyclists people see a few crap ones, wave their generalisation brush and suddenly all WVM are the devil incarnate, or should that be in-van-nate?
Just think about it for a second WVM is dependant on his van for his livelihood. Those who are accident prone are going to be starving fairly quickly.

OK, so statistics tell all...

I drive TWO white vans (rarely at once )

Does this mean I am TWICE as bad a driver as the averagre white van driver?

But if I sprayed them both a different colour, how good a driver would I be then?

The point is nutter drivers come in all colours and shapes of vehicle. Alistair Darling has launched a fairly offensive and unreasoned verbal attack against a minority of drivers based on nothing more than what their vehicle looks like.

Yes, that is very much the point. But it wasn't explicitly stated in the PR because it had to be got out in 15 minutes.

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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

Well, I'm afraid I think the PR was badly thought out. It deflected away from WVM onto cyclists with no proper justification. It suggests that more people are killed by cyclists than by WVM, which is bollocks. Even if it had been qualified by saying that this is in terms of miles travelled by the vehicles involved (not the peds) it still would have been open to interpretation by our media.

If it had said a more press friendly version of this: "The point is nutter drivers come in all colours and shapes of vehicle. Alistair Darling has launched a fairly offensive and unreasoned verbal attack against a minority of drivers based on nothing more than what their vehicle looks like." then it would have been a good PR.

IMHO if you only have 15 mins. to do a PR then you shouldn't do it. You'll only give the media what they want...

Darling featured on the Vine prog (last 15 minutes and you can listen again)

White Van driver was interviewed and "up in arms" and spelled out that he parks where he parks out of necessity of loading.


IAM also on phone about it.

Basically -aimed at all van drivers and I would support. After all - I have to prove my qualifications and skills - as do accountants, teachers, police etc and I would say a person - any person who is required to drive for a living must demonstrate some kind of "professional qualification and skills" - so on that basis - I have zero problem with a van driver or co car rep being required to have a seriously good driving qualification under his or her belt.

Have always been pro- training/skill development/education/taking pride in driving and personal skills anyway.

A good driver had few major repairs anyway. Our garage costs are low - we replace worn parts and our tyres etc wear evenly and we do not have hefty repairs - sign of efficient competence

Two second rule and tailgating were broached and basically Vine prog and even Darling said much of the Swiss feline and IG views on life..for once.

I would agree that singling out one section is daft - but on the other hand ...

most of the bad white van drivers we see today are......

those in talivans and police vans anyway

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I think the fuel efficiency problems of white vans are not down to the drivers revving them to death, which of course they do regularly, it's cheapskate companies thinking that a diesel 60hp car derived van will save them money compared to a more powerful model.

They are then loaded to capacity and the only way to get any acceleration out of them at all is to floor it right at the top end of the rev range where the engine is performing at it's most inefficient and polluting.

Plus, if you get in the way of said white van, the driver is not going to want to slow down because they know it will take then half an hour to get back up to speed, thus trying agressive tactics to get you out of the way is more beneficial.


So, the companies save a few grand on the initial purchase price then pay for it many times over in increased fuel consumption, engine wear and other maintenance etc. so once again another problem caused by letting the accountants run things.

Give me an AstraVan VX-R any day

[quote="SafeSpeed




This tells me that DfT aren't looking at data - they are making their plans based on rumour and individual perception. And you're damn right I'm angry about that.[/quote]

And so am i - i drive a transit at work - so do three of my coleagues - our company won't let an inexperienced driver drive on of them and we mentor those driving them for the first few weeks - me - about 1-2 Million miles car - about 500k miles van - our pet hate - bmw /merc in L3 AT 65 ,with brakes flashing - to keep up speed in a transit we need to be pushing 68 , any less and we lose the impetus , drp back to 50 and spend 5 miles getting up speed.Has DARLING ever driven a Transit/ sprinter etc? on todays motorways??

Would strongly suggest that before he gets involved in road rage he does - and he will find it a bit different to his ideas .

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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

If I have 100 poisoned deadly oranges and 1 poisoned deadly apple I think the public can cope with the idea that apples and oranges are equally deadly despite the fact that oranges are more commonplace.

And the PR was fine, actually. I'm already happy with the response. Writing and sending a PR in 15 or 20 minutes is commonplace. They might not be perfect, but they get out there and they work. Hard work, careful thought and timely PRs have achieved the fundamental objective of moving the Safe Speed campaign into a position of influence.

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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

Well, I'd much rather be hit by a cyclist than a WV. Your release suggests otherwise, and no amount of poisoned fruit salad will change that!

I suppose you have got your head around the difference between risk given and risk received have you?

I also think it's seriously important that the risk posed to a pedestrian by a cycle is in the same ball park as the risk posed to a pedestrian by a motor vehicle. It scuppers about a million false road safety ideas at a single stroke.

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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

Well, I question the demonising of cyclists. The story was about WVM, and you chose to use cyclists as your comparator. Rather than say "From the pedestrians perspective, commercial vans are actually the safest vehicle on the road, safer than any other motorised vehicle. SafeSpeed asks why vans have been singled out?"

Or something like that.

Perhaps there is an inbuilt bias against cycles in the SafeSpeed campaign? Why are they in your stats when they are so different from other vehicles and speed cameras and fixed speed limits have virtually nothing to do with them?


Your PR has done little to bridge the divide between motorists and cyclists. The opposite, in fact. I still maintain it was poorly thought out. Renat-a-quote, in fact.

edited

It is not about offending, it is about making an appropriate point.

How many people have been killed by WVM in the last 4 years?

Sorry but you're being daft.

There's no prejudice against any road user group built into the campaign.

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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

Thank you.

I had hoped for a slightly more considered answer.

I was trying to make a point, it was about what I read into the PR as someone who has a different viewpoint to you. There's really no point in looking at PRs purely from your own viewpoint as you won't see the flaws.

You want SafeSpeed to be taken seriously. I was only trying to help. I guess there's no point in doing that.

Look, seriously, we can't be 'safe' from people assuming our words mean something else. For example there's a common misconception that we want to do away with speed limits. I've never said it and there's been a statement on the web site to that effect right from the word go. Buit that's not enough.

It's absolutely impossible to produce words that are incapable of misinterpretation. Responsibility stops once ambiguity has been removed.

The wider picture is that official policy is setting road user groups against one another. That's one aspect of policy that I deplore and am fighting against. I see very few other groups fighting policy on a broad front.

Repeat 100 times: There is no us and them.

I tried to prepare a PR to that effect after the North Wales tragedy a few weeks ago. But it was difficult to write and there was no 'right time' to issue it, so it remains an incomplete draft.

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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