Safe Speed Forums

Oh dear hjeg1, you just lost it! You've displayed your prejudices, and marred a road safety campaign with them. You trolls never do realise, merely because we have differing views from other, more well funded, road safety campaigners on one issue, that does not make us any less of a road safety campaign. If everyone had exactly the same ideas on how to get things done then we would never see any progress.

Your arguments are flawed in a number of areas, but two are glaring:

You refuse to accept the fact that speedos in cars do overread. You can argue this until you're blue in the face, but make no headway, as I'm sure that anyone who purports it as fact (as I do) will have had a GPS unit in a number of different cars and compared it's extremely accurate speed readout to that of the in-car speedo, and noted the discrepancy.

The other glaring mistake you have made is this:



Very few (<5%) of serious injuries and fatalities on the roads are caused by exceeding the speed limit. An even smaller proportion on the motorway, where traffic is all going in the same direction, at similar speeds in each lane, and the road layout is engineered to be taken at speed. These figures are taken from the DfT's own reports.

People driving without due care and attention are responsible for a far greater %age of serious/fatal accidents, so by your opting to disregard the conventions of the Highway Code in an attempt at vigilante speed policing, you are statistically a higher risk on the roads than any single motorway speeder.

If you really, as you purport, cared about people killed and injured on our roads, the single biggest thing you could do to your driving to reduce their numbers (short of stopping driving altogether) would be to observe proper lane discipline. You can't stop all the speeders, and you are making the road a more dangerous place for everyone (yourself included) by your actions.

I have to say, I don't believe that your actions are as altruistically motivated as you claim, and I rather suppose that some of the accusations you have derided as insults cut rather closer to the core, but that is just my opinion. I could well be proven wrong, were you to take any of this on board and modify your driving for safety.

The one point you still fail to answer adequately is why you do it, when you needn't? Valid answers do not include vigilante policing (the police would never take this course of action, as it is dangerous, they have powers to properly and safely deal with dangerous drivers), two wrongs make a right (apart from the fact that any 6-year-old knows that this is not the case, remember that speeders are only breaking the law near you, and do not nomally inconvenience you, where as you are breaking the law to them, inconveniencing and endangering them, and others on the road) or accusing others of being stuck in their ways (come now, pot/kettle?).

What you are doing is meddlesome, and it is misguided, even if it really is based on the best of intentions. I would suggest you stop it, and see how much more relaxed your journeys become. I am pretty sure you won't, and you'll continue to be an unwitting danger on the roads, but good on you if you do. I certainly won't be engaging with you any further unless you can bring something new and rational to your standpoint, as I think we've adequately established a whole multitude of reasons why MLM driving is wrong, and none why its right.

Hi Steve, just passing through during a quiet day at work

Ultimately the rules become the law I suppose but they must certainly be enforced within the right spirit. Misjudgements and minor misdemeanours that do not constitute a hazard or, in this instance, a deliberate and purposeful baulk of another vehicle, should not be enforced with the same vigour as a blatant disregard.




Not quite sure I follow you here

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Which, in the case of police vehicles, they may need to leave switched off so as not to alert whoever it is they're trying to catch. It may even be you they're after-quietly gathering video evidence of your lane indiscipline before switching on the blues&twos to pull you over for a quick chat...




Maybe because Top Gear circa 2007 is less concerned with the technical aspects of everyday driving than Top Gear circa 1980's was? Maybe also because, unless you like to drive along in the misplaced belief that you're bang on the limit and that anyone trying to pass you must therefore be a speeding idiot, then it doesn't actually matter...




Having accidentally risked blinding him with one full-beam application, you then deliberately did it twice more... No, you're not a moron, you're dangerous.




Speed is just one factor, it can't in itself cause two objects to collide. And collisions don't magically start occurring only when the speeds involved are above the limit.

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Chris

Yeah, it wasn't clear.

The comparison between speed and lane discipline has been raised.
Regarding motorways: the average car driver would agree that going faster than 70 really isn't a problem (there’s nothing wrong with limits per se, it’s just that in this case they are set unreasonably low); conversely, drivers understand the importance of lane discipline and can justify the application of it.


Neither are necessary or dangerous (on their own); however, only one of them serves to impede and even knowingly frustrate.

In addition to this, you might reasonably expect a competent motorist so inadvertantly slip over the limit during the course of a typical jouney. You can't 'accidentally' lane hog - it requires either a complete lack of awareness of one's surroundings or intentional desire to hinder other motorists.

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

Well, in practice I would suggest the latter is very rare and it almost always is an unintentional behaviour that arises from ignorance and lack of awareness.

Also at the margins people who were neither ignorant or unaware would disagree on what actually constituted lane-hogging - excessive weaving between lanes is not a good motorway behaviour either

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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

That is at best a subjective and possibly even optimistic assessment mate. The presence of MLMs on our motorways suggests that there are plenty of drivers out there who:

1. Don't understand the importance of lane discipline or the HC guidlines thereon.
2. Won't put lane discipline into practice (for various reasons, fear being one)
3. Won't put lane discipline into practice because they believe that travelling at the speed limit gives them some spurious moral/legal imperative over others who choose to exceed it.

Group 1's could possibly be educated out of the habit, that still leaves us with a whole subset of drivers who believe that they are right to drive in a way others consider obstructive and inconsiderate and can justify their actions to themselves if not those of the opposing mindset.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I'm afraid I have no idea what "that" forum is.



And calling me about three dozen different names isn't low...?



I don't quite know how to get through to you, but I'm completely serious. The really strange thing here, considering how intelligent you obviously see yourself as being, is how you cannot understand the absurdity of your own stated position.



In your opinion. You're wrong of course, but I don't expect anyone as arrogant as you to ever accept that.



Except that it doesn't.



Ha ha!!! You can blame one of your fellow posters for that! Go on, blame them! But in all seriousness, it just shows how weak your argument is if you can't handle it being turned round.




Firstly, what exactly is "normal" speeding? Secondly, it's extremely unlikely that you would actually accept any evidence that contradicted what you think. You've made up your mind and that's it.



Er, except that I've replied to every single thing that you've said. Which basic questions have I failed to answer? [The answer's none of course, but I don't suppose you will read that.]

Now something that I think really needs to go in bold:

You pretend that you're right on this issue, except that you can't reply to anything I've said, yet alone everything. As soon as someone takes you on, you give up!

But the average speed shouldn't be over the speed limit. Just because many people break the law doesn't mean that it's okay to do so. And I'm not creating an obstruction but simply slowing up the traffic.

As for leaving the policing to the police, you and other people are only saying that because you want to break the speed limit. Besides, if you saw someone being threatened would you just walk on by?

I would disagree, I would say that speeding motorists do potentially affect me. But using this logic and something someone else brought up, if you saw a drug-dealer would you just ignore them because they weren't directly affecting you?

LMAO!!

So you'd go stand in front of the drug dealer to stop him selling drugs to kids would you?

Thought not! Call the police would you?

From the Cambridge Dictionary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org)

It doesn't give a specific definition for the word 'obstuction' but it does offer this example...

"The referee said it was obstruction (= that one player had got in the way of another and so prevented them from moving freely)"

So no, you may not be BLOCKING the road but you are still causing an OBSTRUCTION.

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

The Gold medal for "Contradictory Mental Gymnastics"

Goes to hjeg1 for this gem.

That's the dictionary that I use! I was going to suggest that a certain poster on here looked up the word "arrogant". Anyway, how do you defend the speeders again?

What about someone being threatened in the street?

Okay, how about someone being threatened in the street, by a large gang with weapons. Wade in and you both get a shoeing, or call the police? Any other analogies you want to pull from your rectal orifice?

Noone is defending speeders by the way, but we are pointing out that your behavior causes more of a danger on the roads than theirs! How do you justify that?

Psychologically it would appear. But not directly. Deliberately impeding the traffic flow of a motorway/DC affects lots of people directly.


Probably, yes, if they weren't affecting me, or selling to little kids.


Or undercutting me


But I wouldn't 'teach them a lesson' by standing in their way when they tried to walk to their next deal. If I thought they constituted a menace to the greater good, I'd call the police.


But I still can't understand how you can be so inflexible in your belief that 'speed kills' (it doesn't), and yet be quite happy to drive in the wrong lane. Surely you believe in obeying all motoring laws utterly inflexibly, not just some?

And what are you doing to 'teach a lesson' to the motorists causing all the other accidents not caused by speed, you know, the other 96%?

The largest single slice of the pie is accidents caused by inattention/bad observation at junctions (about 30% rings a bell, though I forget exactly). Why not hang about near junctions attempting to draw motorists' attention to hazards they may have missed?

Or actually, being an obstructive dog-in-the-manger, why not just park across particularly hazardous junctions blocking them altogether? That'll teach the inattentive!

I think the fundamental difference between a motorist doing a few mph over the limit, but observing proper lane discipline, and you is that they wish no ill intention* towards their fellow motorists, whereas you appear to harbour a great deal of ill intention towards many of your fellow motorists. Now why is that?

*I don't wish you any ill will I promise, I just wish you knew how to drive on multi lane roads properly

Firstly, why don't you reply to everything else I've said? Is it because you can't?



A "road safety campaign"!!! If you really believe that then you're only fooling yourself! I don't have any prejudices - with your prosecutions section there are clearly a lot of people on here who speed. I'm sorry that you can't accept that.




Is a troll just someone who disagrees with you? That's what it seems to be to me. And how is it road safety to drive at high speeds?



But if it's such a "fact" then why does it not actually get reported? As for arguing until I'm blue in the face, I can assure you that I'm perfectly calm... Like with that other poster who was clearly fuming at me, I would suggest that you're only thinking of yourself here.



So why doesn't it get reported again?







And everyone agrees with that statistic do they? No, they don't. You're acting as if something's a fact when you simply don't know.



And what does the DfT say to this? Do they accept that you're right?



Except that I am driving with due care and attention, so there goes that argument.



Despite my careful, attention driving? And many people opt to disregard the law. And it's not vigilante speed policing, it's merely driving in the middle lane at the speed limit.



That's just your opinion again. I believe the single biggest thing I can do is to slow the traffic down.



So another magazine psychologist! But out of curiousity, specifically which of the 'accusations' that I have derided as insults do you think cut rather closer to the core?



Ha! Yet again, you, along with so many other people on here, completely fail to understand why I've been saying what I've been saying. If you moan at middle lane drivers then you should at least accept that you (if you are a speeder) are no better than them. I could well be proven wrong about people's arrogance and aggressive if anyone on here decided to modify their driving for safety.



But there obviously isn't any answer that you are going to accept as adequate.



I would disagree.



Well of course they do.



But this is the point that I'm trying to get across to you! You can't moan at middle lane drivers if you don't care about speeders!




And they are endangering me.



Well exactly, but it was someone else who accused me of (effectively) being stuck in my ways first, and I was just responding. Notice how they didn't respond to that.



My journeys really aren't that bad you know - as I've said before, I'm not actually trying to pull these people over! I would suggest to all the speeders that if they stop speeding they may well find that they stop fuming at the middle lane drivers (because they won't be catching up to them).



But this is exactly what I said to that other poster about their speeding, but they didn't reply.



But quite clearly, as far as you and others on here are concerned, it simply wouldn't be possible to bring anything rational that you would ever accept. You've made up your mind and that's it.

Now, now, you don't need to come out with phrases like "rectal orifice"!!!

Obviously in your version of the scenario I would call the police. But how does it help your argument to change the scenario? If I could step in I would do. Jeremy Vine says that he would do so in the future too. Now where have I heard that name from...



I would justify it by disagreeing strongly that it causes more of a danger. And you're just being disingenuous by saying that no-one is defending the speeders.

Whoop whoop, hypocrite alert!

Suggest you go do some research before poo-pooing facts. You can find links to the DfT figures on this very website, the DfT researched and published them, so I expect they agree with them. This is not my opinion, it is a fact.

Get yourself a GPS device and go check the speedo accuracy on some vehicles you have access to.

I complain about middle lane drivers, and I don't speed, so that blows that one out of the water. I always modify my driving for safety. You've admitted that middle lane hogging is as bad as speeding, so why do it? The statistics show that your type of driving is far more dangerous than exceeding the motorway speed limit, so regardless of you thinking that you're doing the safest thing you can, you're wrong.

I can complain about middle lane drivers regardless of my opinon on speeders, because middle lane driving is wrong.

Your arguing style is rather puerile, and its getting tiresome, if the best you can come up with is effectively 'I know you are but what am I', then I've nothing further for you.