Safe Speed Forums

Fisherman: " 'Safety Engineer wrote:
Really ?? How about people who have been pinged at traps like Folly Bottom, the SPECS in London that started outside the 20mph zone. These have caused financial consequences in terms of the fines and subsequent increases in insurance. I would say that is a case of law or enforcement of that is unfair, wouldn't you ??'

"If you think that equates to being denied education, health care, the right to vote, the right to live where you want and the right to jobs that pay a living wage because of the colour of your skin then you and I will have to disagree."

No, However, I do think it is unfair that the law is being incorrectly enforced, leading to financial hardship, whilst it is not in the league of Emily Pankhurst et al it does not mean that it should continue or that it should be accepted.


I noticed that you failed to respond to the most important comment I made:

"I have had numerous conversations with Essex Camera Partnership about one of thier sites operating near Witham that is a hazard to other road users - that is a professional opinion not a personal one - given that the potential outcome of thier method of enforcement could be a fatality, would you care to explain how that is not 'even close in importance,... or effect on peoples lives.' ??"

Is that because it does not fit with your arguments and you cannot justify it ??

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

I don’t just get all my information from this forum, but it alone has shown just what tricks and manipulation the police and legal system will go to in trying to achieve a conviction without the accused being provided with the necessary evidence. But then you seem to think that is ok.

With respect to the Brake organisation, they have a point to make, which tends to focus on the few cases where excessive speeding was the genuine primary cause. Most reasonable people, among which I include myself, wish that accidents did not happen and wants to find sensible means to achieve that.

All the speed cameras in the world can, if used sensibly, only possibly prevent a small percentage of accidents and it is not an effective way to improve road safety. It only just brings more and more resentment and disrespect for the police and legal system from the large number of perfectly safety conscious drivers trawled in by this ineffective and what would seem to be an increasingly corrupted system.

Perhaps you would care to look at the forum;
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6064
which are the notes of a Rural Traffic Officer concerning 39 fatal accidents he has been concerned with. As another police officer commented, “Very very typical - and not just rural areas which have these incidents. Not all incidents are speed related or even caused by speed”. I ask you to go through the list and honestly ask yourself how many of these were likely to have been prevented by speed cameras.

From what I could see the primary causes for most of them were, Drunks, Stupidity, Tiredness and Lack of attention. While some of these causes may have resulted in excessive speed, speed alone was the primary cause in very few of the accidents. So if we seriously want to reduce accidents and fatalities, then prosecuting large numbers of perfectly safe drivers with the use of speed cameras is not the way to achieve that.

In the end if the law is to be respected and obeyed, then it needs the support of the community, otherwise it just become an imposed tyranny from those in power.

So why not do another 10mph less and then another 10mph less and so on until we bring the country to a halt. Clearly to move around effectively involves moving at a reasonable speed and that will inevitably bring some accidents, injuries and fatalities, even where the driver was within the speed limit. What seems to have been overlooked is that the focus is just on speed, with less and less consideration of the other important issues and the damaging effects of speed cameras.

As you have agreed, “I am not trying to suggest that speed alone was responsible for any of those accidents” and it is agreed by most drivers that there does needs to be some sensible speed limits for those who drive at a dangerous speed in inappropriate conditions, but they represent very few of the driver trawled in by the speed camera system.

The law does make criminals of those who do not break it. The most criminal part of the system is that drivers are not allowed to see the evidence against them before they are criminalised. Thousands of perfectly innocent drivers are being fined and penalised due to the anomalies in and manipulation of the speed camera system and inaccuracies in the measuring equipments used.

Because there are other injustices, that does not excuse having yet further injustice with respect to the speed cameras, which can have just as serious consequences for the people and families affected, particularly where it denies someone of their livelihood.

I wonder what the effect of the removal of all speed limits, except 30 limits in towns, would be on the overall casualty figures.
Would it be chaos, or would the natural safe speed be adopted by the majority of drivers which would, in turn, influence the free flowing speeds on all major roads.

Do you really believe that most of us get most of our information from one website? I, for one, have been studying the subject for decades (since long before the Internet, let alone SafeSpeed)



But 10mph more would also have avoided the collision.



But why not, considering that we have to trust them to set an appropriate speed within the limit.

_________________
Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I was merely pointing out the absurdity in stating that had someone being doing 10mph less the accident would not have happened, and that therefore they are culpable.
The speed they were doing had little or nothing to do with it - one could equally say that had they started their journey two minutes earlier or later, or had taken a different route, then the accident would not have happened and so they're culpable because they failed to do one of those things.

_________________
Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Me too.

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

Hmm ... I find that comment very interesting.

What I would like to ask fisherman is - does the driver volunteer this opinion, or is it given in response to a specific question put to him/her by the bench or the prosecution?

If the latter, then I will definitely make sure I am ready for it if I am ever unfortunate enough to find myself in the dock.

Could the driver also have said, if I was doing 10MPH more there would not have been a collision.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

The point I was trying to make is that we are all required to use our judgement about what is or is not a safe speed having regard to all the circumstances including the posted limit. It may well be safe to drive above the posted limit, but if people decide to so they should not complain if they are then prosecuted for speeding.

I can understand why you pursue this approach but in order to pass a driving test it is neccessary to show that you make progress up to the limit when it is safe to do so and stay below the limit when it is not safe. I am at a loss to as to why drivers forget that so quickly.

I am not sure what you mean by exonerated. I would expect someone charged with speeding to be found not guilty if it shown that they were below the limit. If the charge was DWDC or dangerous driving then proof that they were speeding would NOT be sufficient for conviction and proof that they were below the limit would not be enough, on its own, for a not guilty verdict.

When someone is seen to be driving at a speed that was unsafe and / or irresponsible then a prosecution for DWDC or dangerous driving usually follows. Are you suggesting that we do away with speed prosecutions and only take action when driving is seen to be unsafe in some way?
If so, then it you perhaps don't remember the days before the breathalyser. In those days people were able to judge for themselves how much booze it took to make them unsafe and would only be in trouble if they hit something or someone. There was an enormous protest when the breathalyser first came in. We used to get people putting arguments very similar to the ones put forward on this site. There was a lot of support for the belief that drivers should be allowed to judge for themselves if they were OK to drive. Over a period of time it became obvious that the average driver can't be trusted to judge his or her ability. The number of road deaths we have now tends to suggest that the same still applies. For that reason among others the powers that be have decided to restrict the freedom of drivers to set their own speed.

Neither.
I don't know the area, I don't know why the sites you mention were put where they are, I don't know anything about your qualifications or training and even if I did I doubt I have the knowledge base to enable me to understand an argument between road safety engineers.
Its also worth pointing out that I have an entirely neutral approach to cameras. I have never expressed an opinion for or against.

My point is that "good" drivers judge their speed according to the density of hazards around them. This is a good thing, to be encouraged, indeed if all drivers were properly competent at driving in such a manner then we wouldn't need speed limits or enforcement at all. Obviously we don't have that ideal situation, but even so it seems clear to me that road safety policy should try and incermentally nudge us towards that ideal, not away from it.

Where the conflict starts is that if you use your judgement to slow down in areas of great hazard (way below the speed limit), then you also tend to use it to speed up when there are few hazards. If this happens to be in a place where the speed limit has been set unreasonably low, as is very often the case these days, then the result is a situation where competent drivers are being prosecuted even though their driving is of a high, safe standard. This is not good for road safety, as the lesson it teaches the driver is to pay more attention to following the limit than to selecting a safe speed.

I see this as a vicious circle, as the longer it goes on the less drivers will use their judgement, resulting in increasing numbers of excessive speed accidents within the speed limit. The wrong conclusion will be drawn from this (ie the solution is lower limits and more enforcement) and the spiral continues.


As I say above, it's not about "forgetting" anything, it's about how we prioritise tasks when driving. Which sits higher in the list of tasks - driving at a safe speed or driving at a legal one? Whichever you pick, from time to time it will be at the expense of adhering to the other.

If we could sort out the burden of proof problems then that's exactly what would serve road safety best. What could be better than prosecuting people who cause a hazard and leaving alone those who don't?

The problem is that the burden of proof for careless driving makes prosecution for that alone difficult. Hence the charge of "speeding" has always made a fairly good proxy for that. In the "old fashioned" way if a policeman observed someone's driving to be of a poor standard he could pull them over for a bit of "education" and use the easily evidenced speeding ticket as a means of reinforcing that message. Not a perfect system but I think it worked by and large, and the end of road safety justified the means.

But now that has gone out of the window, as people get tickets left, right and centre regardless of the standard of their driving. Thus the message that goes out is "drive how you like, just stay under the limit".


Actually I don't remember the days before the breathalyser, but in any case I think that is a completely false analogy.

To me there is no concept of a safe level of alcohol, the only reason for a limit at all is for the practicalities of enforcement. We all need to use speed to some degree if we are to travel at all, so the judgement of it's quantity is a necessity at all times. The same is not true of drink driving. Your post also suggests that the average driver and the average drink driver are one and the same, which I also believe is completely false. If we were to conduct some practical analysis I'm pretty sure we'd find that most responsible drivers don't drink and drive (and wouldn't even if there were no breathalysers), but those same responsible drivers also form the majority that routinely breaks the speed limit by prosecutable margins.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

You can cite hypothetical situations all day and "prove" whatever you want to prove. Of course it is possible to say that starting a journey two minute earlier would avoid an accident. But that would neccessitate a crystal ball. In the cases I was talking about all that was needed was a bit less accelerator or a bit more brake and definitely a lot more brain.

My remark was based on actual cases when people had pleaded guilty to either DWDC or dangerous driving.

Quite recently I saw someone who had failed to stop in time at a traffic light and had hit the car in front. Due to the large difference in size of vehicle a child in the back of the car he hit was very seriously injured. He stood in the dock with tears streaming down his face, and said "If I had been doing 10 MPH less I would have stopped in time". He had been asked if there was anything he wanted to tell us. He gave no mitigation. Didn't try to say it was someone elses fault, didn't blame the road surface etc. He just told the truth.

Drivers like that will probably punish themselves far more than any court can. None of it will take away the injuries to the child.

And for that reason, the "powers that be" have proved themselves to be fatally wrong.

You only have to look at accident statistics to see that drunk-driving contributes a disporportionate number of deaths and injuries, consequently, taking action to prevent it makes good sense for road safety. It's also perfectly reasonable to assume that someone cannot be trusted to judge their own ability to drive whilst alcohol-impaired as one of the main effects of alcohol is to impair judgement!

However, to attempt to apply the same rationale to "low-grade" speeding - which is essentially the main thrust of camera policing - is to make an assumption based on little more than guesswork and "good intentions". To paraphrase Paul Garvin's comments, the percentage of accidents caused by sober, undrugged drivers travelling at a speed moderately in excess of the posted limit is vanishingly small. Yet these are the people who are being prosecuted in massive numbers by the camera system. Yes, they're breaking the law - but as I said elsewhere, so are people who take a few paperclips home from work - but they're not contributing to the accident statistics, ie they're not a road safety problem, so concentrating on them to the increasing exclusion of all else is nonsensical - dangerously so... Convictions for drunk driving are on the increase, may I venture to suggest because of the lack of police patrols encourages the less responsible to "take a chance on it".

From a purely numbers-based view, prosecuting a couple of million drivers a year has not contributed one jot to road safety... So why do it?

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

I suspect a sizeable part of that is due to the "speed kills" brainwashing that goes on these days.

Sure, if the driver had been going 10mph less then the impact would have been substantially less, but that is surely just one factor in the equation. If he'd been following at a greater distance, or observing better, or anticipating the actions of the vehicle in front he would just as easily have avoided the accident completely.

Remember that according to the figures from the TRL you are about 6 to 10 times more likely to cause an accident through inattention than you are through speeding.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Oh they certainly don't forget. They learn.

Learner drivers and those newly qualified have very little idea about the safe use of speed. They have around 10 times the average crash rate because of weaknesses in hazard perception and speed setting.

As experience grows our ability to perceive and assess hazards improves very markedly and we develop the ability to adjust speed accurately to the conditions.

The risk assessment process that leads to speed setting is largely subconscious and we are not terribly aware of it. But it's there telling us to feel scared if we drive too fast or to feel bored and frustrated if we drive too slow.

In fact the speed limit is a positive distraction for an experienced and responsible driver. This wasn't a problem with discretionary speed enforcement by police officers but it's a damn serious problem with cameras.

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

Exactly. The real cause of the accident was inattention, his speed was an irrelevance.

Without wishing to appear unduly cynical, I'd venture to suggest that admitting to committing the overworked crime of "speeding" or going too fast is more Politically Correct, and thus likely to receive more lenient treatment, than simply admitting "I wasn't looking where I was bloody-well going."!

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

When a collision has occurred this statement may well be true, but it is also true that the collision may have been avoided by leaving more space or concentrating on the hazards ahead so that they started braking sooner. The speed you are travelling at has very little to do with the chance of a crash occuring unless you are going too fast for the conditions. In good conditions you can go very fast and still leave space and time to stop.

I would strongly suggest that this case had everything to do with inattention, and little or nothing to do with speed.
Just to put things into perspective, the distance between two streetlights is around 60 metres. 60 metres is sufficient to perform an emergency stop on a dry road from speeds in excess of 60MPH!
I'm sorry, but surely he should have seen that the lights were red from at least the distance between two streetlights away - more probably from two to four times that distance - so why, then, did he fail to stop in time? It's not as if a child ran out from behind a parked van, leaving him little or no time to react, or anything like that.
At 30mph, you cover 13.3 metres (44 feet) every second - so just a half a seconds inattention can cost a lot in terms of what may be precious distance.

I believe it's because of all the 'speed kills' propaganda that many drivers see speed as the root of all evil, and may very well cause them to neglect other far more important aspects of their driving - like attention and hazard awareness.

_________________
Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I keep coming back to the “10mph” question.



Fisherman has said this on more than one occasion. It seems odd to me that the figure always seems to be “10mph”. And even stranger if all these drivers spontaneously come up with the same figure. I’m beginning to think that this may be fisherman’s figure, not theirs.

One explanation, then, would be that these drivers are asked directly, perhaps by fisherman himself, during the course of the hearing, whether they think that if they had been doing 10mph less there would not have been a collision (or that the accident would have been less serious than it was)

But wouldn’t I be right in saying that any answer the driver gave to that question would be pure conjecture? And therefore not admissible as evidence in any court?

But despite that

Fisherman: "Neither.
I don't know the area, I don't know why the sites you mention were put where they are, I don't know anything about your qualifications or training and even if I did I doubt I have the knowledge base to enable me to understand an argument between road safety engineers.
Its also worth pointing out that I have an entirely neutral approach to cameras. I have never expressed an opinion for or against."

In terms of my quals/experience I would be happy to provide, it is certainly greater than the individuals at ECP I have dealt with (here is a quick overview http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4459)

My gripe with speedcamera partnerships is that this is all being done in the name of safety yet I keep coming across sites that are unsafe in thier location. After the farce that was ECP's reaction my approach is know:

Contact local police normally control room or traffic division directly, tell them that a contractors vehicle is parked dangerously, describe location, position etc and then wait for police to attend. If the vehicle was parked/operating safely I could be up for wasting police time, yet of the three occasions I have done this in all three cases the officers attending agreed it was less than safe and moved the camera vehicle on. Of the three sites one was in Essex, one in Kent and one in Herts.

Those that uphold the law need to abide by it, likewise I know of no UK or international legislation, guidance or code of practice that states the way to control a hazard is to create another.

Perhaps you can now see why many including myself are very sceptical of camera partnerships and thier 'facts' ??

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk