Safe Speed Forums

Results of surveys released yesterday, thought it might be of interest

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trsnstatsatt/roadcongestion



The report does give some of the questions asked, which is nice.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/adobepdf/162469/221412/221513/roadcongestion.pdf

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

The problem with a lot of these public surveys, is that they only compare like for like , with what people are used to at the time of the survey. You ask a person who has been driving for say two or three years what they think congestion is like compared to when they started driving and the answer would be...about the same but you ask someone who has been driving for a couple of decades or more and the answer would be totally different..the same as if you asked a recently test passee what they think of speed limits and cameras and someone who has been driving for much longer...young drivers are used to low limits and speed cameras every few miles but older drivers can't tolerate them.

I remember when I first drove/was driven around the outskirts of london (during the week) about thirty years ago. After being used to rural back roads, I was shocked that it took about 20 minutes to travel about 5 miles and a good ten minutes to pull out of a side road into a main road. It would probaly take much longer now. I remember Telford Council "boasting" back in the early nineties that you could travel from one end of Telford to the other at peak times, in about ten minutes, which was true. These days it can take about twenty minutes, at off peak times, to travel about four miles. It's not that the amount of traffic haas increased by that much, it's just that countless, unjustified traffic lights have sprung up over the last five years, or so, that add at least ten minutes to even the shortest journeys.

"Congestion" is council made and will continue to be so until common sense prevails and someone realises that traffic lights are only needed at certain times of the day, on certain roads and for the other 95% of the time, they are totally counter productive and only contribute towards more congestion and wasted fuel.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

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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

toltec, thanks for the PDF link - very interesting!

So let us "cherry pick" a few results...

Chart 20: Do you think a new charging scheme to use roads will reduce congestion?

Fifty two percent, or OVER HALF say "No", so the majority don't want a new charging scheme. Additionally, the number who said "Yes" dropped from 30% down to 29% over the last few years, so the minority support for a new charging scheme is dropping!

Chart 22: Do you think a new charging scheme is fair?

Fifty five percent, or OVER HALF say "No", so the majority don't think that it is fair. Additionally, the number who said "Yes" dropped from 29% down to 26% over the last few years, so the minority who think that it is fair is dropping!

Chart 24: How would a new road charging scheme affect you?

TWENTY NINE PERCENT say that "It doesn't apply to me / I don't drive"!!!! WTF are they doing - skewing the the results of a survey by nearly a third by including the views of participants who are not affected by any proposed changes??????

Indeed across the population as a whole, do 29% really not drive or will not be affected by any "changes"? I would have thought that very few would be unaffected, so it does cast doubt on where they got their survey sample from???

Oh, and the PDF is poorly constructed with dropped characters, hidden and linked words and keywords of "attitudes, mobility scooters, Opinions omnibus survey" - which doesn't give a lot of confidence in the people who put it all together!

mb

I noticed that the 't' key was not working on their keyboard too

I thought including non-drivers was a bit off at first, then as my wife pointed out while we were reading the report, people walking and using public transport are also affected by congestion.

Other things I found interesting were -

Chart 26: How should the revenue from such a scheme should be spent?

You could read that result as only 20% of people think the revenue from road charges should be spent on anything other than roads and transport.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May