Safe Speed Forums

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4416158.stm

Child road safety measures urged

The government should take steps to protect children on or near roads, according to campaign group Brake.

To coincide with National Road Safety Week, safety campaigners are calling for speed cameras and 20mph zones outside all schools.

Last year over 100 children under 16 were killed while walking or cycling. Many argue this cannot be ignored.

But the government says the number of accidents is falling and councils must balance motorist and pedestrian needs.

Safety campaigners are calling for the changes around schools in particular because they say that speed cameras and 20mph zones are often only installed once there has been an accident.

Survey revelations

According to a survey conducted by the charity of children aged between five and 14, 43% have been hit or nearly hit while walking or cycling.

The findings also show that 42% of the youngsters questioned know somebody in their area who has been injured or killed in on the road.

And seven in 10 children do not walk or cycle because of fast traffic.

The findings came from a survey of 10,376 youngsters aged five to 14.

Improved education

The government has suggested that education is one way to tackle the issue of road safety.

For example, it has been suggested that funding road safety awareness lessons in schools could reduce the number of accidents.

But campaigners argue that there is little point in making children more aware of the dangers if nothing is done to make the roads outside their schools safe.

Brake, which is an independent road safety charity, has also called for tougher penalties for drivers who kill or maim children.
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Do I notice a little bit of 'arms length' treatment from the BBC?

Perhaps Brake have tortured one too many numbers?

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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

What a load of emotive nonsense. What does this actually tell us about the numbers of people killed or injured??

Sweet fanny adams!

Just imagine it - one single child of school age stupidly runs in front of a car and is knocked down. In the following days, at assemblies, all the pupils in the school are warned of the dangers of running into the road, with the name of their fellow pupil cited as an example.

The following week the loonies at Brake survey them. Lo and behold, of 900 pupils questioned all of them answer that they know someone who has been killed or injured on the road!! 100%!!!

[quote="SafeSpeed"]According to a survey conducted by the charity of children aged between five and 14, 43% have been hit or nearly hit while walking or cycling.
[quote]

"or nearly hit" - I suppose you could say you were nearly hit every time a car passes you while you are walking on the pavement. After all the car passes only a few feet away. I'm surprised the figure isn't 100%.

Yes, what about better education for the kids?



I doubt motorists would mind that as long as these 20 limits don't apply 24/7

I do hope so...

While I have every sympathy with Mary Williams' personal experiences, those same experiences disqualify her from having a balanced and objective view on road safety. The name of her organisation says it all.

When I was 14 I was hit by a car on my way home from school - it was 5.30 in the evening, I'd just got off the bus and was only a few hundred yards from home (but nowhere near school). Fortunately there was no permanent damage, though I spent the weekend in hospital after sliding off the car and banging my head on the kerb. Apparently I was saved from a broken leg by the heavy bag of school books I was carrying, but I don't remember much about it. (I remember lots of jokes about it when I went back to school - the idea of me bouncing off the bonnet invited comparisons with Starsky and Hutch!)

It would be easy to say that if the driver had been going a little slower he might have been able to stop - though I doubt he was "speeding" - and if he'd turned his lights on sooner (as it was beginning to get dark) I might have seen him better, and things like that. But I don't blame him for anything, nor was it anything to do with my lack of road safety awareness - the reality is probably that I was in a hurry to get home on a Friday evening and I misjudged my ability to skedaddle across the road with a heavy bag!

Putting 20mph zones and speed cameras outside all schools is all very well, but it wouldn't have helped me, and it may actually have a negative effect if drivers have their heads buried in the speedo as they pass schools when they should be looking out of the window. If the driver doesn't see the pedestrian until the very last second, or at all, even 20mph is going to hurt.

I would suggest a new national road marking standard for "high pedestrian risk zones" consisting of a red and yellow hatched pattern on the road surface. I recall seeing a similar solution outside schools in Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire), and it seemed to work.

Ooooh, the dilemma. The obvious question is who or what will be used to pay for the cameras?

To even suggest that revenue from other cameras should be used to subsidise them is a tacit admission that revenue raising is an objective of the cameras and that certain cameras will not catch many people. Moreover, the ability to put up these 'safety' measures is directly linked to how many illegal speeders they can detect and catch elsewhere. I can see the slogans now... "Speed here and help pay for your school's camera - Please!!".

So, where exactly then is the incentive to reduce speeding....

And so it goes round again.....

I sort of like the title of this thread - "Road Safety Weak".

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

How many children (or adults) have been hit by

a: vehicles mounting pavements

b: on signal controlled crossings

c: on zebra crossings.

These are the accidents that can possibly be attrributed to driver error, and may have a speed element.

Then lets start looking at all the other ones and uncover the primary causes.

20 mph areas also encourage pedestrians to step into the road without looking even more. It is amazing how many of them misjudge your speed and have to quicken pace to get across the road if you don't visibly slow down for them

It was a long time ago but I was hit by a van that mounted the pavement outside my school at chucking out time when I was 10 years old, and suffered a broken leg and concussion. The vehicle failed to stop, and IFAIK was never identified.

Pehaps that is why I have some sympathy with the idea of speed cameras outside schools, although I don't know that the van that hit me was speeding. I notice that nowadays there IS a gatso outside my old school. So presumably there have been other more recent accidents there.

I think that outside schools is one of the few places that cameras could be justified. Some accident black spots might be another, as a temporary meausre until the road can be re-engineered, or as a last resort where it cannot. Certainly not on motorways or fast safe dual carriageways.

These are probably the only places where cameras should be considered. But even then I have doubts - I would rather drivers were looking out for kids instead of cameras. In such cases vehicle activated signs on the approaches to schools might be more effective.

I thought that, about cameras outside schools, until 'SafeSpeed Paul' put me straight. Every time a driver approaches a camera he/she takes eyes from road ahead and looks/checks his/her speedo three separate times. Is this what you want a driver to be doing in such a location as a school at going in and chucking out time?
Also, why would you want a camera enforced limit outside a school at 02-30 hours?

The van mounted the pavement and failed to stop, I doubt the van was speeding, and I doubt that a speed camera would have detected this kind of accident. Where I live (and there are many schools in the area) you don’t even think of going near these schools (morning or afternoon) for the simple fact you can’t drive down the road, cars and children everywhere, not to mention speed bumps. it's vertually impossible to speed anyway.

So in general I don't see the point of cameras outside schools. I find that for rural schools on main roads the flashing amber lights are all that is required (for most drivers) to remind drivers of the oncoming dangers and slow them down.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

The following page gives some background: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedo.html

It is the best data available anywhere. Amazingly. The effect has not otherwise been studied.

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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

the stats for pedestrian fatalities are something like over 70% pedestrian at fault and more than half of those are drunk.

But of course its still the car drivers fault.

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"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

That is my point.

The three situations I hightlighted are the only ones where you could argue that the vehicle is responsible for a collision with a pedestrian.

And as someone has pointed out they only account for some 30% of ped fatalities.

at best 20mph can only ever be mitigation for the stupidity of pedestrians.

I think if the car is genuinely travelling too fast for the conditions then the driver starts to accumulate some blame. At grossly inappropriate speeds, e.g. 60mph in a narrow residential street, then the driver will be entirely at fault.

Ok, I'll add a category where the vehicle was moving at such a speed that the driver could not with 'reasonable notice' stop for a pedestrian or that the pedestrian could not have reasonably expected a vehicle to be approaching.

But I think you get my point.

that a lower limit can at best mitigate the effects of a collision but obsessive adherence to it could make the collision more likey in the first place.

x 1000

MCN 09/11/2005

Just read it. I think it deserves its own thread.

They have way overstepped the mark this time. Statistics made up on the spot. The deserve a good stuffing for this.

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Speed camera policy Kills