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Safe Speed issued the following PR at 07:10 this morning:

PR280: The latest madness: Pace cars in Doncaster

news: for immediate release

In an astonishing display of foolhardiness and ineptitude the Doncaster 'Road
Safety Education Unit' has launched a scheme intended to recruit citizens for
'mobile traffic calming' duties.

In practice this means members of the public 'pledging' to keep within the
speed limit at all times and displaying a sticker on their vehicle to say that
they are doing so. These poor unfortunates will then act as mobile barriers
preventing following traffic from exceeding the speed limit.

Safe Speed warns that the scheme is dangerous and totally unrealistic. It will
undoubtedly INCREASE road dangers due various factors:

* Risks due to frustrated overtaking.
* Risks due to tailgating.
* Risks due to traffic bunching
* Risks due to a 'holier than thou' attitude
* Risks due to traffic obstruction

Road safety works best when drivers co-operate together and adjust their speed
to suit the hazard environment - but Doncaster's mad scheme seeks to undermine
both of those foundation principles.

Just imagine the chaos that would be caused by a Doncaster-style pace car at
70mph in lane 3 of a UK motorway - but the Doncaster message appears to
suggest that to do so would be 'good driving'.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "This level of incompetence is breathtaking, and
heads must roll in Doncaster. "Road safety depends on drivers adjusting their
speed to the hazard environment. This vital behaviour is being gradually,
inexorably and dangerously replaced with a 'driving by numbers' approach."

"UK road safety is in a terrible state. Endless erroneous messages about the
importance of the speed limit have left a generation of professionals shooting
at entirely the wrong safety targets. The public is losing faith and turning
off to the whole subject. We're dumbing down the roads and it just doesn't
work. Road deaths are about 1,200 a year above the level that anyone would
have predicted 10 years ago."

"We have to stop pretending that the speed limit represents a safe maximum
speed. It does no such thing and we all know it. We know it because we have to
assess hazards and we have to adjust speed to suit the hazard environment.
We're good at it. We do it. We will always do it."

"Speed limits are a useful minor part of road safety. They are not a panacea.
Modern policy has promoted them way beyond their level of competence from
useful servant to cruel and incompetent master. As a nation we are becoming
obsessed with speed limits - and that's a very bad thing."

<ends>

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

I'm completely gob-smacked. Morons!!
Prepare for the accident rate to rise as "ordinary" motorists get frustrated and do something inappropriate.
Will these pace cars eventually be told to report anyone overtaking them? Will they be given cameras and notebooks?
And I bet you a pound to a penny that it won't be long till one of them thinks he's Trafpol, and decides to give someone a lecture, or worse tries to pull someone over.
Lunacy.

And given the recently discussed overreading of speedos, we would be faced with; "I'm driving WITHIN the limit, using a speedo that's already reading 10% over". So we'll be faced with them driving at 50 in 60 limit areas. They will then be outraged when people overtake them STILL at or below the limit in some cases.

The potential for creating strife unncecessarily is very worrying - particularly given the mindset of those who will volunteer for this hair brained piece of nonsense.

That is a scary, andcompletely realistic thought.

Perhaps we could call them "Traffic safety puppets"

_________________
Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

and as they'll be driving 'within' the limit, who's to say that the speed they consider safe for their car/conditions/abilities is appropriate for everyone else? Or are they just going to drive everywhere AT the speed limit regardless of the conditions?

You beat me to it prof.

Dont forget that speedos can legally over-read by 10%+6.25mph - that's a lot of tolerance (ignoring the fact that these roadblocks wil be driving at under the limit - the sum total could be result with a lot of speed differential from the limit). So how frustrated do you think one of these pious idiots would become, when armed with such an inaccurate speedo, when being constantly (but legally and safely) overtaken by those with more accurate speedos? (some with a differential speed in excess of 10mph - ' these guys are maniacs' )
I'm afraid that it's not beyond the realm of possibility that these SCP's soldiers would consider 'blocking' these overtakers - not really the safest of manoeuvres! I notice there's nothing within that scheme which asks drivers to refrain from such bad or dangerous driving

I think I'll take them up on their offer of "have your say"

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

The mind boggles - perhaps a notice outside Doncaster - "you are now entering unsafe road conditions"/"beware the thought police"/ or similar, would be appropriate.

_________________
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

I have written an email to them. This sort of thing is disgraceful, they haven't got a clue. You can guarantee this was the idea of a harebrained bureaucrat keen to impress their peers in the "Be Politically Correct" club where they all sit in a padded room doing nothing as it's all been banned in the name of promoting diversity/equality/safety.

Be interesting to see if road rage incidents rise due to this.Perhaps the people living in padded accomodation should replace those on the road "safety" committee

_________________
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

Do they believe we're all freshly out of a kindergarten.



So it will be for these people to determine at what speed they believe we should be driving at, and if they decide to drive below the limit we should all be expected to stay behind them. Lunacy at it’s best!!.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Dixie's picked up on a very interesting point- these muppets could do 20mph on a nice bit of NSL road (because that's what THEY think is safe), and they'd actually believe they were contributing to road safety!!!!

So basically, the driving population of Doncaster will be forced into 1 of 3 categories.

1 - the 'pace car scheme' members
2 - those hard of thinking who will just blindly follow the pace car because 'they must be travelling at a safe speed'
3 - those who can decide for themselves.

The less said about group 1 the better - holier than thou types who get their kicks out of writing to the local paper about how 'it wasn't this bad in my day'

Group 2 will IMO be the most dangerous and be involved in the more minor of the increased number of accidents in the area. In this group we will have the sheep - they will drive at the speed of the pace car paying little or no attention to the surrounding conditions. Lets face it, they drive like this already, but as a 'flock' there is at least some awareness of surroundings however inadequate.

Group 3 should probably by sub-divided into those who will let aggression and frustration get the better of them and those who resign themselves to the madness and avoid the city where possible. The aggressive ones will perform dangerous and risky overtakes and will be blamed for causing all of the accidents in the area. They will be involved in more accidents than at present and more than likely the accidents will be more severe. They will be the reason that the pace car scheme will stay in place - look at these aggressive nutcases driving like insane people, they need to be slowed down for their own safety. Come and join the scheme and stop them!

Madness, utter madness, and how long before people taking part in the scheme will have their cars vandalised for displaying the sticker?

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

I suspect it would be about 30 minutes before someone spots a "pace car" doing 37 in a 30 and writes to the local press about it.

I would seriously doubt the ability of anyone who hasn't passed an advanced test to even know what the speed limit is at all times, let alone stick to it. It is by no means as easy as the ill-informed believe.

How many people are really going to be willing to put themselves up as an Aunt Sally in this way?

I seem to recall reading about a similar scheme a year or so again, possibly in Essex. I wonder what became of that.

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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

Amazing, I have looked around a bit and it doesn't seem as if it is the first:

http://www.idea-knowledge.gov.uk/idk/co ... Id=1723614


(my emphasis) So it's OK for them to speed elsewhere then, just NIMBY!

http://www.salford.gov.uk/council/local ... nsport.htm

(my emphasis)

I assume those statistics were peer reviewed befor publication.

Just how do they know that this particular scheme resulted in anything? It's all just tosh (IMO).

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

I got all excited thinking Madness were playing in gig in Doncaster! No such luck, and truth is so bad I can't quite believe it. This scheme is absolutely and utterly bonkers.

So ordinary members of the public are being asked to undertake a skilled role of being a pace car with absolutely no training whatsoever? What will happen when the first accident involving a pace car occurs? As others have said, what happens when the first road rage incident happens when a pace car driver starts to believe they have authority and tries to exert that (imagined) authority?

The utter stupidity and irresponsibility of getting untrained memebers of the public to preform potenially dangerous road safety inititatives like this really defies belief.

I hope no innocent life is lost thanks to the actions of the incompetent fools.

Cloud cuckoo land.

I'm sure that there was a brief period when the Police said they were going to do this on the M5. There was talk of running marked cars at 70mph in L3. I've been trying web searches, but have found no reference. I'd say it was 4 or 5 years ago. I don't think the stupid behaviour materialised, or maybe they actually did it for a few days. If anyone has a reference, or a better memory, I'd appreciate the info.

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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

Email sent, with some of the above points noted, to the Doncaster idiots.
It will all end in tears, for them.

Anyone know the local papers in Doncaster? I'll give them a bell...

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