richlyon wrote:
However, web.archive.org is a surprising and rather interesting resource - thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Some of the (now deleted) pages that existed on SafeSpeed make troubling reading. To honour Paul's intention to have them removed, I refrain from linking to them. However, I'm particularly troubled by my inability to reconcile
this quote from this thread (my emphasis):
SafeSpeed wrote:
Good grief. Safe Sped does not, nor has ever, advocated or condoned law breaking or civil disobedience. Since you have so little understanding of the campaign, its content and its objectives, you disqualify yourself from commenting on the validity of the underlying analysis.
with information that appears to have been published on SafeSpeed as recently as October 2003. When Paul made this statement, it did cause me to rethink whether I had miscalculated the situation and to soften my argument.
Sorry. I don't believe you. I recognise sophistry when I see it.
richlyon wrote:
I wonder if Paul would care to clarify now, in the interests of honesty and accuracy, whether SafeSpeed still believes that the present speed camera based road safety policy should be "attacked and undermined at every level", and if the commitment SafeSpeed made to replace information it used to provide directly (such as assuming the identity of dead people to avoid traffic convictions) with links to websites providing such information is still in force?
Of course speed camera based road safety policy should be undermined and attacked at every level. It's quite clearly deadly. The loss of trend in the fatality rate accounts for around 8,000 unexplained road deaths to date.
The old information was no more or less than a catalogue of techniques that people had used to avoid speed camera fines as reported in press.
It was scheduled for removal in 2002 when Safe Speed was about a year old. See:
http://web.archive.org/web/200302020036 ... /main.html which contains:
Due to policy and priority changes some pages (marked in red) will be deleted at the end of the year.
We are operating a serious campaign to improve road safety, and the presence of this information is sometimes used against us in discussions. We still believe that the present speed camera based road safety policy should be attacked and undermined at every level, but we can achieve more by concentrating our efforts on the foundations of policy and policy itself.richlyon wrote:
In those same interests, could he also clarify whether aggregating, publishing and actively updating lists as recently as October 2003 of mechanisms for undermining the speed camera system is consistent with the spirit of the quote given here, or whether it is simply a technical compliance that was intended.
The information that your purport to be worried about was offered with the following disclaimer:
We do not recommend or condone law breaking. We are not lawyers and the content on this page are simply ideas not recommendations. Our interest in this instance is to collect ideas for research purposes. If you try to use this information you do so entirely at your own risk. Most of the material on the page was gathered from the BBC and Times newspaper reports. Perhaps you should take your concerns up with them?
richlyon wrote:
I'm sure this is all old hat for the regulars, so please just treat this as a bit of help for a new member getting up to speed with some context.
Either that or you are looking for opportunities to have a go.
I'm neither pleased nor impressed with your approach. At best it's a cheap shot. At worst it's a wilful and deliberate attempt to undermine a serious road safety campaign.
I must have in excess of a million of my words published available around the internet. I'm not surprised that you can find opportunities to take material out of context. I'm not surprised that old material dating from before the time that I carried out the bulk of the Safe Speed research and analysis has a significantly different flavour.
When I started the campaign I knew that speed cameras were a bad idea, because as an advanced motorist with a very wide range of training I knew what I had to do to drive safely - the speedo had no real role to play. But I had absolutely no idea that camera policy was deadly. I thought the worst of it was injustice - needless fines leading to personal hardship, loss of job, that sort of thing.
But every time I turned over a stone - examining part of the government case - I found something nasty. And there were landmark discoveries along the way. This was one:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/tiger.html
If you want to enter a serious discussion about the issues then please do so. I have offered you a
link time and time again. You have shown no interest. What would you like me to conclude from your lack of interest?
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