Safe Speed Forums

Actually farmers have been very hard up in recent years but things are getting better now. Not long ago a sheep would cost you 50p, no really! For them being asset-rich with very little income was a major problem.
Big agri-business has never been too badly off and it is basically an industry in its own right with economies of scale - which is why the tractors and trailers are getting bigger, heavier and wider without the roads being improved to cope.

Still not worked out the quote things, anyway. BMWK12 I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, farmers are allowed to haul their own produce on red diesel. And my friend, if you have 1 truck that can pull a load of spuds in a wet field in november at 400 meters/hr withou getting stuck and get the trailer loaded properly without causing the harvester driver (me) to loose his temper because your not loading the trailer properly then I will be suprised. My tractor has to have a special creeper 'box to go that slow and the other tractors even have troblem with that sort of speed.

Do diggers require white fuel to use the roads??? How many miles a year does your truck do? 150,000 +? I used to do alot of raod work on a very big farm , but covered no more than 10k. It's very expensive using tractors to haul stuff. Mine has a 135 hp B series cummins. With a full trailer it grsses 25 tonnes and only gets 4.5 mpg. What does a 44 tonne artic get 7 or 8 mpg? and moving twice the weight at twice the speed?

They DO NOT get paid to do nothing. Europe was starving twice last century, once is still within living memory. So farmers were subsidised to grow food to feed people. However, we're good, very good, too good infact. Now we have tonnes of food. Tonnes of cheap food, Tonnes of high quality cheap food. Farmers are now being paid to look after wild life, or should they, as private individual do this out of the goodness of their hearts? Would you? If we do so little work, how do I manage to do 4-500 hours overtime a year and why do I still have 13 days hoidiay left.

Can't speak weather any other business has more subsidies than some sectors in agriculture, most imported food is subsidised. Do you think, Nissan, Toyota and Honda would build cars here if the government wasn't helping them? Nor me. They can screw them together in eastern europe for peanuts

You might see plenty of farmers that are asset rich, so in your eyes are not hard up, but I'm not sure the farm I have worked on for the last 4 years has broke even since I've been here and it is a preety tight ship he runs here. My dad is a dairy farmer and earns far less than mum who is a ....... nurse. She does nothing like the hours either.[/quote]

rich farmers, my dad drives a y2k Skoda Felica.

They help prevent people from crashing into things fast.



And from your creative use of statistics, insurance is a waste of money because we are so overwhelmingly successful at avoiding accidents!

But we still need it because a single ‘hit’ is far more important to use than a near infinity of ‘near misses’. In practice, near misses are uncounted, undefined and indefinable. Yet you want to use them to claim overwhelming success!?!



No – another part of this is to say what the coppers here cannot say – speeders are mugs.

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Welcome back basingwerk, I trust you had a pleasurable Easter break.

I'd love to continue our discussion, but I'm afraid (being the slacker that I am) that I'm about to leave work. I'll catch up with you tomorrow no doubt.

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

I thought that's what eyesight, brainpower and brakes were for (and used correctly will stop people crashing into things completely, regardless of 'limits').....




Only insofar as the way the law is framed and enforced at the moment is mugging safe motorists.

Your eye is completely off the ball BW. Speed limits are currently enforced to an unprecedented degree yet deaths are increasing, and your support for a flawed policy is deplorable for in some small way you shoulder some of the blame. Something else more important is being neglected and some people are getting it very wrong.

Even from the earliest days of motoring, we know that motorists over do it, partly due to hurry or excitement and partly out of ignorance. Ungoverned, people have a pronounced tendency to crash along, thumb in bum, mind in neutral. It is only human nature, unless you bring them to account.



They may think they are safe, but that is only their opinion - the opinion of law breaking mugs. Why do you support them, r11co?



And your support for letting the mugs off is far more deplorable than that. I just want everyone to clam down and take the pledge. Have you done so yet, or are you still intermittently breaking ht law as and when you feel like it? Listen, in the local paper this week is a story about a 26 year old ‘Research Scientist’ who smashed into a cyclist near a bend on a country road and put her in a coma for months. He was unharmed and told an eyewitness that ‘he tried really hard not to hit her – I was only doing 80 mph’! This is deplorable, r11co! Luckily, he has been done for dangerous driving and may do a stretch inside. Good riddance to old rubbish. The only way to hurt the morons is to ping every one you can find until they get the message. So hit them where it hurts - in the pocket!

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This idiot got what he deserved. But it sounds like he could easily have caused this accident at 60 mph! He would not have been a speeding mug but still driving far too fast for the situation.

Fair do's, you could be right. But the stretch is usually OK at or under the NSL - I drive it every day of every week. If this bonehead had taken the pledge, and stayed under the limit all the time like he was trained to when he had his lessons, he wouldn't be facing a stretch in jail, and the lady cyclist wouldn't have to learn to walk again. What makes you gasp is that he said he was 'only doing 80', as if it's nothing!!!

Of course, he is as surprised as we would be - he was just going along in thumb in bum, master of all he surveys mode. Only now, he's likely to share a cell with common criminals. Just goes to show how quick your luck can change when you chance your arm with the law. Serves him right.

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My point is that he could still have killed/injured this lady by by driving too fast within the speed limit. The woman would still be dead but he wouldn't be in jail. By giving out the message that everything is fine if your within the speed limit you take away some personal responsibility, however small, for your driving. More important to me is to emphasise personal responsibility with no get out clause eg "I was in the speed limit when I killed her" therefore not my fault.

Indeed, and that is well covered by different laws (not the speed limit) as far as I know. I'm interested today in the speeding laws.



Where does it say that? Who spreads that message? I've looked everywhere and nowhere can I find a single person nor reference which even indicates this. The limits only say the MOST that can be reasonable to drive in nominal circumstances in a given area, and everybody is told to do less when appropriate as far as I know.

I know there are boneheads out there, so that is all the more reason to enforce the limits fiercely, not less.

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It is never said implicitly, but it is the message that is given out by safety adverts.
E.g. "Speed Kills" by which I would take the meaning "speeding kills". Some people, enough to have an effect, will take this as "not speeding doesn't kill" which is dangerous.

Do people interpret "Speed Kills" to mean that anything is OK if you are within the speed limit? Despite the highway code, all thier lessons and thier test, which all say different?

All due respect, fergl100, but that's one hell of a jump.

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... and before he learned to judge a safe and appropriate speed according to the conditions.

You'll be telling me next that newly qualified drivers are safer because they stick to the speed limit, when the reality is that their crash rate is around ten times greater than a typical experienced driver.

And there's something rather trollish about putting a new users on the spot with your tired old inaccurate theories. Please be nice to new users!

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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

There was astudy done in Scandinavia on risk perception in children. I think it is relevant to risk perception in cars.

In this study a group of children had their playtimes monitored to keep them safe and another group were allowed to play unsupervised.
To cut to the conclusion, the children who had risks taken away from them were found to end up in A and E more, in the subsequent 5 year period than the children who had been left alone to evaluate risk "naturally".

The point is that we all allow for a certain amount of risk naturally in any given situation and we do it all the time. If this risk amount is set then if you make one part of an activity safer, humans will take this into account and add on a bit of risk elsewhere.

In otherwords, although it sounds as if everyone would be safer if we all drove within the speed limit, in practice the opposite might occur.

As an example in the playground, put down a soft flooring and children will climb higher. In cars when forced to drive slower than perceived to be safe then take your eyes off the road ahead for longer when changing your CD.

Yes. I think it's highly relevant. Have you got a reference for that particular study?

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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

I'll try.

He was 26 years old!



I’m no troll, so OK then, but I don't want fergl100 to get the wrong idea. A lot of disgruntled 'speeding mugs' hang out here, talking about how saintly they are, apart from their car habits. Some of us don't listen to their soft whining about cameras, and like to tell them straight what bums they are. If I had my way, I’d put the lot of them on the bus – permanently!

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You sound grumpy.
I'd rather go by car than bus because it's not so boring.

Typical basingwerk. You know very well that you are trying to score a point by switching from the general case to a specific case. You know very well that we were discussing a general case. You lose the point for being slimy.



The serious point: "be nice to new users" is an important one and applies to everyone.

In this case however, fergl100 looks well able to defend himself.

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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