Safe Speed Forums

A Safer Way: Consultation on Making Britain's Roads the Safest in the World
Found HERE
Closing date: 14 July 2009

Responses to : HERE
Online Tick Box Survey Answers : HERE
Their Questions :
(Answers *Strongly agree *Agree *Neutral *Disagree *Strongly disagree)
3. Do you agree that our road safety strategy should take account of wider issues, such as climate change?
4. We want to have a long-term 'vision' of Great Britain having the world's safest roads. Do you agree this is a good choice of 'vision'?
5. Do you agree that we should focus on the practical things we can do to deliver road safety improvements rather than making lots of new laws?
6. Do you agree that increasing the number of 20mph zones is a good way to reduce pedestrian casualties?
7. Do you agree with our proposed approach to revise our guidance on speeds on rural roads?
8. Do you agree that we should encourage local authorities to prioritise and invest in good value road safety engineering schemes?
9. Do you agree that providing high quality consumer information about safety performance is a good way to raise awareness and improve safety?
10. To make vehicles safer, do you agree that we should put renewed emphasis on the development of advanced crash avoidance systems?
11. We believe that the following are behaviours we need to tackle. Do you agree?
a) excessive speed
b) drink-driving
c) careless or dangerous driving
d) failing to wear a seat belt
e) drug driving
12. Do you agree that our measurable road safety targets should be for 10 years, to 2020?
13. We believe that our new road safety strategy should be for 20 years with regular reviews. Do you think this is right?
14. Our proposed targets are to reduce deaths on our roads by at least 33% and serious injuries on our roads by at least 33% by 2020.
a) Do you agree that these targets are realistic?
Our proposed targets are to reduce deaths on our roads by at least 33% and serious injuries on our roads by at least 33% by 2020.
a) Do you agree that these targets are realistic?
b) Do you agree that these targets are suitably challenging?
15. We propose a target of reducing the annual total of road deaths and serious injuries to children and young people (aged 0-17) by at least 50% by 2020, compared with the 2004-08 average.
a) Do you agree that this target is realistic?
b) Do you agree that this target is suitably challenging?
16. Our proposed target is to reduce the rate of people killed or seriously injured per km travelled by pedestrians and cyclists by at least 50% by 2020, compared with the 2004-08 average.
a) Do you agree that a target for walking and cycling is useful?
b) Do you agree that this target is suitable?

What would our advice be?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I have had a go at putting some comments without too much actual thought as Sunday Roast beckons ,,. Yorkshire Pud etc ... mmmmmmm!

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

6. Do you agree that increasing the number of 20mph zones is a good way to reduce pedestrian casualties?
A nastily used question. It doesn't even hint at any other options such as road engineering or pedestrian education (or parental accountability). Because this is the only given choice, people will tend to agree to it.

11. We believe that the following are behaviours we need to tackle. Do you agree?
a) excessive speed
but, this was pre-empted by
Excessive speed also remains an issue, and was recorded as a contributory factor in 26% of road deaths in 2007.
RCGB2007 puts the Excessive speed portion (both 'exceeding the limit' and 'too fast for conditions') at 7% and 10%, so totalling 17%, not 26%. Don't forget, there are an average of 2.5 contributory factors per fatality.

9. Do you agree that providing high quality consumer information about safety performance is a good way to raise awareness and improve safety?
Well they've got to start sometime

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

It's one of those totally useless, office beuarocrat thought out questionarres that leads you to give the answers that they want you to give. My comments to it in the comments question were:

"That was a totally useless consultation that proves nothing and you people will not learn one iota from it. If you want to learn anything about road safety you should be asking people who drive for a living, people who exceed 50,000 miles per annum. failing that you should all do a driving job for 12 months in a job where you excced 50,000 miles per annum on mixed mileage roads. Try Parcelforce or something similar as in a courier/delivery job. That is the only way that people like yourselves will even start to understand road safety issues, university degrees and computer simulations won't help you one bit."

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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.

OH .. very much likely.

I put my initial take in red ink. I should perhaps go back and edit as it looks hard to read to me .. even by my own standards (my mind was on impending Sunday Roast and "jolly good it was too"! )

But this is a working document. We will have to debate and waffle along on the way . to fine tune the responses. So let's do so.

I will revise my take and play the serious card later when I can draw fair breath,



By the way .. in work mode . I am blunt and short. In relaxed mode .. I let rip to my feelings. AS does my wife and I suspect .. IG does .. as our work--a-day lives are intense and busy. I also have too many kids. . ho ... hum. and "diddums den"! to me and mine

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

The online questions are only a small section of this and sadly construct loaded questions that aims directly at their goal.
They are so engrossed that speed is the only factor they cannot see any other option.

I am proposing to put forward the Safe Speed concepts, for this Consultation with stats, facts and truth.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I found it incredible that I strongly disagreed with almost every single policy they proposed, apart from the one about engineering - which I strongly agreed with.

Like all other surveys, the questions only go towards proving the bias of the questioners.
However, at least on THIS one you have the question base available so you can see where they are going, and where they want the parties being questioned to go.
Many univ surveys (public service client surveys) keep the question base secret.
You just know what the result is going to be anyway, no matter what the replies are the result is never going to be anything but:
1. Lower speed limits.
2. Fewer cars
3. More public transport
The END result will be:
1. Lower speed limits.
2. More cars
3. Public transport stays the same.
I come back to my central theme here, that the public services are over manned. That alone is going to bankrupt the country over the next 30 years. More revenue is urgently needed, from anywhere.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

It's not very often that I agree with jomukuk but he is certainly spot on with his saying that the public services are seriously overmanned, overpaid and a total drain on this crountry. The salary , pensions and golden handshakes of their higher execs are criminal.

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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.

Which of the public servants do you want to sack first? Nurses, doctors, policemen, firemen, teachers? Or would you be content just to lower their income to the minimum wage?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I should start with the "Outreach Co-ordinators", GLBT Facilitators" and "Five a Day Advocates" advertised in the Guardian. Do you think we would really miss these non-jobs?

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

http://www.jobrapido.co.uk/?w=borough%20council&l=bedfordshire

Oh, and another several tens of millions gone down the pan......

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/08/scope_debate/

OOppps....possibly another £31,000,000,000 down the pan....and at least £12,000,000,000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4392555.stm

Not to mention that practically every pubic servant in the land would have access to everything about you.

Too much "state".
Too expensive "state"
And too many state "servants"

Mrs Thatcher reduced the public service payroll by over 40% in her first years....

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

So would I. But I still take issue with graball's contention that the NHS is overmanned. Too many admistrators maybe but on the front line undermanned.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

The NHS has far too many managers but my big gripe is our local councils with it's "officers" who invent grand job titles to make themselves feel worthy and justify wasted jobs. In my local council if you call in, no one person can sort out any problem, they have to keep passing the buck until eventually it takes at least three people to sort one minor problem. I have worked with councils and have friends who work there so I know what they are like.

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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.

That old red herring. What proportion of the public sector do those jobs make up? 30%, tops.

What the other 70+% do is anyone's guess.

I do a lot of work for the public sector and it amazes me how many people and how much time it takes for them to make decisions, in fact I actually diarise twice the amount of time for public sector sales meetings as opposed to private sector ones.

I once eavesdropped on about six women in a Hampshire borough council talk for fifteen minutes on how to word a sign that was to stop people taking their dogs on the beach in the summer. Honestly, it was pathetic.

There are signs in Bedford, trying to get people to use the park-and-ride system.
To cut down traffic in the town.
The town has [about] 600 parking spaces allocated to local public servants, which does not include police/nurses. Those spaces are at the town hall car parks, and central beds council car parks (along with "satellite" car parks for those facilities).
Very few public servants chose to use the park-and-ride.
They even put in a pedestrian light system for those "satellite" car-park-users to cross the road to get to-and-from the car parking.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

May I refer this discussion to it's original intention, and a related, serious issue in a separate posting.....Do Winter Drivers need to be better informed?

Thank You

I think the point that we are trying to make...well I am anyway ....is, this is just worthless,"lets make a job up" type exercise that proves nothing but gives someone who is underworked and overpaid, some excuse to justify his/her wage at the end of the month.

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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.

As for do winter drivers need to be better informed....I never listen to ANY weather forcast...I put my head out of the door and I see if it's sunny, raining, snowing or frosty and drive accordingly...it's worked for me for the last 35plus years.

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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.

Sam, you have an entire topic for this that is being debated, why have you raised this here?