Safe Speed Forums

We had some friends around for the weekend last week. They brought their young son aged 14months. My wife and I are expecting too and we are jolly proud of ourselves and very excited.
Now please bear with me.
We spent most of the weekend worrying about the house while little Johnny went off exploring sitting on our speakers and dribbling on the sofa, wifey and I spent a good part of the weekend being vex'ed. While we were in th ekitchen we were told by our friends how we were going to have to child proof our home and put child proof catches on our cupboards - presumeably so the little one wont go odrinking any nasty chemicals that he might find. This got me thinking. Why not teach children the rights and wrongs of life and to show them how to behave and to discipline them when they do wrong? I know its a radical and new idea but hey it could catch on.
Then today while driving through a brand new 20mph limit with 12 sets of speed humps on a really wide street that wasnt any more dangerous than the street around the corner with a 30mph limit, I got thinking again. Why not teach childrenhow to cross a road safely rather than accepting that they will run out into the street and accepting it and so adapting everyone elses behaviour, why not change the behaviour of the child through discipline and corrective teaching......we could jazz it up so that the children would have something to identify with....why not have a code....we could call it the ......Green Cross code.
To my mind this way of running our society at he moment is a kin to accepting htat we cant catch the burgular, or when we do catch him cant prosecute him and so society must learn to cope with criminality and adapt to it rather than catching the little F***ers and throwing them in jail, like a civilised country would do.
Rant over. For the time being......

Crunchie - go back to the old days, it'll never take off --some one else has always got to be seen to be in the wrong - else how would those "no win no fee " ladies and gents make a living and be able to afford to spend weeks in pop stars houses in foreign countries

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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

Nephew came round to ours one day. He banged his head against our teak coffe table, and he hurt himself.

Sister in law told us we should childproof our home since our little boy will one day be able to do same.

In actual fact we did her a favour: my nephew used to bang his head against any sort of furniture. Now he does not: he checks if the furniture is soft otherwise he is very careful not to go anywhere near it.

I think I improved his sense of danger somehow and I am proud of it.

Exactly!

Our kids tried that one - found that dad's hand was harder - didn't do it again - old proverb- kid misbehaves - first time tell it off - second time whak - next time - words work.

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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

Can remember as a little 'un parents drumming green cross code into me. Can't remember my age but we lived next to the Southend Road in Hornchurch. My father took me out and we looked at the traffic and judged whether it was safe to cross, he asked me and if safe we went across if not he explained why.

He also did this with younger sister. Niether of us have ever come close to being knocked over crossing the road.

Am amazed and very worried at the number of pedestrians now just walking into the road and expecting cars to just stop.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere, but I'm amazed at how there are flocks of pedestrians with mobiles firmly pressed to one ear, eyes down, just walking out into roads. It seems that because "you're on the phone", common sense and responsibility fly out of the window...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

And kids on bikes: about 10 years upwards or when they're on big enough bikes, cycling at full pelt then swerving in front of you and turning right with no shoulder check; at least they could stick their arm out.

(sorry if we're veering slightly off topic?)

Yeah, I stop...but only just.

my thoughts exactly. in Hull they redid a street (newland avenue) and on the radio they said it was because a lot of school children have been in accidents on it. My thoughts were just as yours. -not to mention that theyve made the street a nightmare -you cant see when pulling out of sidestreets -in the parking areas there are metal pillars along the curbside so if you are reverse parallel parking a big car the piller is in the way if you want to get the car anything like near the curb in one move, and ...anyway I'll stop ranting.

This is why when someone says to me 'those speeding cars make it dangerous for pedestrians' I ask them to clarify. Do they mean if someone crosses the road carefully and waits for a gap, a speeding car may fly round the corner. That would indeed mean the driver is going too fast.

But nine times out of ten, it comes down to what they are really saying is it is not safe just to step into the road without looking, and they don't feel they should have to bother waiting for a gap or for the green man. They want to be able to step in front of cars in perfect safety, which would require a speed of virtually zero.

This also has the effect of causing people to confuse a genuine case of (1) for case (2), so genuine speeding problems risk being ignored, because now every car is a 'speeding car' even if it is doing 15 mph.

Something I find even more worrying is that some traffic planners make the situation worse, running through Chelmsford is Parkway a 40mph dual carraigeway, it had an underpass at the bottom of the high street, since structural problems developed, they put two ped crossings in, I pointed out too then that given that the cross/don't cross signs were at the same side as the pedestrians crossing and at waist level there would be visibilty problems, my comments were dismissed, a couple of years down the line they now have a history of accidents where peds have crossed out thinking that it was safe to go, having seen others chance it and assuming that they could see the signs.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Tell me about it.

And when you see two people walking home from work together - but not really "together" as each has phone glued to ear. -

It does look comical and silly

But the danger? Like the car driver - engrossment in the conversation makes them oblivious to danger - including the danger of having the trendy telphone pinched by a mugger too.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

But back to the topic. My parents used to just tell us that they would count to three and if we continued whatever naughty thing we were doing by the utterance of three - we got a slapped leg, wrist or bottom.

Followed the same princiiple with my own kids. And it works! Like more own parents - seldom reached "three"

Word "No" used rather a lot too.

Grreen Cross Code? Yep - very similar way of teaching as S E's dad.


Spoon feeding, indulging each and every whim, and smothering with praise and pee-cee nonsense inhibits development of essential life skills, imagination and perception of danger and self-protection -as well as taking responsibility for one's own actions

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

My wife and I put great effort into bringing my two sons up with what appear to be rather rare commodities nowdays - manners and respect for others.

We also didn't worry about them getting dirty (they must have consumed pounds of dirt when playing in their infancy), falling off things (they only do it seriously once, and if they do it when very young, don't usually get too "bent"), and generally hurting themselves in minor ways.

We encouraged them to walk to school as young as was safe to do so, and taught them about traffic. When they went to secondary school they went on the bus.

We also taught them to respect animals by having cats as pets - cats are great for this, they are very tollerant of young children but really hurt when they have had enough (without causing major lasting damage)

Result of all of this is I have two sons (19 and 17) I can be proud of.

IG - Rather old fashioned ( now non PC ideas --tut -tut ) , my kids now use the same ideas on my grandkids - ( one uses the "Naughty step" - seems to work) , but by and large they all use the old ideas - and they swear it works - nice to see it works --smothering - they get the idea that they can do what they like and get away with with it.

In my day - kid misbehaved - beat cop administered tongue lashing - kid DID not tell dad ( as ar** not fireproof)
Nowadays - kid tels PC TO F**off- (and dad sues police authority )

Tell me which worked better ??

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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

Newland Avenue is an absolute nightmare.

Speed bumps every 40 yards, a white line down most of the middle, it is narrower then it previously was before - oh and those stupid parking bays, the ones that are at a 45/ angle to the road. Ever tried reversing out of one of those on a busy day?

All the new measures mean that delivery drivers and buses now stop in the middle of the road - and since there is little chance of overtaking this leads to traffic jams etc...

Once took me about 15 minutes to drive down there...and it can't be much longer than 1/4 of a mile.