Safe Speed Forums

With all the recent publicity over the Conservatives announcement to 'Stop the March' and their intention to stop the SCP and so on - we can hope the intentions will go further then they have currently announced.

So then let's say camera's are for the most part history.
What are the best ways to 'pretty rapidly' start to put back the science and engineering back into the roads and educate drivers.

My immediate thoughts are to :
employ additional engineers to start the long process of identifying and applying proper engineering solutions to roads that require attention,
(This will obviously require much time to review all data and ignore the bias reports and research.)
to employ new traffic police and retrain most of the current crews,
to disband the Camera Partnerships,
to employ good road engineers, driving experts, police training centres, other driving experts, psychologists, life coaches, and so on to help identify :
ways to motivate and inspire individuals to be more responsible and to obviously try and improve better skills, knowledge and abilities.

The public motivation can be implemented through :

Abilities - instruction (what is considered to be a good driver), eg public information films, better risk management and judgment
Skills - improvement through courses and appreciation of aims,
incentives & motivations (perhaps reduced insurance (road tax ?) for additional courses undertaken, self improvement is a big incentive,
awareness of good behaviours is very important as it informs people what is expected of them.
Understanding safety for one's self and others - best practices and how to implement them.
Knowledge - increase by improving how to bet better at riding / driving (an relating to vehicle's bikes trailers etc)

I wonder if there might be room for a government driver scheme for things like a single fee for training on the Motorway and overtaking after passing your test, and then a standard course for skid pan training and better driving courses maybe run by driving schools - although this will take some time to develop and improve.
[Obviously the Country's debt position will curb financial advantage - sadly)

Then there is a huge area of proportionate enforcement and help police to reprimand & instruct / guide, or enforce as appropriate - that judgment of authority needs to be carefully taught as many have only known camera enforcement, so understanding also that 'targets' are not the end goal nor the objective are crucial for them to start to help all road user's attitude, understanding change for the better.

These above road user influencing aspects can help start to restore a good basic standard of driving and riding from every road user.

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

I'd be happy with that one alone!!

More trafpol . of MY type . as in old style common sense . and not complacent over the training received at YOUR expense either.,


Common sense enforcement . values . straight forward advice and so on.

Also car manufacturers can help with car design and maybe even restricting to no more than 100moh which is really fast enough and more than fast enough for most .. (OK . so not popular . so shoot me! )

_________________
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.

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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

botach .. thank you kind sir

_________________
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.

So how would you define 'old style common sense' and why 'not complacent' over the training? If you want more then it is still at 'our' expense as it were ?
And then how might you define 'common sense enforcement' in real repeatable terms ?
What manuals or references were first used, and what is your current tutoring methods ? Who in the Police is now revered in training ?
Esp now Hendon is gone (are any of the people still about anywhere ?

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

The conservatives have not said they will get rid of speed cameras. Only that **THEY** will not fund them. Councils can still pay for them themselves.
They have not said that they will differ in any meaningful way with what is the norm today.
They HAVE said they will take a hatchet to public spending. Roads are public spending. As are police.
During their initial bedding-in period public spending on many things will be stopped. Including roads.
There will be a need for extra cash, so taxation will need to rise....even if they "get rid of" a half million public servants they will need to pay for the remainder of the contracts...and then there will be pension arrangements and redundancy payments (you cannot just dump a half million onto the streets)...then there will be the extra payments for unemployment pay etc....
Even canceling road contracts will cost several arms and legs...as Mr Mayor of London found out when he entered the halls of fame.
In fact, taking into account the contract cancellation payments (employment and contract) there will be next to nothing in any kitty for some time.
We already have a large amount of engineers employed in local government AND central government.....they already have money to spend....it's just that the litigation bandwagon is rolling quite fast now....and the legal costs of challenge to various projects also has to be factored into any project. The "No To New Roads" people are very well funded and legally well represented. And don't forget...it may take many years for the litigation to end here and then there are the various EU courts as well.
No. The usual things will happen.Hospital spending will be slashed. The inheritance tax will go up to one million pounds (ok if you have property valued at over one million...otherwise no change....) Money to local government will be slashed (you'll have to tighten your belts) (up will go council tax)
The majority of the public spending was to repair the damage the last conservative government did to the various services....hospitals and schools....
Oh...sorry...I hear that road tax will be ended on vehicles valued at over 300,000 pounds....
I can think of several ways to lower future spending.
Cancel the Nimrod project (it may not need to be cancelled....since the EU will almost certainly break-up BAE systems if the bribery is upheld...and in any case the fines in europe and the usa will be many billions of euros/dollars)
Cancel the eurofighter
Cancel the nuclear missile upgrade
(20 billion so far saved)
And the conservatives are very much in favour of some sort of road pricing....even if it is selling the roads to private companies and then making the users pay...again....and again...
Nothing will change.
Petrol will still be taxed heavily.
Road tax will remain.
Insurance premium taxes will stay.
The roads will still be a patchwork quilt.

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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

Although I have never voted Conservative in all my life, now 53 and I would have happily shot Margaret Thatcher for what she did to this country. I could never vote for this bunch of cretins just on the basis of what they have done/are doing to the road network in general.

Ok the jobsworths in local government are partly to blame because they have been brought up in a safety orientated world where no one is "allowed" to take chances and think for themselves but when all is said and done the government should have the last say in the matter and quite honestly they don't have a clue.

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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.

Leaving aside global [not existing] warming, there is a need to make people think before driving.
Is it necessary to drive there ?
Is there another way of getting where you need to go ?
Quite apart from the pollution issue (which is real....) there is the issue of resource conservation (or limitation of use)
It matters not which flavour of government we get, some sort of sanity has to prevail at some time. Government has its own "flavour" that each one has to follow....it is called "continuity"....the incoming government will be faced with an existing civil service which will tell them what they need to know (if they were in opposition then their ministers (shadow) will almost certainly be informed about important issues anyway....it's the way it works) their initial enthusiasm will be tempered by the information they are given....
You think we wil get many more miles of new roads ?
No.
Not Going To Happen.
You think that, like airports, we build more to accommodate demand ?
It isn't working like that....with airports the recent thinking has been to limit demand by increasing prices....if fuel prices do not limit travel then levy more taxes on flying....seem familiar ?
Everything has its price. Even if the price is not paid now, it will be paid at some time, by someone.
Any incoming government is not going to cut fuel prices...nor cut car tax, nor cut insurance premium tax, and it will almost certainly not cut any taxes....apart from those that only affect a small number of people (like those already rich).
Road pricing, of whatever sort, will almost certainly arrive....the blue party has favoured the "sell them and let others get the flack" approach to road pricing...and do not forget...most peoples opposition to road pricing was not to the issue of charging but to the issue of government knowing where they had been and when they had been there...remove that and most people (who drive low-to-medium mileage) would favour an approach which led to lower costs..

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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

http://www.met.police.uk/mpds/index.htm



.Click on the video. The level of training is the same as the one I received and identical to the Durham's Police Driving School (and all the rest )

We all train to that standard .

_________________
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.

I should give time to absorb and view the Met's video of their current police training
first. If you note they say



If you note - they spend time in the classroom and a chunk of the really advanced training is in actual car handling. .. controlling in "tricky" situations and for the benefit of sam and ben - we are trained how to controll a skid - but more emphasis placed on how to avoid one

However, such training may help us .. but we are trained to best of existing capabilities and it would be complacent to assume equally competent members of the public cannot achieve such standards if the driving test standard were to be raised up a couple of nothches to include skid training/moe advanced car handling techniques/rural road training . It would also be complacene tand dishonest to suggest that the police officers trained to such lofty standards are immune from causing incidents as some tragic evens have shown us - with one court's jury coining a verdict of "institutionalised complacency" given some arrogance of "insisting their driving was safe nby virtue of training" shown by the officers in the dock at the time


A No one person is above the law nor the laws of common sense basics of reckless velocity - something which humans can control via police AND the court system/corrective re-training before a licence gets re-issued .. even .. , but which a speed camera can never hope to prevent nor educate to trueer safety led values.





Common snese means dealing with the problem properly - with advice and explanation for whatever professionally made decisions...We explain why we refer a DIS or a fine .. and also wh we may le off with just a warning over behaviour.. based on what was actually observed in terms of driving and the attitude of the driver. You can usually tell very quickly if the person made a one off mistake and deserves to retain a clean licence and will heed the advice .. Comes with experience though



You cannot afford to be complacent at any one time .. regardless of who you are and what level of expertise/training to date. Nothing is set in stone out there and each situation will be unique to itself.







As said .. you see a lot out occurring out there on each shift over the years. You build up a "nose to sniff out the bother" You can usually tell who an benefit from benefit of discretion within seconds of encounter. Most of us have made up minds how we will deal with the situation at that point. Based on the standard seen and the manner of the driver. OK . the old "attitude test" if you like - but that attitude dertermines whether or not that person is prepared to learn and improve all the same

We are all different though .. but we do try to set a certain core code of good practice into our team during the training stages.





We use Highway Code.. Know Your Traffic Signs.... RoadCraft/Motorbike Craft... Mind Driving and some home grown manuals



Yes .. most employed at the Police Driving/Training Schools around the UK. And Hendon ethics still exist within these schools .. as per the Met's own video of their current training. (Which is the same as ours and Lancs.. and Cumbria's. Ian will have received similar as will Stephen with GMP or Cheshire?

_________________
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.

That is a public info film!
And, I doubt very much that your training is identical to that, as the way I understand it - it is always 'improved'? That is an old standard PR exercise. I see more up here than that ... and know more frankly.
You are not based in central London either so your skills will be biased for different abilities in rural settings. What level of driving are you at ?
Where was your training based ?
I was hoping you could furnish me with far more detail and perspective.

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

IT IS STILL HOW THE MET TRAIN!

Do you think they made it all up then? Core skills have not changed. We stil have to be trained to handle the ruddy car in all situations and train in pretty much the same way still.

It was a flim made by the MET . OK as Public Relations - information if you like..,. but it's still depicting the general level of training and how public money is spent on this.


Or perhaps you "know it all and really know little"". Not being nasty Claire - but preparing you for the nasty interviews on speed cams v training.




Yeah? Right .. Not really Luv. SO it was copy right 2000 but it's still valid reflection and designed to give an insight


When did you do your police training. You cannot claim you "know more". Have you been with your local plod on their training and their patch will not be quite as London or Manchest or even Co Durham.

Perhaps you can expand on how "a simulated pursuit would be different"? Harping back to Over Kellett in 2006 where the plod were in training to use a Vascar .. it was a simulated pursuit which went pear shaped because the fools were complacent and did not audit the road properly nor plan the training adequately It led to a charge of "institutionalised complacency" at the court trial this time last year


Or are you present when they do the classroom basics as that film was really showing the classroom basics and is pretty much stil accurately reflective of Met's training style 9 years later on.


The training Luv .. is pretty much standard and does include car controls/skid pan .. plus the simulated pursuits still occur. But then you claim to know it all .. so describe the entire course you apparently took..

Sorry Claire but you post comes across as blatantly arrogant by stating you "know more". You cannot "know more" as you are not a police officer and whilst you may have discussed driving skills with Paul - it does not make you conversant with plod training more the actual requrements.. nor does it make you an "expert of road safety either" and I have to voice this comment. Sorry .. I do not intend to insult or hurt you .. but this can be what you are up against on live intervews etc... and you have to be prepared for the answers.



. CORE values and skills such as depicted in that film have not changed. What may change is how we "get to know and understand the way the car works and handles given the improved technology - but the basic equired skills would not at all change.



You are not based in central London either so your skills will be biased for different abilities in rural settings. What level of driving are you at ?

Where was your training based ? Have the local plods taken you on training with them?




Naturally - it moves with the times - but the Met's 2000 film production shows the basic core elements all the same. These core required skills remain UNCHANGED! As does training to use all the gadgets and in-car tools. This training to keep abreast of new technology would most naturally would be on-going training.







This is an internet forum. I chose a flim which was readily available and relevant to old Hendon. That training from the Met is pretty much unchanged - same core skills demanded from the officers being trained.

mid way down the page of google look for police training web site per the the page trawled up . A google should give you the full list within seconds . I've chosen the link to S Wales as it's "controversial" from a speed cam slant




http://www.south-wales.police.uk/fe/mas ... 92&n2=2393


compare to similar facilities as offered per North Wales/Lancs/Durham/Cumbria as we all do more or less the same .. including work with the simulator.

_________________
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.

We dont need more engineers - we need more TRAINED engineers, those that dealt with traffic engineering back in the 70's and 80's need to come out of retirement to share their knowledge and every traffic engineer should be trained as such. As a traffic engineer who was brought up in traffic engineering "the old fashioned way", alot of what I see on the roads makes me ill with anger.

The problem being there are far too many people meddling in traffic engineering, from politicians, the public, to road safety practicioners who think that they know "how it should be done". Less emphasis should be paid to enforcement for the time being - there are plenty in the profession who think that you could have a blanket 100mph speed limit or a blanket 10mph speed limit and the actual speed of traffic would change very little at all (I am one of them) in the vast majority of cases.

Drivers need to be kept up to date with how to drive and how highways engineers manage the roads. How, for example, do I get across to the masses that flooring it from one set of signals to the next isnt going to get you through any quicker as more than likely the signals are timed for the platoon you left behind. Its probably one of the few safety critical tasks that people do without any re-training or inspection.

Depends on the road and what that road winds through. A residential road .. parked cars/speed humps/play streets versus a motorway running through a remoter area would have drivers at a safe flowing speed at around these "blanket speeds" as you say. 85th percentile wih a small number deviating above and below this as norm perhaps?




Some areas do have "green flows" ... I can think of at least half a doxen of such "green tidal flows" here. These hold the traffic ... allowing for traffic at the junctions to join the road. All lights change in synchrony and the "jam" disperses each time. We find this works well in Durham and outskirts - easing congestion and actually reducing accidents

So yes - skilful civil and road engineering plays a very vital piece in the whole complicated "multi-faceted puzzle" which we know to be "current road safety policy"

_________________
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.

Which is why I said "in the majority of cases. The ill-informaed assumption, as we all know, is that "drivers drive about 10mph above the speed limit anyway". We know this is not so - the vast majority of drivers will drive to the speed that the road is telling them is safe to do so. If drivers are travelling at around 40mph in a 30 limit on a wide suburban road with patchy frontage development, chances are you could raise the limit to 100mph and the 85%ile speed would change very little, because the information the driver is receiving is the same.

Of course you will always get nob-heads, but then you get them with the current limits anyway and you always will. The fact that the limit is 100mph doesnt make the road any more or less safe; there is always the careless/dangerous driving charge after all.



Similarly with my signals, although its not always possible to get good green progression in both directions - indeed only a few times in my career have I ever managed it in both directions on arterial routes, due to the circumstantial distances between the junctions. Although SCOOT is pretty darned good at co-ordination when set up correctly with the added advantages of varying the green times to suit traffic flows. But it takes a lot of setting up with a good engineer.

I am firmly oe opinion that local consultation and local authorities should not be permitted to carry out any form of traffic engineering and that highway functions should be regional rather than local. All too often do petty, minor, and inconsequential matters become big local political issues that, if the matter were dealt with regionally, away from local political meddling, could be swiftly dealt with and more often than not, disregarded.

Absolutely, the idea that "drivers choose a speed about 10 mph above the speed limit" is a pervasive myth, but it is demonstrably false - why are 85th %ile speeds on NSL single carriageway roads, even those of good standard, generally well below 60 mph?

There are examples on the ABD website of speed limits being raised from 30 mph to 40 mph in the more enlightened days of the early 60s, and showing little or no increase in actual speeds - in some cases in fact a reduction.

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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

North East Lincolnshire Council actually raised a 40mph to a 50mph on the A16 Peaks Parkway... IIRC the 85%ile remained pretty constant. The saving grace for this limit being that its on a new road with NO frontage development or accesses and was installed as a 40mph buffer zone between NSL and 30 when the road opened in 1998. Which incidentally, no-one abided by. *sighs*

Bring back proper engineering. Get rid of local representation. And moreover, lets get rid of road safety departments involvement in running the network and let them go back to education. Accidents need to be investigated by proper traffic engineers, and no-one else.

Hear, bloody, hear!

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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.

I have never professed to 'know it all, ever', that would be stupid. I said, that I frankly knew more than the film appeared to portray about what is taught to the Police. I never said that I had done 'all' the training or anything of that kind.
I was hoping for some information that might help me understand what your department taught before, and now, (today), so that I could learn how the department had grown and what made 'your' RPU's 'better now, (if they are), than they were. It was the specifics within that learning curve that I was after not the basic police driver menu.
So the 'simple' PR general film is a far cry from the detailed discussion I had hoped to have - so I was disappointed.

The Welsh link, with the modern simulator sounds and their attitude and psychology assessments, sound most interesting, thanks for that, I'll contact them.

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