Safe Speed Forums

Following Radio Interview (Here)
Reduction of Speed Limit proposals in Northamptonshire from 60 to 50mph and 30 to 20mph
From an article from Auto Express ...

Speed Reduction Problem : -
There are many issues with this sad news and not least that we believe that this will lead to more accidents because :
- Enforcing road users to simply slow down is against our instincts to drive / ride safely,
- Alters road user search patterns - emphasizing speedo & camera checks at inappropriate times,
- the need to set appropriate speeds to conditions is subdued if not eliminated,
- road users can't see far ahead (condensed traffic build up),
- tailgating becomes normal
- road users STOP paying Attention leading to serious Inattention
- road users are more easily Distracted
- thinking about driving / riding and the road ahead stops happening
- road users start to think about other things, no longer thinking about the road ahead,
- driving / riding to conditions becomes a thing of the past
- the way of thinking is altered as drivers/riders drive & ride to safety from litigation, fines. and points on licenses than safety of people and vehcicles,
- compliance overtakes personal safety and maintaining a safety space around each vehicle,
- mental fatigue to retain a deliberately slower speed than conditions are good for.
Many of the above problems result in drivers / riders thinking that they are travelling in a fog and travel in a zombie like mode.
This is a numeric exercise has nothing to do with road safety, and this alters our trust in what we are told and that alters our driving / riding skills as a Nation.

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

You missed a very important point, over zealous enforcement of speed causes already under skilled drivers to apply to much weight to speed alone, leading to the all too common comment these days of: "I wasn't speeding therefore the accident wasn't my fault!"

You raised a lot of cons in that post, I think we should raise some of the pros:
1. Raises a lot of money for the government.
2. Raises a lot of money for the government.
3. Raises a lot of money for the government.
4. Raises a lot of money for the government.
5. Raises a lot of money for the government.
etc.

IMO, I don't think it does.
It is a source of humour within SCP circles that Simone Colwell alone pays more in income tax than the SCP generates. No, the real beneficiaries of the over zealous enforcement of needlessly low speed limits are the SCPs themselves. The government just doesn't want to admit they were conned by the technology suppliers (RTTM et al).

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

It's Simples! As Alexander would say.......They want you out of your car and onto a bus! No matter that it would cost you 5 times more and take you 10 times longer, (where they think the money and the time is going to come from I don't know) these foul smelling buses put out far more Co2 and particulates per day than your car does even if it were a modern petrol 4ltr V8!(ever followed one?) Besides, your car runs for say one half hour each way morning and night, max total 1hr?...... out of 24? These 'orrible damned things run all day ...... empty or not, even if it's only to keep the driver warm!

Industry and Business here would come to a grinding halt if we followed this crazy path. Apart from that I don't know, only that the lunatics have now become the dictators of our land whichever party you "think" you like. Truth is: they're all the bloody same!

Now I've nothing at all against taking measures to clean up our environment, it's a good idea. But, If you, dear reader lives anywhere near a Sea port, please put up a sign now please that due to increased self imposed taxes, obsticles and greeny demands, we are hereby "closed for business" until sanity returns..............

IMO....We need to "Get Real" and stop this lunacy.

The leaders of this Country really have lost the plot. The way things are going travelling will be slower than it was 100 years ago.

Whynot

I don’t think they ever had it to lose whynot

At least the Tories knew what they were doing most of the time but chose to screw us, and we all knew it.

New Laborious has just dragged the country into the sewers like the blithering idiots they are. I have never been so despondent about MY country in my whole life! I don’t even see my future here anymore; I'd rather be somewhere else than continue to be a witness to the UK going down the pan. Today Northamptonshire, tomorrow the UK.

My advice to anyone is don’t keep all your irons in the UK fire; I'm certainly not...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

...that is assuming you have any irons left....

When you consider that this lot has just bankrupt the Country where do you think they hope to raise some goodies? They will not raise direct taxes because they know its a loser so the obvious place is the motorist. Through the back door. All A&B roads are to be reveued and therefore have their limits reduced so that even more revenue will be raised. This will not reflect opon them as its a back door tax as usual. When one delves into road safety and those who operate such strategies they close the door and are unwilling to disclose anything about their operations in detail. I have been classified as "Vexatious" by our Council due to me enquiring on variuos matters one being how much SMA material they use to resurface the roads. This material has a 40% less adehsion to braking when NEW and takes many months to obtain a correct surface which comes up to standard. These tests were carried out by the TRL but never made public as usual and our Council has banned me under the FOI act for another 6 months (already been banned for the last 12) and would reflect their desperation in withholding the information I asked for. I also asked if they were aware of the performance of this material. I am now in correspondence with their legal department on the matter so this shows the desperate situation which they consider themselves to be in. The above material is much cheaper so therefore they go for that and nothing else. This is to do with road safety you see, they provide cheap and usless road material and we get the fines and blame when RTCs occur which may not be our fault in the first place. Its just one thing to remember if involved in any RTC and the road has just been resurfaced. I have also fired bullets into Northants Council on the subject of mobiles and the case of Dr G Luxford, what a shambles that was, they all want a bullet in the SCP and police. A disgrace to the uniform they wear.OLLIE

The leaders of this country have never been elected.
we are not lead by those we elected.
And this country was doomed the moment M Thatcher decided we did not need a manufacturing base and could do just right on services.
Now we are down to a maximum of 25% of manufacturing industry and falling.
The most productive service "industry" (finance) has been shown to be an emperor with no clothes (although describing it as a cross-dresser with no clothes may be more accurate).
Shortly, the manufacturing countries will start to put the prices up (well, they have gone up by some 15% over the last 6 months) (except for flat-screen tvs....which had a mark-up of 50% anyway).
Then they will have less to sell as their employees purchase more....
Meanwhile, anytime a new factory is required here the local council puts-up a smokescreen of planning crap and the place gets bogged-down in green/brown anti-everything demonstrations...
In tens years time we'll have no houses, no factories and less hope than an ice lolly in hell.
No matter who is "elected"
And we did it all ourselves.

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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

I go back to something I have said before Jom...

How can a country built with coal, sitting on oil and gas, surrounded by a soup of fish, with some of the greatest engineers the world has ever known!!!! - do so very badly?

We have been the greatest nation on Earth! And many brave soldiers have given their life for this country! AND STILL DO!!


But now we are the most pathetic of any and all modern Western Nations! AND IT BREAKS MY HEART!!!

Some of us still have a British backbone, but the the truth is someone else is pulling the strings and our modern GOV has sold out!

Churchill must be turning in his grave.... And that smilie is true as I sit here thinking of our brave men and women!!!


I salute you all!

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I'll second the above. Not only Churchill will be turning but also my father after serving in the police for over 34 years. There is a memorial cup dedicated in his name at the Derbyshire HQ for the best performing detective of the year and to which we were invited by the C/Constable but after what transpired some years ago I wrote and told him to stuff it and have never attended since. I have nothing but contempt for those in any office of power who are no better than minions of this useless Government. No one can express their thoughts or feelings and must always conform to the PC brigades requirements which, together with the HSE has brought this Country to its knees. At least with Saddam Hussain you knew what you had got but this lot you never know what they will require next in regards to control of the population. You can see why they don't have to have any CV for the positions which they hold with the bl--dy mess which we are all in today.

Think the saying about the troops in WW1 APPLIES -Somrthing about being led by DONKEYS

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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

But the troops in WWI didn't get to vote for their leaders whereas in our modern democracy we ..... oh dear, that doesn't work

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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

More like an Ass these days And the lions are caged, bound and gagged by our own laws and PC.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Reading Tone's post again -reminds me of a TV program on the other day -something to do with shipbuilding in WW2- and rivetting .There was footage of rivitting in those days ,with a description of the teams, and how they worked .Terms like catchers ( the rivites were heated cherry red and thrown to a catcher ,to hand to the riviters) .Then two retired riviters looked on as some people tried it out .Contrast the safety kit .And no throwing
Al right we need some H &S ,BUT the elf has become a giant tumour ,slowing work down ,not assisting in safety .
Then - - yep -but whereas in years of old ,the fishermen would act responsibly as conservationists, letting the fish replace what was caught -I remember hearing my Grandfather telling us of how they did it .But that was before red tape ( and the EU) took over the UK fishing grounds .Similarly with shell fish - no self respecting fisherman would land undersized lobsters ,or those with eggs -they went back in .Now ,the EU is paying for boats to be de commissioned ,as there's little fish stocks -because they OVERFISHED (and the worst offenders in taking undersize fish -the non UK boats)

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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

Yes. But compare the amount of people injured and killed in "the old days" at shipyards to today (if any still operate, and it was not H&S that closed them down...it was workers expecting higher wages).
I hear it all the time from people who DO NOT WORK in industries with risks attached (other than falling down stairs to get to the canteen).
I would also like to point out that rivetting stopped because welding became the norm...faster.

Quote:

As useful as pre-assembly was in cutting production time, the real key to accelerated shipbuilding, however, was welding. Ships in World War I took longer to build than in World War II primarily because their hulls were riveted rather than welded. Welding had been introduced in American ships prior to 1918, although none had an entirely welded hull. Riveted ships were strong and durable. But riveted hulls had drawbacks. Chief among these was the time needed to align steel plates and drill holes for rivets, and to set and drive home the rivets.

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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

Thinking about the O/P again and breaking my new year’s resolution for a miinute not to post so much... The moment any vehicle starts to move it has ‘a speed’ which can damage, so the corollary to that statement is speed therefore is the killer. But that is as misleading as saying knives kill, not the person wielding the knife. As long as the speed is zero and so long as the knife never leaves the drawer they can never kill – fact! So far so good, except that in the real world we need knives just as we need speed in order to function properly.

To continue with the analogy someone might argue “yes we need speed but just not a fast speed”. Okay then, let’s run with that... A chef just needs to cut food, so issue plastic knives and ban all metal ones. Well, why not? I have cut through some damn tough meat with a serrated plastic knife many times, works very well actually, better than some metal ones I own. We may need to come up with a new range of plastic knives, with longer better ones, but given the current crime wave surrounding knife crime it’s a price well worth paying, (even if it saves just one life), just like speed reduction – correct?

Well it’s complete nonsense of course and even to this day the research by the Government is at best scant and at worst scandalous! The public deserve to be informed and given the facts; not deceived! The ‘Speed Kills’ message is now so ingrained in the public mind and imagination that the multitude of other factors are all but overlooked.

The public do not know, and many would simply not understand or care, about the important role of Return To The Mean or Bias On Selection. (I admit I didn’t until I came to Safe Speed). The Government and local authorities knows all this and uses it to their advantage to skew the results in their favour along with public paranoia about speed being responsible for the majority of accidents. They could introduce a blanket across every town and city in the country and get away with it under the speed kills ‘safety’ umbrella. Who in power would dare hold their heads above the parapet to argue against it?

The argument could simply go like this, and sounds as though it is in Nottinghamshire: Speed Kills so if reducing to is good, then reducing it further down to is better and then down to or less is better still. Well done Northamptionshire

You can’t argue with that because as you approach zero you cannot get hurt by a stationary vehicle unless someone deliberately bangs their head on it. But of course there is so much more to it than that, as we know!

That 20mph past a school at 3:00 pm during home time is vastly more dangerous than 80 or 90 mph down an empty and open stretch of dual carriageway. The truth deniers don’t like to hear this; rubs them up the wrong way every time. So “Speed Kills” has become this infernal ‘truth’ but until the true causes of KSI are understood you can never hope to improve road safety, especially with a dumb sound bite like that!

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

and all because you want to be able to go faster than you are told You are allowed to from time-to-time. What a pathetic bunch you are!

Happy new year.

The reply..





You too GreenShed. Drive safely and always use a safe speed for the conditions. I don't want to see you or others as a patient thank you.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

A typical phrase to be expected from a control freak who wishes to control a majority of free thinking individuals on the "assumption" that the minority control freak "knows best".

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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.