Safe Speed Forums

Thanks, gobbo for letting me know that it is working! If you are man enough to admit that you are a Testosterone-Fiend, you might still be able to allow your intellect to triumph over your bollocks.

You have made the first step - now let's try to help PaulF!

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I stole this .sig

Sounds good! I didn't know that they had jugglers and comedians at such events!

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I stole this .sig

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I stand corrected.
However there have been falls in fatalities since the 60s and every year there is more traffic. Perhaps he is therefore still correct. I think the jury is out, myself.
My belief is that in the real world strict enforcement of limits leads to more problems than it solves. Lower speed crashes but more of them. More or less fatalities? I don't know.

Yeah – I put it down to my glasses, although I’ve always been spotty, fat, old looking and ugly, even when I was a baby!



Yeah. But would you whine like a cry-baby if you got caught, or take it on the chin, Sixy_the_red? Gritty looking bike by the way. I used to ride Kawasaki Triples and a BMW. Wouldn’t mind a Ducati, but funds are stretched at present.



That is my major concern. Most of these slackers can’t even arsed to do that. If you keep to the 30 and 40s, I can’t complain about you. I’ve given up on the m-ways – people do as they please anyway. One problem I have with raising the NSL is that most of the slackers will think that it is an invitation to tailgate 60 mph people even more than they do now.



Do you live in Newfoundland?



Gosh, it sound’s like you have it in for Renault drivers like me!



I know. If I had my way, I’d chemically castrate every last one of them, followed immediately by the white van men. Except ice-cream van drivers, who seem to drive fairly considerately, presumably because they don’t want to kill their customers.

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Last year's modest reduction in roads fatalities coincided with the first halt in camera expansion since 1992. Now some might think that indicates that halting the growth in cameras was a very good thing...

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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 don't believe they do. What do you mean exactly?

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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

Caution! Basingwerk speaketh with forked tongue. He may even be in league with the devil.



We're WAY behind schedule in terms of reducing roads fatalities - 1,200 a year behind, in fact. TRL said earlier this year that the reason was because 'drivers are getting worse'. Well of course they are. We're telling them lies and standing over them with big sticks. And we're not policing the roads properly.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that bad road safety policy - itself founded on speed cameras - is presently responsible for 1,200 lives lost year on our roads and a total of 8,000 lives lost to date.

Putting that another way, if the former trends in the fatal accident rate had continued through the speed camera decade, UK road deaths would be down to about 2,000 a year by now, not 3,200. This is plain and simple fact - a ruler line on a previously straight line graph - no more than that.

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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

Hundreds less killed is not a ‘modest’ fall. The reduction occurred without reducing the number of cameras in operation at all. An opportunity has been lost because if we continue to increase the use of cameras, we could achieve even bigger reductions than we have.

I guess we’ll have to wait for the UCL report – I can’t want to read it!

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Chill out, SpeedKing! Jokes are allowed (even on you).

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It might look alright for a single year, but in the scheme of things it's pretty bloody modest. At the moment we have no idea if it's even a genuine reduction or just a random fluctuaton that happens to be particularly beneficial. Personally I think it's too early to say that it's linked to a halt in scamera expansion - it might be, but it might also be entirely coincidental which wouldn't bode well for the next lot of figures to come out (and if they go up again you can bet that the scamerati will claim it's because they couldn't continue putting more cameras on the roads). However, claiming that the 04 reducion is due to cameras is IMO far shakier. We've had a decade of ineffectual policy and the lamest improvement in road casualties we've ever seen on UK roads, which actually got worse in 03. And all of a sudden there's a drop and we're expected to credit the camera policy for it? There's been no gradual improvement as we should expect if it was a case of more and more drivers "getting the message" or more and more cameras about to slow them down. It was completely out of the blue, which makes me believe it's either random or due to the one thing that's really changed - the halt in camera expansion. But my gut feeling at the moment is that it's random.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Ahh, yes - the vivid imagination approach to road safety.



After last year's FRAUDULENT report by the same organisation(s), I can't say I'm looking forward to it. I find it intensely annoying to see road safety information twisted and bent to fit a pre-existing agenda.

You might also ask yourself why they didn't sue me for the contents of my open letter:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/heydecker2.html

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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

It would depend on the situation. If I got nicked for doing 90mph on an empty motorway then yeah, I would whine. I don't exceed the limit if it ain't safe.

It surprises me that you're an ex-motorcyclist and you're still anti-speeding (I wouldn't call you a biker coz you clearly aint)...I would have thought you might have a better appreciation of what REALLY matters in road safety - like the muppet in the white van who pulled out infront of me last night on a roundabout when his view was obstructed by another car next to him...He wasn't speeding, but if I hadn't seen him I would have been eating tarmac...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Are you talking to me? 'Safe Speed King', might be a more appropriate title if you insist on addressing me as royalty. I can't say I blame you, but formal address isn't required.

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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

You don't have to modify the model to do any of that - simply import the data into Excel and filter it etc there.
One of the reasons I provided the source is so that nobody can accuse me of trickery, but if you have worthwhile changes you'd like to make, go for it.

Oh, just BTW, concerning your finding no. 1. It works just fine providing your input figures are within the realms of physical possibility - at a speed of 1mph it's physically impossible (given the length of a vehicle) to have vehicles passing along a road at a rate of greater than about one every eleven or twelve seconds.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler