Safe Speed Forums

There are significant differences between the way rail crashes and road crashes are investigated. In rail crashes the driver has very little freedom. They can only move forwards or backwards, stop or go. They are not subject to other rail traffic crossing their path unless someone else stuffs up. Road vehicles, pedestrians etc are prohibited on their tracks. In a crash the track is generally torn up and serious damage is made to the train set hence a subsequent enquiry, normally conducted by the track and train owners (or at least dominated by them) tends to be in depth and, as it is easy to demonstrate whether or not there is an operator error, physical issues can be readily found and fixed to avoid repetition. In the case of road crashes the driver has many more degrees of freedom (they can deviate sideways as well as fore and aft) and have to contend with cross traffic, errant pedestrians, variable levels of grip etc. In most cases the investigating authority, as a proxy for the owners of the infrastructure, has suffered no damage. As there is no penalty (loss) on the owner of the infrastructure the tendency is to blame the operator. I do not see that there is an essential difference in causation between a faulty rail and a deceptive visibility situation on the road. Both are infrastructure failures leading to a reasonably prudent operator into a crash. Both have an engineering solution. In neither case does a speed limitation have a beneficial effect.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

Is it better to reduce the tendency for these mistakes in the first place? It's not like there aren't a comparably insignificant number of them.


Why 'choose' them?
We have ways of turning poor ones into good ones, do we not? Should we not focus on that first?


Why not instead have the best possible record by addressing the root cause?

I find it a bit odd that there are people who call for stringent, unfair and ineffective measures against one road user group purely on the grounds of safety, who at the same time doesn't mind letting other road user groups be as ignorantly dangerous as they like.

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

No, "it" needs to be discussed because "it" is the problem! Speed is the easy option to try and treat the symptoms without attempting to cure the disease. It's easy to measure and easy to enforce (oh, and it's a nice little earner on the side! ) The government / scamera partnerships are behaving in the same way as big, unethical pharamceutical companies are sometimes accused of doing. They have no real interest in getting to the root cause and erradicating the problem, they want something that brings in a steady supply of revenue. Something that doesn't cure the disease but treats the symptoms...


I think you're (perhaps wilfully?!) missing the point here. Of course tracks can't make mistakes (in much the same way that cars can't)! All these problems are about PEOPLE. Take the people away and there won't be any problems. It's people who fail to take appropriate action in order to ensure that tracks don't break and cars don't run people over. The correct coure of action is to inspect and replace the tracks in a timely fashion before they break and hurt someone. The correct course of action in a car is to drive at an appropriate speed for the conditions. Neither is the cheapest or easiest option.

Of course, if you choose to take the "oh well, shit happens" approach and (effectively) give up trying to solve the real problem, you could always MITIGATE (but not erradicate) the effects of both by forcing trains (and cars) to travel so slowly that neither is of any real use any more.

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OK, so just for the record then, are you saying that you advocate a blanket 20MPH speed limit on any road other than a motorway?

If we're going to talk "KSI reduction per passenger journey, then I, for one, would be very interested to see the results!!! I daresay it would cut both ways - if we spent the same amount of money on the M1 / M6 / M74 as we have on the West Coast Main line, might we also see some pretty impressive reductions? (well, assuming we didn't just spend it on cameras anyway)!

(Don't get me wrong, I actually like trains, but I accept that the motor car was simply a more convenient solution to the problem of personal mobility)!! it's popularity and success has now brought upon us a load of other problems which we need to deal with.

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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

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

If you think about it, apart from the extremely bad drivers and the terminally hard of thinking, that would lead to a compliance level of roughly 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005% on average, so the earning potential for the partnerships would be huge. Almost as big a windfall as the hypothecation scheme.

Thus I can see such a ridiculously short sighted and inappropriate scheme being introduced.