Safe Speed Forums

At last ... we are getting to the point. The point of the cameras is to make it normal. Everybody is whizzing around at or over the limit, and then they have the nerve to complain when the summons comes through the door. Drive with a little margin, and you will be OK.

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Why???
Why should we be forced to drive at speeds which are, more often than not, way below what could be considered to be safe, fo no good reason?
Why should we meekly accept the sort of restrictions which simply wouldn't be tolerated in other forms of transport?
Why should we accept the proliferation of arbitrary limits, often set by people who can't even drive?
Why should we accept that we could lose our licences and livelihoods for inadvertently overstepping these limits, when every day we see examples of truly appalling driving - behaviour which never seems to attract the attention of the law?
Why should we accept this when it's all based on a pack of lies?

Regards
Peter

After more than a decade there's no sign of this change in behaviour in the official speed survey data. However the failure of trend in the fatality rate might well be an early indication of such a change of behaviour.



I drive with plenty of margin, but driving at 25mph might leave me with oodles of margin or no margin at all. You can't tell until you know the circumstances.

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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

Think about it as a civic duty - you should drive within the limit because that is the law that has been decided by due process. You might not agree with some of your duties, but stop complaining and get on with it. By all means, if you think a law is wrong, then change it, but for the time being, that is the law, so live with it until you get it changed. You might consider it no good reason, but others clearly don't. I don't mind in the least whether you accept the law meekly or assertively. As far as I know, speed limits do apply to some other forms of transport, so I don't now what you mean there, please explain. With respect to arbitrary limits - if you disagree with the decision making process, by all means get it changed. I certainly don't think people who are unable to drive (for financial, physical or other reasons) should be disbarred from limiting speed in their own neighbourhoods. With respect to the chance of losing your licence - you sign up to the law when you get your licence, so please keep your word, that's all you have to do. Speed cameras can only deal with speed issues - it is pointless to blame them for not detecting appalling driving, as you well know. Your use of the phrase ‘inadvertently overstepping these limits’ underlines the point that many drivers cruise around ‘thumb in bum, mind in neutral’, and the cameras rightly take that option away. If you are in the habit of driving close to the limit, it is all too easy to overstep them, so drive with margin and you will be OK.

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With margin in relation to what?

The absolute top limit is the highest speed that can be safe (according to the law). That doesn't mean it is safe, so drive with margin to the lesser of the speed you judge to be safe and the absolute top limit.

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But the limit that we judge to be safe is sometimes ABOVE the "absolute top limit", as decided, all too often, by non-drivers. We all accept the risk of being ticketed when we exceed these limits, but expecting us to respect ridiculous limits is stretching it a bit.

Oh, and if everyone just "accepted" the law all the time, then women would still not have the vote, and we might still be paying the poll tax. Think about it.

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

All the law says is that exceeding a speed limit is illegal. The law represents (or is supposed to represent) a political consensus about which behaviour is deemed acceptable by society. It is a judgment about probabilities, not a firm definition of safe and unsafe. There is nothing inherent in the law that states or implies that any individual instance of exceeding a speed limit is unsafe.

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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

Just because you don't agree with the law doesn't give you the right to break it.



I have to admit that it is acceptable to break a law that denies fundamental human rights, such as votes for women. It is not alright to break the law on the grounds that you and your chums don't like it.

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The implication that every individual instance of exceeding a speed limit should be investigated as to its merit is ridiculous. Indeed, the law is and must be a compromise that must account, not just for average drivers, but for the lowest tolerable standards. Yet it must be even handed. This fundamental tension has to be borne bravely as a civic duty. It you cannot do this, I know of a bike shop...

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The due process of the law went out the window years ago. When it comes to the technical offence of speeding, basic tenets of the law, such as the presumption of innocence, the right not to have to incriminate oneself and the right to a fair trial have fallen by the wayside.



That's exactly what we're trying to do.



Not the restrictive kind of limits that we have, and those that do exist are properly set.
Buses are subject to the same sort of speed limits as cars, while cars are arguably much safer at a given speed than buses are - not that I've ever been on a bus where the driver hasn't exceeded the limit. On fast roads, the speed limit is pretty much a buses maximum speed or more, so it's not really restrictive.
When it comes to trains, can you explain why it is that they're spending billions on upgrading tracks to enable train speeds of 125mph+, while a high-performance car is limited to little more than half that speed?
I'm not even going to mention bicycles. (oops!)



Speed limits should be set by qualified traffic engineers, like they used to be - and not by politicians who wouldn't know road safety if it bit them.



When I got my licence, speed limits were reasonable and the law worthy of respect. A lot has changed since then.
Would you still have the same attitude if they re-introduced the red flag law? And that's not beyond the realms of possibility, given the way we're going.



I rest my case. They can only tell what speed you're doing, nothing else. Therefore they're completely useless for anything except raising revenue.
And non-speed related issues are almost totally ignored.



You're speaking to the wrong people. We take our driving, and road safety, very seriously indeed. Perhaps you're describing your own shortcomings.

Regards
Peter

The point is to speed up the justice, and slow down the cars, not slow down the justice, and speed up the cars!!!



Endangering passengers is a grave offence.



One possible explanation is that trains run separately on tracks.



That would be a conflict of interest - pedestrians and residents would not be properly represented in the process.



CCTV and high throughput screening might be the answer to that.



Thanks for your opinion.



Yes, I must be less perfect that you all!

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So if I do that, I'll be ok??

Wow. And here was me thinking that I would have to do all that tedious stuff such as look out for hazards and try to anticpate the actions of other road users and stuff like that.

Easy driving from now on then!

Yes!

disclaimer: The troublemaker known as Basingwerk takes no responsibility for individuals who take his advice literally.

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Basingwerk, is your real name Brunstrom?

Ha... no, but uncle Richard's friends in the Government have announced a significant event in the progress if intelligent highways http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3908627.stm

Looks like some of the things I have been saying are coming to fruition ... of course, I knew all along

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See, I was right! you are a Brunstrom!!!!!!!!!

Speed up justice, good idea. But why slow down cars? Even if speed were the menace that the partnerships would have us believe, why not work out how to make transport faster and safer?
Where's the confilct of interest? Seems to me that there's a far greater confilct of interest in locals and pedestrians setting limits than in getting engineers to do it. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be consulted, but they'll never be as impartial as an engineer (providing that said engineer doesn't live round the corner him/herself ).
Still has many shortcomings. You still need to get really dangerous drivers off the road right away, and a camera operator in a comfy chair just can't do it. Sure he can tell a copper where to go, but then we need to have enough coppers to respond. Do we have the resources for both?
What genius came up with that? Unless you steal fuel you're paying tax by the mile anyway, well, fuel duty at any rate. And if your car has poor fuel economy you pay more duty than you would if you got a more economical one. Its a very simple system, and as far as I can see it can't really go wrong. You even pay more when it's busy as fuel consumption is pretty awful in traffic jams. Satellite tracking is completely unnecessary - a ridiculous use of technology for technology's sake. It can't possibly be revenue neutral as it's bound to cost plenty to introduce, so taxpayers' money will be wasted as well. Darling's fascination with these bloody Star Trek schemes really does make me think he's actually from a different planet.

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

Partly for selfish reasons. If speeders only endangered themselves, I'd have less urge to cap their speed (although I'd still compel them to pay for their own hospital treatment from their insurance policies). But they endanger lawful drivers, and are a pest around residential areas for obvious reasons.



Don't kid yourself - engineers want to make a living, you know. I go with the idea that locals are granting you (as a driver) a privilege to use their local roads to pass through, whereas the traffic engineers just want throughput. If the locals decide to reduce driver privileges for their own areas, you'll just have to live with it or bribe them to put up with your smell, danger and noise.



Virtual high throughput screening would eliminate innocuous driving sequences from the data using rules, just leaving a limited number of 'iffy' manoeuvres that could be investigated with little resource and those drivers who are caught could be compelled to help pay for more technology, thus self-financing the whole operation.



I really like satellites a lot!! So much more flexible than overhead gantries, and networks of instruments.

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Boggle. Locals? Their own areas? We're normally talking about the Queen's Highway, not some housing estate or private drive.

"Locals" do not own the road. Folk travelling throuigh do not own the road.

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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