Safe Speed Forums

This article is a serious and sad day for proper road safety ...
They are proving they are determined to follow all the wrong idea and continue to fleece the motorist to solve their economic mistakes !
This action will cost lives as the Country continues to fails to address good Road Safety Policy.

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

What are you going to do if this reduces KSI rates on country roads?

By Safespeed's measure if an NSL 50mph limit is introduced and enforced by average speed camers we should see an increase in the KSI rate.

I'd go odds on the former happening.

False dichotomy fallacy.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

You could be right but even if KSI is increased the limits won't be repealed. Road safety policy seems to be based on "common sense" rather than evidence.

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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

And what about driver fatigue? This factor (17% all roads) already accounts for much more of the collision pie then exceeding the speed limit (5% all roads).

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

Not commonsense. Ideology and spin.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I would actually agree with this, however this will be because as we work our way into a massive recession, there will be fewer journeys made and people will be more cautious, not wanting to pick up the bill for a costly repair (especially as the quality of our roads gets steadily worse)

Of course the government will spin this as a success for their scheme. They were caught out abusing recession to the mean so now they've identified a new statistical anomaly to abuse in order to justify their schemes.

No something far worse that ideology......'conventional wisdom'

you can always tell when conventional wisdon is at play...its usually prefaced with phrases like 'its obvious that......', or 'everyone knows......'

Ah, like global warming is caused by man ...

Has everyone noticed that the BBC R4 Today programme has to have an AGW item every day? Some idiot traversing the NW Passage or another measuring 0.001deg rise in Antarctic temperature.

Also, they are obsessed by Scotland. Even the weather forecast concentrates on the sparsely popuated North and ignores the South (where most of the population live).

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

We will see an increase as we already are on SI accidents.

The fatality rate has slightly fallen for a few reasons :
less cars & less miles traveled,
as the recession hits too, the defense mode of people, always results in less deaths and so creating a false 'less Killed' causation.
As proved by Al Gullon Transport Research Specialist.

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

He can't be much of a specialist if he doesn't take per mile travelled into his KSI rates then...

I'm not sure on this. I think for a large number of people, the full reality of what is happening hasn't quite sunk in yet.
I'm sure the government are well aware of this and have chosen the time so as to get the best combination of the inevitable reduction in accidents while being sufficiently far from the start of the recession to obfuscate the effect of the recession on the statistics.

I am, at least, slightly comforted by the overwhelming weight of public opinion on the comments page beneath that article. Over the last few years I've seen such comments go from about 60% against to more like 90% against. I think the public are starting to "wise up" to what's going on now. After that, it's just a question of finding a political party with enough sense to reverse these stupid decisions and vote accordingly.

I love the little crumb of "comfort" they deign to toss us "...Local Authorities will be able to reverse the change if they can justify it..." Yeah, like that's going to happen! It's worth pausing a moment to think of the incentives for the local authorities either way...

So, just to recap on road safety policy over the last decade or so:

1. Introduce static cameras in a few places. No overall discernible improvement in casualties nationally.

2. dramatically increase camera numbers and introduce new sorts. Claim huge reductions "at the camera sites". Still no discernible improvement in casualties nationally.

3. Further increase camera numbers and roll out average speed cameras. Still no discernible improvement in casualties nationally. Internationally, we loose the "safest roads" top spot.

4. Start reducing speed limits right left and centre. Still no discernible improvement in casualties nationally. Internationally, we slip even further down the "safest roads" league table.

5. Introduce MASSIVE national programme of speed limit reductions, enormous increase in average speed enforcement to go with it, PLUS all the exsting network of cameras, camera vans, "overt", "covert", you-name-it we've-got-a-camera-that-watches-it...

Any bets on what we're likely to see?

Come on Weepej! We've had 10 years of this cr4p so far and it should, by now, be obvious to even the least intelectually gifted individual (that doesn't stand to gain financially from such a scheme) THAT THE EMPEROR REALLY HAS NO CLOTHES - HE IS STARK BO11OCK NAKED!!!!!!!!!

Another problem with a blanket 50:
Driver going slower and drivers bunching - these make overtaking much easier; overtaking suddenly becomes within the reach of those with lesser-powered cars.
The unreasonably low limits, coupled with those who insist on going significantly below them, gives additional motivation for overtaking.
That additional motivation for overtaking, coupled with the appearance of it being easier, will result with many more drivers being inclined to perform many more overtaking manoeuvres. It follows that many more will get it wrong.
The additional fatigue (more time spent in less stimulating conditions) of the poor sod coming the other way means they are less likely to react and evade in good time.

No amount of average speed cameras will prevent overtakes, let alone high speed ones, let alone bad ones.

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

But if those measures that you list hadn't been enacted the KSI rate would have soared. No, I dont' believe that but it typifies the type of crass argument we are up against.

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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

How could it have when such a low proportion of KSIs were, and continue to be, attributed to speeding? You see, this is the sort of crass, ill-conceived argument that a lack of understanding of the figures presents us with.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

Again: You are assuming that the lower speeds are to limit accidents/deaths/injuries.
All policies should be examined, and challenged, as if they are designed to remove vehicles from the road.
The realisation that policies are not designed to lower accidents is there.......take another step.

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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

How come the findings from TRL 595 are never brought up when it comes to speed cameras?

That was also a bloody hard report to find when I went looking or it, the DfT didn't even respond when I asked about it.

Here

So we've slipped down the road safety league table recently. So the solution is, apparently, more of the same medicine. If my GP repeatedly doubled the dose of a drug that was making me sicker, I'd ask for a second opinion!

Whereas anyone with half a brain would wonder what it was that we did when we were top of the league that we don't do now, like, erm, engineering solutions to road safety. Prevent, not punish is the answer (with acknowledgements to Leeming).

I think one of the main reasons we have slipped down the league table is that we have virtually stopped building new roads and upgrading existing ones (with the exception of humps, bollards, red paint and other nonsense).

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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