Safe Speed Forums

Driving to London the other evening, I was in lane 3 of the M4 heading east, following a line of raffic. Up behind me comes a Peugeot 405 coupe at high speed, sits a foot from my bumper and starts flashing and waving for me to get out of the way. I had no where to go, so gave him a quick brake light and then when there was a gap, pulled into lane 2. As he passed, the passenger wound down his window and threw a drink can against my car. They then accelerated away and could be seen doing much the same behind other drivers. I confess to having briefly tried to catch him, but he was doing up to 120mph, so I didn't continue with that. I managed to get a partial reg no and reported it to the police. They said they would "put out an observation for him" and that was it.

My point is that from joining the M4 at Swindon, all the way to London, I did not see one traffic police car. There is an obvious effect of a marked car - people slow down and drive a bit more sensibly and a deterrent benefit from the POSSIBILTY that there may be an unmarked car about, but this is not quantifiable and does not show up in statistics in this modern target-led policing world. A traffic patrol officer could do a whole shift, not necessarily book anyone at all, but make the roads safer and prevent several accidents by their prescence.


Roger

The problem with the pug, if the police had've stopped him, all the evidence would be gone, they'd thrown it all away.
Your second point is perfectly valid, and shows that the scamera is incompetant, it can only deal with one offence, I wouldn't like a police officer to be only able to deal with just one type of offence, they are multi purpose.
The sight of just one police vehicle, will probably prevent more offences than we think, unlike scamera's that people just slow down for and pass then speed up.

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