Safe Speed Forums

As the Welsh tourist Board might say in their Adverts, “You can’t have our mud, but you are welcome to our speeding tickets.”

If you were thinking of taking a holiday in Wales, particularly North Wales Brunstrom territory, but have been put off by concerns about getting a speeding ticket for a marginal infringement of a speed limit, or some other experience or concern with road policing there, then please write to;

Heledd Parry, Wales Tourist Board, Brunel House
2 Fitzalan Road, Cardiff CF24 0UY
Tel: 029 2049 9909 , Fax: 029 2048 5031
Email heledd.parry@tourism.wales.gov.uk

Also email press@tourism.wales.gov.uk

and express your concerns in this forum.

As Heledd put it in her letter to me, “the Wales Tourism Alliance has held discussions with the Police in the past to try to alleviate the perception people have of speed cameras in Wales and to appraise them of the negative impact of their vigorous speed camera campaigns.”

As I mentioned to her, “It would seem that the current road policing policies in North Wales are having a serious detrimental effect on the perceptions of how much you genuinely welcome visitors, so I would ask you to do what you can to see that sensible road policing policies are restored. When that happens, I will then be pleased to consider visiting Wales again.”

The last thing I want to remember about a holiday in North Wales is getting home to a notice of intended prosecution from the North Wales Police for unwittingly exceeding a speed limit by 5mph for a fraction of a second.

Just sent the lady an e-mail explaining why, although I would love to take my family to North Wales, I can't run the risk to my licence, so we will be going to Scotland instead.

Changing one of the national songs , i hear -from "we keep a welcome in the hillsides " to "we keep a speed van hidden in the bushes"

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I know I considered holidaying in Wales this year, but thought better of it and plonked for renovating the kitchen as it'd be less stressful and I KNEW how much it'd cost me!

So long as it's 'Brunstrom Land' I'll never set a wheel or a foot into that area of the country, (actually not even by coach or train). I cannot risk a "thank you for visiting Wales, here's a £60 ticket & 3 points to remind you never to come back".

As Heledd Parry said;

Ahhhh, take a deep breath of that Welsh air and smell the **** ****.

Let us make it abundantly clear to the Welsh Tourist Board that if something is not done to curb Adolph Brunstrom then it will have a significant cost. Of course we all feel very sorry for the people who live there and have to put up with him all the time.

edited

We have changed the venue of our sales kickoff this year based on the number of tickets issued last year.

1000 sales people staying in 5 star hotels and an event that runs over 1M spend.

My bike club also nolonger runs training weekends in wales.

Found at:

http://www.thisisnorthscotland.co.uk/di ... 7754#views

with other comments about speeding in Scotland

scameras PR woman said...


"They are also governed by strict Treasury rules which ensure the only incentive for a partnership to participate in the programme is to reduce casualties."

Is that true - do the treasury withold funding of under performing pratnerships?

Can the publib get access to these tartgets or is this PR Spin?

to my knowledge the rules are set up to focus on drivers where the 85th percentile of drivers speed is above the speed limit. This suggests that they will typically enforce safe roads. We need cameras where the 85th percentile is below the speed limit. Then they'll target dangerous speeding

Caution is required with that argument. Imagine a town centre environment. During the day there are a lot of people and a lot of slow traffic. But at night conditions are entirely different. We might still catch a lot of safe drivers if the (bulk of) the speed survey data applies to daytime conditions while the bulk of the convictions are at night.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Hi,

just saw this post and would like to add my tuppence worth.

Recently been scammed in Wales, open fields either side, NSL to 30mph, 36 in 30, no one else on road, hidden unmarked van.

So feeling rightly agrieved have decided along with rest of relatives to never venture into Wales again, spent our last £60 there this week.

So what have they lost, annual holidays used to spend 4 weeks there so

£2,400 per year for me

5 other families used to join = £12,000

Weekends every week, £100 for hotel room and say £50 for leisure = £7,200

often would meet friends there, so now they are'nt going either approx £3000.

So lets see for 6mph driving safely and being overcharged £60 Wales has lost around £22200 per year.

expected visits left in me and friends and family would have been around 20 years so Wales is worse off by around £4,440,000


Think my maths is right

Good riddance to Wales and their unfair Arrive Alive money making machine and their ..........................cannot print what I think about its leader

Fook me! If the wife and I used any of those 3 options to visit Wales (and we're only over the border in Shropshire), then we'd either have to take 20 weeks holiday or return home 20 seconds after we'd crossed the border!

Sheesh!

_________________
Simon

Apologies for refreshing an old thread, but after fourteen speeding-free years in Scotland, I took my wife down for a weekend in North Wales back in August. What first caught my eye after crossing the border were the endless signs for cameras along all the major roads - far more prolific than "up here".

On Saturday I witnessed, south of Llandudno, two police cars sat in a layby picking up literally dozens of holiday makers who'd just clipped the start of a short 30mph zone (this being a bright, dry morning where some thought and intelligence wouldn't go amiss by the police).

I returned home, and on the Wednesday the mail included a letter from the police informing me that I'd been photographed at 35mph in a 30mph zone, as I was just leaving a village before heading across country to Bala on a national limit road - the natural sort of acceleration you do when the obvious danger has passed.

I was offered the £60 "speed awareness course" for no points on my licence. I declined this as it would cost me around £70 to drive to the course from home and back...and I declined it because I do NOT want to visit Wales again. I found the surveillance excessive, threateningly intimidating, and - worse - clearly nothing more than a money-making scam. Neither my speed nor that of the holiday makers I'd seen earlier was likely to cause accident, and in all cases the "speeding" involved was natural acceleration or deceleration.

It's a lovely place, Wales - but if that's the way the local 'force want to run it, and they can't handle Newtonian physics, then they can keep it.

Andy

Freckledfish and join the club. I know how you feel, I live near North Wales and used to travel over there often. Not any more

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

I had exactly the same issue as freckledfish when I was on holiday in Wales in August, but outside Portmadog. Same set-up, but I was in a queue of slow moving traffic, (slow moving because everyone had clocked the mobile camera van). I was also caught at 35mph as I accelerated out of the 30mph limit. Since I was still in the queue of traffic, I imagine everyone else that day got done exactly the same way.

This all happened on a wide, innocuous section of A road which just happened to have a convenient layby for a police car to sit in. You are leaving a 30mph zone, what can the possible road safety connotations be. Surely if they really think there is a safety issue they should be clocking vehicles coming into the 30mph zone. This is so obviously all about money and nothing about road safety. I cannot believe that this practice is allowed to go unchallenged.

A couple of questions for anyone with experience of this:-

1) My NIP detailed 'offence date'. When writing trying to persuade North Wales Police to give me a different venue for the Speed Awareness Course, I challenged this stating that it should be an 'alleged offence date' on the grounds that I had a right to go to court and challenge their evidence. They wrote to me and accepted that they were wrong and it should indeed be 'alleged offence date' and that they would change the wording on all future NIPs. Any idea if this means the notice has been served incorrectly and is therefore worth challenging?

2) Is the contact at the Wales Tourist Board still valid. My family has taken holidays in N. Wales for the past 3 years and we love it, but we won't be going there again and I'd like someone to know why! Anyone else worth writing to, local paper, Welsh Assembly etc?

3) This may be old news but the finances of this are unbelievable. Apparently there are 4 speed awareness courses each week day for up to 20 people, each of whom has paid £60, potentially therefore £4,800 per day or £24,000 per week. The earliest date I was offered was over a month away so presumably most days they are full. The course obviously costs peanuts, so what happens to the rest of the money? Does it all find its way back to the police to spend as they feel fit or is it divi'd up between the police and the council? And all these people have done is commit a minor speeding infringement. I notice the principle of the National Speed Awareness Scheme, originally endorsed by ACPO when Brunstrom was in charge, was that you could take the course wherever was convenient in the country, but surpise surprise N. Wales do not adhere to this scheme, surely not because some of the revenue would leave N. Wales?

I live over 200 miles away in Somerset so the Speed Awareness Course is expensive and very inconvenient but since I have 3 points already I feel I have no real choice.

Sorry for the rant but I cannot stand iniquity particularly when it is dressed up as being all about road safety, when quite clearly it is all about money.

I'm off to Cornwall next summer!

I recently sent another email to press@tourism.wales.gov.uk, which seems to have been accepted, but received no reply.

Heledd Parry no longer seems to be receiving my emails.

You could also try the various MPs for the area. Use the following links to obtain their contact details.

http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alms.cfm
http://www.dodonline.co.uk/
http://www.dodonline.co.uk/engine.asp?& ... =45&list=y
www.faxyourmp.com

I see the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire has just been caught by a N. Wales camera.

Do you think he'll be joining me on my Speed Awareness Course or do you think he'll go to court and there will be some mysterious mitigating circumstances that get him off?

I think he'll be hung in the sun.
















And in the Mail, Mirror, Telegraph, Times and Express...

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

By the way, that long PR about M. Hughes was very good... and very usable by all manner of publications, IMO. Let's hope that they pick the ball up.

_________________
p.s. I am still absolutely floored by Paul's death. May 2008 be the greatest ever for SafeSpeed. His spirit lives on.

They lost my business, and that of my friends, long ago. Nice place shame about the scams.

It's like Kylie inviting me to jump on her while she's wearing hedgehog skins. Think I'll watch your videos instead ta

_________________
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.