basingwerk wrote:
OK, it's Friday afternoon and I've fixed a bug in some software that was really, really stressing me out over the last week. So I'll give you your fun.
[Hurt look]It wasn't supposed to be a trap or a piss take you know.[/Hurt look]
basingwerk wrote:
Gatsobait wrote:
you're not double-counting are you basingwerk?

The categories were off the cuff I admit. I thought the "masochistic attention seeking type" explains all those chumps who get done twice by the same camera!
I see now, though the wording implies a motive that I think probably isn't there. I'd put 'em in the "thumb in bum" group that you dislike so much (rightly so, IMO - driver inattention is a problem that I think we can all agree on). I mean, you have to be pretty inattentive to be zapped twice in the same place. That said, I don't think it's a large group. I know loads of people who have or have had points, but not one was caught in the same place twice.
basingwerk wrote:
Gatsobait wrote:
loos before his Dehli belly let go, premature labour? organs for transplant
Yes, indeed, the emergency speeders. I was one of these one. The drummer in my band left is cymbals at home, and we had to get from Liverpool to Wales and back in an hour before a gig. I think these could all be loosely classed as 'due to extenuating circumstance',
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if you went to court over a speeding ticket presumably you could plead guilty but with mitigating circumstances. I wouldn't like to say whether forgotten cymbals would impress the courts as much as a thawing kidney, but if no real danger was presented in the dash to get them I'd hope a reasonable bench would be pretty lenient. IIRC curry-man got a fine and a lot of points, but they stopped short of actually banning him because of the circumstances.
basingwerk wrote:
there could be a new offence for this called shitting without due care and attention, or driving under the influence of vindaloo.
:lol:
basingwerk wrote:
... there is no way to tell if a given speeder is doing it for a given reason (with the exception of the pregnant lady who has the birth certificate as proof). So if a person says he speeds because he or she thinks the experts are no longer in charge, it could very be the case that such a person could, in reality, be in the chump class or anti-social git class. There is no way to tell. The point is, though, that reasons do exist.
Exactly the problem. There is no way to tell why someone is speeding, well not remotely anyway. Unfortunately we are largely relying on remote monitoring to achieve that, which we both agree it's simply not capable of. The result is the one size fits all 10%+2 generates ticket approach. Travelling at a truly dangerous speed is by and large treated in the same way as travelling at a speed that may well have been safe in the circumstances, and travelling at a dangerous speed that is lower than the posted limited is not being dealt with at all. Worse still, due to the nature of the system and it's reliance on sending NIPs by post, no action at all is taken after an offence for as much as two weeks. Sorry, but I think that's just nuts.
basingwerk wrote:
It could be that others do not deserve harsh treatment, but I have asked for SafeSpeed's manifesto, and it seems to be 'roll it back to how it was', with no middle ground at all. This is unlikely to ever happen, in my view, so I want to know what is the best expectation. But all I get is 'roll it back to how it was'.
I'm afraid I don't share your pessimism, and within reason putting things back the way they were seems like a good idea. That means twice as many trafplods (sorry about the cost

), more varied advertising campaigns rather than just speed speed speed all the time, and chucking some money at engineering out dangerous features on the road where possible. On the toerh hand, I wouldn't want to have all the plod's shiny toys taken away. Just a seriously big re-think on how they're used.
basingwerk wrote:
Gatsobait wrote:
Let me throw a hypothetical at you basingwerk. <nutters in charge> would you be a speeder like the rest of us, and if so which category would you be in? <Sharp intake of breath> Not...

'I know better than the planners'?

In an extreme case, yes I'd give up and do the right thing, whatever it is. Right now, we have a process to change things, and you have ways to have your say. I think things are not a black as they are painted, and it is best to stay within the speed limit and make your case where you can.
Are you saying you would be in the "I know better" group then? It sounds that way, and in that hypothetical situation you almost certainly would know better. But here's the problem. While I don't for a minute think that we're on a slippery slope to this becoming real life, the instant we begin to set speed limits for motivations other than road safety we run into trouble. Rather than almost all drivers being within the limit we suddenly have a large group who are commiting an offence without actually doing anything different.
It's an interesting response though. Like the rest of us, you try to drive legally. But with a metaphorical gun to your head I can see that safe is your real priority, as I've always believed it would be. We may still disagree on where 'safe' is to be found on the speedo. My belief is that it isn't there at all. Anyhow, that wasn't really my point. What I'm driving at is that limits must be realistic or we make offenders out of people who aren't doing anything wrong.