Safe Speed Forums

I remember you now - the tutonic dominator, who doesn't like my boxer! Nice to here from you again. No way, I took the test in a foreign country as well as here.

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I stole this .sig

Hoooray!!

And if there are errors of judgement leading to near-misses they should be explained at the side of the road by a qualified traffic cop. If there are inadequacies in someone's driving skills then that someone should be trained or educated to remove those inadequacies. If there is diesel spilled in the road every effort should be made to clear it up..... etc. etc. etc.

On the other hand we could just accept these things happen, shrug our shoulders and say 'well, the outcome will be a lot less severe if you just slow down'.

Are you starting to grasp the point yet, BW?



Wrong again. The system you propose depends on speed regulation, and this is something we all agree with (go and remind yourself what 'SafeSpeed' means before you go off on one again...). Speed limitation is something different entirely...

Which is why you must take your test again, as foriegn standards are not up to our standards.

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Steve

as well as here

Er, that's what he said he did....didn't he

Still feeding the troll, I see!

That all?

My wife can outdo you and she is just a mere girly!

Its the patient logic which sets you apart from those who foam at the mouth at the (individually speaking) statistically unlikely carnage Mr Werk. I think we all respect that to some extent. But here's a thing. How about old age? Research (even the Dept of Transport's) shows that old age slows cognitive ability. In fact a range of abilities are degraded. This theoretical "menace" is remotely measurable via the DVLA's records. So do we ban drivers as soon as they reach old age (election loser). Do we suspect that road safety policy has stronger political root than a logical one?

Perhaps Brunstrom is a visionary after all....

http://www.roadsupervisors.net/she.news.htm

Road safety policy is very much a trade-off between politics and logic. It is hard to think of any important government policy which is purely based on strong logical principles. Indeed (and I am being serious, not inflammatory here) there was a kind of relentless "logic" in the communist and fascist administrations in Europe of the last century. The trouble was, it was very one-sided, and one purpose (the main purpose?) of a democratic political system is to take the radical edge of "dangerous" logic, and force the system to comply with the wishes of the majority. This is usually deemed a good thing, although side effects such as the one you bring up do happen. As Churchill put it - democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.

Although the age effect is remotely measurable over a long period of time via the DVLA's records, and action could be taken, it is only measurably in a statistical sense, rather than an individual one. Perhaps that is the difference, i.e. it is not possible to 'pin' it on an individual. There is also a difference in degree. In any case, actuaries in insurance companies do 'measure' this risk and others like it, and use it to set the rates. I would also expect the government to act if the size of the problem became a 'big' issue, like speeding has. Perhaps the governments inaction is an indication that the problem is small?

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I stole this .sig

Quote of the day...

Sorry I couldn't resist it. Government inaction is never an indication of the size of the problem.

"Speeding" accounts for less thn 7% or road deaths but they have gone overboard with speed-o-phobia. Drink driving kills three time as many but hardly gets a mention most of the year. The Police admit that the rely on "intellegence" to catch drink driver..what ever that means.

How about MRSI (super bug). Kills 4000 people a year (more than road deaths) ...Governent action...nothing. My wife is a nurse so I know this to be true!

Smoking kills 25 times as many people as the roads do and yet it is still legal! but then they make money out of smoking don't they.

Just look at he biggest killers in the world and ask what government (s) are doing about them.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Are you serious or are you trolling?

Speeding is clearly prevalent, but it appears to be impossible to find any worthy evidence that it's a problem.

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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

I'm pro-camera. If that is trolling, so be it. Are you scoring points on a slack (and rainy) afternoon?



Speeding has became a 'big' issue, one way or another, whereas risk due to age has not. That is what Sam asked about. As for your remark about worthy evidence, well that has become something of a crusade, hasn't it? Is there no such thing as speeding?

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I stole this .sig

Speed has been demonised to justify the introduction of a way of profiting from the demonisation in the name of safety.

Not unlike the way Islam is being demonised to justify the plundering of oil fields in the name of international safety!!

Well, fair play to you, 7% is more realistic than some claims. I'll say this though. It's a heavy number to be stung when you are just a tad over the limit, or in the middle of the night when everybody's asleep. Yet you can't expect to get away with it completely, can you?

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I stole this .sig

BW - I think this has to be the biggest example of Orwellian doublespeak you have ever come out with. It was statistical generalisation that was used to justify the extreme criminilastion of each and every incidence of 'speeding' in order to justify the absolute enforcement that we have now.

Each incident of speeding (notice, NOT inappropriate speed as speeding is just exceeding a number, as is overage) is no more dangerous in itself than each incident of overage. It is other factors that lead to impairment/inappropriate speed that matter.

Well, we are pro road safety. Pro camera means you support a narrow, profitable regime that may contribute to road safety but all evidence suggests probably doesn't.

PS In case you didn't know, the latest ACPO handbook for safet camera partnerships now states that their only performance target is that they turn a 5% profit over expenditure. They are no longer directly measured by casualty reduction.

Nope... we charge people with an offence and leave it to the courts (along with our evidence) to establish guilt and punish accordingly

In an ideal world - punishment would fit the crime and the juduciary system would work like a well tuned engine.....

The Fixed Penalty System - on the other hand - is different. We had the fiasco with the computer generated signatures and the issues over signing the NOIP etc ... again up to the recipient as to whether he or she signs, accepts and pays the fine or decides to fight in the the court.

Again - mate - back to COAST and that driving plan.....

Two wrongs do not make a right.... Read my post on cornering - or better still ... read "RoadCraft !"

Scan for information....


{Rest of stuff has been covered in numerous posts by myself and the Mad Doc on subject of COAST and driver training - COAST and speed drops out of the equation because you tend to choose the safest speed for the condition, which may not necessarily be the speed limit - - though in the Mad Doc's case ... this is usually at 10% above the limit (and more if he knows there are no speed traps around }

I'll accept that you don't "punish" lawbreakers (although as the first point of contact they'll have with the whole judicial system, you may still end up being considered part of the punishment), though bear in mind that my comment was written more in response to BW's original, rather than as something in its own right - I'm not sure what word I'd have used had I been freely commenting on the police's role in crime prevention.

However, this just seems a bit like we're nit-picking over a minor detail whilst ignoring the major detail If you replace the word "punish" in mine and BW's comments with "charge with an offence", which one of us is then nearer the mark, bearing in mind that it's quite possible to break the law without endangering anyone...