Safe Speed Forums

In the Mail on Sunday today is a letter - anonymously attributed - about roadside shrines with flowers etc. The writer supports the use of "shrines" as a comfort to the bereaved but the last sentence reads:

"... would like to see permanent tributes ... at the scene of an accident ... to make motorists aware of the dangers of speeding."

Not, you notice, bad driving or stupidity but speeding. Poor brainwashed soul.

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

The "Speed Kills" indoctrination has been fantastically successful - Shame this government can't put so much effort into useful things.

It's a frighteningly strong barrier we have to overcome.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

Yeah. That's why we have to scrap speed cameras. The all-important culture is badly damaged. Millions of people are allocating potentially life saving resources to the wrong 'safety factor'.

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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

It's always been the case that a lot of people say "speeding" when they mean "dangerous driving" -- I've heard people talk about red light running and how the "speeders" that do it need to be stopped.

And since the public associate "speeding" with "bad driving", it's no wonder that something called a "speed camera" will be a good thing in people's minds.

Try explaining to Joe Public the difference between "exceeding a speed limit" and "driving like an arse" and they'll have real difficulties taking it in.

I saw that too and thought exactly the same.
It's interesting that the prime factor in road safety has become the detection and punishment of breaking of posted speed limits, thus addressing, at best, 5% of the overall causation factors.
In work-related accidents the 'Elf & Safety Exec ( much as we laugh at them) do address a number of established causation factors. In aviation safety/accidents, there is an Accident Investigation Body which looks at and reports on aviation accidents and makes recommendations or requests changes in regulations. They don't just concentrate on one aspect of accident causation and apply a majority of resource to addressing just that cause.
It also seems that at least 5000 deaths per annum are attributable to MRSA infections in hospitals. Some put the actual figure of deaths from this as high as 20,000 per annum, the true level being hidden by falsification of death certificates. However, we don't seem to get organisations like BRAKE setting up to require this problem to be cured by putting in place additional monitoring of hospital cleanliness. Why not? Are those dying in hospital not so important as those killed in RTC's.
Why can't we have 'hospital safety partnerships' monitoring hospitals and handing out 'fixed-penalty tickets' to anyone who enters a hospital or a hospital ward without first using the antiseptic hand gel. Maybe this could be camera monitored
There are virtually as many people killed in accidents in the home as in RTC's. These are hardly addressed at all.
Personally I do believe that it's all political. Address only the areas of public safety when they can be made entirely cash-neutral or, better still, make a profit for the gov't in some way.
It seems that detection of breaking the speed limit is the only aspect of casualty reduction embarked on with such huge resources in an attempt to reduce loss of life and why, because it's easy to do electronically, even though logically it can have very little overall effect. Makes a nice profit and creates some jobs though.