Safe Speed Forums

They also load on post codes as well. They even load on professions too. Did you know that teachers und nurses do get small discount from some insurers.

Then there also Sheila's Wheels und the discounts for lady drivers too as statistically we girlies are safer (nana-nanarna -NAH! ) than you blokey blokes

So basically - they load for £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££! basically.

Safety nothing to do with it und should you be unlucky as to have incident .. these sharks do utmost to wheedle their ways out of it und make everyone involved whether liable or not liable pay. Protected No Claim? They'd still load somewhere or other. They usually call this "blanket increase".

People are daft though over insurers -thinking "insured ... they'll pay up!". They are firms with eye on the bottom line after all. They will use anything to reduce the pay-outs - keep profit-margins after all. That the way of the world here.


We now paying for floods across the country on each policy .. plus a subsidy into MIB funds too to cover the uninsured muppets.

But back to plot. Kids do learn from parental examples und firm but fair upbringing. But as society .. we need to embrace courtesy und good manners in general. Sadly - these are lacking. these days.

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Always remembering that insurance companies are selling risk in a price sensitive competitive marketplace. The more accurately they can pare premiums relative to risk the more policies they will sell.

If they get the risk calculations low for a demographic and charge too low a premium then they will make a loss as claims exceed premiums.

If they get the risk calculations high for a demographic and attempt to charge too high a premium then they won't sell many policies.

It's quite a tightrope with relatively few opportunities to gouge.

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

I totally agree, and think we need to remember to add the bottom line
"assuming they are operating in a competitive market"

Follow the ownership track back up the chain from your insurance broker, and you will see that in the UK there are a small handful of companies operating dozens and dozens of companies. Three of these larger companies share board members.

Fair trade ? Hardly

Of course cartels are illegal. If you think you have evidence of an insurance company cartel, then it is your duty to report it.

Motor insurance companies pay out more in claims and overheads than they charge in premiums.

Their profit is entirely dependent on holding the cash for an average of two years between premiums paid to them and claims paid out from them.

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

Well, there are, but they probably would continue not to bother with licence, insurance, etc.

Certainly in H&S circles there is a lot of research regarding youngsters and risk taking, I'll dig out the HSE Research Report on it.

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

It called BIKEABILITY .. in three stages from handling bike in school yard/park (aimed at beginners.. und our youngest boy now aged 7 did this when aged 6 years. We intend to get youngest kitten to do this when ready but she only just turned three years now. We do have one 6 year old foster with us for middling term of three months or so whilst his Mama recover from a knee job, We intend to sort him out with this first stage of Bikeability before he leave us.)

Second stage.. basic rules of road und safety led cycling. This offered currently to Year 6 children in our area now. Both our rogues (9 year old Lukas und 7 year old Andrew) do have this stage under belts now.

Stage Three. This ist the serious train up for the work-day commuter of the future with the nasty fast roads/biggest roundabouts und all the perceived stuff.


Nothing dangerous about cycling or sharing roads. Fear create mistake und danger. Acquiring the skills to cope .. that defuse (right word?) the fear.. allay the fear.. or create the means to obtain the safety led survival skills. I suggest reading IG's posts down in "Cycling" along with his paste from Richard Peace's expertise from CYCLING PLUS MAGAZINE itself That guy speak the common sense.. Richard Peace..I mean

but IG also. He committed police officer towards safety in any case whether he cousin or not. I speak objectively here. HONESTLY!




I think Bikeabilty address the changing traffic situation better. I support CTC on this one by the way. Of course, we not see eye to eye on some things .. such as forests of silly speed cams .. but in reality .. we are not polarised. We run a closely running parallel line on many issues .. but perhaps polarised on the scam thing.



Thank you We do try hard with our own kids und the fosters too. Wayne .. he was hard work but proven it to be worth the soul searching und endless worry to us at the time. We take on the "difficults" which no one else want. It so sad as these kids are basically good kids but victim of circumstances. It not pee cee to type this That ist the situation most of time. We live in cosy middle class life style. Some truly struggle. We try to help those in big trouble if we can. Why? Oh.. we like kids. We not stupid. We know some folk get a raw deal in their hand of cards in this life. We got a decent deal despite losing Rudi und Ferdl that way.. und a nearly in my own case. We make decision to do this just before the incident happen though.


We have them ride bikes to get mobility. feel for speed. some know-how. We then have them karting to get a further "feel". When we drive.. we are trying to get them to observe .. see what we see.. risk assess. We noted with some merriment that our 14 year old daugher (adopted. I should not keep typing this. She's OUR daughter now Lovely girl and as I know she does read here .. ) - well ... I noted she hit an imaginary brake when Nick (second son) was driving us the other day on visit down to him She saw the hazard ahead split second before he reacted. )

We training her up now. She's working on the DSA games of hazard perception und the revised Code. She has Bikeability 3 under her belt already too. Plus some Karting successes. When we drive in car.. we ask her to observe what we do. Like the older children .. she's watching the road und ist a right early warning system as to hazards ahead here too

I guess I say. engage the children in car.. turn drives into a "spot the hazard ahead" game.. make it fun for them to do this too.



I think more bad luck there.

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

I think you have to get more specific information about cartels than just suggesting that because two companies share board members they must have either conflicting interests or mutually supporting interests. Both of which are near impossible to prove but yet both options remain most likely.

Look at what has happened with bird flu and the Tamiflu virus (on topic in terms of curruption). Nobody has died from bird flu who didn't live among bird feces, and so it has been that way since bird flu was first isolated in East lothian many years before the panasian strain was isolated in the 1990's. George Bush ordered about $4.5 billion dollars worth of Tamiflu from Roche who have to pay a licence fee to the drug designer's Gilead Sciences Inc for every dose sold. I know it is nothing more than pure coincidence that Donald Rumsfeld was on the board of dircetors and now is in the US government, alledgedly still in ossesion of over $30 million in Gilead Shares. He did okay out of it.

So I can only say it is a similar coincidental occurence that shared board members might only serve their own interests, they certainly wouldn't do it deliberately. These are men of money after all, and greed is the order of the day, not fraud

Intersting to see how they make their profit. That is exactly how banks operate under the fractional reserve system, except with banks there is no money until they get somebody to sign up for debt first of all.

I think it's lack of suitable training combined with the natural confidence of youth. In WW2, the best age for fighter pilots was 18 to 23 because at that age you are 'immortal'. However, the training was such that some of the foolishness was 'trained out' and the residual was applied against the enemy. Yes, there were accidents caused by impetuosity, but that will always happen with the young.
The accidents which are virtually unpreventable are the ones caused by the desire to be competitive with one's peer group.The preventable ones are those in which culpable errors are caused by lack of situational awareness which comes back to both training and experience.
My youngest Grandson is almost 13 and has restored a Mini mainly by himself with a bit of input from me. He drives it on private land and, now that he is getting more experience, he remarked that on its current tyres it oversteers at the limit rather too much and asked how to deal with that. I constantly tell him that a really good driver will not appear to be driving fast at any time, as the smoothness will make it look easy. I tell him that heavy emergency braking should almost never be necessary and to watch the driving of others and be privately critical of them. He now asks me the right sort of questions, like why I took such a line through a corner, why I changed down at a particular place, etc. By the time he's old enough to drive he won't need to prove anything to his friends.
He now navigates for me on small club rallies, so he's learning lots from that, including how to judge a corner in advance and how to get the car in the right position at the right speed to maintain progress with safety.

I've recently been spending some of my spare time campaigning against the Lancashire Telegraph and their draconian 'Wasted Lives' campaign, which aims to 'cut young driver deaths on the road.' What the campaign actually does it bend statistics and use shock value of ordinary figures to sell newspapers. The LT have twisted situations, even to the point of claiming young drivers to be responsible for an act of motorway speeding (154mph on a busy M65) that upon further investigation appeared to be carried out by a 37year old. Revelations such as '6/10 young drivers admit to breaking the speed limit' are twisted to '6/10 young drivers admit to driving at life threatening speeds.' The campaign portrays (or certainly did until recently) all young drivers as reckless boy racers and wished for younger drivers to face harsher penalties for the same offences including (in their original aims) a 50mph national speed limit, which if exceeded by 10mph would result in an automatic ban (yes that's banned for 60mph in a 60 zone). Unfortunately due to nazi-esque propoganda and the belief that the campaign is trying to 'save young lives,' it has received moderate levels of support from readers and celebrities (although some of the younger ones would have had to swap their cars for something under 1100cc under the LT proposals, a point I'm sure they were unaware of), along with criticism from more educated members of society.

Fortunately many of the campaigns sillier proposals have been modified after consultation with experts, yet some remain. A 50mph limit for new drivers, a ban from motorways (yet most young drivers seem to smash themselves up on country lanes and urban areas) and a minimum learning period (despite individuals clearly learning to drive at different paces, as with learning to do ANYTHING).

I've put Paul's previous post on the Wasted Lives forum (I hope you don't mind), where hopefully someone from the paper will read it and may try and use some common sense in their campaign.

Anyway, I personally believe that inexperience is the key cause of accidents amongst young people. When you pass your test you really think you're just as good as everyone else on the road but soon realise you aren't. However, I like to think that a years experience has seriously helped my driving and am much more aware of hazards and potential danger.

Yet I still see drivers of all ages pottering along at 29mph in all situations, oblivious to what is happening around them. I was in a car with someone last week who just sits at 29mph constantly, braking to stay below 30. She goes into bends far too quickly, brakes quite sharply through them and comes out slowly (I fear for her life on an icy surface). After worrying me with this driving style, she then proceeded straight through a crossroads, unaware it was even there until after I had shouted 'BRAKE' and we were across on the other side, still at 29mph. She has been driving for twice as long as I have, yet appears to have far less sense than me before I passed my test. Yet the government seem to think its fine to tell people how long it will take them to learn to drive, despite clear individual differences.

Moronic boy racers tearing up town centres at night is a clear problem, and the fact that prats like this draw attention to themselves creates a perception that many young drivers are overgrown scallies like this. This is far from the truth.

Emphasis should be placed upon learning to drive properly (rather than to pass your test) from the moment a new driver passes. Things such as Pass Plus should become compulsory, teaching new drivers how to drive correctly at night, on motorways and on other types of road. More emphasis should be put on clamping down on dangerous boy racers than catching people driving above the limit, which is clearly favoured by the powers that be as it is more easily measured.

Something tells me you're going to like it here


Wasted Lives front page here: http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/wastedlives/

Perish the thought of us gatcrashing another forum....

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I'd love for you to gatecrash the forum. It seems people have given up arguing with me, whether I'm boring them or they've accepted I'm right I don't know.

HERE are the campaign's original aims:



As you can see, age discrimination really is at the core of these aims (although the new aims are less extreme). Also, as you can probably see, none of these restrictions will improve road safety at all, only cause congestion, transportation problems and punish responsible young drivers.

I see that newspaper lets out the opinion from driving instructors about engine capacity limits being some sort of answer. Unfortunately that could possibly put those young drivers at risk, where there are four large teenagers in a 100cc car trying to climb a hill in an NSL zone particularly.

Another problem is that not every family can afford two cars, so if little Johnny has just passed his test and the family let him use the family car then the car will need to be changed to a low power car and everyone in the family will have to drive it.

But, there does appear to be a problem with excess speed in built up areas, or from what I've observed, excess acceleration. The idea behind limiting power would seem to have the effect of removing the possibility for the driver to be able to accelrate to high speeds in short distances, something which can probably all agree is a likeley menace.

I think the way to go is to limit acceleration. To measure acceleration you need an accelermeter and many new cars have accelerometers fitted to control some the safety devices already. The device is cheap and can very easily be integrated with the existing engine electronics. The main car owner can have a key which the car recognises as an unlimited mode key and allows them to have access to the vehicle's full potential. The new driver could have a limited key, or their licence could be swiped in a reader, and then the car operates in limited acceleration mode.

This would mean that middle aged dad of two with a Subaru Imprezza could let his 17 y/o out in the car knowing that the vehicle will limit his abilities to accelerate quickly. I think insurance companies might behave favourably too in this situation

There's the usual caveat. Little Johnny can simply take the wrong keys. To combat that the car can log every time a particular key was used and for how long, providing valuable court evidence if required. If required a text message could be transmitted at that time too.

Using existing technology the additional cost to manufacturers for this sort of system is probably less than £10-£20 per vehicle.

Another problem is that not all cars immediately have this technology. A retrofit kit could be made available. Paid for by the insurance companies instead of giving the new driver their first year rebate, althoguh a whoel system to retrofit a car might cost less than £200 but the insurance saving might be greater than that so both parties could still benefit.

It's an idea I've had floating around for a while. I don't agree with raising the age limit, in Australia the age limit is 16, and perhaps it's due to their road network, they don't have such a problem that we do, or maybe they just make allowances for kids who want to head for a supermarket carpark and burn some rubber.
Nor do I agree with reducing power. Yes, it worked for motorcycles but even a 125cc motorbike can keep up with fast car traffic in town, not so a fully loaded small car heading up a hill.
Reducing maximum speed does nothign about the way the car can be driven in the sub-limit speed range. Using the Subaru Imprezza example, it could still be accelerated hard right up to the speed limit, adn fast accelration in narrow streets is perhaps as bad as it gets sometimes.

Chris

Welcome SWL

It really does sound like this campaign is preaching a lot of reactionary prescriptive nonsense. Some of their ideas do seem sound, such as the DVD for youngsters, yet one wonders what it's content would be, given the finger-wagging nature of their other policies.

At the age of 24 I was a commissioned officer in Her Majesty's Royal Air Force. I was considered responsible enough to start learning to fly some moderately expensive pieces of hardware (as well as taking responsibility for the men and women placed in my command), and yet, the measures suggested by this campaign would have seen me very limited in my movements, given that my first posting was at RAF Leuchars, in the north of Fife, Scotland, whilst my family and friends all resided in the Midlands!

For all the major flaws in this campaign, all bar one seem to boil down to the presumption that age is a worthwhile indicator of maturity (where did 25 come from?). This is the same presumption that has banned the sale of fireworks to under-18s, and yet this very evening I have witnessed over-18s firing pyrotechnics at a <30-degree elevation across the River Severn in the centre of Shrewsbury! It is a case of working from that which is easily measurable, rather than that which is worthwhile!

The other major flaw lies with their presumption that limiting the speed of younger drivers (or any drivers) will make them safer.

This is a completely stupid idea that would result in young drivers attempting to preserve speed through hazards because acceleration beyond the hazard would be more difficult. In short they would end up going faster in EXACTLY the places where we need them to be going more slowly.

The only good aspect is that it would send the very important message that they are 'not yet up to a normal standard' - but I think that there are many better ways to send such a message. I favour graduated driving licences, not because we have huge problems with legal youngsters in powerful cars (which we don't) but because it hard sells the concept that they still have much to learn.

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

Limiting acceleration. Bonkers idea.

How about when little Timmy attempts an overtake, finds himself running out of space at his 50mph limit and needs to accelerate at 0.1G more to get himself out of trouble?

Oh dear, the clever little limiter has kicked in and poor little Timmy and his one <25 y.o. friend, along with his three 25 y.o. friends have all been killed in a head-on smash with an articulated lorry. The poor lorry driver is badly injured and, even when rehabilitated, cannot return to work as an HGV driver due to PTSD.

HGV driver Derek is quoted as saying, "I couldn't understand it, the Subaru was overtaking a Datsun Cherry up the hill, and was almost past it when I came round the corner. It would have been touch and go whether he could get back behind the other car, but he should easily have been able to continue past it, but then he just seemed to stop accelerating, and before I could stop we had hit."

That is not to mention the pillocks who take umbrage at being overtaken, and try accelerating themselves to stop you, which is tantamount to attempted murder in my book.

Fabulous idea.

I think you need to go back , read over what was suggested to you, especially that I am not in favour of limiting speed, and then explain how it is that an acceleration limiter can limit top speed.

Lets say that the Imprezza can reach 150mph. How can limiting it's acceleration affect it's top speed ? It doesn't. It can't. The car can still provide all the power little Johnny needs for towing dad's boat up a hill, it can still reach 150mph on the German autobahn, and it stops him from reaching 50mph in a small sidestreet in a short distance.....what bit of this seems like a bad idea to you ?

All of it. Re-read mine and notice that the 50mph bit was a nod to the crazy proposals of the aforementioned campaign, and the rest of the tale still holds water without it!

No, I don't mind at all.

I'm co-authoring a newspaper article (working title: young drivers: we're letting them down) which details the policy failures that are resulting in hundreds of thousands of young drivers ill equipped for experience learning.

Blaming the young drivers or placing restrictions on them should only come AFTER 'policy' has made a fair stab at preparing them for life on the roads in the real world.

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

You can't say it's a stupid idea for those reasons unless you are able to say that young drivers don't already attempt to preserve momentum for after a hazard already. Have you any proof of that whatsoever ?


What might the levels of inception of driving controls centred around ? Do you hope to limit power ? Distance ? Hours per day ? Type of vehicle ?