mpaton2004 wrote:
bombus wrote:
So instead of being merely selfish, irritating, inconsiderate and parasitic like I would imagine they usually are, these people are indirectly causing deaths and injuries. It's totally unacceptable.
I can understand your logic (the same can be applied to people who buy homes under approach paths to airports) but stating that these people are "indirectly causing deaths and injuries" is ridiculous.
I wasn't talking about people who have a genuine problem with speed (i.e. going too fast for the conditions) on their road. They are perfectly entitled to get the problem dealt with in a reasonable way (although they are not entitled to expect less traffic). Similarly, people with genuine frequent incidences of speeding on their road are also entitled to aim to get those people not to exceed the speed limit, however little actual difference that is going to make.
I was talking about those who knowingly and deliberately make up (or greatly talk up) "speeding" on their road, just because they don't like the mere presence of the traffic. This deception ultimately contributes towards and encourages a policy based on speed cameras, by exaggerating the incidence and impact of speeding. It distorts our road safety priorities. And I believe that through their side effects speed cameras cause deaths and injuries, which is tragically ironic given the nonsense about how they save them.
So I'm afraid I don't think it's remotely ridiculous. And anyone who thinks that cameras cause deaths and injuries, or even that they just don't save lives, will surely also believe that these people are indirectly causing deaths and injuries by putting unnecessary emphasis on cameras at the cost of real road safety measures. When I say "deliberately", I don't mean knowingly, I just mean that they have chosen to make up a speeding problem, and therefore they've deliberately misreported a road safety-related situation, despite presumably realising that doing so was quite possibly going to cause deaths and injuries somewhere along the way.
Of course it's possible that someone could move into a house on a through-road with the plan to report speeding that wasn't there, only to find that a lot of the traffic really was speeding. In this case, if they actually reported what they saw, they wouldn't be causing deaths or injuries, since they wouldn't be producing crap data, despite having intended to.
_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.
"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (
Conservative Way Forward:
Stop The War Against Drivers)