Safe Speed Forums

I agree on both counts. But we shouldn't ignore the potential for engineering improvements (often quite minor) to reduce the number of accidents. And neither should we tolerate roads that are "difficult" to drive and complacently say that they only catch out bad drivers.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go along with weepej on this one. To me the best driving days of my life were in the seventies. Cars wern't nearly as safe and roads were nearly all 70MPH. You didn't have speed cameras to worry about and driving was a pleasure.

If you couldn't drive to a certain standard then you either suffered or you learnt to drive properly. Britain at the moment is in danger of being suffocated by cotton wool and bubble wrap.

While i'm all in favour of filling dangerous potholes and resufacing roads where a skid is likely at anything over 25 MPH in the wet, I couldn't care less how many hairpin bends you are likely to find in a given mile of road. I used to live within a couple of miles of three nice hairpin bends and the fun was in power sliding round them in the wet, they're still there and I've never heard of anyone coming a cropper on any of them.

I love going into mid Wales and driving "dangerous " roads that hardly anyone travels on just for some fun.
You can keep your motorways and dual carriageways. If I'm in no hurry to get anywhere, I'll take the country lanes everytime.

Our local paper has just named a road that I used to travel daily as one of the 10 most dangerous in the country (A529). This is cr@@, I used to travel it daily and still do regularly and the only accident I ever saw on it was a guy who spun off on sheet ice at 6 AM. It's now being ruined by silly 40MPH stretches everywhere.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

[quote="Steve"t not all accidents are a result of bad driving; so what do we do about the remainder which aren't?[/quote]

"Accidents don't just happen of themselves. Accidents happen because men are foolish, and reckless, and negligent, and lazy. Sometimes, because there isn't enough money for what they want to do. One crash in a hundred may have been because God willed it so. Not more than that "

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

You perform power slides on public roads?

Nice!

A long as you only kill yourself I figure.

Yep, I die every time I do one....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The men in question need not be the driver.

If we're going to accept that many are simply negligent/lazy, it is right that we continue to allow their risk (to themselves and others) when proper solutions are available?

It is better to be safe than right!

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

A quote that has remained with me from my advanced driving by one of the observers - "You gain nothing by being DEAD right!"

Let's focus the discussion on those that might read it. Your point won't be read by many non-drivers, so it won't change their ways.



It depends on the cost. If the solutionsare cheap, it would be irrational not too use them. But if the solutions are dear, then forget it. Spend the money on something more cost-effective (cancer drugs, better teachers, more flood defences, whatever...)

Engineering out a hazard doesn't count as excusing bad driving in my book. If you are suggesting that all accidents are caused by bad driving, that is an extreme interpretation. I would think that a large majority of accidents are caused by errors of judgement, by applying an engineering solution to minimise driver errors is the best solution in those case.

Humans are always going to make mistakes, no amount of education can prevent that. If it could, then games like bop-it would become very dull indeed

On the contrary, I wasn't talking about non-drivers either. I know for a fact (sorry, I'm not divulging) that some in officialdom are following this thread - that's who my comment was aimed at.


That is true, there are bigger things to worry about in life.
Should road tax/duty be paying for non-motoring related efforts - I think so, but the problem is how much of it? How much of the tax/duty is actually spent on the roads/pavements/lanes etc?

It doesn't detract from the overall issue of expending resource in the wrong areas, especially when the justification for doing so is so badly unsound as well as grossly misrepresented.

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

There seems to be little hypothecation, at the national level. They pile up all the money on the table, wherever it comes from, and the cabinet divvies it up as they see fit. That made sense when letters took days to get from here to there, and when people received second hand copies of biased propaganda in newspapers.

But with the flood of data nowadays, people know that politics is just about collectively making up our minds. And there will always be winners are losers - that's how it goes. If you want to pay for safer roads, you loose something else. What should it be – the NHS or the BBC? Fine if you like Rupert Murdoch, and if you never need a hip operation. Or perhaps we should close our Physics Labs, or our museums and galleries? On the other hand, we could just drive a bit more carefully (and slowly?), and save money that way. It just makes sense.

We could instead focus on the non-essentials, like the lavish spending on criminal holiday resorts (aka prisons), much of social services, EU subsidies, subsidising illegal occupations of other countries, direct benefit payouts, the glut of well-paid civil servants.... I'm sure there are more examples.

So are motorists are subsidising society? If so how then by how much? (depending on the divvied portions, some could reasonably view it as 'being screwed'). Shouldn't we be looking after groups who are heavily subsidising others?

However, it seems we have indeed lost something valuable: pedestrian safety.
There are significantly more KSIs arising from the single 'pedestrian error' factor of "pedestrians failed to look properly" [3487] than all drivers exceeding the speed limit [1993] [source, table 4b, RCGB2007, fatal and serious injury accidents summed).
How can this been allowed to happen even though pedestrians aren't KSIed when walking into each other pedestrians or trees?

TBH, I think a lot can be gained simply by disbanding the SCPs (which aren't free) and replacing them with trafpol (which can also cost recover).


Who is to say motorists aren't already? Where should the line be drawn? Is there a ever a lower limit of 'slower'?
Why don't we put as much focus on other road user groups too? Won't that also save money, perhaps more of it, as well as being fairer?

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

In that case forget the motorist as it pales into significance when you look at Council Tax payers.
About a third of adults in each county are paying for the other 2 thirds.

That's the problem isn't it?

If one signs up to the belief that the cornerstone of road safety is curtailing numerical speed, there's only one solution when increased enforcement and lower limits doesn't save everyone's lives, and that's more of the same. Get everyone to do 50, and someone (Brake probably) will start campaigning to get everyone to do 40.

To reuse an analogy I've used before, if my doctor prescribed a treatment that failed to work, I'd start thinking he was a quack if all he did was increase the dose every time I pointed this out. I'd be looking for a second opinion from someone prepared to try a different treatment.

That's the ONLY good thing that I can see as a reason for dropping the NSL to 50MPH.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm TOTALLY against it and can only see it INCREASING rural accidents BUT the one thing about it is that when common sense is seen to prevail, it can be returned to 60MPH "at a stroke", just as it was in the seventies BUT if we continue as it is now, with councils dropping every other speed limit to 40/50MPH, it will be virtually impossible to get sensible limits back on the majority of our roads in the future.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I'd be surprised if limits ever went back up after being cut to , but I guess anything's possible. Boris, after all, is reversing the congestion charge zone changes of the last few years, isn't he?

I suppose it would be a lot easier to reverse one big change than lots of little ones.

Really? Do you care to tell us how much the average paying dweller pays in council tax and how much the average driver pays in road tax and fuel duty? Give us the numbers and show us how the latter "pales into significance" - I think you'll be surprised how much it doesn't!

"... forget the motorist ..." indeed

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

Council tax is levied upon the property. The bill is addressed to a person resident within, it has to be.
We already tried to tax each person for local public services, it was called the "poll" tax.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

And when you saw the number of people who campaigned against it did that not indicate the number of those who don't pay council tax? It sure indicated that to me.

Council tax is levied against the person who owns or rents the property, all of those adults who live there and are not so registered get away with receiving their services for nothing.

The Poll Tax was a half-arsed method of sharing the burden; it should have been levied onto income tax with the funds being distributed from the centre.

I preferred the Poll Tax because I had a choice of where I paid it being somewhat mobile at the time; also being in full time education during the Poll Tax years I paid £70/year...magic. Not as magic as the F-All that most get away with while I pay £250/month for next to nothing in return. Oh yes and I have 4 vehicles to run also.

It really cheers me up to see lay-about's benefiting from all of the hard work I have put in to get a nice place to live after not being able to even afford a council flat in a ghetto and they pay nothing towards it. Then they fling open the door of their crappy old banger and make a mess of my vehicles...maybe I'll get an old Land Rover with railway tracks welded round it! Edited to add..and live in a Gypsy camp. No taxes to pay for that...well not for those that live in 'em

Property taxes are favoured by most legislatures around the world for the pragmatic reason that it is very difficult to hide a property. Taxes on individuals not in employment are virtually impossible to collect and are extremely regressive in that they can exceed 100% of income.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown