Safe Speed Forums

Well, how about a structure of penalties that ramp up depending on the seriousness of the action, careless driving, dangerous driving etc...

Nor is VAT on a new vehicle (and maintenance and parts).
But that's the point isn't it, it's not hypothecated (To designate a new tax or tax increase for a specific expenditure).
£45 Billion from motor users, £7.5 Billion of that spent on roads. [Link]; that difference is over a grand per motorist, so where does the rest of that money go? Shall we add proposed rises in parking and congestion charges to that? What about the newly introduced victims surcharge? (surely a blatant case of subsidy)


A greatly biased and blinkered site. The figures given within are misleading too. How much do things like insurance offset the burden to the NHS? Could you imagine the burden on society if there were no useable (or still cobbled) roads?

"Bring out your dead!"

Now I don't doubt there are 'Mr Toad' types, but the sensible person recognises roads as a shared space.


Today's non driver didn't pay for it either....we're all fortunate in that respect.


You still benefit. You use the pavements and crossing facilities, I guess you use a bike on roads (and cycle lanes?), you need food (that needs to be transported), emergency services (ambulances, police (they police more than just the roads) and fire services have to use those roads to get to you), I guess you want goods and services from time to time, you may even need public transport (now don't tell me that's not subsidised).

Yes everyone pays for the roads (yes even the non-drivers of yore) but everyone still benefits/benefited from them; it's all interlinked but not necessarily unfair to non-drivers.

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

In which case: the penalty for exceeding the speed limit on a motorway = 0

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

Weepej, you make me laugh. You keep talking about the weight of cars like they are some massive earth moving equipment. The two smallest and lightest vehicles I use are....... my car and my little bike.

To put the weight of a car into perspective, a decent Charolais bull weighs about the same as my car. Have you ever met a bull? They are very unpredictable and I would sooner take my chances on a dual carriageway than with a stroppy bull. Another example is LGV's. If you see a foreign fridge lorry on the road, he could well have started his journey carrying the weight of my car in fuel. My tractor is another example, the wheels weigh about what my car does, trust me, I have man handled them .

Oh, but what about the speed? What about the speed? It is just a number. I have been hospitalised indirectly by a machine that wasn't even going at walking pace, but have driven and been driven at speeds you think are deadly and here I am, right as nine pence.

Take a chain saw. Flippin' dangerous them. They can't move under their own steam and they only weigh a few kilos so should be all soft and cuddly, right?

Neither I nor anyone less here is advocating tearing around at break neck speeds, but to suggest that driving a vehicle weighing X at Y speed is deadly is crazy. Each and every day there are millions (probably) of individual journey's taken. Most of these journey's will see the driver exceeding the speed limit at some point, and some of these will be by a fair margin, yet we only see a relative handful of deaths.

Smoking in public place would attract a hefty penalty, as would being fat, as would drinking too much.

Eh, they just widened the M1, and are in the process of doing the same to the M25, IIRCC M1 widening cost 21 million a mile to do, total over £5 billion, and that's just for a relatively short section of road (and one extra lane), for the exclusive use of motorised vehicles.

Regardless, VED and fuel tax is just a way of collecting revenue for the government. If they did away with them tomorrow the tax would come off some other way.

I understand this, but it's boatch that doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of shared space paid for by people, car drivers and non car drivers alike.

DC's shared space? I think not. If they have light controlled pedestrian crossings, then press the button, wait for the lights to change and cross. If you want to take your chances against the lights, go ahead, but really it should come with a fine. There were plenty of people crossing against the lights in Southend yesterday. Didn't see one car/van/motorcycle doing the same.

It is. No jaywalking-type law exists for DCs. Then there are the cyclists.


Again, there is no legislation prohibiting pedestrians walking against their phase. Personally, I'm against any such legislation, on non-DC roads anyway.

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

I think that’s irrelevant to this debate!


Are you really questioning something you gave within your own link?

Anyway, so how does that invalidate the yearly figures I (and you) gave?
(think about it....)

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

Isn't that what we have at the moment? If you see hurrid people doing stupid things every day it's evidently not working.

Also, as you have freely admitted to unsafe behaviour, shouldn't you be penalised too?

Er, your link. I quoted your link in my reply.



My point was there's always such expensive work going, on, so it makes those figures for road spending look mighty suspicious, like something's missing.

Am also wondering if you added up the figures ever spent on the road network what that would look like compared to the tax take from VED and fuel duty paid by us motorists, I'd be leaning toward private motoring actually being a subsidised activity.

Regardless, we've established, VED and fuel duty are NOT hypothicated.

That WOULD be a day when pigs would fly.....

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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.

On the A127 a big fence has been erected in the central reservation with a big yellow sign that says, and I quote " FATAL ACCIDENT SITE. DO NOT CROSS". That suggests that there is not much sharing going on. It used to be NSL, then last year it went TOD cameras and 50 limit, no doubt next year it will a 20 limit and camping allowed in lane 2

<sigh>


Are we done here?


Yes there is something missing: your inability to understand timescales and amortisation.


Have you added it up? If not, how are you able to justify your own leaning? The figures we've discussed thus far certainly don't indicate any significant subsidy.


Correct - it all goes into the pot, but is more taken out than put in....

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

... yes ... for now, at that site.

This individual requirement (even assuming it is one as opposed to a request) does not apply to all other areas of that DC, or other DCs, and likely won't be a permanent restriction on that area of that DC.
Right now there is no general or automatic prohibition over and above urban type roads (it is open to debate whether there should be [and there's at least some merit to it], but that wasn't the point).

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

If motorists are upset that the tax on them is not all being spent on the road network then console yourself how much better treated you are than smokers and drinkers. Of the approximately £5x10^9 raised in duty on alcoholic beverages not a single penny is spent on the drinking infra-structure.

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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

But that frequently-heard argument is a fallacy, as it is the duty of the State to pay for roads out of taxation revenue; it is not the duty of the State to provide pubs.

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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

( ... motorists ... yourself ... you ... )

Does other groups having it worse reasonably justify an unfair (assume for argument's sake) but less drastic policy? I don't think so!
Should we sit back and let this government spin their way to unaccountability just because folks like the Chinese have it so much worse?


The luxuries of cigarettes and drinks manufactured run by profit-based private enterprises driven by market conditions.
The necessities of driving are managed by those who are meant to service and be accountable to the general public.
Beaten to it by Peter!

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

I have never said that you don't drive a car - you have often said you do and I have no reason to disbelieve you.

However I think the proposition that there are "Pedestrians Crossing" signs on the Kingston Bypass section of the A3 is extremely questionable. It is not really relevant that there are such signs on another part of the A3 thirty miles away.

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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