Safe Speed Forums

The war on the motorist is over, the Transport Secretary said yesterday on his first day in the job.

Philip Hammond promised to end the way the country's 33million drivers have been targeted by an array of speed cameras and cowboy clampers.

He also pledged to 'sweat the assets' of the road, rail and aviation infrastructure to get value for money for taxpayers.

The secretary of state pledged to scrap public funding for speed cameras and said he would consult on a plan to curb pump prices when oil prices soar

Mr Hammond promised: 'We will end the war on motorists. Motoring has got to get greener, but the car is not going to go away.'

The Tory Cabinet minister stressed the coalition government would abide by a Tory manifesto promise not to fund any more fixed-position speed cameras.

Labour's 13-year war on the motorist is over: Tories pledge to halt rise of speed cameras, road pricing and cowboy clampers
By Ray Massey
Last updated at 10:50 AM on 14th May 2010

Philip Hammond arrives at No.10 Downing Street to be given his portfolio
The war on the motorist is over, the Transport Secretary said yesterday on his first day in the job.
Philip Hammond promised to end the way the country's 33million drivers have been targeted by an array of speed cameras and cowboy clampers.
He also pledged to 'sweat the assets' of the road, rail and aviation infrastructure to get value for money for taxpayers.
The secretary of state pledged to scrap public funding for speed cameras and said he would consult on a plan to curb pump prices when oil prices soar
Mr Hammond promised: 'We will end the war on motorists. Motoring has got to get greener, but the car is not going to go away.'
The Tory Cabinet minister stressed the coalition government would abide by a Tory manifesto promise not to fund any more fixed-position speed cameras.
Councils could fund them if they had the money and could justify their use - but the money raised would go to the Treasury, he said.
He ruled out 'pay as you drive' charging for existing roads for the duration of the Parliament.
And there are no plans to charge for the use of the hard shoulder or additional lanes built to existing roads.
But Mr Hammond did back road tolls to pay for new roads - such as has already happened with the M6.
He is also exploring electronic pay-as-you-drive charges for lorries - to ensure that foreign freight firms do not dodge the charges levied on UK companies.
A similar system already operates in Germany: 'We will look at lorry user charging', he said.
He confirmed there would be consultation on a 'fair fuel stabiliser' which could ensure that fuel duty is reduced when world oil prices rise.
But Mr Hammond, who drives a Jaguar, did back road-tolls to pay for brand new additional roads - such as has already happened with the successful M6 Toll: 'New road capacity is a different issue' he said.
Mr Hammond also vowed to scrap Labour's air passenger duty in favour of a green tax which charges by the plane rather than by the passenger.
He added: 'We are going to have to look at new and innovative ways of funding capital expenditure. The era of easy public money is over.'
Philip Hammond has pledged to axe taxpayer funding of speed cameras

Labour too had pledged to scrap APD - but instead retained and then actually increased the controversial duty.
In March Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling confirmed rises in APD which would see the air tax for a family of four travelling long-haul economy soar from £220 to £340.
Individual tax rises from £55 to £85. In 2008 long haul passengers paid a flat-rate £40 tax. A family of four travelling long-haul in premium economy, business or first class will see their tax rise from £440 to £680. Individual tax rises from £110 to £170.

In a bizarre anomaly, British fliers to the Caribbean pay more than people flying to far flung parts of the United States - such as San Francisco or Hawaii - thousands of miles further away from Britain.
Mr Hammond said the Government backed the £16 billion cross-London Crossrail scheme it had to demonstrate 'value for money'.
He did not think it would be difficult to get private funding for the line.
But he stressed: 'Over the coming years we are going to have to learn to do things differently.
'As far as transport in concerned we are going to have to sweat the assets that we have much better.
'We are going to have to look at new and innovative ways of funding capital expenditure. The era of easy public money is over.'
In Opposition Mr Hammond had been shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, but that post has gone to Liberal Democrat David Laws who he said would make an 'excellent' chief secretary.
AA president Edmund King wished Mr Hammond well but said he needed to stay longer in his new post than the 'merry-go-round' 13 predecessors, who averaged only 20 months.
The new coalition government has also ruled out a third runway at Heathrow airport and committed itself to a new high-speed rail line to begin work in 2015.

Councils could fund them if they had the money and could justify their use - but the money raised would go to the Treasury, he said.[/i]
So no change there then, that is what we have now.

The attitude should be "I will cross here when it is safe, and I will be care full"

Get out of your motor occasionally and you will come to appreciate how ing difficult it can be to cross the road at all, let alone safely.

That's interesting:
The Tory Cabinet minister stressed the coalition government would abide by a Tory manifesto promise not to fund any more fixed-position speed cameras.

Councils could fund them if they had the money and could justify their use - but the money raised would go to the Treasury, he said.
So no change there then, that is what we have now.

Which could be paraphrased as "I will only cross the road when I will cause no inconvenience to the motorists. And, if such an opportunity doesn't occur I'll just spend the rest of my life sitting on this pavement".

Get out of your motor occasionally and you will come to appreciate how fucking difficult it can be to cross the road at all, let alone safely.

That's a bit strong for you DCB!

I'm lucky in that I live in the back end of nowhere so crossing the road isn't generally a problem for me. It's not that we don't have cars, it's that speed limit enforcement is rather less obsessive than it is in many more built-up areas so we get a decent spread of travelling speeds. This seems to create natural gaps in the traffic, which are good for pedestrians to cross.

I too have always lived near a busy main road and have never had any problems crossing it, even when, I was a child and it was a NSL. If anything it's probably harder now that it's 40MPH because of less traffic spread, but most busy roads, at busy points, have crossing facilities anyway.

Sorry for the explteives



I do agree that it can be harder to cross the road when the traffic is travelling slowly but that isn't really what I am talking about. There is a de facto assumption amongst most drivers that their progress along the road has priority over the desire of the pedestrian to cross the road - a priority maintained by the fact that the pedestrian will always come of worst in a collision. That assumption makes walking both unpleasant and slow.

When I was working in a small town in British Columbia I was delighted to find that the situation was, by law, reversed. If a pedestrian stood at the kerb the cars stopped to allow him to cross. And, backed up by a presumption of motorist guilt it worked well. It didn't bring the traffic to a standstill and I didn't see a report of an accident in the month I was there.
Obviously such a system would not be appropriate for main routes and rural roads, only for town and city centres

Those two sentences are contradictory. If you never have a problem it can get neither harder or easier

When I was working in a small town in British Columbia I was delighted to find that the situation was, by law, reversed. If a pedestrian stood at the kerb the cars stopped to allow him to cross. And, backed up by a presumption of motorist guilt it worked well. It didn't bring the traffic to a standstill and I didn't see a report of an accident in the month I was there.
Obviously such a system would not be appropriate for main routes and rural roads, only for town and city centres

Pavements are for pedestrians. Cycle paths are for cyclists. Roads are for motorised traffic.

Bridleways are for horses

I don't think many (if any) "presume" right of way simply because they know they can kill pedestrians