Where do you begin?
I have friends of mine who will never harm anybody on the roads, excellent drivers, many professional road miles, threatened with losing there licenses because of speeding penalties. I know people who make you grit your teeth when your a passenger because of there blithe appalling driving, who are teachers. One of these got pulled for speeding and the next week his equally appalling negligent wife also for speeding (hand held roadside cameras) The usual trip, 3-4 mph in a clear quiet 30. The points and fine they have received will not change the fact that even at 30mph, they are accidents waiting to happen ,that has not been addressed at all. On the other hand. They will not get caught for speeding again but they are accidents waiting to happen, someday.
The driving experience now is awful, queues at empty roundabouts, gormless drivers looking at your indicator whilst pulling away, not bothering to use there’s. The whole driving experience has disolved into a nightmare whether on the motorway or in a retail park.
The police should be used to enforce good driving and reduce speed enforcement to extreme and truly dangerous driving. As far as I am concerned you should be booked for failing to indicate (especially on motorways) and this should be logged on a three strikes and out basis.
There should be speed cameras but only to catch really fast rocketing boy racers and drunks, sensible good drivers can drive to the conditions, but the trouble is at the moment motorists are not reading the road at the moment but concentrating on penalty evasion at the most dangerous times sometimes. Good drivers reading a road will react faster to danger than a poor driver driving by rote, like my teacher friends above. they are always shocked and surprised by everything on the road! SSPEED CAMERAS DO NOT DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN GOOD DRIVERS AND BAD AND DO NOT ADDRESS BAD DRIVERS.
Some time ago, there were crap drivers who weaved and dawdled along and were identifiable and you kept your distance and hoped they either drove off a cliff, or turned off. Now because of the blanket speed restrictions and the new church of speed enforcement, these drivers have found an excuse to drive even slower. So an enforced 50 on a dual carriageway can drop to 35-40 behind these morons, and 30mph can drop to20-25. Snakes of robotic driving with, vehicles constantly having to change gear, 4th to 5th, back down to 4th, back up again........ and so on. In cars designed by computers, with brakes, chassis, drive trains that are derived from racing technology that in many cases could out perform super cars from twenty years ago in terms of handling being driven by people like this, in this way, Jesus!!
So, the historically awful drivers can frustrate the world now and the only way to get past these pratts, either in a car, or lorry on a road or dual carriage way safely if you do not want to endure another 10 miles of this, is to risk your license as you try to accelerate to overtake putting you momentarily over the speed limit. Worse still, this motoring underclass also like to have a 200yd comfort zone between them and the car in front, excessive for braking but not enough for people to pull out from a side road. Therefore, six cars can easily be the length of a village. You can only look in pity at people waiting to try to pull out. I don't think it occurs to these people that others have a journey of there own!
The perceived safety of most , so called law abiding safe drivers is rubbish. They are appalling as are members of the IAM, (It's no good
thinking you are a good driver, you have to be a good driver, which is different). I cycle on the roads a lot, rarely if ever does anyone give you berth, indicate, slow down, any of these things, where are the contientious drivers now?
The reason that people drive like this, so badly now is they think they can get away with it. Therefore I believe the emphasis on cameras should be reduced and the emphasis placed on people to demonstrate that in the increasingly crowded roads of Britain that they have a right and the skill to hold that license.
Once you start to enforce the small things like not indicating in the way i mentioned above, then people will soon THINK about there driving a little more, rather than trating the car as a motorized armchair.
Around where I live, there are calamitous accidents frequently, car carnage and death around the leafy byeways and highways of Worcestershire, the fences are littered with flowers, shrines and teddy bears and it is difficult to see what current or sensible safety policy would change this. The truth is ,there isn't. The reason for this is simple, either freak accidents, (Driver struck by shaft of sunlight in eyes making him or her sneeze not even realizing they are over the centre of a road as a motorbike rounds a corner from the opposite direction hugging the apex, BANG) The other frequent accident around here is (driver discovers to late an unknown quirk in the steering geometry in his over laden hot hatchback which responds strangely and with frightening finality as it goes out of control on a deserted dual carriageway at midnight)
Accidents will and always happen and there will always be those who make sure of this.
Personally, I think that being able to operate a mobile phone should be part of your driving test, or being asked general knowledge questions whilst negotiating a course. If you cannot do this ,you can't multi task, then the more likely you are to have a distraction crash. This is when most people have there accidents, big or small when they plough into a bus shelter, or hit a trolly in a car in a car park. "I was distracted at the time officer, there was a bee in the car"
Common sense will never prevail on the roads, road craft is an unheard of term now, the ignorant and the vulgar dominate. Do silver Mercedes - BMW's have indicators? (only joking )
You could really thin the amount of traffic on our roads and help the health of so many people legitimately to become healthy. Lets face it, car ownership for some people just enables them to get to a supermarket quicker, walking would be so much healthier. I' not being elitist but because there were so fewer cars at one time on the roads that, hopeless brakes, handling, and safety features were forgivable in a crude way. Now, all this has been reversed and you can be expected to walk from accidents that would have killed twenty years ago. But what has happened, we have filled the roads with morons, the advantage has been lost.
The government likes statistics, people who want to win an argument without too much bother like statistics, the biggest users of statistics are usually caught with there mucky trousers down sooner or later, for instance. The vast majority of accidents involving alcohol are minor bumps or collisions, the really nasty ballistic incidents usually involve arseholes who's time has finally come. When people test positive for alcohol at the scene of an accident it reflects how many people drink and drive rather than drink being a factor in an accident. People are found GUILTY even though an accident is not there fault!!
I am not condoning the actions of intoxicated drivers but when the amount of people as a proportion goes up each year for drink driving then obviously, this is not some niche occupation. In fact, drink and driving is quite routine as is the use of mobile phones in cars. When there is an accident, if the police are not busy saying "Speed was a factor" they are saying "the person was using a mobile phone" or "The person was over the limit". Pointless!! The accidents would have happened anway. It simply indicates the amount of people who do this.
I have first hand experience of the perversity of road death and bereathment. When I was quite young, my aunt left the house with my cousins to take them to school, they had to cross a busy A road. The traffic was busy being rush hour and they all scurried across holding hands. My cousin who was only eight at the time dropped her dinner money as she stepped of the road, she stepped back and was hit by a car and killed. The driver did no wrong under the guise of the law, he wasn't speeding and yet she was dead. How many drivers on our roads today would have the sense to read the danger? It was not SPEED that was a factor Mr Policemen; it was the poor reactions, perception and lack of empathy for vulnerable people that killed her. I know people who would edge away and slow down even more in that situation, I know that I am aware of kids weaving about on bikes and the fact that they will try to pull away from their parents grasp.
Recently, a young man locally stumbled on the edge of a pavement and was struck fatally with no other traffic around. Did he really have to die? I think people drive worse than ever now, there are accidents you cannot stop and really road safety implementation is a mess.
Some time ago, I was picked up (Illegally) by a bored traffic cop just by the Aston Expressway, B'ham and told I had been speeding. As I slowed and stopped, he and his partner scrutinized the car for five minutes, tyres, tax, bodywork and then mouthed the reg over and over again to control. Finally, he tapped the glass and asked me to come to his car. "Do you know why I have pulled you over" he said, here we go I thought. His car was parked at 90 degrees and a hundred feet away to our path on the dual carriage way, so speeding was not an obvious reply. He seemed puzzled, in actual fact, thought the Queensway tunnel the signs change from 30, to 40, to 50, to 30, to 40 etc as you negotiate the various chicanes, filter lanes, rises, blind bends, decent into darkness, rises into blinding light so everyone evens this out to a functioning average speed, my mistake was to start to accelerate to soon towards a 50 a hundred feet in front of us. The fact that the other hundred or so vehicles at the time were doing the same was neither here or there, I was pulled because it was the middle of the day and I had what looked like a "crew" in my car. In fact it was 3 of my 4 sons, we where visiting my mother at the time. I was pulled for the potential bounty that my dirty R-Reg Fiat Marea could offer.
The behavior of the cops when I was pulled supported this. And so, I had the opportunity to discuss the above much to there amazement, I was furious and when I discussed, speeding, driving, candence braking, driving with side lights, my assertion, that, you could have blanket 30 everywhere and because of the amount of vehicles on the road and millions of road miles every week, the annual fatalities figure would not be reduced, only by focusing on driving skill and craft could you make things better and do you know what there repeated response was as I refused to let it go. "Look, we are doing our jobs, you have broken the law", my response "Then the law is wrong" and so it went on, stalemate. I have yet to have a sensible debate with a traffic cop but in terms of us and them, they know what’s wrong really but choose to be ignorant, who would blame them.
It's a long post but I am sick and tired of the unfairness of it all, any coppers out there, please get in touch.
Cheers, Steve
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Steve.
and 
alternate frequently. Lots of drivers don't seem to recognize the difference.
