Safe Speed Forums

How about a place where we can deposit all the misleading / spin / propoganda / over-simplification news-items and their counter-arguments / explanations / non-spin ?

For instance, I've just seen this on the BBC website at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3226673.stm
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SPEEDING TRAFFIC - THE FACTS
In 2000, 66% of all car drivers exceeded 30mph limit
Nearly half of all pedestrians hit by a car travelling at 30mph die
Drivers are twice as likely to kill at 35mph than 30mph
A 1% reduction in average speed results in an average 5% less crashes
- - - - -

While these points may be factually correct (though perhaps only in certain contexts for some facts like the last one) they encourage over-simplistic attitudes which do not serve the serious road safety debate.


I am too lazy to search for the fuller discussions about these points (I know that some of them are excellently handled by Paul elsewhere on this site), but perhaps a central "read the whole story" reference for each piece of oversimplified information would be useful, and could prevent energy being wasted on repetitive explanations of the same point.
[Moderator: please feel free to move this post if there is a better place for it]

Could we get it sponsored by and call it the Richard Littlejohn forum?

Having had a laugh, if it is possible, rather a good idea.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

I have something like this at http://www.fastandsafe.org/site.aspx/Pages/factsAndMyths

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Alan Wilkinson (at http://www.fastandsafe.org)

Yes Alan, that's the sort of thing I meant, good stuff.

Each point having its own web page is handy, as you can send someone a link url where they can see the "whole story" on the specific point that was being oversimplified.

I suppose it now comes down to hoping that the point under consideration has a suitable "whole story" page. With SafeSpeed and FastandSafe there is a good pool of reference information, so perhaps some improved indexing would suffice.

Paul also has a good Big Lies Page..

Hi beermatt (great name!), I knew I'd seen lots of that sort of info on the SafeSpeed site, thanks for finding it for me.