Safe Speed Forums

I'm truly sorry that your Mother was hit and your young cousin was killed.

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I am happy that nobody wants (in this forum) to abolish some limits altogether. That is not the message I have had, so it is a relief. Keep it up.

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Yes, that would be a very poor solution. A better solution to distance imposition control would be to use instruments to monitor how close you drive to the car in front. If the system detects a violation of limit, three things would happen. First, a warning would sound in your car to alert you, second, small increase in your car tax would made, as a fine for your bad behaviour, and third, your records would be updated to show this. Periodic reports of repeaters would show the worst offenders, which would be made available to insurance companies, who might levy high premiums for increased risk.

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Without wishing to be disrespectful, what planet do you live on?

Can you seriously see a system like that being implemented in this country?

Better of sticking to the SF novels.

and then you do diminish the importance of cutting road casualties relative to other casualties. And later the same day,

and then you are disrespectful!

Do you live on a planet where you do things you don't wish to do? You are asleep at the wheel when it comes to the technical rate of change. That is no surprise, because the road system has remained locally isolated from other developments for a long period, but cameras have changed that.

With respect to the technical solution for applying disbenefit for obnoxious behaviour, it’s already happening. The current system of fining speeders already works that way (although I’d argue that current levels of disbenefit for small offences is too high).

The satellite tracking end of things is already announced. Proximity warnings co-ordinated from gantries are as trivial as the scamera setup, micropayment management is already in the Internet infrastructure, and indeed, Microsoft’s solution to spammers is similar to what I have proposed as a possible disbenefit for minor traffic infringements.

Insurance companies already use information on driving history when assessing risk, and this is likely to increase, as good drivers refuse to share risk with poorer performers.

Have a nice weekend.

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ROFL

So, pointing out that hundreds of thousands of people die every year from circumstances that could be improved much more efficiently is diminishing road casualties?

Sure! I think you will find it is saying nothing about road casualties per se, and highlighting a major discrepency in the Governement's approach to public "safety".


As for the super-dooper IT system that will be tracking tens of millions of cars a day, automatically hooking into database systems from competing industries, performing real-time data transfer in the order of gigabytes per day, that will have a huge and cumbersom administrative back end, and of course will be error free - then yes, I'm afraid you are living on another planet if you think that a government that cannot even procure a system to manage our taxes without running into humungous cost over runs and huge data loss on an almost daily basis, will be able to procure, implement and maintain a system like that.

As has been said before, it's technology for technology's sake. There are so many problem issues that you just fail to address that it boggles the mind.

Of course, given your employment background, I suppose I would just be a liitle bit cynical in seeing why you would like to peddle this myth as heavily as you are.

We could do all sorts of things with technology, that doesn't mean we should or that it would be cost-effective or efficient to do so.

As someone who is knowledgeable about IT in general you will of course know that that the Government's record with large IT projects is not just bad, it's absolutely abysmal.

What you are propoising is to spend hundreds of millions (maybe even billions) of pound to introduce a system that more than likely will not work , be hugely unpopular, more than likely thrown out by another government and who's prime benefit (road safety) could be better served by resturning to the methods that gave us the safest roads in the first place.

Your company isn't makeing this stuff is it?

basingwerk, how many times must I say this? I am not blaming the cameras! That would be like blaming my washing machine for not being able to do the dishes. I am criticising the reliance placed on cameras to improve things when they are inherently limited to tackling a tiny proportion of the problem. This has been said before, but TPTB have a hammer and are acting like every problem is a nail. That is what I am critical of. Nobody is blaming the hammer, just the idiots who think they can use it to drill holes, plaster walls, seal pipes etc. With me?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

You shouldn't run yourselves down like that. The British are just as capable as anyone else, if they set their mind to it, although you do have second rate administrators, I'll grant you that. In fact, that needs sorting out more than anything else. On the other hand, ICI was the first in the world to do real-time computer control, SD-Scicon/EDS and others have written numerous systems to control a vast array of industries from water supply, through energy (gas/oil/nuclear) through steel production and chemical plants. A quick surf shows many more -
The London congestion charge - seamless transition to operations
www.inmarsat.com - operates out of London, very sophisticated systems.
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts –
VEGA - operational simulator for the Herschel-Planck mission

and the list goes on. It looks like you have selected a couple of high profile failures to bolster your case. Are you are Luddite?

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Spot on. Cameras just hold drivers to one of the promises they make to get their licenses - the promise not to go over the limit. If drivers break other promises as well, we both agree the cameras can't detect that. Other things are needed to detect that, either more coppers or more intelligent instrumentation. Frankly, I think it'll partly be the former (sorry In Gear, just speaking my mind) because cops need to eat. There will always be the need for many cops, though, because whatever percentage of the knob heads we clobber with instrumentation, there will always be many things we can't catch electronically.

If TPTB don’t get that message, everybody will be miserable, so we have to spread it. The problem is, though, that we all have different messages!

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You seen what the average Force has to use IT wise? It is a joke - and compturers are only as good as those programming and operating them!

They make mistakes!

Techology is not fool proof!




So - how come people get billed when they have been nowhere near London?

It happens! It even happens here in my patch where we have congestion charge in the main town!

And as for the weather forecasts .. since when have they got it right!



People are not Luddites (and I admit am a bit of a dynosaur - but heck - that is my job to breathe fire on folk!), but it is a bit blinkered to set such great faith in a machine's capabilities.

There are operated by very fallible humans at the end of the day!

Quite frankly - people are social animals, flexible, diplomatic. They respond to human input and react badly to robots!

They will always have edge over technology - especially when dealing with crime and criminals!

We manage pretty well without over reliance on tchnology!

And our pulls always understand why their action on the road was offensive!

That is why we have such a good record on our patch and why change something that owrks well for sake of it!

...your spell-checker obviously doesn't

Regards
Peter

Hey - I claim to a good copper and a brill driver

Never claimed I could spell, type and when I admit it - am right dynosaur when it comes to using computers!



You should see the state of some of my reports!

Paltry excuse this time?

She who must be obeyed had my tea on the table!


Uniform cuts no ice with my wife!

Authority figure?

She just laughs at my acid tone! And gives me some with knobs on!

Wimmin!

I knew we could agree on something eventually That said, and I know I'm interpreting what you said a little more literally than it was meant, I've never promised that I wouldn't break the limit and no-one has asked me to. I just didn't on the day I took my test. Er, actually I did the first time from missing the sign and didn't notice till I realised there weren't any 40 repeaters anymore - d'oh too late, failed! The next one went better. I think the "promise" is an assumed one, and I don't have any problem with that if TPTB kept to the assumed promise of keeping the limits realistic.
Well, if you engineer types can come up with a driving-like-a-dickhead detector I won't complain. Glad to see you do think that the original dickhead detector (donut power/mark 1 eyeball/bloke from Hendon system) will always be needed.
Talking of computers being only as good as the programmers, saw this today http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp. The short version is that a guy in California once ended up with a personalised number plate that read NOPLATE and got thousands of parking tickets for illegally parked cars with missing plates. The people writing the tickets used to put NO PLATE in the number plate section, and not knowing any better the computer sent the fines to the poor sod with the personalised plate. Other people with MISSING and NOTAG have had the same problem.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Er?

That not otherwise known as a form of Road Rage?

Why not just make a space and let numpty pass you? Or if he persists - find a decent gatso which has garage of lay-by for you to nip into at last minute?

That works like a dream! Tried it out a couple of times after Wildy gave me lessons in how to do it skilfully and efficiently!

Road my Ma lives on was dirt track when she first moved there. The residents paid for it to be tarmacked.

It was THEIR road if you like!

The council NEVER consulted them when THEY decided to DIG IT UP and then build ROAD HUMPS on it which are BIGGER and MORE DANGEROUS than the POT HOLES were on the original dirt track!

Not Crown property - people's property! For use of by the people! Who are not consulted over speed limits nor chicanes nor speed humps which damage their cars!

Get it right - mate!

Well - our family neurologist is a "she" and is very "Scamera Shy" when posting on here on odd occasions! She is one of our drugs experts - which is why she made that post on the Nonny section!

However, if you were consulting her about treatment for you brain/neuron disorder or myself about your treament for your lurgy virus which affects you heart, (lot of my patients require transplants for heart virus-related diseases!) and I deal with lots of other lurgies as well - you would get our advice and we would treat according to your medical history, bio-chemical tolerances and according to our budget whether you were private or NHS.

You would certainly NOT get to decide your own treatment on basis that (and I know it sounds very arrogant of me - and you will be muttering "typical ******** medic who thinks he is GOD! ) - and bottom line is - am expert in my job and you are not!

Same as if I have to bow to the experts who provide me with half-decent equipment to do the job and fix the bulbs in theatre and so on and so on!




And residents and stakeholders are not consulted at all when deciding so-called traffic calming measures whatever they are!

But designing roads and deciding on form of treatment based on very intimate knowledge of human body, anatomy, individual's medical history, specialist knowledge of available medications, treatments and potential side-effects and combinations with other treatments for other related and non-related ailments is certainly not the same thing

And - by the way - NHS claoms back as much as it can from RTAC's insurance companies.

And by the way - computers are rubbish!

Look at computer crash affecting student loans - today!

If they cannot cope with normal routine run of the mill financial transactions - they would be as much use as chocolate sump plug in controlling road safety alone!

And by the way - got stuck up a mountain when a compturised funicular doo-dah failed!

Hottest day of the year and a sheer drop!

Computers?

PAH!

You might be interested in the Traffic Calming Regulations.

Any hump that does not comply with these regulations is an illegal obstruction.

You could/should therefore report it to the police.

You can leave In(ternational)mar(itime)sat(ellite) organisation out of this one. a) it was from the very start an inter-governmental organisation and as such the majority of its employees were not British b) it has since become a private enterprise, it still employs the creme of the technological elite from around the world who are extremely well paid c) its main business is satellite comms - very expensive, very high tech. You can request to be connected via an Inmarsat channel when making a call and you can get an idea of the rates here http://www.telesave.co.uk/athome/inmarsat.htm. The point is although the supercomputer doesn't 'need to eat', you always need either a small army of expensive highly skilled technicians, or a large army of inexpensive low grade ones, just to keep the thing running. They need to eat and the more highly skilled they are the more expensive their tastes.

In fact before you accuse anyone else of being a Luddite, let us know what you think of Jacques Ellul's thesis in 'The Technological Bluff' : http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie ... arch&meta=
Perhaps you will recognise yourself as one of the 'fascinated people'. You probably belong to the new aristocracy that is the technological elite of today, which would explain your rosy view of technology.

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DO NOT PANIC

lol

luddite. Yeah, that's a good one.