Safe Speed Forums

Good news... the campaign to remove the chicanes on the road (re: post earlier) has succeeded. The chicanes will be removed and replaced with "more appropriate traffic calming measures". Which is undoubtedly the little speed bumps, but that is at least an improvement that might nearly be as safe as a road without any traffic calming at all.

Next interssting point - check out how much to put in the chicanes, then how much to take out.
Reason - one set put in in Nuneaton - installation £3k , removal £8k, according to local paper( few years ago), and it is election time.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

We already know that you are against real safety measures, as defined by the highway code, the police, the department for transport, most (even all) academics who have been consulted on the issue and the law, so you have little defence there.

It is also safe to call you and your chums mavericks because you profess distain for the speed limits, so again, no defence at all so far.

But is it a hate campaign? Well you hate cameras - what ARE you grumbling about?

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I can see your point, although I don’t necessarily agree with it completely. I particularly like your ideas about residential streets.

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Chicanes are congestion-generating. Queues at chicanes on side roads often back up onto main roads, causing an unecessary hazard. Traffic queueing at chicanes inflicts unecessary polution on the roads' residents. Rows of queueing vehicles make crossing the road more hazardous to pedestrians.

They are a bad idea and should be scrapped.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Basingwerk, you've been coming on this site for a long time now, so you should know what SafeSpeed's stance is by now:

Speed Limits
Necessary

Rigid speed limit enforcement
Arguments for and against. When analysed closely, the cons tend to outweigh the pros.

Rigid speed limit enforcement used to the exclusion of all other road safety measures
Short-sighted, ill-informed and highly dangerous. No argument.


Hope this clarifies things for ya, matey.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Thanks but it clarifies nothing - if speed limits are necessary, then we have speed limits, end of story. There is no argument from me over that.

It’s this incoherent nonsense that speed limits are not real that gets me.

Who could want a limit that is not limiting!?! Why do you want that? And why would anyone call a thing that does not limit you “a limit”!?!

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Is that you urging ME to stick to the limit? You have no idea whether I drive within the limits or not, so it's a bold assumption on your part to urge me to obey the law!

Bad laws engender a lack of respect for the law - all laws. The means of enforcement with regard to speed limits only serves to multiply the level of disrespect. Your stance on this issue of obeying a law STRICTLY, which may not be a just law, lands you with the same lack of respect. And all the while, you duck the issue of whether you apply your STRICT adherence to the law to other aspects of your everyday life - such as your TV ariel, or whether you would accede to a law requiring you to have elderly relatives done away with if required by law, or whether you would disobey the law while you campaigned to have it changed.

A lot od German citizens must have felt very uncomfortable with the manner in which the Jews were treated in nazi Germany - yet it was the LAW, and they went along with it. Should I be frightened into obeying pointless speed limits such as the one at Ings, or should I be persuaded to respect the law, by only having decent laws and limits enacted? Which policy would achieve more sustainable results?

Like the law on planning permission for TV ariels, speed limits should be enforced only when necessary by policemen, and the offenders detained, not by robotic "one size fits all" detection and punishment, which merely sends a toll in the post a few days after the o f f e n c e .

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Forget all that talk about mavericks and hate campaigns, then! I'ts good to hear that you have the best interests of the whole community at heart, and not just drivers and thier disruptive machines.

After the break, we can have a good chat about how to cut teenage car wrecks, and what sort of message we 'mature drivers ' should send out to them through our actions.

Have a really good Easter this year!

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We had a recent thread about that:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6571

Didn't notice any contributions from your good self

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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

It would have been even bolder if I had advised you not to obey the law! There are plenty here who think it’s clever to break the speed limit, so I’m happy if you are not among them. Good man – have you taken the pledge?



It was bold of me to ask you to obey the law, so perhaps you already do. But then you say, in a rather indirect way, that the law is bad. Can I now assume that you mean the speed limits are bad? Or do you mean that speed limits are OK, but they shouldn’t limit your speed? Or do you mean that laws enforcing speed limits are up the creek? Or are the levels of the speed limits wrong. Help me out here, Ernest – what do you mean?



It's a rather bold assumption on your part to say I have an illegal TV ariel! But one thing at a time here. Good people should get behind the law and support it. The law is right - the people who break it are wrong. That is what we were taught.

You used Godwin’s law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_Law ) with your appeal about nazi’s (thanks peterE), and I concede that, in extremis, the situation changes. There is no “extreme situation” with speeders – I reckon they just break the law, straight and simple.



No – don’t be frightened. Think of it as a civic duty, like putting litter in your pocket ‘til you see a bin. I’m in favour of having proper speed limit levels. Once set, I’m in favour of enforcing them “warts and all” so to speak, and going after those who can’t be bothered to sort themselves out. That’s the best way to get safer roads.

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Yeah - it was in one of my quiet periods when I was too weak from tussling with pogo and Ernest to carry on. I have strong feelings about that particular issue as well because the bloke who smashed into me in '04 was 18. He got a 9 month ban - it should have been a couple of years more – he didn’t give a shit about us (broken hips, stoved in rib cages) - more interested in the damage to his transit van!!!

The roadsides are littered with bunches of flowers around here - barely a week goes by without some other young person smashing into something, or even going down into the Fens at Ramsey - what an awful way to go!

PS: I should add that I'm not bitter anymore about the foolish boy who put me in agony for 10 weeks - I was pretty bad too at 16. I was bitter at the time, but now I try to transfer my anger to road slobs in general, not individuals.

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A hate campaign is a phrase with very negative conotations usually directed against a person or people. Just because you argue against something you hate does not make it a hate campaign. But it's my guess you knew this.

Yeah, you can look at it that way. I specifically mean a campaign against a Thing, not a person. In any case, no-one can deny that people here hate cameras – just look at these emoticons:

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I don't deny it.

Good. I suppose you were right to pull me up on that - it's not like religious hatred or racial hatred. I think is a bit close to the line, though. Clearly it's glorifying vandalism - I don't think there is a specific law on that yet, but give Charles Clarke another year or two and there might be!

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I don't see temoticons as glorifying vandalism, I see them as a bit of fun. I think some people in this country get a bit precious about these sort of things.

By the way why didn't the guy who smacked into you get jailed?

BW, you have my every sympathy for the injuries that you received from that juvenile nutcase, but by your comments you're making Paul's point for him!

Speed limits and their ruthless, robotic enforcement mean less than nothing to kids like him.


As I see it, SafeSpeed is campaigning for rational, human speed-limit enforcement... Crazy teenagers don't need NIPs two weeks after blasting through a camera at limit+>100% - always assuming that their cars are even traceable - they need stopping and nicking, there and then. The reduction in active road policing is just making life more profitable for florists as well as CSPs.

Cameras, like an increasing amount of recent legislation, only have effect upon the notionally law-abiding, they have absolutely zero influence on those members of society who, frankly, don't give a shit!

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Basingwerk - you strike me as one of these meak people who borrows much extra courage in your convictions thanks to the protection Internet Annonimity gives you.

I strongly suspect that were you face to face with all the people you enjoy insulting you would be far less hasty to pass judgement on their maturity and understanding of road safety.

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