Safe Speed Forums

I cannot say that any of us have been rude to basingwerk or indeed you - My Sorry One!

On the other hand - I think referring to my wife's cousin's boss as "chiefy" and "Mr Garbles" is an unwarranted attack on a senior police officer who certainly commands a good deal more respect than a counterpart who calls for the legalisation of extemely dangerous Class A drugs supplied by NHS which cannot afford decent and REAL REAL REAL LIFE SAVING TREATMENTS and has people waiting over three months of a cancer scan in some areas and incidentally if they listen to this idiot and supply it on NHS - you, me, IG, Sir John Stevens, CC Garvin, Paulie Smith, Gatsobait, basingwerk, Observant One, etc, etc all bally well PAY for it

But forgot - we treat these people with "tea and sympathy as they cannot help it....."

So ... these people get into their CARS and does not matter what speed they drive at - their "speed intake" will mean that they will KILL - yes KILL - someone in their cars at a LOW speed!

And I dare say - you will turn around and say I have been very "rude" to you because

a) I used bolds , italics and CAPITALS!

and

b) I disagree with you a bit!

Yes they do! Increase of 30% KSIs in Lancs, Drink Driving up by 20%, and similar returns in Essex, Cambs, Northants, Dorset.... Wales .... need I continue? Oh - and incidentally - these figures are from Cops' own records, and the NHS incoming wounded records as well..... both bear the other out - and if these were published together - side by side instead of the spin doctored ones - we would see true picture emerging.

As it - they are available on relevant web sites but you have to work it out for yourself - and that is what they gamble on - fact they majority do not and are too apathetic to be aware of basic current events - let alone the nitty gritty of it!

As for the rest of your bleatings - kindly use relevant figures....





Please tell me how a camera actually "saves a life!"

Does it jump up and down and tell person to concentrate, observe, anticipate with space and time?

Does it tell someone why action was dangerous?

Does it stop a tailgater? Spot a tired driver? Drunk driver? Drugged driver? Terminally ill driver? Defective car driver? Mobile phone user?

Does it take account of road condition? Legal limit can actually be too fast for the traffic conditions! But what the heck! Scam deems that sage and people think they will remain "safe" if they drive at the limit and nothing else!

Another of IG's and my wife's cousins was killed when a six wheeler artic hit him. He had entered one m/way from a merge and negotiated his way into L3 and L3/4 of this motorway went stright on to where he wanted to go and L1/L2 veered off to left to become another m/way going somewhere else....

Lorry had dodgy brakes (yup warning light was in cab - driver KNEW!) but it also had balding tyres and a bulge on one of them - which blew. Lorry careered through central reserve at low speed -(rush hour) and struck the guy head-on. No camera could have saved him and sadly - cops are not ubiquitous either..

My wife had mother and father of all rear-enders. She had pulled up at a traffic jam and man was taken fatally ill at his wheel. Unluckily for her - he had an unusually clear run at her - and hit her full throttle at great speed. Oh - she survived - and fully recovered after a lot of hard work on part of all of us!

Camera would not have helped then - and perhaps if a BiB had been more on ball before he entered motorway - just maybe.....

But - unlike one certain person - I do not go around blaming all other drivers for these traumas in this family's personal life - not do I believe for one moment that a speed camera is going to make huge impacts on driveer behaviour.

What will make an impact are measures which all us so-called "petrolheads" have discussed over and over... emphasis ondecent driver training from the start, constant input on correct practice by way of adverts - decent ones - designed to advise and help people recognise and correct errors, periodic assessments - graded with fair insurance enticements.....these measures will do a lot more LONG term!

Speed cams - short fix - which is used not to enforce a speed limit - but more to make money - because they do not site them where they should - do they! Ings comes to mind - and all those other talivan places - yards from a speed limit change and at safest points in the road....

OI! IG !! - You forgot to spell check again!

So probably +95% of ticket speeders get no criminal record. – So you'll less than 5% right.
I don’t possess these cameras, nor do I like some of them despite what you might think.


That IS your job isn’t it.

You do it very well I must say!Now I’m presuming you aint supervision, but this level of personal purge must be without precedent,- hundreds, 200 or 300 perhaps. Removed – Disqualified?….. Jailed?

Your chief must be proud of you.


Nope, 28 years ChInsp. now, 15 years on traffic.


Do so fairly regularly. I’ve nothing to fear from the law enforcers. On your motorway, the main problem is your 90+ speeders who tailgate for sport on very busy roads. Some of the worst driving I’ve seen is on the A1M.

Don’t choose to use your other roads much, sounds like you’ve a real problem with drink, drug chancers etc. I’ll keep travelling through thanks.


I’ve had a look at your stats, tried all sorts with them – not very good.

Compared with Lancs (your shout)

Figures don’t seem to bear that out;

Fatalities per 100000 population

1996.........Durham……9.7…………………………Lancs……6.2
1997.........Durham……7.4…………………………Lancs……5.6
1998.........Durham……9.0…………………………Lancs……5.9
1999.........Durham……6.8…………………………Lancs……5.6
2000.........Durham……4.7…………………………Lancs……4.6
2001.........Durham……5.6…………………………Lancs……5.4
2002.........Durham……8.6…………………………Lancs……4.7
2003.........Durham……8.6…………………………Lancs……6.1

Am I wrong In Gear? These are DfT and Census stats.

Forgive me for questioning, but I do like to confirm the validity of soundbites.



You’ll find my tolerances on certain roads don’t bear that out –more tolerant than some BiB!!

I’m using DfT Road Casualty figures, Census population figures, Are they wrong? Are they only wrong for Durham?

Show me the errors? I’m happy to be corrected?


Some can! Some do!! Let them develop, they are in their infancy. You’ve not much chance of stopping their development anyway!


Tragic event MM and you have my sympathies, but with respect you are comparing two things which are entirely different. Cameras are not BiB. Neither can provide the answers to all our road safety problems. They can work to maintain or improve the status quo while we rely on road and vehicle improvements along with improved training and remembering to use these skills to reduce fatacs. Cameras especially Gatsos are numb and don’t provide all or even many answers at the moment. They will improve and become much more road safety relevant, links with ANPR, SPECs systems etc. Who knows what the future will hold.
90+speeders on the motorway will always react more violently to loss of control following blowouts Smidsy impacts and failing to drive according to conditions etc. Their high speed puts them in much greater risk of the motorway crossover accident as well as more serious same carriageway accidents. We need protection from them.

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Drive in haste, repent at leisure.

I think speed limits have to be fixed - it is realistically impossible to make them variable for all permutations of road/traffic/weather conditions. So - the variability must be in the enforcement. In other words, sensible enforcement by trained police officers. That is (on the whole) what we had before the massive proliferation of speed cameras.

You compare DfT Stats with Census stats.

According to Department of Health stats - I am superdoc in my patch - high viral containment blabbabababababababababa!

I know my death rate - it has not changed! I still lose all my patients! Sure I have some better treatments available and can "buy" time for people - but I know I will lose these people within two years or so... Those whose hearts have been attacked by virus - only option is transplant and likelihood of match? Before they die? Any idea how hard it is to get a match here?

I need RTCs - for supply! That sound callous - but sadly - that is where we get our harvested organs from to greater extent. Nice healthy ones! Yes - I know - callous and wicked of me to voice it - but - sadly - too true.

And those people (especially the relatives) they want, demand and expect that organ because we have the "technology" to do it. They want their loved one to live - and get terribly upset when we cannot deliver a match and lose a much loved person. And the person who loses a loved one in a car crash is also terribly upset at the loss of a loved and does not want the remains to be used as "spare parts" either.

I was faced with this prospect when my wife was lying in hospital all those years ago - touch and go. Only thing "salvagable" were her corneas anyway - as she had number of internal bleeds after being impaled on the gear stick. But thankfully for all of us - she did pull through and had one child since and we are expecting another one very soon.

Can't quite figure out what you are trying to prove.
Does this mean that if you live in Durham you have a greater chance of being killed in or by a car.......errrr no
Does it mean the roads are more dangerous......errrr no

You need to look behind the stats. Durham has several trunk roads that go through county but a relativly low population. I suspect may of the casualties are not local resedents so the stats presented in the way you have chosen to mean nothing.

You should get a job working for the scamera squad cooking there figures for them....

Ok now I have pointed out your errors are you going to correct them

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Speed camera policy Kills

HAHAHAHAHA!!!:lol:

I’m for safety of all road user groups. I place a huge value on the rights of 'non motor vehicle' road users.

If someone uses a fact based soundbite to back up their argument, I believe it’s right to question it if the source isn't provided. In Gear said this.If In Gear or anyone provides me with the figures, correctly sourced, I’ll be completely happy to accept his statement.

Also

Could In Gear show some evidence of this given figures for the last five years.

1999…Durham…… Killed…33………………………………………Lancs……Killed…79……
2000…Durham…… Killed…23………………………………………Lancs……Killed…65……
2001…Durham…… Killed…27……Serious…231……………Lancs……Killed…76……Serious…1079
2002…Durham…… Killed…42……Serious…253……………Lancs……Killed…66……Serious…1011
2003…Durham…… Killed…42……Serious…235……………Lancs……Killed…86……Serious…962

Not much evidence of that ‘Steady decline’

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Drive in haste, repent at leisure.

But Lancs have over 320 fixed Gatsos in addition to mobile units. They have more drink drive incidents - which go undetected until they become "incidents"

Figures do indicate year on year increase in Lancs despite these Gatsos, talivans, zero tolerance and a speed course. We are, of course, going to be looking closely at their results now that they have revised the "qualifying criteria" for their "Speed Course" They were issuing NIPs like confetti for 31-35 mph and offering the speed course as alternative to points for this offence. Now - they are sending a warning letter up 35 mph and offering the course across each peed limit range at 10% plus 4 and prosecuting anything above this with the fixed penalty. Quite naturally - they are hoping to see improvements from the revised strategy - which of course I applaud. And they formally teach COAST on this course too!

COAST incidentally - is not a Lancs Speed course thing - it is a Swiss/German idea - from their L/tests... according to the Swiss in this family .... who all learned how to drive in Germany .....

Figures still show Durham is ahead of Lancs. Also 20 more died in Lancs in 2003 than in 2002. At least we stayed at the same number - and our serious are still lower - and 2002/2003 shows the decline in "serious".

In 2002 - we started to have a really serious and deadly problem with boy racers and bikers. For some reason we have a very ugly situation whereby some of these bikers think there is some "pleasure" in speeding on their bikes at speeds above 150 mph - even 200 mph in a couple of cases.

We cannot keep up with them and to even try to do so will place our officers in danger as well as add to an already dangerous situation. Of the 42 who died on Durham's roads last year - over a third were these bikers and joy riders..... We cannot even catch up to deliver acid lectures - and when we do manage to catch these people - it is too late - we are picking their limbs from where they scattered after colliding with whatever they collided with .... other cars, bikes, trees, fences, walls, and sadly innocent pedestrians....so we could not even use them for "spare part" surgery either....

I cannot understand for one moment what the "thrill" is .... perhaps Patch or bmk may be able to enlighten us as they are bikers .... (who bike responsibly judging from their posts but may have sufficient empathy
with fellow bikers to have some insight ....

Do know I like to ride my bike well and arrive where I want to go in one piece, having enjoyed the scenery at a reasonable pace...

We are working on the strategy of dealing with our problem area still and so far a hard purge has resulted in umpteen warnings, fixed penalties, and licence losses/bans, and we are prosecuting a significant number. Trouble is - we end up going for lesser charges to get chance of securing conviction -

"Dangerous driving and riding" is heck of a lot harder to prove than a "careless" charge.... as we get "Subjective yer 'Onour!"

Even then we are bound by mags and what they are allowed to sentence and commit to......


We have always been draconian on drink driving - and we do not wait unitl Christmas for a blitz on it. We keep it on-going - but did admittedly increase focus during Euro 2004 as we were aware that people would succumb to temptation and silliness as they do, sadly at Christmas, where common sense flies through window as they get carried away .....

We also have problem with drugged drivers coming in from just over our Northern border as well.


We also have unmarkeds tootling along the A1M - they do nail the dangerous tailgaters and OTT speeders . It is highly likely that one of those OTT "speeders" is our guy chasing the bad guy....

We catch as many as we can! Honest!

It is often assumed that, if a problem has causes, the way to remove the problem is to address the causes. Just for the record, though, this is logically false. How come? It's obvious, really. There may be (and often are) many combinations of events that lead to a circumstance, and many different combinations of events may lead to a different, perhaps better circumstance, i.e. the backwards path may not be the best, nor even a possible way to solve the problem - there may not even be an implicit backwards path. To illustrate this with an example. If, after cars were introduced, we had a problem of too many accidents, we could remove the cars and the problem would be solved. Hm... see what I mean! Or another one. If, after Iraq is invaded, we had a problem of insurgency, we could pull out and the problem would be solved. Hm… no path back at all! More often than not, we solve a problem by progressing forwards rather than rolling back. In this case, we are rolling forwards to implement cameras. Just because the causes are complex does not in the least mean that the answer must be.

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I stole this .sig

Good point and good example (Iraq). I can't argue with that. Though I think your other example would in fact be an excellent solution in that it would totally eliminate car crashes - it's just that you'll never persuade people to give up their cars. The problem with that is not that it wouldn't work but that it probably couldn't be achieved.

However, is it not equally unreasonable to assume that a backwards path is necessarily inappropriate? Not that you suggested that, of course, and I don't think we can even infer that from what you said. But your point just says that a people solution may not be best, not that it is inevitably doomed to fail. That being so I think it's a mistake to dismiss such solutions in favour of technology. Which isn't to say I am suggesting that there is no place for technological solutions, just that we shouldn't take it for granted that the answers always lie in that direction.

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

Once Pandora's Box or the Forbidden Apple is bit .... there's no going back... You cannot uninvent once it is there.

Same as with Iraq - by invading we set off a chain of events which we appear unable to contain

So like with my lurgies - we find way to fight back and resolve with as little fuss as possible.








But in case of resolving a speeding issue - answer you say is simple - whack up a scam.

Unfortunately - lot of other factors involved. Accidents occur through human error. They are always going to occur because humans are "accident prone!"

Simplest solution then - is to acknowledge that human being is human being and try to educate to eradicate errors. Speed cams ae not going to do that - but telly, training and trafpol can do much more!

The discussion is, in a basic sense, the time honoured one about whether to punish or rehabilitate. Modern thinking is that we should help offenders, spend time with them and let them confront their wrong doings. People on this site feel that cameras are too blunt an instrument; that they catch everybody, even the one-offs, and people who are good drivers really, and the "bad ones get off anyway" and "I was in a hurry" and "Speeding is quite safe anyway" all that other tear jerking stuff.

Well, maybe there should be a bit of latitude. I think that instead of a £60 fine and points, first offenders should be invited down to the station for a chat, a biscuit and a cup of tea, and “invited” to either make a £60 contribution to the Road Peace charity, or pay the fine. Yes, that would do it. Second time around, throw the book at the pests.

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I stole this .sig

Piffle. The discussion here is about determining what's REALLY important to road safety, and blind obedience to the speed limit isn't it.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Of course, I think cameras are a good development, but on the face of things, it is perfectly possible that the right solution to bad developments is to put things back as they were. The trouble is that subsequent developments can make that costly, as the new bad developments are built into the infrastructure, i.e. new things enable more new things that depend on them, and the path back becomes ever more expensive to retrace. I think that is why SafeSpeed is putting so much effort into this right now. He senses that the race to put up cameras and the political dissatisfaction with them presents him with a unique opportunity to get his way. He is out to make a pact with anyone (including the MAD yahoos) whose goals are aligned with his own. I believe it is too late already; we’ll have wait to see who is right.



I couldn't agree more. But if we are to backtrack, it will have to happen soon. This is because solutions that carry a weight of history are more difficult to displace. The most difficult development in cameras was getting the first one installed. Every one after that was more easy, although as I say, political dissatisfaction has grown. I doubt it is now possible to remove all cameras without a serious legal fight from those who have benefited from their presence. Additional, there is much bureaucratic and judicial machinery now built around them, and in any case, more effective monitoring solutions that provide the same information are in the pipeline, without the physical camera installation. This is important – if things go on as they are, the police will have all the information on each driver’s every journey, including start point and time, end point and time, vehicle details, route and speed at all stages. In the light of this, I suggest we discuss the issues of how drivers should react to new offence detection technology, and determine how information from such technology will be interpreted. Indeed, there are serious privacy concerns over and above safe speed issues. Is that a society we want? I don’t know, but it is likely to be the one we get. In the meantime, my advice to all is to obey the limit and drive properly; that is the only policy that will work whatever monitoring technology is used.

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I stole this .sig

Put things back they way they were? You mean decent trafplod numbers, discretionary use of police powers to educate after minor infringements and hammer the real idiots, engineering solutions to dodgy roads instead of just sticking a Gatso up?You heard it here first, folks. basingwerk isn't actually against putting things back the way they were. FWIW I note that again we seem to be on nearly the same wavelength. Personally I'm not against using a camera in a location where all else has failed (or is impractical for one reason or another). After all, that's what they how we were originally told they would be used. Getting the trust of motorists back again might not be easy though.

Hmmm. I'm not sure how much it would really cost to throw a few OFF switches. I know, I know, more to it than that. The problem is that scameras come cheap as far as public funds are concerned, and going back to the old ways will, as you've pointed out, inevitably push up the donut budget for the police. Still, if we get better value from that money I'd say it's well spent.

Could be, could be. Especially the last bit about those who've benefited from scameras.

Yeah, of course. They've benefited most from the scameras. Take 'em all down and it'll P45s all round in the pratnerships. For sure they'll fight. Not so sure about the judicial bit though. I'm sure FPNs existed before the scameras were around. They were just generated by BiBs with radar guns. I'm pretty sure my mum got one while I was still at school. Interestingly the BiB was going to give her the lecture and a warning (discretion at work there) but she had to go and make some smartarse joke that he'd probably heard a thousand times before. You guessed it, lecture and speeding ticket instead (discretion still at work - ticket the smartarse because s/he obviously isn't taking the whole thing seriously enough ).

This is getting to be a habit. Again, I agree with you. These are important questions. The privacy concerns are top of my list, closely followed by reliability and accuracy.

No, I don't think we do want it, and I'm still hopeful that it won't happen. If we get it I think it will be largely the fault of an apathetic public for not saying so soon enough.

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

Nah. This isn't political. I'm not political. It's just about lives on the road. No more and no less.

A pact with MAD? I'd have to be mad. MAD do nothing for the cause of road safety.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Well - according to something I read either heere on the PH forum - they have removed scams on the Coventry Ring Road .....

Possibly these scams may well be deployed elsewhere - in more lucrative place as people "were not speeding on this traffic jam of a road!"

As for the "spy in the car" - will not go down well at all. We already have umpteen stealthy constitutional reforms according to Lord Woolf - which will harm democracy as we know it. He calls it a "danger of elected dictatorship - which can easily turn malevolent"

As we know - we have "cherry picking" as to which judges hears certain cases, not to mention more than a bit of favouritism when appointing these judges to the bench in the first place.

That being the case - how on earth can Joe Public even begin to trust this kind of technology and its useage?

Shades of Stasi Germany .....