Safe Speed Forums

you lot need to get real! if our roads are so safe that we dont need to do anything about speeding etc how do you account for the massive death and injury toll on our roads every year? perhaps you dont like to think about reality!

so you're proposing that we pay more attention to the 3% of accidents caused by speed in excess of the posted limit and ignore the other 97%?

If speed enforcement is the medicine, how come the number of accidents has gone UP in the ten years since cameras came in, after years of going down?

Nurse: "This medicine isn't working!"

Doctor: "Increase the dose"

yes in a way all accidents are due to speed, as cars have to be moving to hit each other

PEOPLE NEED TO LOOK AROUND TO SEE WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND THEM TO STOP ACCIEDENTS

N.B I knoe this from experience

edit:- I have put four dents in a car not once was I in excess of the speed limit. 3 from not looking when parking the car. and one where my ability was far far less than my Confidence in my ability(luckly it was only pride and the car that was damged)

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Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

If you read the safe speed site a bit more you'll find a bit more information... Firstly read http://www.safespeed.org.uk/roadsafety.html and you'll find out a bit about what safe speed is about...

After you have read the road safety document you may wish to read the safe speed claims at http://www.safespeed.org.uk/proposals.html. As far as I know this is what safe speed 'fights' for.

To continue along what safe speed actually fights for (correct me if I'm wrong), we don't condone/encourage law breaking, and therefore 'speeding', but after some research you'll find that speed, as in breaking the law speed, isn't necessarily the major factor in many accidents, but this major factor can be driver error, car maintainance levels, road conditions, weather, etc... Looking at the number of road deaths after speed cameras were wildly introduced, the drop is minimal (I think), and the number of deaths may have actually increased slightly, or stayed the same (again I can't quote statistics).

Speed cameras are useful in some, I repeat, some circumstances, but they cannot be used as a replacement for properly trained police drivers. There are many times when speed cameras are inappropriate, as they cannot take into consideration road conditions, weather, traffic levels... Whereas a police officer can do all these things... To give an example of this... A speed camera is installed on the outskirts of a village in the countryside. A main single carriageway road runs through this village, and the speed limit through the village is 30mph. There is a school on this main road, and local residents have complained enough about wanting a speed camera at this location, so, they get it. Now, this speed camera does not know that 30mph is lethal speed, and when you hit a child at 30mph there is roughly 50:50 chance they will die (remember reading this somewhere I think). So 30mph is lethal speed. Yet, at 3am, when there are absolutely no children around, the camera operates the same way, watching for the same speed of 30mph... In this case it may be safe to do 40 or 50mph, yet you get snapped the same.

That's the case against speed cameras fought, not terribly well, but feel free to add/pick holes...

Something that is left out of our 'basic' driver training is being able to judge what is a safe speed for the conditions. This is something else safe speed feels strongly about. This means that when you are on an ungritted road and there are a few inches of snow lying on the road, even if it's NSL, you don't drive at that speed, that would probably be dangerous. In such circumstances it would be more correct to drive at, say, 20mph. This is sort of brought into the theory test as braking distances, but you need to know that it can take 10 times further, or more, to brake in snow, or 2 times (or slightly more) to stop in rain. This idea isn't drilled into learner drivers enough, and it should be. Another part is the '2 second rule' that learners are taught. This is a good idea, a nice rhyme to say over to yourself, and always good for a quick check if you think you may have strayed slightly close to the car in front...

Sorry, I have rambled slightly, and my post is probably all gobbildygook...

Just edited this to say:
Don't forget, this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, you will get a lot more information by reading the safe speed website, and probably by talking to the more experienced drivers on the forum.

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Mike

Have you read anything posted on this site?

i notice that nobody has bothered to address the real problem - how to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads.

its very easy to complain about cameras but how about some solutions?

do any of you have any workable ideas on how we can reduce the massive number of road deaths and injuries?

but i dont think that you have any realistic solutions. unless of course you believe that removing speed cameras will suddenly make everyone drive carefully?

what exactly do you think would happen if all cameras were removed?

That answers that then!

I do believe there are some ideas in that post... I did not say removing all speed cameras would magically reduce the number of deaths on the roads, I just said that they can never totally replace properly trained police drivers (in large enough numbers to cover the country properly).

There's another way to reduce deaths and serious injuries... Train more police drivers who can actually go out onto the roads and spot dangerous and wreckless driving, joyriders, and people using excessive speed for the conditions...

More time needs to be spent educating drivers that they should use appropriate speed, appropriate following distances, proper vehicle maintainance, that type of thing, rather than saying 'Oh drive at the limit and you're totally safe.'

I reiterate, read the safe speed website a bit and you'll start to pick up many useful driving hints and tips.

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Mike

Robert12, I regret you are gullible, misinformed and have fallen for the police propaganda.

So long as travel involves moving vehicles, regrettably there is not a simple solution, other than stopping all driving, to preventing all road accidents, but one thing that is for sure is that speed cameras are NOT the answer.

With the increasing use of speed cameras the decline in road casualties has slowed, or even reversed. Where as previously these casualties and fatalities were steadily decreasing, at about 5% per year. Given the safety improvements to vehicles, improved casualty treatment and improvements to roads, what we see is that speed cameras are actually resulting in increasing road casualties.

May I suggest you acknowledge the real world we live in and perhaps when YOU get a few speeding tickets and possible risk losing your driving licence you may see things differently. Even if you never ever exceed a speed limit, if you drive then you can still get speeding tickets.

Most reasonable people who contribute to this website are a concerned as everyone else about improving road safety and wish there was the quick and simple fix which you seem to think should exist, but it doesn’t work like that, so get real about the situation.

The police and “Safety Camera Partnerships” know that speed cameras don’t work and provide no road safety benefit to the community, but they are not going to admit that while it keeps them in secure well paid jobs at the expense of drivers.

dead easy, just put more traffic officers on the roads end of sory!

You're completely wrong. We know quite a bit about how road safety worked in the pre-camera era. That's what we need to know because at that time we were enjoying a regular and reliable reduction in road risk values.

Road safety is primarily an issue of psychology - crashes are the consequence of human error. Clearly we need psychologically sound policies. Some are listed and explained in the Safe Speed manifesto: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/manifesto.html

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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

It's another one isn't it? Or has The Sensible Majority changed his name?

Go to BRAKE! Robbbbbert - they will think that you know what you are talking about there and sympathise with your obvious utter lack of experience on the subject and on the road.

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Aquila



Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat...

I know I'm a little slow a times but this thread has made me realise why the "speed kills" mantra is so dangerous. It's not just because people like Robbert12 think that if they drive AT the speed limit then they're perfectly safe. It goes one step further than that. They believe that all accidents are caused by foaming at the mouth speeding nutters who are by definition OTHER PEOPLE. OTHER PEOPLE are the ones who crash therefore I have nothing at all to worry about in my safe little 30mph world. OOops, bang. Goodnight.

@robbert12: Your post show why the current road safety policy is so dangerous. They've brainwashed people like you into believing that "speed kills" mantra and that the only speed that kills is in excess of the speed limit. Because of that policy, people like you now believe that their primary responsibility to road safety is not to drive safely but to obey the speed limit, and that provided they do that they will be safe and good drivers. That message has been reinforced by removing traffic police from the roads and replacing them with automatic speed measuring equipment and talivans. Some constabularies have taken this so far that they no longer have traffic divisions.

That policy has spawned a new generation of driver that proceeds with brain in neutral - often too fast for the conditions. On this site you will find many mentions of COAST, which is an acronym for the five most essential elements of safe driving:

• Concentration,
• Observation,
• Anticipation,
• Space, and
• Time

Note that "speed" doesn't appear in that list, and with very good reason. Speed is a secondary factor and if you drive with proper COAST you will automatically drive at a safe speed.

Hopefully, from the responses to your post, you can see that the present policy is wrong. The fixation upon a secondary safety factor to the exclusion of the primary ones is flawed. We need more traffic police on the roads to apprehend and deter dangerous drivers. We need to change the message. Instead of "Speed Kills" we need to go back to things like, "Only a fool breaks the two-second rule". The Irish have started producing "Always expect the unexpected" road safety adverts that we desparately need our government to emulate. You can find links at http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7258.

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Will

Have you read anything here? Do so, then post again.

Most people here have have real problem with the fact that human traffic enforcement has decreased as cameras have increased.

Most people believe that road user training is woefully neglected.

A lot of people here have an active role in road safety.

Don't say something so ignorant and sweepingly inaccurate if you have no hope of backing it up.

To add my tuppence worth to this

And in the majority - blindly doing the speed limit "because I can, because it's legal", not because it's safe to do so.

Why do you think there there SO many out of control vehicles in poor weather conditions? So many 'boy racers' wrapped round trees on country roads? Because:- "I'm sober & doing the limit therefore I am safe - because ONLY speed and drink driving kills, the government tells me so. My inabiltiy to think for myself has no bearing on MY skills, and anyway it's OTHER people that crash....becasue they are drunk & driving over the limit."

That depends on how the cameras are removed. If something like this were followed, the reduction of fatality trend that this country enjoyed prior to the widespread use of automated enforcement would likely be restored:

• Rewrite the rules for placement. Currently, the rules say that you can't put speed cameras where they stand a reasonable chance of doing some good (i.e. where most drivers agree that exceeding the speed limit is dangerous) but must put them where speeding is least likely to be dangerous (i.e. where most drivers agree that the speed limit is significantly below the maximum safe speed under most conditions).
• Switch the message they're pumping out from "speed kills" to "keep your distance", "watch out near ice-cream vans", etc.
• Replace talivans with proper traffic police who, unlike talivan crews, can detect dangerous driving and have the authority to do something about it.

At the end of that process, you'd still have some cameras - but they'd be positioned where they could do some good rather than where they could generate the most revenue.

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Will

There are only two ways to reduce accidents:
1) increase the driving ability of everybody
2) get more police policing the roads
It really is that simple.

3) Engineering measures to minimise the chances of mistakes or to prevent the mistakes from resulting in crashes.