Safe Speed Forums

Why have I? I thought this campaign was about safety and people driving at appropriate speeds?

Because speed cameras will never become a null issue.

They have a negative effect on driver behaviour, cause distraction and distort road safety priorities. These effects occur regardless of whether motorists observe speed limits or not.

Disagree. I think the positive benefit is definitely grossly over-emphasised, but I don't think they're the deadly distractors people claim. I should invite you to drive some of the semi-rural roads where I live so you can see what sort of lunatics there are in completely unenforced areas. I'm not saying there aren't any in enforced areas, but people tend to drive more cautiously in enforced areas.

Do you REALLY think that the bulk of the public is perfect at the mode-switching required?

Speed limit compliance is ALWAYS conscious. Adjusting speed to conditions is mainly sub-conscious.

And look at what the government is saying by its actions: 'Stick to the speed limit and you'll be safe'.

And at the end of the day, does it matter AT ALL if someone skillfully adjusting speed to the conditions goes over the speed limit?

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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

I often see lunatics on the roads, especially in the south east, so I can well understand your concerns ( I share them). Speed cameras in my experience do not curtail the action of these lunatics and ironically the biggest lunatics of all are never caught by these cameras as they are fully aware of where they are and brake for them.

The only way to address this, other than driver training (although I admitt you can train a bad attitude out of someone) is more traffic police. Speed cameras just don't work.

Life is busy (often). Roads are busy (often). As SafeSpeed very importantly says Speed limit compliance is ALWAYS conscious.
Even the most well behaved, compliant, anti-speed driver has at least TWO extra elements to consider at all times whilst driving:
- what is the speed limit NOW
- what speed am I travelling NOW
A lot of the time, granted, this is quite easily manageable, and these extra tasks are just absorbed into the general driving routine.
However, there are many times when these are "unwelcome" additional considerations. Indeed a DISTRACTION as far as road safety is concerned.

I know that this has been discussed in great detail somewhere else in this forum. Link anyone?

No it isn't. Traffic Police were the sole domain of our roads for years and injury accidents were several times higher than they are now. They are not the utopia of road safety.

Would you be pleased if we had traffic Police who enforced the letter of the law for every single punishable offence? Because to get rid of the habits of drivers in this country, that's what we need to have, and the only people who have caused this are ourselves - not the Government, not safety cameras, not reduced speed limits..

I don't think the extra 'effort' required to ensure the speed you are travelling at is legal as well as appropriate is half as bad as you think. Once you have determined what the maximum speed you should be travelling at feels like, it is quite easy to recognise when you are exceeding this.

In my observations, it is often the users of higher performance cars rather than smaller hatchbacks, etc.. that exceed the limits by the greatest margin. From the inside of these cars (of which I drive one) it may seem very safe, all the shielding from the outside world, but on the outside, when you've got a Vectra blasting past a cyclist at 50mph when the expected speed should be 30 or less, it's not a nice environment to be in. Yeah, there may not be a crash, but I'd be dammed if I was going to put up with that.

It's what's on the outside that causes the damage if you crash, and on the inside that causes or avoids the accident. If people drove with respect, followed all the road laws, we'd be twice as well off as we are now. How do you teach people to drive with respect nowadays when the youth of today don't even know what that word means?

As I've said a million times, you will fail your IAM, RoSPA, or any other advanced driving test if you exceed the speed limits. These courses are hugely respected worldwide. I'm afraid to say I would much rather have people following the IAM driving standards than the SafeSpeed driving standards.

<Drunken rant deleted>

Bye bye

The average car back then had less attention paid to crashworthiness, and fewer systems designed to help you avoid getting into a crash in the first place, than the average car today. Drink driving wasn't seen as a bad thing (though it seems a growing number of drivers these days are starting to think it's acceptable once more). Wearing seat belts was optional. If you had an accident you could easily end up waiting far longer for the ambulance to show up (no mobiles back then, so how far away is the nearest landline, and who knows where it is anyway...) and when it did arrive it was little more than a glorified taxi to get you to A&E, as opposed to the well-equipped paramedic response vehicles we've got today. Once you did make it to A&E, the medics were relying on the level of medical knowledge, equipment and drugs available to them back then - a world away from what's available now.

So really, how many of those injuries and fatalities back in the golden days of the traffic police would still have happened given todays standards of vehicle design and medical care, IF scameras had never been introduced and we still had the same level of trafpol presence on the roads?




Perhaps not, but cameras (and future forms of speed enforcement being discussed) are even further from being a utopian vision - rather more Orwellian...

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Chris

I was never suggesting traffic police were the be all and end all of road safety. They are just more effective than the thoroughly ineffective and truely counter productive effects speed cameras have on our roads.

I don't think we are going we're ever going to see eye to eye on this issue.

mpaton2004, your views on speed limits, speed cameras, SCPs, enforcement and safe speed appear to have changed dramatically fairly recently, completely different to how they have been.

The following links support this for anyone who doesn't recall your earlier posts:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ght=#47874

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ght=#30462

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ght=#34572

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ght=#38150

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ght=#32852

I don't mean this in a nasty way but is there any reason for such a massive turn around in opinion and attitude? You seem to be shouting in a completely different direction now.

Correct.

I am, because I conducted an analysis of my driving and riding and undertook further advanced tuition. I realised that there is absolutely no excuse for breaking the speed limit (except where emergency situations dictate) other than my own selfishness.

1. *I* want to get from A to B quickly so *I* will drive faster than allowed.
2. *I* can't see any reason for the speed limit so it's ok for *me* to break the speed limit.

When I realised this and applied the same logic that I apply to my professions (where strict discipline and standards rule) I immediately started to begin driving more calmly and found it IMPROVED my hazard perception while on the road. I also began to notice more and more drivers (of which I was once in the same group) who blatantly don't have any sort of standards. It's not a majority, but it's far from a minority.



My attitudes have completely changed on this. I used to be very pro-SS, but then I was simply quoting Paul (SS was an effective propaganda machine for me just as much as DfT is for everyone else) which weren't really my own beliefs.

I strongly believe that a lot of people on here are not at all interested in the safety side, but are joining the bandwagon because they are lashing out at being inconvenienced by not being able to travel as fast as they please.

If you want to reduce all casualties to near zero, hard limit all vehicles to 10 mph on every road. If you're really pro-saving lives, you'll have no problem with that.

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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

If limits were set in a sensible way then I could understand your decision on this but...



If limits were set at 10mph would you be "selfish" if you exceeded this speed?



I certainly don't agree with all Paul espouses but I had my beliefs prior to ever hearing of Safespeed and I don't just trot out the party line. You seem to have the fervour of the newly converted to a different religion. Why not wait a bit longer to see if you still believe in a few years time.

(Incidentally, Paul, what is the meaning of the "popcorn" emoticon?)

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Settling in for a true cinematic experience. Or, less hyperbolically, I'm interested in what comes next.

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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

He didn't say "if the limits were set" though, he said "hard limit all vehicles", in which case you couldn't exceed the limit even if you wanted to.

Unfortunately, he'd already answered the question in the previous post. The cinema is now empty but for the cleaners.

Hmmm.... I have one or two ideas.. Hmmmmm :shh:



Most of us on here drive to COAST principles anyway This system chooses the safest speed to proceed in any case.

But please do not try to deceive anyone as to this.. we all have the Tom Toms and we all have the "very useful" overlays

- no one on here are complete fools! We all have such gadgets Tom Toms are - er - legal abroad too You just keep about the overlays



If you have a Sat Nav as I understand from some of "your" previous posts - then most Tom Tom users will elect to have the cam overlay .. and it does show the speed in any case



Yeah - and my family appear to be the only ones to actually comply with the 20 mph in the villages. In fact.. I seem to recall Ian posting that he pulled one such compliant person on suspicion of being "drunk". He's welcome to pull me, Wildy, my eldest son, entire Swiss mob and my learner twins who sailed with 100% scores on theory test and they have practical test dates confirmed too as we all comply with this limit on the basis that we are a 52 week 24/7 tourist resort and walkers and cyclists are always around.

Our "speeding" as such.. more empty motorway based in reality. and we do love our family track sessions and A/bahn blats.

But driving or rather all road use always has to have COAST as its base point



Hmmm! I bet .... and I think I know why Paul used the icon


Members may guess .. non-members and lurks can only speculate I fear I may be letting a "cat outa the bag"





Um.. safe speed means what it says on the box. You adopt the safest speed for the circumstance. This means always being able to stop comfortably and without upsetting a vulnerable passenger on your own side of the road and in the distance you can see to be clear ... per the Highways Code, Road Craft, Paul Ripley and Peter Amey (who is to RoadCraft what John Franklin is to CycleCraft )

COAST forms the basis of DIS and Speed Awareness courses as run by some Pratnerships. Proof has been posted up on this site in the past.

No one is against a speed limit. One is rather pro - MORE police officers and LESS automation as the latter cannot safeguard against defective cars, drunks, drugged, tired or the ill.. and yes.. perhaps - an extremely subjective opinion in view of one death caused by a person driving a seriously unroadworthy vehicle and almost losing Wildy (and she would have been a severe loss to me and I can honestly say I would never have recovered from losing her as I love every infuriating quality about her and proud to declare this in public too)

With respect - you are clueless as to what real road safety means if you think cams work or just driving slowly works. Ferdl was hit at just 20 mph by a defective and died on impact. A speed camera would have spotted that .. NOT and I would ask "you" to be honest. Oh and I think the inverted commas are warranted (I think fellow members understand what I am thinking.. and no disrespect to the true member )



When I was a medical student ..and if my eldest is aged 19 years and my twins 17 years.. and I did not marry on graduation.. think you guess this was a long time ago now...

But.. I used to drive past this fire station on my way up to Bury General for a student "torture of nasty questions" on the "rounds" I do not ever recall traffic moving above a crawl.. and can only conclude those pinged were pinged at weekend or off-peak.

But something very wrong if so many are copped in such a short period and on a road which is usually heaving with traffic anyway.

Thus I can well understand why the person pinged three times might just ask some questions as to calibration and accuracy of the scamera.

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Do please tell us about this! Where did you get your 'further advanced tuition' from?

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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