Safe Speed Forums

Brab

Let me ask you a question.
If so many people are regularly breaking the legal limit,, why do you think that is ?

NB - Topic split from here.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Maybe youd extend that rather simplistic view to people having sex?
far more effective way to reduce aids and hiv and kids by not doing something generally safe and enjoyable eh?

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"Safety" Scamera Partnerships;
Profitting from death and misery since 1993.

Believe nothing- Question everything.

Why do some drivers speed regulaly :- answer because the chances of being caught are lower odds than the chances of winning the lottery.

Speeders claim that speed cameras are there just to raise extra revenue:- IF YOU DO NOT SPEED THEN YOU PAY NOTHING FOR PASSING A SPEED CAMERA

I advocate the increase in the use of speed cameras especially in built up areas & ideally would be as often as street lighting, remove all speed bumps as they do no use at all & are just an inconvenience to all drivers.

First of all -


Perhaps if you do a bit more reading on here ,you'll find that if it's a lot of drivers ignoring the posted limit ,that the limit is set by political decision, not for practical reasons .(Suggest you read up on 85th percentile) .
No one on here advocates speeding, that's a myth propagated by the speed kills brigade . Then again ,another suggested piece of reading is the definition of a "safe speed" .



Can you suggest another good reason for their existence . If that argument is true ,then why did the last government remove local authorities right to claim "expenses" from the money raised . Possibly because LA decided that the trough was deep enough for a little bit of "culinary accountancy",AND CENTRAL gOV'T SAW THROUGH THAT LITTLE PLOY. Stats are used to prove the need for cameras - but those stats prove nothing. It's easy to use a bad accident year to prove that use of cameras (in an accident free year ) worked.( Look at RTTM)


Before the introduction of cameras ,this country already had an excellent safety deterrent -the professional Traffic cop. They didn't just dish out tickets, their job was ROAD SAFETY - education and enforcement . Read some of the posts by IG- a now retired traffic senior officer.You will learn a lot of road craft from his posts.

Don't pre judge- look at the evidence for education & training on this site. Then look again at the half truths propagated by the speed kills brigade.

Then ask yourself - which driver is safer - one driving 1 mph below the limit at all times, blindly believing that they are "safe" , or one driving to the road conditions ( possibly a lot slower than the limit minder) , but with eyes open to the conditions.

Speed doesn't cause problems. Excess speed for the conditions is like letting a five year old play with a loaded gun .

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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

I agree with you on the fact that alert drivers that drive to the conditions of the road are safer, but many drivers appear to switch their brain off the moment they start their engine & fail to notice anything that is not in their line of tunnel vision.

One point of fact is drivers who suffer from center lane syndrome on the motorway & fail to notice other drivers attempting to pull out to overtake traffic.

Last year driving in foggy conditions on the M62 last year I only came across one other driver that had reduced speed for the lack of vision, which was much lower than the vision that is available driving at night, yet most were still driving well above the speed dictated by the road conditions.

I don't know how you can say "speed does not cause problems", if someone is doing 40mph in a 30 limit & you are pulling out of a junction, it will be safe to pull out with that car at that distance but if the car is doing 40 then a crash will occur.

Or could it be that they appear not to notice anything not in their narrow field of vision. I class it as poker driving, as in "scream up to a junction/island /whatever, making it look as if you have no intention of stopping/giving way". All those paying attention draw back , in case it's one of the thousands of illegal drivers that the auto cop haven't traced , and chummy sails through jumping all the queues,all of the time. I hate walking down town on market day -same symptom.Till I bought a curtain pole,and walked through town . Instant courteous behaviour. Take a narrow gap ,possibly wide enough for two cars to pass side by side. I never try it - it's a recipe for a damaged mirror. If I'm first in, I take up all the room.
Wing mirror they might argue as 50/50.A head on with me the best part of the way through ,no chance.


That's down to lack of will(& proper roads policing by trafpol, mostly because they're thin on the ground ,and busy with more important things) .As I said ,( as in all good tales) Once upon a time ,we had a dedicated force out on the highways & byways, dedicated to PREVENTING accidents,educating those in need ,and prosecuting those that deserved it. Again ,as I said, that didn't satisfy the bean counters as there was no profit on the books, only loss of cash . Then there's your bit about dangerous driving in fog. Different scenario, same problem - too many sheep, not enough sheepdogs .

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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

I'm afraid that you've fallen into the modern/inexperienced driver trap. It's not entirely your fault. It's the fault of modern government/road safety "experts" (I use colons because they mainly know very little about actual road safety).

In the good old days we were taught that we should always expect the unexpected and never take anything for granted. Read the road ahead as you actually see it and not how you would expect to see it in a perfect world or on a computer game.

So in you case scenario, an experienced driver would look at the approaching car doing 40MPH in a 30MPH limits and their brain would calculate that the other car is approaching faster than you would expect a 30MPH car to approach and calculate that they were too near to pull out in front of. The inexperienced driver knows at the back of his mind how much distance to be safe when pulling out in front of a driver doing approx 30MPH, knows that it is a 30MPH limit, sees that driver approaching is x metres away and thinks they can pull out....BANG!

This is the problem with having control freaks in charge of road safety. No one is encouraged to think for themselves, you are told you must do what they tell you to do because if you do what they tell you to do (i.e. stop when they say, go when they say, travel at a speed matching that number on a post), then NOTHING can go wrong........WRONG!

The best advice is to learn to think for yourself, judge what is a safe speed for the road you are travelling on without looking at "lollipops", learn to judge approaching traffic speed and don't assume anything.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Again it's all because modern drivers are conditioned, that the only observational skills needed, are those that match the magic number on the speedo to the magic number on the side of the road and BINGO..nothing can go wrong....WRONG!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Bingo -your 1 million miles , added to my approx 2.5 Million miles makes approx a LOT of miles of speedo watching,. But I don't just watch speedo - I look at road. TOGETHER ,WE MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT.

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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

It would appear that the trial of Peter Renshaw will have put a serious dent into your assertation that "speed does not cause problems", If speed cameras would have been present would he have been travelling at 50mph, I seriously doubt it, he seems to be the type that would slow down for the 50 yards or so that are covered by the camera then immediately return to travelling at nearly twice the speed limit, never thinking about any other road user or pedestrians & what would be the concequenses of his actions.

i think we should adopt a similar driver training system to the ones in norway & sweden where before being allowed on public highways drivers attend a 12 month course (even before they are at the age where they can apply for a drivers licence) which teaches them how to think & handle differing road & weather conditions, to think ahead & observe traffic situations around them.

Yes i definately agree with this.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I don't know the facts on this case...can you fill us in?

Speed in itself isn't dangerous, however excessive or inappropriate speed can be, perhaps this is where you are getting confused?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I have been reading this site and posting on this forum for a while. I can not recall seeing any such assertion by the site, the owner of the site and any of the regular posters (both pro and anti camera). Can you point me towards it please. I would like to know the context of why it was said or why you interpreted what was said to be this assertion.

I personally believe "speed" in isolation is harmless. My proof of this is the song by Eric Idle - The meaning of life. Listen to it or read the lyrics and then tell me that you are not moving whilst sitting and reading this post. The numbers are not 100% accurate, but are close enough to show it.

By the way. Welcome to the forum.

Sorry about that I was replying to an assertion made by "graball" not the site

to Graball link to trail report http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-18172991

That just mentions "dangerous Driving", it doesn't mention speed at all. You can be driving dangerously and be well below the speed limit or driving perfectly safely and be above a poorly set low limit. What do you define as a dangerous speed?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

As speed is purely a measurement of movement, then you are saying that movement causes problems and I suppose in a very simplistic way, you could argue that if no-one moved, there would be no collisions.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

You've just defeated your own argument here. Firstly you say that if a camera was present he probably wouldn't have been driving at 50MPH. Then you go on to say he seems the type to slow down for only 50yards and then speed up again...so in that case a camera would be totally useless apart from a 50 yard stretch of road....wouldn't more traffic police on patrol, serve a better purpose?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Sorry I can not see where this has been done. Can you link to it please

On the road speed is never the only factor that must be judged by all road users. It is however the only factor that a camera can judge and then only in relation to an arbitrary number. In most cases that number will be wrong most of the time. It is upto the road user to work out what the safe speed is and this is where the current policy of road safety is so limited. The obsession with posted limit adhenrence detracts from far more important factors that must be considered at any moment whilst on the road.

:welcome :
Not aware that I nor Paul has ever stated this. Perhaps it is your interpretation, but it is certainly nothing this Campaign has ever claimed, and is therefor wrong and best that you retract it.

You have evidence that this chap is this 'type' or person ?
How do you define this 'stereotype' ?
Most drivers I see do exactly this and yet the prior and remainder of the roads that I see them travel, is done so, in a mostly considerate and competent manner i.e. a 'normal motorists actions'.
This 'surfing' behaviour may often be from a 'psychological demonstration' of distaste for the camera's presence, than 'an aggressive driver' who will always behave below 'normal' standards.
This conclusion seems to be one based on no evidence, than the one incident that the chap has been convicted of. He clearly made a tragic and fatal error and one that he will pay for, for the rest of his life. It is tragic for the family, but lets only consider by using facts than assumptions.


Interesting to discuss in a new thread.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I've read the links supplied to this case and I can't see any mention of the driver doing 50MPH or even that he was over the speed limit. Dangerous Driving (what he was charged with) can occur at well below the speed limit. (He might have been concentrating on his mobile phone/C.D. Player/high on Drugs, anything which would have made his driving dangerous).

Is this another troll assuming that speed is the mother of all evil and responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.