Steve Thomas at 104mph

Steve Thomas

Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester

After being prosecuted for 104 mph, Steve Thomas said: "I considered that my manner of driving was safe."

Introduction

Greater Manchester Police Press Statement: (issued 29th April 2004)

The head of Greater Manchester Police force's traffic unit has been fined and received six penalty points on his licence after driving more than 100mph on a motorway. Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas was caught doing 104mph on the M6 toll road.
He was fined £450 and had his licence endorsed by North Staffordshire Magistrates sitting at Stoke. Thomas said: "On the day in question, the driving and road conditions were good and I was part of a group of around 15 cars all doing around the same speed. "I considered that my manner of driving was safe."
"However, exceeding the speed limit by this amount is unacceptable and I sincerely regret my error of judgment. "Excessive speed is a contributory factor in many road traffic incidents and it is everyone's duty to drive safely and at a reasonable speed at all times.
"I remain committed to reducing the number of serious road traffic accidents that occur in Greater Manchester."
A Force spokeswoman said: "Mr Thomas is responsible for traffic duties at Greater Manchester Police and that responsibility will remain."

In the news

(BBC News web site)
(Safe Speed press release) (available soon)
(more to follow)

Understanding the important issues

Was it dangerous?

We have a high degree of faith in the standards of training for Police drivers. Mr Thomas had received this training and if his judgement was that 104 mph was safe in the circumstances we do not doubt his judgement for a second. So no. We don't believe it was dangerous.

Would the public consider it dangerous?

Many people would consider 104 mph to be automatically extremely dangerous. But those people are wrong. 104 mph would only be dangerous if it was inappropriate for the circumstances. The appropriateness of a speed cannot ever be assessed from the speed in miles per hour alone.
We are extremely concerned about the false public perception. Somewhat ironically, we believe that false public perceptions of road dangers are in themselves dangerous. (A simple example is a driver at 29 mph, convinced that his speed must be safe in circumstances where 10 mph would be appropriate.)

What can we say about Steve Thomas opinion of the dangers of speeding?

It must be reasonable to assume that Steve Thomas does not believe that exceeding a speed limit in itself is dangerous. We agree.

Safety requirements and legal requirements are out of step.

Absolutely they are. Here we have (what we assume to be) a safe and responsible use of 104 mph in appropriate circumstances on a public road. At this speed most drivers could expect to be banned, yet we have seen no evidence nor even a suggestion of a safety violation. Clearly the law is miles out of step with reality.

What should happen next?

Steve Thomas should own up and state publicly that there's much more to road safety than sticking to a speed limit. He should pledge to give true and accurate information to drivers and he should pledge to enforce the law in the best public interest. We wrote to him and made these points. The letter is below.

We wrote to Steve Thomas

30th April 2004

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas
Greater Manchester Police
P.O. Box 22
Manchester M16 0RE

Dear Mr Thomas,

May I offer my commiserations on your recent encounter with unnecessary law enforcement? I should like to point out that literally thousands of members of the public are suffering the same experience every single day.

Clearly you know full well that exceeding a speed limit in itself does not represent a safety violation. Perhaps you believe that high levels of speed enforcement will benefit road safety, but consider this particular side effect:

The current behaviour of the Police and the speed camera partnerships is convincing certain group of the motoring public that exceeding the speed limit is dangerous. But this belief automatically goes hand in hand with the belief that keeping within the speed limit Is safe. We now have millions of drivers who believe that their primary duty to road safety is keeping to the speed limit. In many cases they now choose a speed based on the number on the speedo without regard for the conditions. And I don't need to tell you how very dangerous 30mph can be when it is inappropriate.

This is just one of a list of 19 dangerous and potentially dangerous side effects arising from the modern overemphasis on speed limit enforcement.

I implore you to use this opportunity to rise above the hype and start giving honest and accurate road safety messages to drivers. I also implore you to deploy your finite resources to detect and prosecute genuine safety violations on the roads and not purely technical ones.

I have personally spent about 5,000 hours considering and investigating the overall effects of high levels of speed enforcement on UK road safety and my conclusions are that modern policy has already cost more than 6,000 lives on the roads over the last decade. Then there's damage to the police-public relationship and even loss of livelihood for some drivers unnecessarily banned. I can arrange a presentation of my findings if you wish, or you can read about them on our web site.

Finally allow me to ask you to carefully examine the real effects of this experience on your own driving. I expect that you will notice that you are now directing far more of your precious attention towards speed limit compliance – and this means you have less attention available for the road ahead. Millions of safe drivers are having the same experience.

I should warn you that I intend to publish any reply to the Safe Speed web site. If you ask me not to publish any reply I shall respect your request.

Yours sincerely

Paul Smith
CC:
Damian Green MP
John Thurso MP
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/stevethomas.html

Conclusions

The clear message that 104 mph need not be dangerous is a valuable one because it highlights the vital difference between "speed within a speed limit" and "speed appropriate for the conditions" A particular speed in particular circumstances may be either or both, but crucially neither one implies the other.

Safe Speed hopes that this incident will trigger a proper examination of the issues.

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