Safe Speed Forums

Paul, you had a major gain this week with these twin gains to the "speed cameras are not the answer" camp.

On Monday at a fringe meeting of the Conservative Transport Group.
RAC Foundation Edmund King said "Death rate reductions have plateaued" "Need to move away from speed cameras and get at the causation" "appropriate speed was required".

Shadow Transport Minister Owen Paterson "need to re-build trust with public", "stop penalising the generally law abiding and focus on the real problem" "speed cameras only addressed less than 5% of the problem" "It is inappropropriate speed that kills" "focus on the hard core of bad drivers" "move away from technological control and back to traffic police" "incentives for better driving".

TC001 Can you give the source of these comments.

Neither of those 'gains' are recent, although clearly the time is right for people to nail their colours to the mast.

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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

Er..............Me!

I sat there and heard it.

Cameron needs to stop mentioning "gas guzzlers" before I will listen to him. I can see punative tax plans for motorists in the making.

Up to now he looks like Blair mark 2.

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Speed camera policy Kills

There were some interesting figures in the paper yesterday which compared the "dust-to-dust" (i.e. whole lifetime) environmental footprint of various cars instead of the usual emissions only stuff.

Guess what, the Prius is really bad due to its high overhead to make and dispose of safely. The best was the Jeep Wrangler - a 4x4.

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

With "Dave" now trying to make the tories come across as nice and green, I wonder if he will be pressured into lowering the motorway speed limit and have it more strictly enforced.

I don't think there's any difference in ANY of them any more, they just take turns in ripping us all off. Cameron has already admitted he is going to hit the motorist even more.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

I think there's mileage in painting the transference of the tax burden towards "green" taxes from taxes on income as a regressive one.

All drivers irrespective of income get taxed (assuming there isn't a particularly linear relationship between CO2 and income ), so green taxes will be great for high earners.

More to the point it won't be a "transference", it'll be even more taxes - it always is

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Wake me up when the revolution starts
STOP the Toll Tax http://www.traveltax.org.uk

Oh yes I remember now!

Raging unemployment, Interest rates out of control. Utilities privatised, collapse of UK manufacturing. and of course the sleaze. All because there was no credible opposition party. Can’t wait to go back to all that again.

When it came to budget time I always seemed to fall into the narrow band that lost out EVERY TIME, year after year after year..

I will NEVER vote for the b*stards again...EVER!

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Speed camera policy Kills

Nothing wrong in privatising utilities.

Ask my bank manager!!

Last nights news on the tory party was very confusing. so he was waring a red tie then a blue tie than no tie. he was supporting tony blair and gays and .... listening to the people... and in support of the NHS... ..

looks like tony blair 12 years ago...
I have painfull memories of the tories in 1987 and my direct debits swallowed all but £50 of my months pay.

lib 's are back in limbo

So who is the friend , or the least of an enemy? fat cats are getting fatter
middle income man is getting fleaced again...

If there was an election tomorrow I would not know who I was voting for untill after my x hit the paper.
The first time in 20 years I didnt know where my vote was going.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I think this underlines the point that a campaign like SafeSpeed must lobby all political parties and it would be a mistake to put all or most of our eggs in one particular political basket. Many of the current anti-motorist policies were started under the Tories and (believe it or not) Labour have actually backtracked on some of their pledges.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I've got a good key into the Lib Dems, but their policy people are pretty far gone and out of reach.

No one I've ever found in Labour is ready to even talk at all. If there's a weak link it might be Dunwoody, who has asked some fairly searching questions about RTTM at camera sites. She must have been shocked at the answers.

But the Tories are coming our way at a considerable rate of knots.

If anyone has any ideas about a link into Labour, I'm all ears and ready to give a presentation.

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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

Is that because it goes rusty the day you buy it such that the amount you have to dispose of is substantially less than you first stated with

Seriously though - I think reliability and safety play there part too.

1) if a car is less likely to crash or has primary safety aids (e.g. good brakes) it costs a lot less if it lasts 15 years rather than gets written off after 2.

2) Secondly, some cars are high maintenance - Low oil change intervals high cost parts etc. motorcycles for example score very badly in this area.

oil - 4-6k
tyres - 3 - 10k
brakes 15-20k

typical life 60-80k but a very high number of sports bikes and scooters are scrapped with less than 4k on (point 1 above)

"motorcycle" is a far too broad a description. High powered cars get through tyres and oils just as quickly. Bikes also have a much better recycle rate and are rarely doing 0mpg sat in queues wearing clutches and oils. on the other hand 4x4's for anyone other than those with a genuine use (farmers etc) are merely for those lacking in confidence and ability. I've seen them, the same ones that picked on intelligent kids in the playground. also this same old tired argument that they give you a better view in traffic is BS. where would you be if we all drove tall vehicles? back to square one. time to make 4x4's the agrigultural vehicles they were not because they're gus guzzlers but because most that drive them seem to think every other bugger on the road should make way and be damned to right of way.