Safe Speed Forums

I'm genuinely baffled by what you mean, I'm afraid. I don't see anything contradictory in my views. You can't take a single sentence in isolation - it's designed to be read in conjunction with other sentences in the thread, I don't restate everything I've said in previous posts in the same thread, I assume that the reader has read the whole thread before arriving at my nth post in the thread, and will read those words in the context of the others. Perhaps my use of the word "trivial" was a poor choice - the usage I chose is commonplace in the mathematical community, but I should have appreciated that it would not have the same meaning to the general population - substitute "straightforward" for it, if you wish.

Yes, quite, that is a perfect example of an accident I would deem to have been caused both by gross stupidity and deliberate risk taking. If he had had a speed limiter fitted, do you think he would have attempted the overtake?

So have I understood correctly, everyone else on this forum finds it extremely challenging to get from A to B without crashing? If so, I hope I don't encounter any of you while I'm out on the road...

That's not even slightly funny, nor is it clever

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

No, but we realise that it is far from being a piece of piss, requires skills and experience developed over a number of years, and also involves not only minimising your own mistakes, but being alert to the potential for others making mistakes.

Obviously much of that becomes a "lizard brain" process, but if you think it is dead easy, you are dangerously complacent.

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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

You didn't say how fast the car he tried to overtake was going - if it had been travelling at the speed limit, then a speed limiter would have prevented him from catching it up in the first place, let alone trying to overtake it.

And not in response, to what you just said, but in response to my exasperation at people's attitudes on this thread:
The more I read on this forum the more I think that the majority of people here have little interest in abiding by the speed limit. The anti-camera message is that they distract you etc etc, but when offered a way to remove that distraction, nobody wants it. That's because what everybody on this forum really objects to is being stopped from breaking the law and speeding, and I just find that very objectionable. If you don't like the law, try to get it changed, don't try to find ways to break it.

Oh dear, you've been reading this forum for months and still totally miss the point

Personally I regard speed cameras as only a minor irritation. I have a clean licence of 24 years' standing and don't feel they threaten that.

But they have an adverse effect on road safety and driving standards, because they lead drivers to place completely disproportionate emphasis on one aspect of driving that is relatively insignificant as an accident cause.

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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'm struggling to understand why we don't agree. Actually I don't think we agree about anything in this immediate context. May I please have short comments on a few key statements?

1) The process of driving safely involves considerable concentration and the application of experience. True or false?

2) If I stop paying attention to the road ahead while driving I will normally crash in well under a minute. True or false?

3) Almost everything we do while driving is planned and conceived as a crash avoidance strategy. True or false?

4) The essence of safe driving is to be well prepared for hazards. True or false?

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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, no. People here mostly object to a distracting road safety policy that misses the opportunity to save lives, and even takes some by distraction and misleading messages.

We want the law adjusted and adapted so that:

a) It does not peanalise safe practice
b) It correctly targets dangerous behaviours
c) It does not deliver false and misleading messages about safety priorities
d) Enforcement resources are properly allocated in proportion to realistic assessments of risk
e) Responsible drivers can concentrate on arriving safely rather than concentrating on compliance with arbitrary laws
f) We stop damaging the police/public relationship.

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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

1) True, but I find it very easy to give driving that concentration. It demands it, so it is a natural reaction to give it. The degree of concentration demanded varies of course, and so the concentration given will also vary with the demand. For example, if it always required absolute maximal attention, you could never check your mirrors. It is very easy to drive in a way that reduces the demand placed on the driver, e.g. by leaving a larger gap to the vehicle in front.

2) True.

3) True, but the strategy is planned when not driving, and merely implemented when driving.

4) True, and again I find it easy to do this, partly via 3.

Simpler just to lose the cameras altogether, although personally I'd be satisfied if they were to go back to their original intended purpose - a final measure for use in identified black spots where for some reason an engineering solution isn't practical. Had they stopped at that point Safe Speed might not exist. I don't see a further reliance on technology with potential disbenefits as being much of a solution for the disbenefits of over reliance on the first lot of technology.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I'm fairly happy to belive that is what you want, Paul, and I think there are some other people here who also have those things as their primary concerns. But I think there are a lot of people on the forum who have hitched themselves to your wagon because they see it as a way to achieve different goals. And the irony is that I came here detesting speed enforcement and speed cameras, and the attitudes of the anti speed camera people on this forum have done far more to change my views than "JJ" ever could.

There may be one or two. But I am 100% with Paul on this, and I would say virtually all of the regular contributors are too. I just don't see all these posts that glorify "speeding". "A lot of people" - I really don't see that.

The intention is to promote responsible driving and enforcement practices that are actually effective in improving safety.

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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 find this a reasonable argument - I'm in favour of the general principle that government interference in our lives should be minimalistic, only existing where necessary to prevent significant harm.

Problem is that the only time I got caught speeding in my life, it was by a trafpol, not a camera, so I don't buy the whole "discretion is great" argument. He explicitly told me that he didn't think my driving was dangerous in any way, and then said that'll be 3 points and a £60 fine, please. No, "discretion" doesn't work, not when we have speed limits that are so low that the normal flow of traffic is ( limit + (30% to 50%) ), i.e. outside the range of where they consider it reasonable to exercise discretion. So if we're going to go for lack of enforcement, I'd need there to be a serious lack of enforcement to be happy with it.

So being realistic, and accepting that we will never have such a lack of enforcement, I'm left with only two solutions I can see:
1. Get speed limits set at realistic levels. People on this forum seem to hate this suggestion and always argue against me when I suggest it.
2. Get a system that helps people to abide by the speed limit, and prevents the moronic behaviour that I encounter whenever I try to drive at the speed limit. Honestly, I do think that it is extraordinarily dangerous to drive at the speed limit on our roads at present, but only because everyone else wants to drive so much faster. This is what I think is completely skewing the stats at the moment, the fact that some people are slowing down, and causing a hazard for other drivers. We need to get rid of this cause of frustration somehow, either by allowing those drivers to speed up, or by slowing the other drivers down.

Blimey. Really?

There are users (and millions of drivers) who know that camera enforcement is a PITA that interferes with their accoustomed safe driving practices. They may not know in detail why it's bad for safety. But their instincts are proved to be correct by my analysis.

If you're concerned that we have a significant 'boy racer' element, I reckon you are entirely mistaken - but I'd be interested in examining anything that you think might be evidence.

I'm sensitive to the risk of being undermined by accidentally becoming a champion to undesirables, but I've NEVER seen any significant evidence of the effect.

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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

Why are you using spurious arguments to defend the indefensible?



Who might that be? I've seen very little evidence of that.
If you suspect my motives just because I disapprove of some scheme that has no merit whatsoever, which doesn't solve any problems but creates a whole shedload of them, then I have nothing more to say to you.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

It is true that my comment probably applies to you least of all, you strike me as an extremely sensible chap. I just have one question - if speed limiters were mandated for all vehicles, and hence one was in your car, would you disable it, or would you believe that it is entirely possible to drive safely with one in operation?

I honestly can't see how anyone can say it wouldn't solve any problems. And I really can't see how it impedes anyone's ability to drive safely. I can see how it might make you drive more slowly, arguably unnecessarily so, but not less safely. For example, if you can't overtake because you can't temporarily exceed the speed limit to do so, and have to sit behind a slower vehicle, safety has actually been improved, not reduced, the only downside is that your journey will take longer as you sit behind the slower vehicle.

I would suggest you wouldn't find any of the "Top Ten" contributors to be people who take an irresponsible attitude (apart perhaps from Basingwerk ). "In Gear" least of all.

I have also taken a much more "liberal" attitude on issues such as drink-driving and mandatory retesting than many others.

I would seriously resist having a mandatory speed limiter in my car, and would certainly hold out with an older vehicle as long as possible. I don't realistically think I would deliberately disable a limiter (unless very easy to do and hard to detect) as at the end of the day I have a life to lead and most people will, in the final analysis, knuckle down before the power of the state rather than becoming martyrs.

Personally I think I would be able to drive safely with a limiter, but I wouldn't say it would make me safer. It would concern me if I found I was letting the system slow me down when approaching lower limits. And I would worry a lot more about other people, especially those right behind me...

I honestly believe that variable limiters would make the roads significantly more dangerous - see Limiting Speed, Limiting Safety on my website.

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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

Steve, exactly the same thing happened to me about nine years ago. Came down a hill in an NSL s-c at 55ish, without any change to the nature of the road (apart from a very gentle bend straightening out) it becomes a 30. There is a built up area but not for about a half mile, so I would normally slow down for the built up area rather than for the needlessly premature sign. This particular day there were a pair of coppers with a Dodgyscope pinging everyone who failed to slow for the sign, and being close to twice the speed limit of course I made their day. Just like you they agreed with me that my speed was not dangerous, but said that wasn't really the point since dangerous or not it was illegal. I couldn't counter that so I accepted the points and the loss of forty quid. I have to admit that I was pretty cross at the time, and for a while lost respect for policing (it didn't help that within a year I'd be pulled by another copper who miraculously failed to see my normally displayed and valid tax disc, and then wasted my time going over the car to see if he could find something, anything, to book me on - git).

So I have as much reason as you to be sceptical of the idea that the police can be trusted to use discretion in speed enforcement and not bugger about nicking safe drivers. However, I feel that it's likely the pair who tugged me for speeding had been sent to an obvious honey trap to make up some numbers before the end of the month, so the lack of discretion probably came from higher up. If so this is a problem with local policy, perhaps itself driven by HQ and in turn Home Office policies, rather than front line BiBs themselves. I'm sure there are sadistic small minded BiBs who will go for easy pulls so they can boast about how many people they stop, but I believe the majority would get more job satisfaction from stopping one speeding nutter than ten safe but still not legal garden variety motorists. Imagine the talk in the coppers favourite pub -
"You wouldn't believe the maniac we tugged today, this bloke was all over the road doing 50 or 60 in the roadworks where there's those loose chippings, how about you?"
"Pulled quite a few people doing 35 in a 30 limit."
(Sotto voce) "W ker"


I think discretion can be made to work most of the time as it did reasonably well in the past. The human factor will mean it's never going to be 100% but cameras haven't taken out the human factor so it isn't 100% now anyway. Here's a couple of ideas to reduce the 'sadistic' pull and encourage discretionary enforcement:

• Speeding convictions must not be used to count towards a force's clear up figures. I don't know if they do at the moment, but if so that must change. The senior management in each police force must have no particular incentive to concentrate on easy offences like speeding over the more effective but challenging ones like DWDCA. This should prevent orders being given to park up with a laser on honey traps near the end of the quarter if the headline figures might upset the police authority.
• The primary road safety target for a police force should be death reduction. No more, no less. If they have a spokesperson stand up at a press conference to say that average vehicle speeds in the county have dropped by this amount, or figures are down at last year's fatality sites, or that X number of penalties have been issued and Y number of offenders were convicted in court, if they try any of that they must be told to cut the crap and admit whether county wide deaths have gone up or down or remained unchanged. A secondary target should be reduction in the number of reported RTCs. Makng the police to concern themselves with reducing accidents in general and fatals in particular shoul force them to prioritise the most risky behaviour rather than play numbers games by going for easy targets.
• BiBs must operate two-up and when pulling a driver for speeding both must agree that the behaviour is sufficient to justify stopping for the lecture and/or a ticket. This should reduce the chance of a safe driver being tugged by the rare jobsworth who joined up because he was bullied at school and gets a power rush from the uniform. It would actually need two jobsworths who joined up yadda yadda yadda to be in the same car at the same time, as the presence of a sensible copper who's prepared to exercise sound judgement would scupper 'em.

Nothing wrong with (1) at all, but in isolation it doesn't go far enough. (2) - all in favour of eliminating moronic behaviour, but unfortunately moronic behaviour is usually not speed limit related. But I do agree with you that we have unnecessary danger on the roads because we have failed to prevent frustraton and failed to accomodate fast and slow drivers adequately (e.g. by removing opportunities to overtake safely).

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein