Safe Speed Forums

Apparently there's an article about Doncaster's bonkers 'community pace car' scheme, where I'm quoted.

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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

Here it is:

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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

Was going to put this on the madness in doncaster thread but it seems to have drifted slightly ---

What would be the reaction if houses in an area kept getting broken into ,the police failed to respond and residents started vigilante patrols -
rather like the official reaction when it was reported that paedophiles were living in a street and parents forced them to move.

If we vigilante groups are frowned on ( mob rule actually, like the hanging mobs in the wild west) in one context - officialdom should work to stamp them out altogether.

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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

This is the article in text

The driver in front . . . is a rolling roadblock. By Andrew Baxter

ROAD safety chiefs are asking drivers to become ‘rolling roadblocks’ in an attempt to force speeders to slow down.

They are recruiting vigilante motorists, who promise to observe the speed limit at all times, to display a sticker in their rear window warning that It would be dangerous to go faster.

But Britain’s first mobile traffic-calming initiative has been condemned as dangerous by motoring organisations which say limits should be enforced by the police, not well-meaning but untrained volunteers.

They are also alarmed by the prospect of motorists sticking rigidly to the limit while impatient drivers back up behind.

The Community Pace Car Scheme began in Yorkshire and Humberside as a local initiative after a spate of road accidents, one Involving the death of a boy of 12.

Since then more than 12,000 motorists in East Sussex have signed up. while in Oxfordshire 2(N) councils have set up schemes.

Similar Initiatives are being organised by Avon and Somerset Police and Bath and North East Somerset Council and In Wiltshire.

Road safety charity Brake has received thousands of applications from drivers keen to take part.

But motoring organisations warned the scheme could cause accidents by encouraging tailgating and overtaking as motorists try to get past the ‘pace’ car.

‘We are concerned at this vigilante attitude.’ said Edmund Kings executive director of the RAC Foundation for the Motoring.

‘Drivers should concentrate on their own driving rather than preach to others.

‘We have seen a massive increase In speed cameras. If they are working, one has to ask why we need citizens sent out in pace cars. Some may even go out specifically to slow traffic.’

Paul Smith. of anti-camera group Safe Speed, said: ‘It is fundamentally dangerous to set members of the public against one another on the roads.’

But John Mounsey, a Doncaster councillor who helped launch the scheme two years ago, said: ‘It’s been very successful. Local residents were fed up with people driving too fast. You still get a few idiots storming past the pace car but we’ve had no road rage.’