Safe Speed Forums

From a letter in my local paper:




So each driver has a one in 3 chance of meeting someone like this. No wonder death rates aren't dropping. I wonder what the death rate would be like if we were all still in our 80s/early 90s cars with these number of uninsured etc drivers on the road? The kind of person that drives around like this isn't exactly the kind of person that takes road safety seriously are they?

Although the statistic on "sometimes under the influence of drink or drugs" is misleading as I suspect it includes anyone who will admit to occasionally driving after consuming alcohol within the legal limit.

I recall seeing figures that possibly around 10% of drivers were driving unregistered cars and/or were unlicensed or disqualified, and accounted for perhaps 5% of total mileage - which is alarming enough, but not the "almost a third" that the writer of the letter suggests.

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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

NO !!

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RoADA Member -GOLD 2008
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

I think this is our MAJOR road safety problem and one which MUST be effectively addressed soon.
These groups along with boy racers, tired drivers, pressurised drivers, weekend bikers, drink/ drug drivers etc probably amount to about 10 or 15% of our road users. They are probably collectively responsible for 70%+ of our fatalities.

I think that the government need to know and they need to have it driven home that these are the major fatality causers in the country. Many of them will cause these fatalities at speeds which are over the speed limit, but that is simply a factor of their general recklessness, and will never be affected by enforcement of speed whether by us or by cameras. It may be affected by mandatory Intelligent Speed Adaptation - ISA, but at an unacceptable cost to concentration.


Ooooh! I can feel a letter to Mr Darling coming on!

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Ian, that's the most accurate and pragmatic post I've seen for a very long time.
But as the cash rolls in from the cameras and vans, how on earth can we expect central gov't to listen. The cameras won't catch any of the major contributory factors you list and no-one seems to want to listen to the sort of sense you and others propound.
It's so frustrating to be a high-mileage driver with a good safety record, to see the things you state as the truth and to see them every single day, to see the number of fatals not decreasing - indeed, maybe increasing - and to see the official response is to have more cameras. What can one do?
In my case I can state quite categorically that when on a journey instead of concentrating on my driving and looking for hazards, I now drive looking at my speedo and scanning for cameras.That can't be right, surely, but I'm more afraid of getting a few points on my clean licence than in seeking and responding to moving hazards, so my driving method has changed.

Also dont forget about the car theievs, joyriders and other illegal types of driver too, like so called "asylum" immigrants with no licences.
Theres loads round by me.

Spot on. The record keeping systems that are essential to address this problem can be built and would work. They would involve CCTV and cameras, a database, an ops centre, a network and lots of other infrastructure elements, but there is absolutely nothing to stop this system from being created, but cost. It would be buttressed by cooperation from DVLA, police, car manufacturers, insurers, banks and petrol distributors, and the general public. The offenders (and there are millions) cannot be tracked and traced by lone policemen working in isolation. A fully systematic approach to identify any vehicle/driver combination that does not fit a legal profile can be implemented as follows.

Before a car can be fuelled at the pump or tested for MOT or pay the congestion charge or enter the Mersey tunnel or other estuarial crossing, etc. etc., a database lookup is done to find details on the current registered keeper, whether the vehicle has a current MOT record, where and when the vehicle was last refuelled, whether the vehicle has a current insurance record, whether the vehicle has a current tax record. The vehicle details (will be chip stamped into the petrol nozzle) will be compared to the actual (colour, make etc.)
Any failure means NO FUEL, and a notification to the nearest patrol car. When the driver pays for the fuel or any service, a check will be done on the driver’s ID and license to see that he is on the insurance manifest, that his bank and address details tally with the official records, etc etc. The information on where and when the vehicle was last refuelled is for statistical purposes (vehicles sharing the same plate will eventually show up at various ends of the county being refuelled at the same time). Obviously, all numbers will go through the PNC and DVLA to check on outstanding issues. Again, any failure means NO FUEL , and a notification to the nearest patrol car.

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I stole this .sig

Brilliant Ian, I couldn't agree more. Much of my work points to the same conclusions. PLEASE do write to Mr Darling, and copy to your local MP.

Keep us informed of any progress. If there's anything at all I can do to help, please let me know.

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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

Fine sentiments, but no details on how to implement. We could use our taxes to hire (another army of ) traffic cops and hope that they can sort it out if we have enough policemen working in isolation on it. Another approach that can be used in parallel is to systematise the administration, offloading the costs onto the offenders. But wait - that sounds like - speed cameras.

Look, DVLA and road policing in general is in a mess (and people are getting away with no insurance etc.) because we have NOT provided the information tools that they need to flatten this problem out - it's that simple. If we are serious about road safety, we shoudn't undermine the record keeping systems - we should spend money to improve and rationalise them.

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I stole this .sig

Taking the points from Ian are there any statistics on what % of fatal accidents involve

Drivers who are unlicenced,
and/or uninsured,
and/or drunk/drugged,
and/or driving dangerously

?

The drunk % statistics are probably available but what about the rest?

If they did represent a large % (eg 50%+) then we should mount most of our efforts to campaign/lobby to tackle these through an enhanced traffic police role. (Scameras dont tackle the above).

We probably need a more focused message with a single objective to cut deaths through enhanced traf pols.

I couldn't agree less.

The problem is that cameras and technology DON'T catch the real offenders and, worse even than that, cameras and technology tend to push people outside of the system completely.

In fact I find it extraordinarilly hard to imagine any technical solution to any societal problem. CCTV moves crime around. ANPR and congestion charging (London style) promote car cloning and number plate theft. Speed camera promote all manner of nasty side effects including vehicle registration avoidance and damage to the Police public relationship.

If the government showed signs of thinking it through and establishing in advanced that the side effects were less than the potential benefit then I might have to accept some of the interventions. But the way things are the side effects are not even considered. That's incompetence on a grand scale.

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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

You and me both! We already know this type are responsible for all the incidents on our patch. We are managing to control some of it - with projects such as Drive Wise and Bike Wise and our monthly campaigns - but even so - we have some which slip through the net.

As for ISA - we already have the Belgians concerned over the accident potential of the cruise control. Over-reliance on the device, combined with a misunderstanding as to its limitations and use - numbs the brain, causes slow reaction times and rear enders apparently occur on these motorways. Family pal based out there says that the Belgians may be notoriously stereotypically poor drivers - but that they ain't the ones having these accidents!


For once I agree with basingwerk in that the record keeping systems and data bases need serious money spending on them. The DVLA is making far too many mistakes!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I can understand your views on cameras to some extent, but to reject the use of electronic record keeping technology is so absurd that I think I must have misunderstood what you mean. Without the implementation of thorough IT systems in the judiciary and police arenas, it would hard to catch any offenders. Any policeman will tell you how important records are. The fact is that the crime fighters are being sadly let down by amateur meddlers in information technology, when they deserve the best information tools we can provide, with the ability to sift and sort that information to find the stuff they need to do their job.



You speak as if technical solutions can not solve problems. Many of the specific problems you allude to relate to ID, and technical measures are in hand to solve that, with about 80% of the population is in favour of an ID card scheme and happy to carry cards at all times!

Without information systems, the world would be a very different place. Your own web site shows how important it is, based, as it is, on computerisation. Every organisation, from the police, the NHS, the armed forces, telecomms, finance, the commercial industries, manufacturing, entertainment, space, transport, fuel and water and so on are all totally dependent on record keeping systems, often with real time data capture and RF backup, yet you reject them as new fangled, and want to return to the heroic policeman working with a notebook in isolation (perhaps riding a pushbike?)



You last point holds water. It is not that record keeping systems are not useful, but that systems and procedures need to be implemented and managed properly. Actually, electronic or manual systematisation has no bearing on this. Good systems are required to allow the cops to have a chance of getting this problem under control. Make no mistake – this is not going to slow down at all, so the debate should not be about whether we have integrated information systems, but about how we should best exploit them in an era when information about anything at anytime is available, with the capability of accurate identification.

You want us to keep secrets about the speed at which we go from here to there, but the information (and much more) will be available, irrespective of whether it is collected by GPS/Transponders or cameras or blokes with radar guns. So what should be done with it?

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I stole this .sig

Sorry Basingwerk..

I intended to add a line to that last post clarifying the essential difference between adminstration and intervention. Administration is well served by technology - but I have yet to see an 'intervention' that is genuinely well served by technology.

Apologies for not making that clear...

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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

Just one thought on this.... Record keeping is fine and useful, but we have to be careful about what data we gather, where and how - it's very easy to overwhelm what could otherwise be a good system with astronomical amounts of largely irrelevant data.

Dumb ass statement even for you.

What about if you need to fill a can, dirt bike, generator or anything else that runs on petrol or diesel that does not need to run on the road.

You will also get an epidemic of car cloning. Even electronicaly tagged cars could be cloned.

The more reliant you are on technology the easier you will be fooled.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Keep a civil tongue in your head, you insolent dog!



I’m quite happy if people are allowed to fill small cans. I am amused by the idea of chav’s sneaking about from garage to garage, going to the trouble of filling up their cars one can at a time!



It would be rather easy to find cloned cars when they appear at the same time at different ends of the country! In fact, accurate, real-time record keeping is the way to get rid of them. Or do you prefer hit and miss methods, that mostly miss? Listen, cars will carry permanent ID stamps, whether you like it or not, so get used to it and calm down.

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I stole this .sig

Youre not too bright are you?

"any failure means NO fuel"..........what a stupid, ill thought out idea.

Did you know that i can buy a propane bottle from ANY camping shop and run my illegal car on that?
Did you know that i can run almost any diesel vehicle on reclaimed oil, like chip fat?

Now, how ya gonna address that one clever clogs?

Are you a newbie? Here is a site on netiquette. I've just brushed up my own skills, and I suggest you do the same.



Yes, deltaF, but there aren't many well stocked camping shops on the M1! There is a mobile chip shop near Rotherham, but I suspect it will be slow going due to the massive queue of un-taxed chav-mobiles! BTW: it is conventional to spell "Youre" (as in Youre not too bright are you) with an apostrophe.

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I stole this .sig

There are several problems with these ideas. Some problems with having a chip reader to identify the vehicle being refuelled are:

• No MOT=No Fuel
  • It is perfectly legal to drive a car that has no current MOT provided that journey is to a test station or repairer.
  • It is perfectly legal to refuel a car that has no current MOT even if it is not on such a journey - provided the car is being trailered (e.g. being taken to compete in motor-sport).
  • It is perfectly legal to fill fuel cans, for which there would be no information to check.
  • The fuel may not even be for a car - and I suspect that DVLA would barf on the hull serial number of your boat, or ICAO registration of your aircraft!
• No Insurance=No Fuel
  • It is the driver who needs to be insured, not the car.
  • Unless the car is driven on the road, it needs no insurance. (e.g. trailered cars)
  • The driver may not be the person who pays for the fuel
  • Other problems listed above about where a car is not being refuelled.

... and that's without the privacy issues.

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Will