Safe Speed Forums

Brunstrom on French Road Safety:
http://www.north-wales.police.uk/nwp/pu ... D=1&CID=54

Links to FIA report:
http://www.north-wales.police.uk/nwp/pu ... France.pdf

Which contains:



Translation: Speed cameras are so good that we only need to talk about them to experience their magical properties.

And the truth is: Since November 2003 when the first speed cameras were installed on French roads, There has been no further reduction in road deaths.

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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

Brunstrom and his magic road safety beans.

He's like a modern day road safety alchemist. Trying to turn cr4p into a coherent road safety policy that saves lives.

It's witchcraft I tell you!

Or snakeoil...

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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

Never let the facts get in the way of speed camera spin.

Anyhow not the tw@t is a Druid we will probably seem dancing naked around Stone Henge come the solstice..............

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Speed camera policy Kills

Err... careful - that there cartoon illustrates perfectly the Wikepedia definition of a Charlatan!!
Well at least he's not holding TWO cameras back to back!!!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

To quote wiki "A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money or advantage by false pretenses. If the ascription is false, then "charlatan" is pejorative; if it is true, then the description "charlatan" is not defamation."

I could not find a better word to describe the SCP's propaganda generators.

Has anyone bothered to send a comment to Mr Brunstrom in reply. I did consider doing so, along the lines of asking whether he has actually done much driving in France both before and after this wonderful transition into a road safety policy?

I have, and th biggest changes I have noticed have been much much greater use of roundabouts, and barriers or traffic islands appearing in the centre of roads at sections where it would be dangerous to overtake.

It gets better.... and on to the subject of Paul's cartoon....

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

In all seriousness, speed camera partnership's "communications" exactly fit the above definition; the pseudoscience bit especially, given their passion for utterly misleading statistics that even a 10 year old could pick deep holes in; and their apetite for quite irrelevent data.

Hmmm!

Well - the real reason why France has started to reduce any casualties lies not with the 1000 cams they installed (and which "Zut et BOF ... Merde .. alors .. .. pinged the very Minister who sitched them on ! You really cannot make it up




But what Dick fails to note is one litsy bitsy .. eensy weensy little fact...

like a doubliong of traffic police to cop drunks, lack of seatbelts .. jumping red lights .. and the other stuff wich cause fatalities on the roads

Sure .. France is currently improving its safety record - but this is certainly not due to speed cams - and the French admit this in their press and sundry websites. They have targetted drunks , red light jumpers and non seat belt wearers in particular over past three years. POLICE, les flics, les gendarmes .. specifically trained to police the roads have been DOUBLED!

It - um - makes a big difference.

I have asked one of the family teachers to scan a freebie which came with a francophile mag some 6 months ago to scan and upload to my "hoster". I will then post up some salient "factoids"

Oddly enough am informed that the editorial of that issue was C O A S T in tone as in C meaning Courtesy and Common sense .. and oddly enough they referred to Observation, Anticipating hazards and allowing at least a two second space (else get fined ) abnt time for the journey!


Hah! Told ya! C O A S T .. a catchy little acronym! We are on the right road with COAST safety led advice from real people and on the wrong one with a machine which can only measure speed and NOT BAD AND CARELESS DRIVING/RIDING/CYCLING - and people can be just as careless at a low speed in a motor vehicle.. on a biike or bicycle ..

I include cyclists - bad ones - as road users byt the way, We all know that thugs/yobs/muppets alike drive cars, ride motorbikes and even cycle. No one criticises all cyclists or all bikers or drivers - but we all know that the same people types are a potential danger no matter how they choose to travel!

I would love to know how to educate ... get a safety-led COAST style of road use through to these...

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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.

so how long before our lot target seat belts and phones

I was quite impressed by French road progress. Even in the remote area i visit quite often they have introduced improvements. Road straightening for visibility was a main thing.

One road i was driven on a lot had an improved part with nice wide cycle lanes and perpendicular roundabouts to make it safer for everyone.

Perpendicular roundabouts? Do French cars have anti-gravity capability?

Sorry i meant roundabouts where the entry and exit roads join about 80 degrees to the roundabout, making it easier to see what's coming and encouraging drivers to go a safer speed for the roundabout.

As oppose to the tangental roundabouts in English which are great on motorways but not very good in an urban enviroment, and hashing is being used to make them more like French roundabouts.

2 second rule is guided by the dashed lines down the side of the road, and these signs reinforcing the message on the TV most nights!


This year I noticed in central France that at accident black spots, they had life sized plastic cutouts in black, of the numbers of people killed positioned at the side of the road.
Within a few metres there was usually a fairly obvious hazard!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I must admit I quite like driving in France on the whole - but not Paris

As promised - now received some scans of a rough guide - and posting some of them up for refererence.















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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.

If we have achieved the same or better in the UK, that would either mean a 35% reduction in road deaths in the last 4 years, or a reduction of 2821 road deaths over the same period.
Yet another porkie, methinks.

True. And again let's look at some of the facts...

France doubled police presence - specifically targetting careless and dangerous practices amongst all road users and they do tell people off for j-walking too,

Here? Over-reliance on scams and a reluctance to face the truth of the matter: namely that we are not addressing nor preventing the underlying issues here by reducing police presence and relying on cams. The fact that they claim to have "freed up police time to deal with other crimes" is a bit of a non starter when we all know when we have been burgled and police "actions" - and official stats may suggest "some crimes are down!" - but the police and judiciary then contradict with another set of source figures which state the opposite.

I also know from my own experience of submitting figures that there is a lot of manipulation which distorts the truth of the matter.

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Only been to France once --that was a school trip in umm - years ago --Paris got the impression that even then there were two sorts of pedestrian

The very quick
The dead.

I was in Paris this year. Previous visit to that was 10 years ago. I noticed a HUGE difference in the traffic situation, with it flowing in the city more easily because there was less of it. Paris does of course have two motorway standard ring roads now...