Safe Speed Forums

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

They built my hopes up with the first line, only for them to come crashing down again after the last line.

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David

This is almost exactly what happened in my village. After representation from the Parish Council, they did speed checks, put out the mobile camera and caught just a very few (local!) people. The reason for this is that there is actually no significant speeding problem. The PC complained that this enforcement was done at the wrong time, in the wrong place and that the police should repeat their actions.

I wrote to the PC to say that their views reminded me of the EU Constitution votes. Keep repeating it until you get the "right" answer that supports your prejudices.

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

As Millom isn't on a through road to anywhere, at rush hour you would catch even more locals

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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

Isn't it somewhat ironic that the residents are now complaining that not enough people were speeding. Either it's a safety issue, and the operation was a success, or they are just time wasting NIMBYs who want people to speed so that they get fined. There is no middle ground.

No they aren't, Freak. They are complaining that the crackdown took place at the wrong time so that it had less chance of catching the people who were speeding. As useful as trying to compile school truancy stats at midnight.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

So they'd have been happier if more people were speeding - as I said in my post.

What makes them think that the result would be any different. Let's say that the operation took place at rush hour, and only caught 3 people, would they then complain that people were slowing down, and that the police should use covert detection so that the cars exceeded the speed limit?

All of these residents fail to realise the simple and glaringly obvious fact when these patrols fail to catch the large numbers of speeding motorists. THERE IS NO PROBLEM TO DETECT!!!! QED

We had a similar problem in a village near us, residents complaining for years about "speeding" traffic, then the police did a check and found the average speed to be 26MPH, the residents complained because the survey was done in the peak morning rush when traffic was moving slowest....you can't win!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Freak ,you're talking nonsense. The residents want speeding to stop all the time, not just in the hour before noon. They should do the surveillance for at least 24 hours, preferably a week, to get a proper idea of the problem.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Your optimism is touching. Even the most dilligent police officer would look askance at 24 hour surveillance on a road where they only detected 3 speeders in a daytime hour. Even if they did it, all they would catch are the mums taking their kids to school (as happened in my village). As pointed out above in the "rush hour" it's too busy to speed.

Like residents in a lot of villages, what the complainers actually want is for no traffic to come past their houses at all. The speed issue is just a proxy that they can use to raise a complaint.

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

Afraid I have to agree with Malcom on this one. I also have lived in a village where the residents insist there is a problem, but numerous speed checks prove the opposite. The residents always then claim that the speed check was deficient, where the most likely answer is that the perception of speed is wrong on the part of the residents, and that there is no speed problem.

Far too often these days people buy houses in villages on a main road then a few months later moan about the speed/weight of traffic going past their window and try and get the speed limit dropped/road closed...why not buy a house in a quiet cul de sac in the first place.It doesn't take much inteligence to realise that if you buy a house on a busy road then you are going to get traffic.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Fully understand that. My argument is with the freak who says that they want speeding through the village.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Speed surveys monitor the road for 24 hours over a couple of weeks and from these surveys the mean speed (used to be 85percentile) is calculated which give the authorities a speed which the majority(average) motorist feels is safe for that stretch of road. Unfortunately the councils then ignore this "advice" and put a ridiculously low limit on the road. We have a former NSL road by us which carries a heavy load of traffic throughout the day and has been reworked for the last 24 months and is now about to reopen fully, dual carriage way in places...with a 30 MPH limit....mad.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Yes, I bought a house in a village in a cul-de-sac. It's very quiet.

I wish the bl**dy birds would give up their dawn chorus at 4.30. It wakes me up. It's the same thing every day.

I think I'll complain to the Council to get them removed. I suppose they will send someone round with a noise meter between 11.00 and 12.00 to check, though.

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

I must be silly today. Could you show me where you said this?

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

People may not WANT speeding through there village but they WANT to THINK that people are "speeding" through their village in order to find something to moan about and cause further headaches for motorists by introducing un neccessary traffic calming. We get it round here all the time every time some old codger dies at the wheel through a heart attack, they claim it's the fault of speeding, too many lorries, too much traffic etc etc, they believe anything apart from the truth.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The complaint was that not enough people were caught speeding, ergo they wanted people to speed, it's not rocket science.

It's like the people who want covert speed cameras, they must want people not to slow down because the camera will not be visible so that more motorists get fined.

The SCP's always show the huge numbers of motorists fined as a measure of their success. I find this a daming idictment to their abject failure.

And yes graball that is what I was saying - I think dcb is being deliberatley obtuse on this point.

I'm reminded of the scene in Lead Balloon in which Jack Dee's character, convinced that his postman is noisey enough in the morning to wake him up, is so desperate to catch him in the act that he sets his alarm so he can get up early enough to listen intently when the postman arrives.

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David

I cannot guarantee it, but I believe the residents of Millom may have a justifiable beef here.

The road is used as a short cut to pass heavy goods vehicles on the A595, which despite the much increased distance on the map, it avoids a steep winding hill - check the google map/satellite image.
If you put your foot down, you can be in and out of Millom, and out in front of the HGV which was holding you up.

Why do they do it?
Well it is one of the few routes to Sellafield - look at the map and see how tortuous it is... and much of it is NARROW - we are talking of not enough width for two HGV's to pass by each other in some places.

Not long ago, there was a protest when the council was forced to abandon the 20mph limit in St.Bees - which is also a rat run at peak times.

None of these roads are suited to spirited driving - there are just too many blind corners, hidden entrances, and agricultural traffic. It needs MAJOR investment to sort out the problems.

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