Safe Speed Forums

(Mentioned by Big Tone - thanks)
Daily Mail here This needs to be stopped immediately. I am surprised that it has gone 'un-noticed' by all the various bodies! Awful.

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

One of the major concerns for the motorist and road safety is that if people have to spend an unnecessarily large fee on insurance they are then unable to spend as much on car maintenance and upkeep.

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

... and also will be tempted to not bother with insurance come renewal time.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

...and then will get nobbled by ANPR, a healthy fine, see their family car crushed, possibly lose their job. Yes, we as a country really look after those struggling at the bottom. I have no sympathy for uninsured drivers - they are a menace. Yet I understand why many people feel they have no option but to take the risk. Insurance has been a joke for years now - I know 17 year olds who have been locked into nasty finance agreements that they won't have paid off til they are in their twenties just because the deal with their car includes insurance and it is the only way they can afford to get on the road. These companies seem largely unregulated or worse a law unto themselves. It has been allowed to happen, I believe, as no one looks after motorists and we as drivers though our number great do little to hold anyone to account. We are vilified by the vocal minority in this country as selfish, environment wreckers and it is not the in thing to look at the problems faced by us sensibly or impartially but tax our fuel year on year, allow our insurance to get cripplingly high, throw cameras up all over the place, tow us for nipping into the shops for three minutes, clamp us, fine us, crush our vehicles etc. etc.. All of which is seen as perfectly acceptable.

Which is why insurance should be provided centrally either as part of the "Road Tax" or as a levy on fuel.

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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

I have always wondered about this with regard to ANPR and insurance. If we for the moment forget that it is a person not a vehicle which is insured, there are many exceptions to the mandatory 3rd party insurance (Sec. 144 RTA). How does ANPR deal with this?

Also with the introduction of continuous insurance, does the DVLA check that one of the exceptions apply, or simply rely upon MID to issue fines?

It doesn't. ANPR is predicated on the false assumption that all legal vehicles have their insurance details recorded on the MID. And woe betide anyone in one of the many exception categories.

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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

This I have proposed before and I know Paul suggested it many years ago.
The 'Gov' needs to provide everyone after they pass their test with 3rd party only insurance to drive/ ride a vehicle.
They might choose to restrict the vehicle bhp, but this way, overnight all the admin on ANPR and so on it removed, Police can stop chasing people for insurance too.
If the Gov also provide an allowance for those on low incomes that too resolves the problem of some people being unable to afford to get to work, due to the fuel increase !

That way I think it does start too become fair and sensible.
Insurance Co's still sell the fire and theft and of course Comprehensive ... they won't loose out that much !
The gov will only need to fork out when someone has an accident and it will have insurance to cover this anyway ...

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

From Wikipedia,
AustraliaIn South Australia, Third Party Personal insurance from the Motor Accident Commission is included in the licence registration fee for people over 17. A similar scheme applies in Western Australia.

In Victoria, Third Party Personal insurance from the Transport Accident Commission is similarly included, through a levy, in the vehicle registration fee.

In New South Wales, Compulsory Third Party Insurance (commonly known as CTP Insurance) is a mandatory requirement and each individual car must be insured or the vehicle will not be considered legal. Therefore, a motorist cannot drive the vehicle until it is insured. A 'Green Slip,'[2] another name by which CTP Insurance is commonly known due to the colour of the pages which the form is printed on, must be obtained through one of the five licenced insurers in New South Wales. Suncorp and Allianz both hold two licences to issue CTP Greenslips - Suncorp under the GIO and AAMI licences and Allianz under the Allianz and CIC/Allianz licences. The remaining three licences to issue CTP Greenslips are held by QBE, Zurich and IAL - NRMA.

In Queensland, CTP is a mandatory part of registration for a vehicle. There is choice of insurer but price is government controlled in a tight band.

These state based third party insurance schemes usually cover only personal injury liability. Comprehensive vehicle insurance is sold separately to cover property damage and cover can be for events such as fire, theft, collision and other property damage.

other countries have simillar schemes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance

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nigel_bytes

That is most interesting and not something that I knew !
I find this also of great interest which is under development in the US I wonder if that patent covers the UK ?

Perhaps adding the 3rd party cover to tax is better than fuel which is so sensitive and so directly relates to miles traveled.

I agree (surprisingly) with JS that the trading of personal data must be stopped along with the charges and costs that are a rip off. Whether the is 'proof' of a whiplash injury I think the inflamed muscles might show up on an MRI scanner perhaps ?
Last time I got a 'whiplash' injury I had 'moved' one of the vertebrae (they said about 1mm), so it was blatantly clear, and took months of (part time) traction and various heat treatments/massage to sort out.

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

It would be frighteningly easy to do! The next logical development of the Norwich Union "black box", perhaps? Many modern cars have GPS. They already collect data on road and engine speed, throttle position and a variety of other things for the engine management system. Those with Electronic Stability Control will also detect steering angle and acceleration (sideways and longitudinaly). Basically, most modern cars will know whether they're being thrashed or not, and many will know where and what time they're being thrashed. The problem I have (apart from privacy) is how they related "thrashed" to "crashed". I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who can drive a car hard without crashing it, and I'm sure the converse is also true. How will the system be able to calculate risk just from driver behaviour?

I agree in principle with 3rd party government cover - but with crash for cash and other scams where people seek to defraud insurers how could we not guarantee these would not become more prevelant if you were in effect insured by the government? I would have said people have even less scruples about taking government money than they do insewerance companies'.

Oh and I would wholly oppose 'black boxes' or other forms of on-board Big Brother to monitor driving. I shudder.

Have you ever tried to get compensation from the government ?
Have you ever tried to get money owed to you from government departments ?
I have known people wait for years to even get a response over money owed to them.
You could guarantee EVERY claim would be vetted.
Black boxes no way, theres too much spying going on without them.

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nigel_bytes

I reckon people would still try it and the system would have to at least be as fast an inswereance companies are today otherwise people could be left without cars and without compensationn for months/years and if the government insurance was paying for a hrie car the bill could be astronomical. The present system has been allowed to go largely unregulated for years - the hire car/bike scam and others where insurance companies can do what they like and feel they cannot lose. We pick up the bill they cash the profits. It has to change.

If a black box saved me money, proved I was a good driver and more importantly that it was someone else who caused the crash, then please come along and fit one to my car tomorrow. I know some 17/18/19yo's who I would trust implicitly behind the wheel - I also know some 30/40-somethings who I am always consciously looking and checking everything they do. Yet who is it that gets the bad rap?

I am presently driving about 40k miles a year commuting etc; the worst offenders for bad driving are middle aged women and men, tear arsing down lane 3 or pottering along in Lane 2 without consideration for anyone else. Only today I was called a young hooligan by an old fellow who failed to look as he pulled out on a mini roundabout while I was on it, I very narrowly avoided him however he seemed to think it was my fault. I have taken to driving on the motorway at around the same speed as trucks as it is much more fuel efficient and to be honest much less stressful, letting the morons do the work - it is particularly entertaining sometimes how stressed some people get just to get to the end of the slip road a couple of seconds earlier.

I wont say that I am deliberately obstructive, but I am neither deliberately accomodating, particularly if there is plenty of room in the lane behind me and a group of morons is trying to force their way in to the gap in front and its free-flowing traffic. This is particularly evident at M55 J3 on an evening where instead of just joining Lane 1 in plenty of time (like at the 1/2 mile marker), platoons of vehicles sit in Lane 2 till last minute and then move across. Its not like it will make any difference in their journey time in getting to the back of the queue at the top of the slip road.

It is these people who should be paying the higher insurance premiums as their driving manner, behaviour and mental attitude is more likely to cause an accident. I dont say that as someone who is just a dawdler, but as someone who actually observes driver behaviour for a living. What I see on street, through my cctv cameras and in responding to the inevitable RTC's at my junctions is that it is those who do not concentrate, who are too busy trying to get there 5 seconds before everyone else and who dont show consideration are those that get caught out. And at the end of it all, it doesnt really get one anywhere that much quicker.

I am a firm believer in mandatory and random re-tests and a sample of driving taken from a black box would certainly make more people think about their driving decisions, if such actions were to come under scrutiny at random.

Most interesting...
but if the Gov so wished then they could 'hold' the cost when there is an incident that requires payout. Since Ins Co's would be involved then there should be no reason for any additional delays (at least no more than the usual delays!).

As you point out, there is the great danger that the cost to the Gov would be excessively high.
The black ('proof', tracker, & ID) box might be imposed, but the 'war on the motorist' has to be reduced, or the public might actually 'revolt' so it cannot go 'too far'.
I think though that it might be introduced through the back door, by trying to show people how 'beneficial' it will be! I suppose as many Sat Nav's have some of the basic data of course, they might try to combine these with a black box concept.
I think that a strong message of better driving / riding habits and 'how to's' will be helpful, but it must be wide enough to reach millions than a few thousand !
We have taken confident experienced drivers and turned then into paranoid over cautious uncertain one's.
How to undo 18 yrs of the Speed Camera damaging effects ?
A variety of approaches is required IMHO. (Media, DVLA, incentives, proportionate & appropriate enforcement etc)

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

I couldn't imagine anything worse than mandatory re-tests. I would be vehermently opposed to any such measures. The bureaucracy involved would be a nightmare. More paper work. More inconvenience. The government and the departments who deal with testing find the current system taxing enough. I remember when they introduced the 'new, improved!' *snigger snigger* bike test and the ensuing farce that quickly followed the fanfare. It is/was completely unnecessary, ill-conceived and seemingly not thought out in practical terms. The DVLA are incapable of processing a licence correctly half of the time so I shudder to think what would happen if you had to send it off any more than you already do.

It may be well intentioned but in reality the administration involved, cost (oh, another stream of revenue for the government and those in charge to exploit), invonvenience to ordinary motorists and what I would see as negligible or unproven benefits would to my mind make the whole thing worthless. Good drivers are made on the road, not the test centre. The government constantly fails to appreciate this - how anyone who has sat a theory test can view it as anything other than another way the government yet again can be seen to be doing something that is visible but lacks any real impact while making money is beyond me. That is why the whole speed camera lie is predicated on BS. There is no educative element or way for them produce what real road safety relies on - good drivers. Driving tests just teach people how to pass a test, they do not teach people how to drive. That happens on the road everyday through real-world experience that test conditions really only scratch the surface of. Ecouraging good driving and enforcing standards is preferable to forcing people to pay to take a test randomly.

The majority of drivers I would suggest are good, safe and responsible. Having Big Brother on the back seat, watching and recording your every move, could actually cause accidents, make people behave erratically/unnaturally or have severly negative implications on people's driving. The repercussions of having to constantly think about every move you make and whether it would be cast your driving in a bad light and the psychological effect I feel would be distracting, compromise one's concentration and interrupt the natural flow, observation and processes that are necessary for driving. It could produce a nation of ditherers. Painfully deliberating each move and each potential eventuality carefully before... oh they get hit by a truck. Or they pull out very slowly on you. And presumably the boxes would mainly record things like speed, GPS, gear, rpm, etc., which really, how useful will they be when determining what is safe from what is unsafe? Without a series of cameras all over the car to cast that data into real-world perspective it is useless. I presume you'd get the system completely abused by those in power - so exceed the limit and a ticket will be waiting for you before you even step through the door. Swerve to avoid a cat and cross a double white and you get a ticket or have your day in court explaining that a cat ran out and caused you to take evasive action. I can't see a black box promoting or reinforcing good driving practise.

People are capable of driving safely and considerately. A black box is yet another step towards removing or sidelining the most important tool in road safety - drivers themselves. People should be encouraged to think for themselves and drive safely as that is the correct thing to do, not because there is a speed camera there or a little black box on the back seat. It would just be another abdication of responsibility, element of control and a step towards a society I don't want to live in.

Yes, that's the problem with black boxes. Most modern cars already need road speed, engine speed, throttle position, brake application & so on to work. Many need steering angle and lateral / longitudinal acceleration and, of course, GPS location data is often present too. Those with collision avoidance systems will also have radar data on the proximity of the car in front. I'm pretty certain that far more manufacturers than are ready to admit it, can and DO record quite a lot of this data. Typically a rolling 30 seconds or so which, in the event of an accident, will show how the car was being driven in the moments before the accident. I don't think they go out of their way to share this information with prosecuting authorities - clearly it might not win them many more customers if they readilly sold that sort of data! I do, however, suspect that they keep it to cover their own backsides when allegations of vehicle failure or malfunction are made against them.

And, of course, for all the time people believe that speeding = "dangerous" and not speeding = "safe", any sort of "black box" is unlikely to help an experienced and competent motorist secure any kind of discount!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign