Safe Speed Forums

Yes, I too have to laugh at them new Brake/greenshed/council and uncle tom cobbly approach to road safety....it's ok to have lots more accidents so long as they are slow and low injury ones....in other words, we don't mind half the population going around with a broken leg so long as it's remotely possible (but not certain) that the death rate drops by one....craziness in itself.

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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.

That is a ridiculous interpretation of what has been explained however it is not a surprise that you have suggested it. They suggestion and any agreement with it illustrates how ignorant you really are of road traffic collision and injury management.

The subject of this thread suggests a causal link between fuel prices and collisions, a similar causal link between vehicle speeds and speed enforcement has been denied yet this one is fully accepted without question. There is a dilemma there.

You, the forum members, have demonstrated that you have no concept of the relationship and significance of collisions and injuries in teh analysis and management of road traffic. This is a dead giveaway to someone's knowledge in that area. It has been explained to you all on a number of occasions but evidence remains that confusion abounds.

Reading the forum in the past few months it has become obvious that it is seldom contributed to by its regular members and rarely attracts comments from anyone outside of the usual sycophantic few regulars. There is often days and weeks between contributions in threads and discussions and when there is there is the usual back-slapping agreement to wild and sometimes irrelevant points, if you can call them that. Take the daft suggestion about applying for a discount in your insurance because you are "safe and skilled drivers", take that and the safespeed philosophy, drive at the speed you can safely stop in etc..taking little heed of speed limits and the laws governing them! Then see what answers you get from the insurance companies

Your forum is simply not relevant and attracts little opinion of value.

Perhaps you can consider this causal link: there is an exponential increase in the frequency of contributions when Greenshed posts on this forum. Don't agree? Count them and weep.

yep, you're right and as i said earlier and I think it's a famous quote from many years back...."the whole world loves a clown!"......

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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.

Anyway, getting back to the serious business of accident management.

I notice that you haven't commented on the Portsmouth story about serious injuries going UP since all the 20 MPH zones have increased..... I wonder why.

It's common knowledge that since local councils have started lowering speed limits from NSL to 40 in many semi urban areas that collisions have gone up for some and yet they happily quote statements to the fact that Serious injuries and deaths have gone down....not really seeming to care that accidents have increased.

Only today the Telegraph has an article stating how dangerous country NSL roads are , despite the fact that accident rates on them are about half those of urban roads, so the government are talking of lowering speed limits but if speed limits go down and accident rates go up, do you really think anyone will give a damn?....I certainly don't think they will.

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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.

2 posts 15 minutes apart; see, there is a causal link.

You need to use more than 2 fingers for typing perhaps.

Have you any evidence the two are linked?



Common knowledge?



Is it 68% of fatalities occur on rural roads? Considering they carry a tiny tiny proportion of the UKs traffic that makes the numbers massively disproportionate.

If people were as careful on them as they were on urban roads you'd expect fatalities to be insignificant.

Of course, you know in your heart that it's inappropriately high speeds used on rural roads that make them such dangerous places to be.

Grabs did say you were ( or professed to be an engineer). Was that by qualification, or did the title "Engineer " come via your name . I always thought you to be Capt'n of ( when not on PH AS ONE OF BOOTS OFT WORN DOWN THE MINES)

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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

If people were as careful on them as they are on urban roads, the accident rate would be TWICE as high.

If people were as careful on urban roads as they are on rural roads then the accident rate would be half what it is. So why do you think people have twice as many accidents on urban roads, the speeds are half as much so why are accident rates twice as much?

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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.

57% is not an insignificant increase so what do you think has caused it?

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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.

Have we got a depth charge emitocon on yet . Might be useful,

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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

Wow, you're really not getting this are you. 65% of fatal incidents occur on country roads, but compared to urban roads country roads are EMPTY so the ratio should be much much, much less.. much less.

OK, an extreme example.

6 fatalities on an urban road in a year, 1000 cars travel along it, four fatalities on a country road, six cars travel down it.

That makes the country road a much more dangerous environment even though it has less fatalities (but remember it's not the road that's dangerous, but the traffic on it and the actions of those using it).

Dunno, and neither do you!

You really don't understand accident RATES, do you?
The RATES, take into account the number of vehicles using the road. That's why they are quoted as ACCIDENTS/million Vehicle Kilometre. What makes you think rural roads are quieter than urban roads...just because you live in London and don't experience real life outside your little bubble. There are many rural roads that are far busier than some urban roads and vice versa BUT the accident RATES take the number of vehicles over a given kilometre into account when they are calculated....any clearer now?

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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.

I suspect it has something to do with a generation of motorists that are brainwahsed into thinking that if they stay within the speed limit they will be safe. That can work quite well in urban areas and on motorways, where the speed limit is often artificially low. On rural NSL single carriageways, you can quite easily "have a nasty off" whilst driving within the speed limit - even in ideal conditions. The problem (as I see it) is that 60 is fine for some stretches of the road, but you only need one 30MPH bend in (say) 20 miles of otherwise straight road and it will be used as a justification to lower the limit for the whole lot. Either that or our once green-and-pleasant land will be decorated with red-boardered lollipops with a different number on them every hundred yards.

Rather pessimistically, I feel that's the route that the authorities will take (as opposed to teaching people to drive). Interestingly, unless they can foster a culture of "grassing", I don't think it will be about the money, for once. Unlike the particularly lucrative "motorway bridge" scenario, motorists (speeding or otherwise) will be far fewer on these roads, so the takings will be small.

here's an example of what to expect..... https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=horton ... -0.76&z=15

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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.

You weren't asked what you know, you were asked what you think? You disagree with the scenario presented, so the question still stands, what do you THINK caused the increase.

As I pointed out earlier, the council/councillors have the data at hand to prove whether the rise in serious injuries occurred in the new 20MPH limits or not and the cause of such injuries....to me the lack or forthcoming information suggests only one reason....they are down to the 20MPH zones but don't want to divulge...I'm sure if the rise of incidents was in NSL areas, they would be the first to announce it and drop limits forthwith.

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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.

In a nutshell

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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

Hmm, not around here they're not, and I travel on them quite a lot, (Cheshire). Clearly one can drive out to rural Shropshire and also some places in Cheshire where there is very little traffic, sometimes almost nothing for an hour or more, but no distinction seems to be made between local country roads around towns, and those that are really remote from anywhere at all. It is those which lie just outside towns and conurbations where the dangers lie, IMHO, and where some speed management measures may be necessary.

I also have to say that I DO see a lot of inappropriate speed amongst cars and vans that pass in the opposite direction, on those busy local roads, and also some very bad driving, like going round blind bends far too fast to stop before an unexpected obstruction. Me, I'm always cautious. I came round a blind bend going home from work once and found a cow right across the road !! I was easily able to stop, but I suspect some would not. BTW this road lies only 1/2 mile from Crewe, yet is in open country.

What has caused the rise in traffic on these minor roads I do not know, but it could be related to the widespread use of sat-navs, or the crowded 'A' roads with so many trucks going at 40 mph, one might as well use minor roads. Another thing that comes to mind is the general migration to the countryside of people that at one time would have lived in the suburbs. Barn convrsions are very common where I live, and the buyers are not going to work on the local farm !

The time of day sees significant changes in such traffic. Now I am retired, I drive these local and rural roads much more in weekdays than I used to. Late afternoon sees a step change in traffic, with some people seemingly only seeing their front door through the windscreen, and nothing else. I am usually not up early enough to see what happens in early morning !

Apart from villages, and approaches to them in places, these are all NSL roads, but the people who are driving badly are not going anywhere near that, just driving very badly. On most of these roads 40 mph is lethally fast in some places. When we look at driver training and education, there is nothing after the Driving Test, yet it is entirely urban in nature. As I see it, it is time to introduce graduated testing, so that a second test on country main and local roads has to be undertaken, (after 18 months, say), to try to cut out what I can only call recklessness-through-ignorance. Many times I have commented to my wife, "he/she will do that once too often", but they are very clearly ignorant of certain aspects of driving, and will remain so until they have an accident with nobody around to confront them on their lack of skill.
Nobody goes out to have a crash deliberately as seems to be implied by some people. Cars are expensive to fix !!

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

They don't take into account the number of other users of the road.

If there was only one person walking/cycling along the road that year, and they were crushed and killed by a car that's a 100% fatality rate for that road in respect of pedestrian users.