Safe Speed Forums

What you are saying is that motorists pay a lot of tax. So they do; so do drinkers and smokers. You are taxed because you'll pay it, motoring can be just as addictive as alcohol and nicotine. You want to think that you're buying something for yourself with all that money but you're not, it just goes into exactly the same pot as all the other forms of tax and duty that everyone pays. Your VED does not have a lable on saying "spend on roads". As far as the NHS is concerned, air pollution and lack of exercise are directly responsible for this country's top two killers: heart disease and lung disease. And do you think that we'd have invaded Iraq if they only had sand?

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Well, I'm saying that motorists are also responsible for the safety of others, because they are responsible for the danger.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Does that in any way absolve (say) pedestrians of responsibility?

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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

Motorists pay over £42 billion in motoring taxes whilst only £6 billion is spent on roads.

I'd say that motorists pay for the roads. Just because it all goes into one pot and then the money comes out of that makes no difference.

If I put a tenner into the whip and my mates add a penny each. When the round of drinks gets bought who really paid for it.

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www.misspelled-signs.com - A tribute to illiterate signwriters.

BRAKING / Thinking distances:

at 70mph velocity is 31.2928 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 21 metres. At 70mph you cover 21 metres in 0.671 seconds.

at 60mph velocity is 26.8224 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 18 metres. At 60mph you cover 18 metres in 0.671 seconds.

at 50mph velocity is 22.352 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 15 metres. At 50mph you cover 15 metres in 0.671 seconds.

at 40mph velocity is 17.8816 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 12 metres. At 40mph you cover 12 metres in 0.671 seconds.

at 30mph velocity is 13.4112 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 9 metres. At 30mph you cover 9 metres in 0.671 seconds.

at 20mph velocity is 8.9408 metres per second. The Thinking distance given on that link is 6 metres. At 20mph you cover 6 metres in 0.671 seconds.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Well, I don't know what the Law reckons, but it would seem to me that apportioning the responsibility would make the most sense. The greater the hazard that each user brings to the road, the greater the responsibility placed upon that user.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Smokers pay more than non-smokers; drinkers pay more than teetotalers. High earners pay more than the unemployed but no-one can claim that they own more of the roads, or NHS, or Iraq war than anyone else. If you want to pay less tax, then use your bike for journeys less than five miles. If you want to use your car then keep doing so but you aren't paying for anything in particular that you can lay any kind of claim to. Try getting into the Millenium Dome for free by saying "My taxes paid for this".

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Everyone is equally responsible for their own safety and that of others. The nature and the scope of that responsibility does not change. This isn't just a legal viewpoint, it's a moral and a practical one also.

The problem we have to avoid here is the idea that, perhaps, pedestrians can delegate some of their responsibility to others (drivers in this case). They can't. The false belief that they can is in itself dangerous because it leads to behaviour which is less careful.

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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

If I choose to increase the level of danger that others have to face, it would certainly make sense for them to be a lot more careful, but the responsibility would rest with me.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

I don't understand that point.

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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

If someone jumped into the sea and got eaten by a shark, then it could be considered their fault. Or their mistake, anyway. But if you put a shark in a swimming pool and it ate someone, that'd be your fault.
Now, you regard the roads as the being like sea, with the sharks always there and the swimmers having to take care. I regard the roads as the swimming pool, there are no sharks until they're introduced. Every motorist brings a shark.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

From here. http://archive.treasury.gov.uk/pub/html ... vedcon.pdf

'nuff said I think.

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www.misspelled-signs.com - A tribute to illiterate signwriters.

Except that it's a lie.

VED for most vehicles is calculated on emissions, which do not relate directly to wear and tear on roads. They do relate directly to air quality, and poor air quality is quite literally a killer. When you pay your VED you're buying the right to poison the air, make people ill, shorten their lives and even kill them outright; the mortality rate goes up directly in line with air pollution. So VED is not something that motorists should be proud of, it's something you should be bloody ashamed of.
Even if VED was in reality being used to maintain the roads, it's the motor vehicles which are degrading them, not feet or bike tyres. And there's still the hugely expensive motorway network to pay for.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

That’s a good explanation but I don’t think it’s complete enough to be valid. The key point here is people’s expectation.

In this life, people quite reasonably don’t expect to have sharks in swimming polls; hence it is up to the pool/shark owner to inform others about the presence of any shark and its dangers, as well as take preventative measures in case someone didn’t understand the risks. However, what we actually have (remaining with the analogy) is a society which has allowed a shark in almost every swimming pool, in which case everyone would reasonably be expected to know the risks and not blindly jump in (those at risk of not understanding would be supervised); those that do jump in will first check there is no shark. In this case I would apportion blame to those eaten who jumped in without looking.

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

Let's cut to the chase....

You said VED wasn't spent on the roads. I found a Treasury document that said it was.

You can obfuscate the issue all you like with points about 'wear and tear' and pollution... you're still wrong.

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www.misspelled-signs.com - A tribute to illiterate signwriters.

When the Road Fund was abolished in 1936, one of the reasons for winding it up was to disabuse motorists of the notion that since they were the only ones paying for the roads, they were the only ones with a real right to use them. (This was a complete travesty of the truth which was that the requirement for a licence was symbolic of the fact that motorists had no right to be there, only permission.)
Today's government and governmental organizations have no qualms whatsoever about deceiving people. They are quite happy to let you believe that VED is earmarked for all those road-related things, and even persist in calling it "Road Tax" in some of their communications (when the term "Blood Money" would be much more accurate).
The roads were there before the cars. Road Tax did not pay for them to be built and doesn't pay for them now. Your legal status on the roads is equivalent to that of a theatre goer who has bought a season ticket. He hasn't paid for the theatre, he doesn't own any part of it. But he has permission to use it.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

you better go claim your 1cm worth of motorway then.


of course that claim is not better than this bunch of hippy crap.


you might want to do a bit of research about the enormous piles of horse shit, and the disease it brought, that the nice, clean and continually getting cleaner, motor vehicle has replaced.

What does it pay for then? Not to educate cyclists on traffic laws, I know that much.
Just to split hairs for a moment......

I do own the tarmac on the road outside my house since I have recently paid to have it laid. You are all welcome to come and use it though, obviously.

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www.misspelled-signs.com - A tribute to illiterate signwriters.

That in essence is true, but can we expect a 7 year old child who has momentarily bolted (out of sight of the parents) across a residential road. I don't think we can expect much in the way of roadcraft from the 7 year old, therefore we would expect a reasonably competent motorist to be (albeit in a small degree) to be anticipating the unexpected, and be able to stop the vehicle, or at least scrub enough speed off to miss said miscreant. (provided the laws of physics won't be bent, I accept that in certain circumstances a collision is inevitable)

I think the point is that, whilst everyone has an equal responsibility, as a motorist we are in command of a huge lump of steel, thus since we were required to learn how to safely operate this machine we should therefore strive to be above the pedestrian who has momentarily let their concentration drift.

Is this not the whole ethos of SS, we are human, so we make mistakes, hence every single driver (and I do mean 100%) has broken a speed limit. This is not negotiable it is a fact, difficult to prove, and I am sure a lot of people will shout at me for that statement. The SS argument is that a motorist should not be hammered every time that needle slips beyond 10% + 2. Similarly, the pedestrian who has let his mind wander and steps into the road should not be penalised by a hospital stay or worse.

I think in essence this thread is leading us down the road that the only thing that will make our roads safer - is education. Not just of the motorist, but bring back the cycling proficiency, bring back Darth Vader doing the green cross code adverts and most important - give us back our traffic Bobbies!

How many of the roads currently accessible to both motor vehicles and other road users existed in the same form as they do now, before the motor vehicle was introduced to this country? How many of the roads currently accessible to any road user, existed at all before the motor vehicle? Some roads were there before cars, not all, and of those that were, pretty much all will have subsequently been reworked in some way to facilitate their use by motor vehicles. How much of the road network needs to be altered, and how much change is required in the way the network is used, before the ancient rights no longer make much sense?

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Chris