Safe Speed Forums

i.e. in 20 mins...

Death Race 2007: Tonight

Quentin Willson reports on the growing trend for boy-racers to film themselves as they create mayhem on Britain's streets performing dangerous driving stunts, before posting the footage on the Internet for millions to watch. British Touring Car champion Jason Plato puts the skills of a group of these young men to the test at Silverstone to evaluate how safe they are on the road, with startling results...

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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

The two individuals who are running the websites that host that material are both grade A morons. They are providing a shop window for the exploits of these 'boy racers' but have not one shred of social conscience for what they are doing. Without the means to show off their wares some of the individuals may be less likely to perform those stupid stunts.
Bloody oxygen thieves the pair of them.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I was totally shocked at the shallow-thinking dishonesty of the programme producers.

The seriously injured pedestrian was hit by a stolen car being pursued by Police. What's that got to do with Internet video? Oh, right, nothing. He was just there to make it seem worse.

The idea of trying to regulate internet sites is laughable. If it's banned in the UK then videos will be posted in Malaysia or Russia or anywhere the authorities can't reach. Banning will make no difference.

Who knows what they edited out of Edmund King's or Jason Plato's interviews? Did either of them say something sensible that wasn't broadcast? Quite likely.

As an exercise in pointless, useless hand-wringing, I'd give it 10/10.

As an exercise in doing anything useful, I'd give it 0/10.

When are the authorities going to realise that they have squandered their credibility and young men have totally lost interest in listening? That's the root of these problems.

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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

I rescanned my digibox to get 'Dave', and now I can't get ITV 1-3!

Have you tried rescanning again? Sounds like it missed a mux. It might not mis the mux on a further scan.

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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

Yeah, several times

Might try again when the atmospheric conditions are different!

The internet is censored in China! Great Firewall of China. I find the idea quite scary.

Which is probably one of the reasons Freenet came in to existence.

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Andrew.

The UK based ones could exercise an element of self-regulation though. The videos they are hosting serve no useful purpose to society, claiming that they are merely depicting what is going on in the real world is simply self-serving clucking noises.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Well I'm rather a long way past the 'boy racer' stage, but I must admit I've become so disgusted at the government's 'road safety policy' (which is a rather flattering name for it!) that I've virtually stopped listening to them. It makes me even more inclined to rebel and just do my own thing.

I didn't see the programme, and perhaps it's just as well, by the sound of it.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

In addition, the third member of the "panel" was the guy riding the motorbike in the clip introduced as "what can go catastrophically wrong" - who admitted that he'd hardly suffered any injury at all... Not exactly reinforcing their point IMHO.

Generally it was an appalling program. It was vaguely amusing hearing Jason Plato telling the boy-racers that they were crap, but anyone who's done any track coaching knows that almost everybody is pretty useless in their early attempts on a circuit.

The hand-wringing copper displayed his ignorance of how the internet works, and all-in-all it achieved sod-all other than probably to boost the viewing figures of the featured internet sites. Yes, those sites are deeply irresponsible, but we live in a society where personal responsibility for just about anything is being eroded by an increasingly intrusive state nanny, so what can you expect of its "children"?

I agree with Paul 0/10

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

30mins isn't really long enough for such a subject. You could do a whole programme with Plato and the idiots - I didn't expect he'd say they were anything but poor drivers but his face said so as well. I guess most of what they filmed ended up on the cutting room floor. Very much a lost opportunity.

Better than some of the other 'bad driving exposed' programmes of late but still a bit too po faced and preachy - where did they find PC Joyless??

Some of the driving was bad, very bad but I'm not seeing lighting a firework with a flaming exhaust compares with 176mph over Woodhead.

As for the amoral website hosts.... words fail me They may just move the hosting off shore but something needs to be done. These types of site have also come under the spot light for showing bullying and assault and still they don't care - and that includes the biggest of them all.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

What opportunity was lost as a matter of interest?

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Disagree. They already self-regulate.

I don't really support the view we need to protect society in to aviod depraving or corrupting, if indeed that is your opinion.

Disagree

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I'm glad you only disagree with the self-regulation aspect.

Actually, I typed that one word out, got distracted and rather than dump the post hit submit for some dumb reason.

Anyway, I'm of the view that some degree of regulation and censorship is necessary to protect society from the excesses of the media makers.
Its a difficult moral and ethical argument which I can't really be arsed to act out here as I'm positive it would simply have to end in an agreement to disagree

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

With regard to showing more of the lads in the car with Jason Plato.

Assuming they we're poor drivers why not show us? All we got was a few in-car shots of Plato saying 'your doing 100mph round a corner' etc etc and him saying they were bad drivers. I think his expression confirmed he wasn't impressed but I don't think he could have said anything else.

There's a lot of talk about how bad these 'Max Power' generation drivers are. But given they had one of the UKs most experienced and successful tim top drivers, Silverstone and a car they sure as heck proved nothing with what we saw.

So a lost opportunity - though the results may not have been to the programme makers liking in every case.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

Ah, OK.
The problem with these half hour specials is that there is never enough time to show a substantial amount of detail on any facet of the program. A such, they exist merely to grab the attention of the viewer and thell them 'look at this problem we've got here'. As far as the Jason Plato drive was concerned, it seems they merely wanted to comunicate the idea that the lads concerned are bad drivers; I don't believe it was ever intended to be a point of discussion as to whether this was accurate or not.

As far as the issue overall is concerned, it is not actually one of road safety, i.e. it cannot be fixed by changing road safety messages delivered to young people any more than alcohol abuse, or happy slapping problems can be fixed in the same demographic group by regualting the sale of alcohol or mobile phones with video.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Censorship is a very intersesting topic and one that always stimulates lively debate.

I really don't think a video of irresponsible riding is likely to deprave and corrupt society and in many circumstances it would do the exact opposite. Should people not be free to make up their own mind?