Safe Speed Forums

Are you suggesting he should have been forced to use the cycle path provided on this road, at the far side adjacent to the railway?

Well that would sort out the conflict with other vehicles AND stop him from jumping the lights.
Unfortunately cyclists resist cycleways in favour of being allowed to take risks in with the traffic.... this from the Southampton Cycling Campaign:

If Jonsher was here, he'd be taking planners to task too!

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

I see you say the layout is complicated, yet she managed to negotiate this junction at speed, and while looking at the mobile phone without running off the road, or hitting any other vehicles, in low light?
So either it ISNT that complicated, or she was the luckiest/most skillful driver on the road.... up until the point where she hit a cyclist who
......1 ...... jumped a red light,
......2 ...... failed to see OR HEAR her car coming
......3 ...... didnt wear a cycle helmet,
......4 ...... failed to make use of a cycle track provided to keep cyclists from coming into conflict with cars.

I have already highlighted the prosecution (Mr Jenkins) GUESSING at what he thought was her speed, and surmising that she was USING the phone at the point of impact.

I dont agree with mobile phone use in vehicles - they have a perfectly good facility to record missed calls, or take messages.
However, I dont agree with courts "making an example of" anyone, especially when the proof is thin at best.
It implies that she will receive a higher penalty than she deserves, just so that it becomes a deterrent to others.
Perhaps if she were given an absolute discharge, it would serve to warn cyclists that they should not jump red lights?

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

I find it amazing that a cyclist chose to jump THOSE lights. It is the bigest exit from the southampton port and a heavy commuter route. To travel through those lights on red with out looking would give you odds less than 1:6 of being hit. My odds of missing a poorly lit red light cyclist at 7:00 on a Febuary morning would be 5:6 too.

If that was his normal behavoir it would have happened quite soon. I don't from the "evidence" know whether she was texting.
I have had first hand experiance of how un-truthfull hants coppers and thier "experts" can be. (they lied about a tacho disk, road signs and checking road signs and possibly setting the clock on a lti 20/20)

It does seam that a momentery error can now send you to jail. before this case it was pre-meditated drink driving, road racing. These lemmings on bikes take these risks every day in Southampton. It seams that the larger vehicle is allways guilty and if the evidence is not clear they will embelish it with experts. That means tomorrow I could go out and hit a poorly dressed cyclist and they will find some evidence that I received a text and there fore sent a text (although I send about two texts a month) and I will be off to jail.

In the speed camera case the timings were very iffy. yet some copper made all sorts of evidence up about checking the speed camera against the speaking clock and then taking hos mobile back into the police station. It was all rubbish. I wonder about the mobile and police call canter timings. how accurate are they? were the text times sent or processed times?

Oh well... they will have to let out some more muggers and thieves.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Did they bother to check if the cyclist had been using a mobile, too? I saw a cyclist, recently, bowling along at speed on a busy pavement, on his mobile, oblivious to the pedestrians he was scattering.

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Rush hour was mentioned, maybe the place was stuffed full of stationary traffic.

Hang on.. if that's so mate .. how come she was accused of "speeding".


Rush hour means "slow crawl"

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

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I also agree. Poor defence coupled with prosecution case heavily loaded with emotion instead of facts will sway the averge ignorant jury.
Same sort of thing as the Gary Hart case.

Fact is the DfT are peeved that vast numbers of motorists don't buy the line that handheld mobile use is really dangerous and continue to treat the law with contempt. So they need increasing publicity to frighten the motoring public into submission.

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

Not if there is a little bit of space, people dive for space in rush hour, often at great speeds, I see it a lot.

7 am is busy there but no queues. That point is where you have left all shops and buildings, then you join the 50 limit. Her speed of 45 was not unreasonable. (85th percentile might be 40)

Another thing is that Ocean Village is about 2-3000 m from that point. If she had received or sent texts they should have come up on different cell phone masts. there are a number of large buildings and heaps of cell phone aerials in the city center.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Very good, an officer of the law is expected to uphold the law, and is reminding us that we are expected to obey it.

... but hang on ...

... so, we are allowed to choose which laws we obey? If enough people ignore it, that makes it OK to ignore it?

Can you not understand how the former is devalued by the latter?

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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.

Of course the law is undervalued by people cherry picking which to obey.
That is why cyclists in this city obey none because the police cherry pick which ones and whom they enforce them on.

Government have cherry picked who they listen to. There is virtually no point in reasoned arguments to change laws or speed limits because their dogmatized to a green anti car policy.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

My main gripe over all this, is the determined effort to make an example out of the driver - especially on flimsy evidence.

Judging by the comments on the This is Hampshire site - some of whom obviously lurk here, they would be right at home stoning women to death in Iran for associating with others of different faiths!

We have weepej saying the junction is difficult to negotiate, and he thinks 30 mph "is on the edge" - yet the driver allegedly has negotiated it at 45 mph, while using a mobile phone, without falling off the road or hitting any other vehicles legitimately using the same piece of road.
Come on weepej, dont shirk answering this puzzle! How did she achieve this amazing feat?

And if we ARE going to make an example of her - why not hang her from a crane in the middle of Southampton's football ground?
After all, she didn't learn from her two previous speeding convictions, did she.

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

The thing is, a custodial sentance is NOT going to improve her driving. Mobile phone asside, there was a basic failure of observation here - she should have been looking back along the road she was joining to ensure there was no conflicting traffic. The ONLY way to prevent her making the same mistake again is training!

And as for saying anyone who kills at all whilst driving - we ALL have the potential to kill behind the wheel and yes it is a sobering thought. But since a custodial sentance is supposed to be both a deterrent and a punishment I don't see how it can apply to a genuine mistake.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

No way - I'm interested in a more radical solution than that. In some areas in Scandinavia, traffic lights have been done away with! Everyone has equal priority. In other words, walkers and bikers can go slowly in the street, cross wherever they like, etc. It is the drivers task to choose a speed that can’t bother them, and walkers etc are duty bound to try not to bother the drivers.

It takes a bit of getting used to - the system depends on the natural human habit of cooperation. Cars may have to go slowly, but only where they need to. The overall flow of traffic of all types is actually increased once the lights are gone, and everybody is better off, so I am told. Problems of gridlock vanish as soon as the system is started up, and everyone is happier, which is the main thing. There are less “lungers and lurchers” on the roads, as well, which can only be a good thing. The streets aren’t “drag strips”!

Perhaps this is the way to go? But could the British handle it? Hmm… maybe not.

Interesting point Valle and I'm sure I've seen it mentioned here somewhere before: Along the lines of - if all road funiture etc. was removed there's evidence that the uncertainty of it all would actually make everyone more alert resulting in less accidents.

I think it could be the way to go. Less is more an' all that.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Ah. Scandinavia! Not a lot a traffic in places - in fact in Sweden, some highways double as landing strips for military aircraft.
However, the situation in Gurnsey is a little like you describe... but again less cars.

Anyone seen the YouTube film of a junction in India, with no lights? It works, but everybody would have to learn to use the road in the same fashion - and I am not sure they would be up to it! The main principle seems to be the inclination to give way when necessary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM&feature=related

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

IIRC this was done in the Dutch town of Drachten, not in Scandinavia, and despite having been widely praised does not seem to have been extended elsewhere.

It has much to commend it for small urban streets where traffic management tends to be too prescriptive, but I'm not sure it would work for large main roads where there are lots of vehicles and very few pedestrians, and nor could it cope with high-volume intersections.

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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

I interpret that sentiment in a way that provokes many safe speeders into a rage. The principle is the inclination to give way when necessary, because you don't care about the time. We are too often slaves to time, and the shortage of it (mostly due to the hours consumed by work) causes untold stress and even misery.

I suspect we live longer than our ancestors did, but we spend the extra hours (and more) zooming to and fro to the office!

Yup, note nobody is going very fast; introduce that here and you'll have people cutting through there at 45mph because they thought their time was more important than everybody else's.

There'd be 20 deaths a day.

Luck, blind luck, I see it every day.

The faster you go the more lucky you have to be.