Safe Speed Forums

I'm sitting watching in total disbelief.
Traffic cop PC Matthew Bort driving at 90mph whilst taking his eyes off the road & his hand off the steering wheel to operate the speed detector equipment.
PC Bort driving at an average of 98 mph whilst taking his eyes off the road to look at a monitor whilst also taking his hand off the steering wheel to move the camera & also operating the speed detector equipment at the same speed.
This is outragous, if eating an apple is dangerous what the f#### is this.

Always used to see 2 police in Traffic cars, now they seem to rely on 1.

Another example of cutbacks compromising the formerly high regard that Traffic Police were held in?

That said, a highly trained police officer still probably keeping better eye on hazards in this situation than most drivers - assuming he is highly trained of course.

Fact remains all these incidents were at well above the speed limit & all are driving with out due care & attention.
So much for the we cannot break the law to enforce it.
A kid who had a computer game monitor was prosecuted despite the fact the police admitted his mate was playing the game, because he could see it, they said it's illegal.
A woman eating an apple is prosecuted, someone eating a Kitkat a few years back, but the police can take their eyes off the road & their hands off the steering wheels at over 100mph & still feel able to criticise others standards of driving.
They are operate double standards of the very worst kind.

I must admit I tend to work double crewed most of the time,

But......

While understanding your frustrations KC there are a few things to consider.

PC Bort will be driving with his full concentration on the job in hand. Now the 'job' will entail some use of equipment ie vascar, camera, but there is no doubt that while doing that he will be using the Observation, Anticipation and Planning model he learned.

Driving a motor vehicle demands that you use the vehicle controls regularly, you need to take your hand of the wheel to change gear, you need to take your eyes off the road on occasion to check rear view, assimilate the functional information on the dash etc. None of these are considered due care offences.

Most of the concern about observational loss expressed on this and other forums relates to the presence of speed cameras and the involuntary reflex gaze(s) towards your speedo at a time which may be inappropriate to do so. I understand the vaue of this point. However PC Bort would divert his gaze at planned appropriate times. He was displaying a good level of concentration, which is the most important aspect of driving.

His camera move IIRC was a considered move to evidence tailgating, an aggravator which we all like to look for during a speed analysis.

We tolerate drivers changing channel on their radio while driving on the motorway, while probably thinking about all sorts other than the specific job of driving. If any lack of concentration is evident in their driving they should be spoken to about it.

I don't see a display of double standards in the example you have given....

But the chap in the camera van......

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Not heard about the game monitor thing before, but that sounds pretty harsh. Actually, ridiculously harsh - by that logic my step-father should have been arrested for keeping a couple of shotguns, even though when he had them they were kept legally, he was correctly licensed and kept them properly secured. But he could have used one to blow someone's head off. That'd be nonsensical, but in principle isn't very different to how you describe the monitor. The fact that the driver could see it doesn't present a problem unless he was actually watching it. Perhaps he was but I'd be impressed if the police were able to prove that.

The apple and KitKat eaters are slightly different IMO. As I said elsewhere the actions themselves may not be inherently dangerous, but the attitude that precedes them isn't desirable in the driving seat. I struggled to express my thoughts clearly before so I'm not too hopeful this time, but I'll have another go. Once, as a younger and inexperienced driver, I had a pretty crap attitude towards safe driving and would not always give the task of driving the concentration it deserves. Typically while fishing round in pockets or door bins for a pack of fags, digging one out, and then lighting it with a naked flame about 3 inches from my eyes ( yeah, very sensible at night, bugger up your night vision young Gatsobait, what a genius I was ). The problem wasn't the act of lighting up and smoking, it was that driving had stopped being my No. 1 priority as soon as I'd thought "I want a ciggie". Fifteen years on I have a different attitude behind the wheel. I'm a more experienced and much safer driver than I was, and I probably could safely light up without presenting any real danger to anyone, but I'm invariably far too busy driving to do that.

Basically what I'm saying is that eating or whatever might be a symptom of not driving properly rather than simply a cause of it. Whether that was really the case with KitKat-man or apple-lady I personally can't say, though for the latter the court clearly felt her driving wasn't up to snuff. I did think the efforts the prosecution went to was OTT though.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I don't know so much. There's a marketing adage: "movement attracts", and it's a reminder that our attention is drawn to movement.

In the old days, when sat around discussing heaven knows what, the number of people staring at the fire was amazing.

In more modern times if ten folk are in a room with a TV on (sound turned down), at any given moment you can bet that half of them have at least half an eye on the screen.

I do believe that it's dangerous to have "moving pictures" within a vehicle in clear sight of the driver - and the more interestig the pictures, the more dangerous it is. We're designed to direct our attention on the basis of movement and interest and drivers on boring roads are very likely indeed to pay involuntary attention to a screen inside the car if it shows anything even remotely interesting.

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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

We are talking of about 0.4 sec max to perform the above action

Don't really like pulling the "we've been trained" card as this annoys people - but - er - we do include using in-car equipment in the training!

But holding an apple in your hand whilst driving can badly compromise handling of a car. I did read that the apple girl did swerve slightly as she negotiated the bend: this attracted the traffic cop's attention. It would have attracted mine as well. As said before - would depend on what I had actually seen and judged to be the case as to the action taken.

As for the Kit Kat ... chocolate can melt in a warm car. Once attended a collsion where person claimed he was licking the chocolate off his fingers when he rear-ended the person, shunting him forwards into the path of another vehicle on a roundabout. We were involved as there was an injury...

As for the rest of the programme - it highlighted the weaknesses in over-reliance on this policy.

As for the talivan operator ...

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Probably the male half . You're talking to a guy who turns the stereo down when approaching an unfamiliar roundabout. My wife nearly went round the twist trying to understand why I had to do that, but that was before Men Are From Mars etc became popular. But yeah, a muted TV screen has a similar effect. If I'm reading say, I find that I have to concentrate more on the book than I would do if the TV was off altogether. But... that means that the TV is only a distraction if we allow it to be.

I can see your point, and I agree that it's a potential problem for bored drivers... especially if they've been semi-anaesthetised by a nice wide, straight dual carriageway that some clown's put a 30 limit and a dozen Gatsos on . Still, I'd argue that the magnitude is probably variable and very hard for plod to prove distraction. Unless of course they happen to have the in car video camera pointing at the driver, who's looking directly at the screen oblivious to a dirty great batternburged Volvo alongside him.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Plod doesn't have to prove distraction. There's a perfectly good law about NOT having a "TV or similar" screen within the driver's field of view.

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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

'Course there is. I, er, just... forgot about it. D'oh!

Edit: as a matter of interest what makes satnav screens and some of these other displays for all the gadget menus and options okay? In law, I mean.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

While driving we have to take hand off steering wheel to change gear, operate switches, etc. Woman eating apple was doing this with apple in hand, which one? The hand holding steering wheel, or the one changing gear, which ever one she was one making a routine task more difficult.

Walking into town on my lunch today i saw car wander over white lines, and guess what - driver was eating a sandwich.

If nothing else it showed a lack of planning and responsibility that maybe highlights a problem with her attitude to driving - why not eat apple before or after journey? Same can be said of pedestrians crossing road and talking on phone, answer phone or cross the road - don't try to do both.

Regulation 109 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 provides for the use of television sets or other monitors in motor vehicles



So satnav etc is OK in law, whether it is an unacceptable distraction in reality is a different question, but we rely on Sec3 RTA to deal with that.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Thanks for the clarification Ian. Sorry, but that brings up another question. This from Jag's UK site (my emphasis):
Nice car, but arguably the options could be better thought out . So where does the law stand on something which may display relevant car info or the satnav, but is also capable of showing Eastenders omnibus edition? Seems odd that they'd offer this option if it was illegal under C&U regs, but what you quoted makes it sound like it ought to be.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Most cars with TV's need the vehicle to be in park or have the hand-brake on to switch to TV mode. Apparently with older cars it was a one-wire job to disable but newer stuff is tightly integrated and difficult.

Gareth

On Traffic Cops the officer concerned can clearly be seen driving at about 98mph with one hand on the steering wheel whilst he adjusts the on board camera with the other whilst flicking his attention between screen, car being filmed & road ahead.

didn't have a problem with the pointing the laser bit. The speed limit is stupid. 90 in a modern car, and that one was an A3 isn't fast. Yes he was tailgating, but there was know body in front of the tailgatee and the tailgatee might have looked in his mirror to see the tailgator. Oh, and A1 road conditions too.

However. Mr Talivan man. What did they say a 46% increase in fatalities since the introduction of speed cameras? So he sits on the verge and points his camera at a road that clearly used to be NSL. It must have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Was it that guy that said about speeding being as unacceptable as drink driving or wa that earlier? Then he admits he speeds and has 3 points for speeding and laughs! Nice.