Safe Speed Forums

This was aired last night on local TV.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7349509.stm

I was going to put it on the motorcycling forum but my big gripe is the statement: -

"the police driver has to accelerate to more than 100 mph to keep up with them"

Does he?

Isn't the PC putting themselves and others in yet more danger?

I also query the dubious stats on 'motorcyclists being 50 times more dangerous than cars'!

I will concede that they are more at risk, but 50 times!?

I don't feel in danger to the tune of 50 times greater! Where do they get these figures from?

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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.

Re 50 times

I seem to recall that about a third of road fatalities involve motorcyclists. since motorcyclists are something of a minority this would suggest that the "50 times" figure is not unreasonable.

However, 50 times (a very small number) is still a (very small number)

In the great scheme of things Motorcycling is not much more dangerous than, Oooh, taking a bath (the number of motocyclits who die in accidents each year is similar to the number of people who drown in the bath each yesr)

Thats why you feel relativly safe! Because, well, you are!

It is also why HUGE numbers of people are happy to drink and drive. it really isnt that dangerous! (if it was we would have tens of thouseands of deaths a year instead of a couple of hundred)

(Raw stats suggest that 99.9999% of legaly drunk drivers actually manage to complete their journey without killing either themselves or anybody else. Amazing isnt it!)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

No, all he has to do is go faster than the biker, he'll catch up in the end. The bigger the differential in speed, the less time it will take.

Am I being overly simplistic?

Not at all, the speed required from the chaser is dependant on the initial separation distance, the initial speed differential, and the time in which they catch up.

I was once pulled over by a jumped-up BTPC in a marked transit, because I wouldn't allow him to cut me up to exit the roundabout from the wrong lane. I accelerated away from him, and when he caught me up, he bemoaned the fact that he'd had to travel at 70mph on a NSL SC to catch me up, and I had to point out that I could accelerate much faster than him, so that did not imply I had broken the limit.

As it happened, I proceeded to give him a lecture on driving like a prick, and speeding and was allowed to go on my way. Seemingly lucky perhaps, but I believe he was out of his jurisdiction anyway, and abusing his blues to gripe about me not facilitating his tosserish driving.

You make the point I was going to make. i.e. The bike would easily out accelerate the car in a quick burst of speed. The Police could then have chosen to get up to 150 mph if he wanted to make it look even worse or he could have caught them up at considerably less which would have been better and safer IMO.

These chases may make for good TV but from a safety aspect, why doesn't the PC just phone ahead and have them stopped while he follows safely behind, instead of breaking reasonable limits himself and putting his fellow officer and others at risk. This looks as though it’s what happened anyway to me so how necessary was it for the officers to behave that way?

I don't like the way it's portrayed. The biker at the front would have had main beam on, I expect, and would see the clear straight non-residential open road ahead whereas the view from the police car, on low beam, and sitting lower down than a biker would have the effect of making it all look far worse. (Not condoning the bikers behaviour BTW, but let's put it into perspective.

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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.

I think I smell a rat - seriously

Call me nuts but I have just noticed something which I can't explain.

Look at the white lines passing by at 120 mph and watch them as the speed drops to 96 mph. Look at the trees and and surounds too.

How fast

Oh and I have ruled out the stroboscopic effect too. I have done 120mph past a tree at the side of a road, (abroad) - It doesn't look like the one on that video I can tell you!

Hmmm

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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.

Excessive use of emotive language is a major source of irritation when Barkstar is watching cops on the box.

A recent favourite, that highlighted what we are discussing here, went something like "The stolen car weaved dangerously between lanes and then took to the hardshoulder, just missing cars travelling at high speed and risking a major accident" Closely followed by "The highly training officer carefully changed lanes to keep up with the erratically driven stolen car, notice how he used his skill and judgement to continue the pursuit up the hardshoulder"

They both did the same things.

Oh for sake!!

Barkstar

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

That is soooo true.

'Madman caught doing 120 mph on M5!'

"Brave officer tests car at 150 mph on M40'

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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.

Absolutely. Yes, the police are the good guys, and yes, they're allowed to do things which normal motorists aren't allowed to, but patronising the viewers by pretending things like the above isn't particularly helpful to anyone.

Also, when a police car is following and matching the speed of a car which is speeding significantly, but safely, on a motorway (say 100mph on an empty, dry motorway in daylight), and otherwise driving completely legally and well, the narrator invariably draws attention to the "mph" indicator in the corner of the screen. This is because the car in front is not obviously going "too fast", and it's only with reference to the numerical speed that the narrator can attempt to justify saying that they're "going at a ridiculously high speed" or whatever emotive language they decide upon.

Which of course highlights the glaring difference between going too fast and exceeding the speed limit. (Granted foreshortening may play a part, but I don't think it completely accounts for the driver not seeming to be speeding excessively. It's usually pretty obvious on these programmes when a car really is going too fast.)

That gives me an idea. Let's disable the speedos of those who get self-righteous about other people's speeds. Firstly, that would mean that they wouldn't be able to get self-righteous anymore, because they would be too incompetent to work out whether someone was going too fast without reference to their own speedo. Secondly, they would get caught by multiple cameras and banned very quickly. Unfortunately, thirdly, they would probably cause accidents through not being able to set a safe speed. Oh well.

All the same, I can't help thinking that especially these days, speedos are as much of a hindrance as a help. If we didn't have them (or cameras), people would have to learn to drive without them, and once they did, both driving standards and attitudes would surely improve in the end.

Returning to "cops on the box", what annoys me the most about those programmes is when the narrator regurgitates incorrect pro-camera propaganda (e.g. we've had the one third lie before). Thankfully it doesn't happen too often though. I quite like Cops Uncut with Quentin Willson, as that's the only programme where the narrator dares to ever criticise the police...in fact he never does anything but. (It shows American clips rather than British, which may explain how they get away with it!)

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

Roads being policed by Trafpol - I *thought* that was what we were in favour of?

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All views expressed are personal.

You're right Bombus but I make no apology for telling it as it is. Nothing sticks in my craw quite like hypocrisy and that's exactly what it is.

What would happen to a speeding officer who knocks over and kills a child? Speed kills or just doing his job? What would have happened to the officers in that chase if they had hurt or killed someone? Worth the risk for the 'greater good'?

The bikers were going too fast for the conditions, no argument there, but from the car it looks like they are flying blind. The truth is that the view from the bike would have looked very different, but you don't see that of course. They showed us the bits they wanted to show, in as poor a light as possible, in order to add to the drama but what happened in between? And I am still unconvinced that the displayed speed is accurate from looking at the surrounds, as I said earlier. There was a lot of footage missing and there are countless accidents every year involving Police, many of which don't involve any other vehicle.

I don't think it's very clever to get into a high speed chase no matter who you are, not when there are better alternatives. If speed kills then the speed of the officers car could kill too with even worse consequences because of its greater mass and additional passenger! So why portray it as 'good in pursuit of evil' when in fact they are all in the wrong. It's like a parent slapping his son for hitting another kid and telling him it's wrong to hit someone else. (Er really dad? Exactly what did you just teach me?)

If I didn't laugh about it I'd cry instead. I don't think it's right or fair that officers can drive recklessly with impunity. It bothers me. It should bother us all. I don't like adverts which skew the truth.


Another one which irks me is the reverse film of a little girl at the side of a road and you see the blood disappear back into her ear and her bones mending etc. She ends up in the middle of the road. No parked cars or obstructions so she apparently just materialises there, in Star Trek fashion, and someone knocks her into the middle of next week doing just 35 mph!

Let's analyse that for a minute…

What is the girl doing there in the first place? (Green Cross Code). To knock the girl that distance you would have to be doing a ridiculous speed and make no attempt whatsoever to brake even though she is standing there in the middle of the road in full view on a clear day. (Was the driver asleep or something?) Also, how can a girl, or any object, go off at a 90 degree angle to the driving force when the girl is stationary? You may go off to one side a little, if the wing clips you perhaps, but 90 degrees and end up by a tree 20+ feet away from standing in the middle of a road? Can someone explain the phyics of that to me? This isn't snooker but if it were the car equivilent of the cue ball would had to have been doing 100+ mph and she wouldn't slide on her back all the way to the side! What kind of idiots do they take us for? It's like something from an OTT Swarzenegger movie.

Using shock tactics in an unreal scenario isn't the way forward to making our roads safer IMHO. If you are going to make a advert like that at least make an effort to make it accurate: First of all, pan out so you can see the whole thing! Child runs/walks out from in between parked cars, (Didn't learn Green Cross Code again). Car hits her and she either flies over the bonnet or lands crumpled somewhere in front of or underneath the car on the road.

Is that better? I think it is.

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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.

Yes, but even dear Paul, in one of my last posts to him, said that they shouldn't act just as an addition to speed cameras.

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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.

Same applies to many other areas of govt propaganda, e.g. the "war on drugs". A lot of kids get fed a load of stuff at school implying that (a) drugs are no fun, and (b) that they kill you.

When they find out that (a) they are, and (b) in moderation they don't, they unlearn the lesson completely and may then do themselves real harm.

I suppose a downplayed ad in Big Tone's example wouldn't have the same impact:

Little girl (cue Austin Powers voice): "Ow! That really hurt! I'm going to have a mark there!"

JTB: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Deliberate exaggeration not only doesn't work, it's incredibly counterproductive.


I am, and I never meant to imply otherwise. (That does not mean, however, that the police are infallible. Except for In Gear of course. )

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

Ah, I see what you mean but I didn't mean it quite like that. (My fault) I am actually in favour of shock tactics so long as they are accurate. It's the inaccurate distortion, gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of the facts which I disagree with.

Real life is far worse than anything they have ever shown and would have much greater impact if it was used. Like the ads on smoking a while back where they interviewed people who talked about their own condition, their foolishness, how it impacted on others and at the end they announced he/she had passed away. Effective and most importantly - real.

I would prefer it, and I'm sure there's plenty of footage, if they did the same for a RTA. You could blank out the faces, (or maybe not with consent), and show a real situation - instead of lining the pockets of a software image animator or pandering to the powers that be who obviously know nothing about how these things happen in real life. Air it after the watershed and announce it may be disturbing for some viewers.

Are they afraid the public can't handle the truth?

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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.

I'm certainly are in favour of more Traf Pol. What makes you think I'm not?

There are two points here: One is the utter garbage commentaries we get on Cops on the box programmes (As above) and like "The fleeing car is now doing over 100mph and if he had a blowout a crash would be inevitable" Like wise for the cop car filming him.

The other is a little tricker. I don't want any pursued thiefs to get away but we've all seen chases where it would seem the cop car is taking similar risks to the toe-rags (Last night's cop Suburu chasing the Citroen being a case in point). If, as mentioned, a cop is pursuing a car at 100mph+ on an empty motorway, can we really claim one is safer than the other? Sure if you bring other traffic into the mix I'll trust the cop more every time but what he is doing is still hazardous.

Barkstar

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

Surely SOME riders are at more than 50% risk because of their riding style, while others are at less than 50% because they are cautious?

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

Aha! But Police tyres are highly trained not to have blowouts!

I think you would be safe with me if I took you for a ride Ernest.

I have taken many people from work on the back of my Kawasaki. Old, young, male, female, doctors & scientists in rehab, black, white, aliens from Mars.... and one woman who had a lifelong fear of motorbikes which she wanted to overcome. In fact she regularly comes on the back now and she is looking forward to http://www.1066-mcc.co.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=920



A wonderful event I attended last year for the first time in colaboration with the police whom I love and respect!!!!

This is how it should be damn it!



You listening Brunstrom! You have power but you have lost respect of the people!!!!

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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.