Safe Speed Forums

I agree with cost effective though I do not think that means the cheapest, you have to be careful of hidden costs, what you directly pay out to implement something can be just the tip of the iceberg.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I'm afraid that is unproven.

Besides, do you really have a wish to turn the UK's Tax Regime upside down?

e.g. Old people hardly contribute any tax, yet they cost billions. I say we should take the money away from the old people and give it to the people that pay. The ones that pay are the ones that deserve it!!

See, even if you are right on the tax amount, it isn't as simplistic as that.

Few things seldom are. Whatever you do to tax some are going to be worse off and/or consider it unfair.

Nice bit of topic drift going now

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I know. You'd better tell Johnnytheboy that though.

Opps I think I'm the queen of that but I'm happy to blame J the B

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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.

In that case, it would not be the cheapest, so I'd reject it. I guess you should always choose the
CHEAPEST (big picture), not the cheapest (little picture). But the point is that we have to put value
on lives, to limit spending, because of resource limits. I often hear "you can't put a value on a life"
but I'm trying to shake that idea up a bit.

That's why I piped up, Tone. Politicians only know how to spend money. In the real world, we have to
keep spendthrifts in check, or we'd be on the street. Almost everything is resource constrained,
even the air. Managing that means that we must teach politicians to save, and only spend on
must-haves, not nice-to-haves.

Yes, sorry. Yet the issues are related. We've heard a lot of ideas about training
"numpties" (if we knew their names!), yet no-one wants more regulations
nor do we want to pay anything out.

Yes. When I heard a police representative say that in order to justify the amount of money being spent on anti-terrorist measures I thought "Tell that to the poor muggers dying of cancer because NICE says that the available drug treatment is not cost effective".

Transport engineers do, of course, put a price on each life saved when considering how much to spend on safety measures.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

That seems a good summary!

If you want to go into it, old people have paid tax all their lives. They still pay tax on their income, even if it is from a pension.
They have paid into the welfare system since it started.
If you really wish to contribute insulting comments then contribute them towards the pensioners who paid nothing for their pensions...index linked and income based. Public servants.

Taxation from motorists:

* Motorists in the UK pay £42.2 billion to the Government in taxation: fuel tax £22.1 billion; Vehicle Excise Duty £4.6 billion; VAT on vehicles £6.8 billion; VAT on fuel £5.6 billion and company car tax £3.1 billion
* In addition, motorists pay another £75.2 billion into the economy through their purchase of vehicles, fuel and basic running costs
* Just £6.7 billion was spent on UK roads infrastructure in 2003
* 92 per cent of all passenger travel is by road
* 6.5 per cent is by rail
* Roads serve 92 per cent of our travel needs
* Britain’s major road network has increased by just 0.06 per cent (under 200 miles/316kms) in 10 years
* Our motorway network ranks among the least developed in Europe (motorway network length to unit of GDP). The UK is fourteenth out of a European league table of 15 - only Ireland has fewer miles


Spending on roads, maintenance and repair:

About £6/7 billion

The real problem facing the country NOW, is the cost of providing pensions for public servants.
Even when deductions are made from salaries they are not invested in anything, those deductions just go to paying those already retired.
The cost of government pensions NOW is £1,000,000,000,000. That is, the cost of paying pensions to the CURRENTLY WORKING public servants and those ALREADY retired.
Fan. Hitting. Shit. The.
So, within 30 years....all the taxation will be needed to pay retirement pensions for government employees.
A bit simplistic ?

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Bunkum, the M1 widening at Hemel Hempstead cost that on its own and that's about four miles of road.

Gosh, I'm sorry. I'd already forgotten starting the discussion of how an army of courtesy cops was going to be paid for. Oh yeah, I didn't.

So, B Cyclist wants us bang on topic again. So, another numpty driver trait:

Driving about with your wing mirrors folded up.

I think the final tally works out at £5.1 billion. Not my problem though. The reason for the over-run on costs is down to poor planning and inadequate costing by the highways agency.
Nothing new there then ?
Another government agency that is overstaffed with under-qualified and over-paid people.
In fact, if you get down to the nitty-gritty of uk life.......most of the problems are due to government. Or rather, the lack of joined-up thinking, or any thinking really.
Too many knee-jerk reactions to poorly thought-out policies.
The point has been made, in the past, that the way to increase economic activity and to better peoples lives, is to reduce government to that necessary to defend the country against invasion. Everything else is just grist to the mill of enlistment of public servants.
Which, by 2030, will have got the country to the point of people paying 75% of their income as taxation just to pay the public servants pensions and salaries.
We URGENTLY need less public servants.
And I don't mean doctors, police or fire personnel.
I mean pen-pushers and academics.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

6/7 Billion on four miles of road? So it's true then, the roads really are paved with gold down south!....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I tend to look over my shoulder rather than use the mirrors so I have done this a few times.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

The government stats say that in 2006/07, total spending on roads in England, including all new construction and maintenance, was £7.0 billion:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/da ... oa1871.pdf

Are the government stats wrong then?

Whereas taxes raised from motorists must have been £40 billion or more.

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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

It's about 240 miles really......when you look at the work involved on other roads......

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

I'll go one step further. I think you can also tell a numpty driver without even seeing him but just by how his car is parked with the front wheels poking out to the right.

They are often big vehicles, like 4x4s & Jags, and by leaving the wheels akimbo it narrows the road sufficiently to prevent more free-flow traffic on narrow roads.

What's their problem? Robbing a bank and need a quick escape or just like the look of their tread?

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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'd agree with malcolmw and others; your numpty is someone not very good at driving, with very little awareness of whats going on around them, generally someone I figure has no interest or enjoyment from driving, it's a conveyance, a mere requirement to achieve their ultimate objective, eg to visit aunt mildrew.

They're normally slow, unobservant, and can be unpredictable, acting without regard to other road users eg straightlining a 3 lane roundabout @ 10mph in blissfull ignorance to the lane markings or the trajectory of other cars.

Road hogs, maniacs, bumper riders etc I don't regard as the "numpty" as they usually like driving and can be technically proficient at handling a car. These drivers might carve out in front of you at a T junction because they want to be out in front and go faster, or they may chop in front of you on the motorway, they know they carved you up, they chose to do so. A numpty on the other hand, will bumble out in front of you at a T junction, or "drift" across into your lane narrowly avoiding collision, with no apparent knowledge of your existence, then trundle off slowly.


Is anyone else out there finding the toyota prius to be a popular numpty car of choice? Now I might be biased slightly given that it's an eco-statement first and by many accounts a poor to average car in every other respect, but thats just what would appeal to the disinterest a numpty shows in the driving process, and my experience of prius drivers is generally they exhibit all the numpty traits.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction