Safe Speed Forums

And that's why we should go ... slowly. Thanks. At last it's starting to work.

Driving slowly can be a mistake!

Look at that poor old thing doing 10mph on the M32, she got done for it; not very relaxing at all.

How slowly? Do you feel 30 mph on all motorways is about right or, dare I say it, do you feel the conditions and circumstances matter? Well what a revelation that would be! Thanks. At last it's starting not to work.

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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.

Oh, Johnnytheboy, let's be human about this. You are not following my rule, remember: delay your arrival as much as you can bear. I don't expect that would be very much, for you, so just contribute what you can to slowness. Even a couple of mph makes a difference.

The rule is "as slowly as you can bear". Just delay your arrival as bit.
It'll differ for each driver, but speedy cats should give us (say)
5 mph, or 10 if you are generous (e.g. 20's plenty).

Look, I know it's a paradigm shift - car makers show us pictures of
guys going somewhere as fast as they can. We're turning it around.
Just aim to go as slow as you can bear, for the traffic conditions.
You'll soon get a feel for it, give it a try. Remember, the goal is
to delay your arrival (for safety), not to bring it nearer.

Go on, try it for two weeks, and let us know...

Even the slow drivers are at risk of accident; wait, aren't they at greater risk than the average driver?

It doesn’t detract from the error that only bad drivers desire fully comp.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Well, you could be saying that the faster you go, the safer you are, which is tosh. So I'll be kind and assume you you're getting the point - the average speed is too high, and they endanger other drivers as well as themselves. The answer? A slower average.



You can't have it both ways. If good drivers desire fully comp against crashes, then the inference is that it isn't good enough to be good. No matter how good you are, a crash is still a plausible outcome of every journey you make. Sobering, eh?

Anyway, stop side-tracking us. You still haven't yet explained how you'd offset the lack of care in those who won't have a pay a penny if they screw up and knock a kid over. You don't have to trust me - the facts of the matter are discussed in the literature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance# ... s_too_much). dcbwhaley gets it, so why can't you? Insurance creates higher risk by making the insured less risk-averse ; that's the way of the world, and it's time you came out of your denial.

Looks, let's band up here and change the world for the good of all. Just knock a few mph off the top, and relax a bit. If we all join in, pretty soon we'll make a dent in the accident rates. Just give it a try, instead of harping negatively from the sidelines.

PS: safer cars have the same effect. Drivers become less risk averse if they drive a safer crate. It's well known.

Of course your statement is tosh; there is also an upper limit for which 'fast' is safe.

A needlessly slow average encourages disrespect and for the law and disobedience of the limits.
There is also the issue of fatigue, which results with more accidents than exceeding the limits on the faster roads. Slower, even when averaged, isn't always safer.


Yes, but it isn't very likely, it may not happen at all. Remember, I didn't say everyone can expect to crash.

Piece of mind can also have a valuable effect, taking that away will result with unrelaxed and stressed drivers - yet you seem to call for drivers to "relax a bit".


Who asked me to explain what and when/where? I didn't realise a question had been asked of me.
To answer anyway: TP, TPFT


What makes you think I don't get it? Just the potential of being involved in a collision should be enough to make people more risk-averse. I wonder about anyone who is significantly more risk averse when not fully comp beyond the potential of losing their mode of transport, losing their entitlement to drive, being arrested, imprisoned, injured or even killed, let alone killing someone else.


There'll always be those who always believe a bit more can be knocked off - until no-one drives at all; only then will those people be happy.


It is also well known that people with nice vanity cars are more risk averse than those with disposable crates....

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

did i miss the answer to the question.... "who is we ?" ?

That's easy to tell, actually. Third party only rates for "nice vanity cars" should be much cheaper, to account for this "risk aversion" that you speak of. Yet that's not true at all. Us crate drivers get insured for 99 pounds a year. As usual, your fantasy figures don't stack up at all. Weird, eh?

"We" are the drivers who are fed up with the heavy footed macho men who are polluting, sorry populating
our road space. We are just asking them, basically, to sell their balls and buy some brains. It ain't
rocket science.

That might be something to do with disposable cars having little or no sale/replacement value (possibly less than the insurance cost), and vanity cars having a very high/premium replacement value (usually much more than the cost of insurance). If follows that an equal risk will result with a higher premium for the high value vehicle, purely because it is costlier to replace. Thus the driver of the 'crate' can be seen to be generally riskier when comparing the 'replacement value to insurance cost' ratio.

This makes perfect sense; people are more likely to look after their high value (especially vanity) cars than disposable crates.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Fascinating sloganising again, aber, but what you wrote doesn't appear to have anything to do with what you quoted.

Can you name any? I've never met anyone in person who comes out with such tosh, so I'm inclined to think it's just you and some imaginary friends, unless you'd care to prove me wrong!

Quickly flicking through the No. 10 petition site I can see multiple petitions to reduce various facets of the nationwide speed limits, and they all have about eight genuine signatories (one of whom is always Abdullah Rhodes-Taylor, which sounds a bit made up to me), so maybe you have up to seven likeminded friends...

The petition linked in my sig has 35,000 by comparison...

I do that sometimes even if it would be safe to go much faster, 10% over the speed limit, painful but bearable if it means saving ones license. Most of the time though I do not let personal feelings dictate my speed, I let safety considerations do that.

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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 wasn't going to mention it but...




What did I ask back there? You okay Abercrombie?

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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.

On second thoughts whichever of us took her to A&E would probably have been charged with leaving the scene

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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

You are, without doubt, a complete and utter moron.

Let me give you an example. Highly contrived but it's to illustrate the point.

You come round a bend to be confronted by an overtaking car heading straight for you on your side of the road.

There isn't enough room to pass nearside to nearside.

You've got two very stark choices:

1. Go head-on, write both cars off and more than likely end up with serious injuries. I wouldn't want to go head-on with a closing speed of over 100mph even in my "Panzer" A4. It's going to hurt, bones will be broken. But according to your logic this is ok because the other guy's on your side of the road - so it's his fault and his insurance will pay out. I'm sure my future wife and kids would take great comfort in knowing that if I wasn't lucky enough to walk away with serious injuries.

2. Ditch the car to avoid the head-on. (I've actually had to do this once.) Insurance-wise you're screwed unless you or a witness got the other guy's number plate. But you'll walk away, probably without a scratch, and your fully comp insurance will pay for the damage caused to your car. Which may only be minor, may be more serious - in my case I wiped out a traffic light as I ran out of space, but that caused far less damage than running head-on into another car on the wrong side of the road.

When I did this I needed a new front bumper, grille, bonnet, radiator, heat exchanger, water pump etc (caused by hitting the traffic light) and a new alloy, tyre and suspension arms on the front near side (caused by driving up a kerb at 40mph). But I was completely unhurt and the car was repaired as good as new.

Unfortunately I didn't get the other guy's number so had to claim off my insurance, however they settled on a "without prejudice" basis. Had I not had fully comp then I'd have been landed with a repair bill of around £8,000.

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...

On the other hand, you seem to have fallen headlong into my trap, by showing that driving is ALWAYS dangerous,
no matter how you personally behave, so thanks, you chump. So drive more slowly and have more chance. Thanks for
your kinds words.

You missed the word potentially there, in the same way that walking down a flight of stairs is potentially dangerous, get is wrong and you break your neck and die. Continuing this analogy we can see that descending the staircase by flinging yourself down it would have a high risk of injury so this should be avoided. Slowing down a little let try running down the stairs, if the person has sufficient motor/physical skills for the pace they select then the risk exists, but is manageable. The problem of course is if someone else needs to use the stairs at the same time, running could well lead to a collision as more space is needed for changes of direction and to stop than say walking and you do not know how competent the other people are. So now as there are other staircase users we are walking, we can of course still fall and break our necks, handrails however would help us recover and prevent this. Of course if we hold onto the handrail and descended one step at a time putting both feet on each step falling becomes even less likely, the problem is we could still loose concentration and fall or someone else could push us. To combat this we sit on the top step and shuffle down the stairs one by one slowly but surely reaching the bottom, it takes a long time but everyone gets there eventually. Of course everyone must do this as anyone walking may fall over or nudge some else sit stepping down. At some point it is decided that using stairs is altogether too risky and if we all just stayed on our floors it would be much safer. Eventually all changes of level are banned as it is deemed more fair to deny such movement to all rather than simply exclude those unable to cope with stairs safely.

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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