Safe Speed Forums

What? Aren't our gaols full enough for you? Be clear for us, please, do you mean ANYTIME, 24/7? Or are you limiting this to busy times when the amber "bouncing ball" lights flash? Does this mean near the small school in a back street AND the big comprehensive on the main road? We're back to "one size fits all" again, and it simply doesn't work.

And save your gaol time for real killers, please.

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

We like to save effort to concentrate on the more important things in life - such as golf and having fun with the family. We all like to save our brass and get best value for money out of it! We like to have nice things - as this shows status in the overall pecking order. The joys of human nature!

Perhaps the frustration is seeing the technology as such steal some of our thunder. Perhaps the speed of some of this technology is making us think that all results should be instant and immediate. They even think that bodies heal up after ops in an instant!

People have been known to pace up and down glancing at their watches over 45 seconds heat-up time in a microwave. Yet - if heating same product on a hob - they are calm and relaxed!

But - personally do agree - lot of these labour saving gadgets remove the therapeutic satisfaction of doing the job yourself. Also social interactions suffer - people use e-mail when telephone and even speaking to person sat next to you would be more appropriate. And the number of times I have seen someone use a calculator to work out a simple percentage - like 10% instead of using their brain! Over-reliance on technology dulls the brain, breeds apathy, impatience and de-skills! Could be another factor in our accident rate in general!

Clearly - people are not coping as well as they may think to all this wonderful technology - which is now beoming far too intrusive and thus has dangerous implications!



Ah! but in the 70s we had the oil crisis- 50mph limits and three day weeks , Red Robbo in BL - you could not buy a car then due to strikes- and the ones you could buy were pretty naff! (Vx Viva? Victor Allegros? the Austin Princess Oh and the Marina Hillman Imps?

You still could not get that far that quick! People were still angry then!

And I would not say motoring is "dirt cheap" today either. Most new grads will not able to afford decent wheels given the debts accumulated on graduation.

Fast sets of wheels still cost regardless!



Then perhaps it is as well we are adopting at Churchill-like stance!

"We shall fight them ... on the beaches etc..... We shall never surrender!"

Long live the CAR! And to hell with speed cameras!



Ah! But new guidelines seem to suggest 2 points at 31-32mph, 3 points for 35mph and 6 points for 38-40mph in 30mph zone. Plus the fine and there seems to be some talk of increasing that!

Zero tolerance is making mockery of road safety. If that comes into force - we will see more speedo gawping than ever before - and possibly more Pavlov dog behaviour at sight of any van and scamera. Apart from scouring the trees and neighbourhood for the bloke with the super 2000 meter Prolaser jobby!

45mph near a school and gaol? Not enough room anyway! What do you do if school is on 50mph limit road (A580 springs to mind! - no accidents immediately outside school as there are barriers - but further down the road - kids have been run over because they are too lazy to walk few yards to a foot bridge or traffic lights!)

Even during holiday time? At midnight? Early hours of Sunday morning? Even when kids are locked into classrooms? And what about their walk home from school on other roads?

How about teaching them road sense? Green Cross Code? Simple engineering - like good old fashioned barrier between kerb and roadway at these hot danger spots?

Family's teacher works in school on 40mph road. She ensures staff police the area at peak times, oversees the crossings at the pelicans, and they make sure the kids board the school buses calmly. There are barriers between the road and the pavement as well. This also prevents kids from j-walking - as it does for the A580 school. But then again - hopefully these kids will remember what she spends lot of time and effort doing - remembering their daily input fix of Green Cross Code! If they did get run over - she would probably go and finish them off with a tongue lashing!

The system engineeers have a maxim- KISS - which means Keep It Simple, Stupid! That means no exceptions so nobody gets mixed up.

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I stole this .sig

Ok. So we just need one rule then: "don't crash".

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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

I think basingwerk would prefer a modified version of the drink-driving slogan, simply:-

Don't drive!

I jest of course..

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

True, who wants everything to be unecessarily complex. But we shouldn't fall into the trap of oversimplifying things either. Check the sig.

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

or even just

Don't!

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I stole this .sig

Back in the 70's, you could hardly expect to pick up a decent runner for less than a month's wages. Now, cars are better, faster, last longer and far cheaper. In October last year, I got a Corolla Executive 16 valve something or other, for just over half a weeks wages, and it's still going, although it needed an exhaust for ninety quid. It seems pretty nippy to me.

Last year, I got rid of a Nissen ZX twin overhead cam fuel injected coupe something or other with a spoiler that was good for 135 (so I'm told), it cost me 900 quid a few years back. This year, I had to get rid of my wife's 2 litre fuel injected overhead cam Sierra Ghia, that was faster still (so I'm told). That had cost about 3 days wages, and lasted a year. I could have done it up, but it's cheaper to buy another one with a year's MOT thrown in and new tyres.

These are good times if you want cheap motors - the killer is the insurance. I had an absolute limit of £200 a year, but this year, I've had to shell out £212, which is madness.

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I stole this .sig

Try being 17! At least £600 to insure anything in my own name...

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Ah! But that takes the thrills and spills outa life! All business is about risk taking and risk assessment!

We thrive on stress, risk taking, - it gives life that zest, will to live and survive. It is that will to survive which helps us anticipate and react to danger and accidents.

That is why we, as human race, explore the unknown --- go into outer space etc., practise dangerous sports - rugby, white water rafting, hang gliding, parachuting, bungee jumping, steeple chasing, flat racing, downhill ski-ing, off piste ski-ing, speed skating, ice hockey, luge, bobsleigh, American Football, soccer.... (Note most of these are FAST SPEEEEEDY sports. I could add roller coaster rides at the fair ground as well! (And look what happens there if automation breaks down!)

If we had the attention span of average goldfish - you may have point. But we don't.

And it is that zest, curiosity for life which has developed the technology - and we had better start using it correctly before it begins to destroy us - as you correctly point out!

True - and inflation in those days was also running high. Which was why cost of living was beyond wages, and resulted in Labour's wilderness, Tory success and majority megolomania, and downfall due to complacency, weakness and general apathy, and now we are saddled with an increasingly megolamaniacal government again.

Also - we got rid of the red Robbo types, improved our standard of living - due in part - grudge - to technology, and our same zest for life and speed has led to development of better and cheaper cars on aggregate.

But our young graduates will still struggle to afford even these today. Plus insurances as young drivers! Then there is not very simple matter of accommodation costs for them!

Am looking at financial ruin in 2- 4 years time when 3 eldest hit 18 and start really costing me at uni. You have to help 'em these days!


Mike

Always been pricey Mike! Looking at costings for our eldest already

I got seriously into debt as student in clinical study years - bought the totty tempter Triumph Stag. Bank Manager owned most of it for years - even after graduation! My parents were not amused at the time Insurance? Even third party took some managing!

Was well worth it though! Pure pleasure of driving - not to mention queues of absolute babes wanting to try out the passenger seat!

Still the wife (we were made for each other! ) blew all her allowance on fast motorbike and took the new "boyfriend" home to meet Papa! Apparently, he blew a gasket at the time! (She tells me it was family tradition to do this - and as one of the youngest - she had only done what the "nerds" had done before her. Only she was the only girly to buy high powered motor bike! ) Anyway - she was on poverty line for long time - and even had to take to scrounging left-overs at one point!

Yes but there are a few things, though. I'm working on the KISS principle, so I can't see any value in variable maximum limits - that just gets people going. I can’t go with the idea of no enforced maximum limits, especially not on urban streets and single carriageways – the idea is too wacky, and the rule that the maximum right speed is the lower of the safe speed and the limit is about right. I can maybe go with the idea that coppers should have some discretion, and I can go with the idea that penalties should be gradual, without this shock-horror thing about 3 penalty points for 31 mph, which doesn’t make sense, and turns average ‘thumb in bum’ drivers into speedo-gazers.

I can’t go with the idea that limits should not be enforced concretely. I can’t see the sense of having coppers standing at the roadside with radars, when machines can do that. I can go with the idea that instruments (of any kind) should be fairly sited, where they have the best effect on reducing danger, not for maximum revenue.

I believe that revenue from motorists should be hypothecated back into safety initiatives of one kind or another, not go to our Scottish friend in the treasury and mixed in the general tax take. I think some or even all of this money might be spent on training schemes and public knowledge transfer.

Most of all, I think that motorists have to respond to these monitoring and control instruments, because they are inevitable. I think the ‘thumb in bum, mind in neutral’ brigade spend far too much time in speedo-watching mode, so they need audible speed violation warnings from the dash, which should be easy to implement from a systems point of view.

And I don’t think the evidence for the diminishing returns fatality curve is conclusive at all, because we have no parallel universe to judge what might have been.

Any comments?

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I stole this .sig

Agreed. (but not exactly the same reason - The thing I hate about variable limits is the unfulfillable implied promise that they represent safe speeds)



I agree with speed limits too, mainly because inexperienced drivers need guidance.



Agreed-ish. If penalties are going to deliver safety benefits then they need to be graded by danger or risk. Grading them so that +30 on a deserted motorway at dawn is a much higher penalty than a suicidal +10mph in the rain or the fog and the dark in exceptionally busy conditions is just completely barking. And dangerous.



Again, it must be driven by safety. Camera can't deliver safety because they can't recognise safety violations - they only recognise technical violations.



I don't give a damn about hypothecated revenues. If safety deserves investment, it shouldn't be limited by the number of fines or the taxes raised. I also worry about a load of unecessary admin required to make the ringfencing work. Where's the public benefit?

I would however make "bad drivers" pay for their own training, which, I suppose, is closely related in terms of principle, but without the overhead.



If monitoring systems create danger - and I believe they do (because they distort safety priorities and more), then the monitoring systems have no place anywhere near the roads.



The "parallel universe" of course is the prior performance. But the trend loss isn't primary evidence, rather it is confirmation of mechanisms already understood and expected.

Have a read of the "why do drivers speed?" thread. There are a whole lot of interlocking facts and principles here leading to worthy assessments of what's important and what not.

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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