Safe Speed Forums

I would have thought that 'Drunk and Incapable' would include the inability to walk home unaided.

I appreciate that as drivers we should all be driving to account of others' mistakes and lapses etc (including pedestrians), but all those 'others' should also have some individual responsibility

Basingwerk what are you suggesting? That we should work where we live and not travel? That your pretty little village should have no vehicles? Can you really grow enough food etc?

Grow up please, the motor vehicle is an integral part of our society. I would hazard a guess that you do occasionally make use of one yourself.

You come up with a workable alternative and I'll do my best to adopt it. Until then please don't start whinging about our reliance on motor vehicles and please don't suggest that its alright provided that it is not in your back yard

so are speed cameras

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Which is a shame for road safety. To be frank with you if my intention was to race round the country I'd rather the speed cameras than the police.

Sadly the trade off for the Governments mis- informed policy on speed cameras has been the loss of traffic police, the increase in Drink driving, uninsured/unlicensed drivers, unregistered vehicles, dangerous driving and of course not forgetting an increase in deaths on the road.

Still you know best

Well, you'll be sadly disappointed, because the next wave of monitoring
technology may not involve cameras at all, but RF boxes installed by
insurance companies that lower your rate if you are a low risk, i.e. if
you don't break the limit. I'm actually in favour of that because it puts
the costs of control firmly where they belong - on motorists, rather
than the general tax payer.



But you didn't say that, did you! Just like I didn't say that we should work
where we live and not travel and that my pretty little village should have
no vehicles. I also didn't mention growing enough food etc? Nor did I deny
that the motor vehicle is an integral part of our society. Nor did I whinge
about reliance on motor vehicles and lastly, I did not suggest that its
alright provided that it is not in my back yard! All that stuff is part of your
fertile imagination, Patch!

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I think that this quote says pretty well all that you claimed it did not. Your words may be different but the sentiment is clear.

NIMBY

Not entirely true, and in any case, not relevant to the point I was making.

Yes, electricians are trained, but who’s talking about electricians anyway? Not me.
Talking about qualified electricians is irrelevant here, since there’s nothing, legal or
otherwise, to stop me playing silly buggers with the plug sockets in my house. After all, I
own them and can pretty much do what I like when the only person likely to get killed or
injured is myself. Yes, socket fascias are designed to prevent anything being inserted into
the live socket accidentally, but I can’t believe you or anyone else could possibly think
that it’s a foolproof system. We both know that inserting something more or less the same
size and shape as the earth pin of a plug into the top hole will open the gates (or whatever
they’re called) that protect the live and neutral holes. A little bit of experimentation and
ZZZZZTTTT Now, if I was stupid enough to do that, or to use a more realistic
scenario, if I was daft enough to do a bit of electrical DIY without first flicking the
appropriate switch on the MCB (well, actually pulling a fuse as I’ve still got a fusebox) I
run the risk of electrocution. The responsibility for that would be mine and mine alone.
How can I possibly expect someone else to take that responsibility for me? And even if
that were possible, would I be any less electrocuted? Obviously not.

True, but again, irrelevant. A shotgun certificate does not make the holder’s head more
resistant to being hit by an ounce of shot at several hundred miles per hour. Nor does it
necessarily mean that the holder is immune to a momentary, and potentially lethal, lapse.
What it does mean is that the holder is a responsible person who is highly unlikely to
make the error of cleaning the gun without first ensuring that it was entirely safe to do so.
Again, this is all drifting away from the point. I’m talking about the need for us all to take
responsibility for our own actions. In reality I very much doubt that any shotgun owner
would clean their gun without first making it safe (which is simple enough to do with a
normal shotgun after all, just open the thing up), but then I expect that most shotgun
owners wouldn’t get legless enough to fall into the road in front of traffic either.

The fact that the MOD feels the need for barriers, fences, gates and guards suggests to me
that they recognise that red flags on their own aren’t sufficient. Again, while this is
true, it is beside the point. If someone were to successfully get past those measures and
then have an artillery shell land on their toes, it would not be the responsibility of the
army. They may get blamed for not making the fences high enough, or whatever, but no
-body forced the idiot to wander round their ranges.


Yes, all you have to do is stumble at the wrong place or time. That’s precisely why it is
so important that as pedestrians, which all of us are in addition to being drivers, we take
responsibility and be careful out there.

It’s just a matter of acknowledging the risk and then avoiding it. Not hard at all. I’m sorry
to keep banging on about it, but when I am near the road I stay on the pavement. That
doesn’t entirely eliminate the risk of course, but vehicles mount the pavement pretty
rarely, so the odds I can live with. I’m still not dead yet, so I’m either lucky or it’s working.

I do agree that many people no longer recognise the risk anymore. In fact, not only do I
agree, I’d say that’s the root of the problem. However, I don’t think that this has anything
whatsoever to do with the road lobby. Nobody ever said that walking out in front of a car
was safe, least of all the road lobby. I’m generalising here, but I expect the road lobby
would be much happier if pedestrians woke up and realised that getting in the way of a
car on the road is inherently dangerous, and simply stayed on the pavement. This is just
complacency and laziness on the part of some people. Rather than taking care of
their own safety they’d rather TPTB made other people responsible for them.

Too bloody right. I work from home
Anyhow, 1 ton lumps of steel at 50 through the workplace is comparing apples and
oranges, mate. The purpose of a road is to carry traffic, so there is nothing wrong with it
being used as such. It simply bears no comparison with most workplace environments. I
don’t know Pontblyddyn, but if there’s a rat run problem there that’s a slightly different
issue. Still, rat run or not, the locals have a responsibility to themselves to be sensible
around the roads until a solution is found, possibly by making the A55 a more attractive
route by upgrading. Whatever is done, when the traffic is reduced to a better level the
locals will still need to take care by the road. Short of making it pedestrian only there will
always be vehicles on the road, and so there will always be the need for caution before
rolling out of the pub blind drunk.

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

Once upon a time - they had 7 year apprenticeships, then it dropped to 5 years and now Jobseekers/Third Way/ Noo Labia gimmicks are churning out "electricians" after 13 week courses.

Most of these go forth and wreck other people's homes...

More manage to end up in casualty. In fact - this sort of thing accounts for more KSIs than manic drivers - excpet - they cannot make money out of this sort of thing - and they do not want to put off "suicidal" electricians ...





The bloke who shot all those kiddies in Scotlands had all the right papers - he still murdered them...

Besides - magistrates are not known for common sense - you only have to look at the daft sentences they pass in name of "political correctness!"

In any case - our cars/licences can be checked by BiB at any time - if one can be found - in scam prat hotspot that is!




Amazing how many people do.

It is also amazing how many people ignore red flags on Morecambe Bay, Southport beach, and Cuxhaven Watten in North Germany ...



All accidents have element of "wrong place, wrong time". Wildy was "wrong place, wrong time" as was Ferdl.

Train comes off the rails for whatever reason - wrong time, wrong train for those on board. One of the family's pals was in Tower One on Monday, 10 September 2001. He had changed the time of the meeting by chance. He could just as easily have been in that building the following day...

You meet person carrying a virus - which is not particularly dangerous - only by chance it happens to attack your heart muscle - requiring you to have transplant surgery or die. You may need the poor person who dies by chance in an accident...... sounds harsh? That is what the person requiring the donor is really asking for though - because the technology to do this exists. The harsh realities of life basingwerk ... am I saying we need deaths in RTAs? NO! Not at all. But we cannot dispute this happens either.



Those tourists - they get everywhere!

In 2001 - Cumbria was complaining because of drop in tourist industry. We want tourists. Tourists bring cash. Tourists arrive in ..... cars!

So - if they want the money the tourists bring - they use common snese and accept that they are also responsible for ensuring they apply Green Cross code common sense when out and about.

Hit button twice

I'm actually a PIPBY - Preferably In Patch's Back Yard.
But you are off target again, Patch - Pontblyddyn is 200 miles from my place.

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Quote:- To be frank with you if my intention was to race round the country I'd rather the speed cameras than the police.

'Cos Scameras can't catch bikers!!!!!!!!!

Quote:- To be frank with you if my intention was to race round the country I'd rather the speed cameras than the police.

'Cos Scameras can't catch bikers!!!!!!!!! (Especially ex-job!)

To help me make my point and show you it’s relevance, let's put this in a Darwinian context for a minute. In this context, there is a trade-off between rational intellectualisation, and acting on base instinct. A great Darwinian advantage that (some!) humans posses is that we can understand intellectually that innocuous things can be dangerous. We learn, or are taught, not to play silly buggers with plug sockets, eat strange white powders, drink stuff from that bottle at the back of the shed or walk in the middle of the road. These are the types of example you give. We learn not to shoot ourselves, nor walk in front of artillery. To help us when it isn’t obvious, we use flags, signs, shutters, locks, gates, barriers, procedures, life belts, fuses, fire alarms, crash barriers, flashing lights, emergency stop buttons, beach guards and (the list goes on and on).

However, at a lower level, we share with other animals another great Darwinian advantage - the ability to act impulsively. This is great for spotting a bit of prey and hunting it down on the fly, or for spotting a hole in the oppositions defence and scoring a goal.

These two advantages are often aligned and mutually advantageous, but sometimes they are not, and form a fundamental tension. Now, taking one of your examples, when you are gearing up to stick those prongs in the plug, you would have to think through how to open that top-hole and push that gate aside, so you are already in rational intellectualisation mode. If you really want to, you can hurt yourself, but you have to make a little effort to do so.

Now, when a 9 year old is toodling along the road on his scooter, he is unlikely to be so primed, and he only needs to slip, step or see something interesting in the gutter before light out forever, without ever going near rational intellectualisation mode. So there you are - its too easy to get killed that way, and we need basic protection against it.

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SMIDSY moves keep bikers well in check!

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I am aware you live a long way away now – the Home counties perhaps ? Maybe the quarter of a century you lived in this area was a long time ago. I have lived ‘5 miles from there’ for nearly 20 years. Maybe you can argue that it is a valley because the river Alun runs from Mold to Wrexham sometimes near the roads. But you check out the map from the URL – the contours are rather far apart. Most people would not describe the area as a valley - the topography is far too flat for that.
So I’d still like to hear your further explanation of why you call the road a death trap narrow road ??
Basingwerk, I have followed your choice of wording with some curiosity - you seem to alternate between the kind of pedantic logic and rigid adherence to regulations employed by the scamerati PR folk such as Steve Callaghan of the Cumbria SCP and the deliberate and skewed choice of words that the publicists in orgs such as T200 and Brake routinely use.
Such as
A541 = death trap narrow road
Cars = great lumps of ugly, oily iron blasting along
And you appear to have some engineering knowledge
So Basingwerk, are you SCP or are you or are you anti-car lobby. If the latter please tell us that you do not use a car at all.
As for our tiny, winding village roads you describe, they might have been half a century ago. The A541 is a main road linking Mold and Wrexham. These are not tiny picturesque villages any more they are centres of commerce, employment housing and education. And there are several thousand people morning and evening using the A541 to get from one place to the other. Public transport is simply not an option for most, the 2 railways linking Mold and Wrexham/Chester were closed in the 60’s. The last bus for Wrexham leaves Mold at 17:45 while many including my daughter are still at work. This is the same story I suspect for much of semi-rural UK. Much of the road is wide, about 33% is dual carriageway but over the last few 4 years the modern breed of “ traffic engineer” following the new govt anti-car policy has tinkered with what are basically safe roads and used hatchings and unnecessarily low speed limits to restrict the overtaking opportunity. This leads to increased risk ..and increased opportunities of revenue collection for the local camera partnership parasites
Your comment about the A55 implying that this A-road is some kind of ‘rat-run’ is incorrect – The A55 is an East- West Euroroute – it’s entirely appropriate that someone wishing to get from SW of
My objection is that a section of road like so many others in the UK nowadays can be subject to arbitrarily reduced speed limits simply on the emotive whim of a single voceriferous individual and not the considered professional opinion of a trained engineer.

Since we're talking about the stupid and potentially self destructive behaviour of people who should know better, I had been considering Darwinism too. Not just the Darwin Awards either.


That's one way of looking at it. I think it's evidence for a Stupidity Gene, myself. Never mind all that guff about wingless fruit flies and different coloured sweet peas. Let's look at why some people can't recognise obvious danger when it stares them in the face. Presumably their prehistoric counterparts with active Stupidity Genes would wander about in front of sabre toothed cats, trying to work out why everyone else had cleared off back to the caves.


And we have a basic protection already. One that works well and has been around for millennia. It comes in two parts, education and supervision. As a toddler I was always accompanied when outside by the road. That’s the supervision bit. When I got a little older my parents were able to explain the dangers, on top of which there was Tufty and Dave Prowse in his Green Cross Code man kit. That’s the education bit. It must have worked okay as I was perfectly capable of riding my bike to junior school and crossing the road without being flattened.

basingwerk, you gave the example of a nine year old on a scooter, and said said "he is unlikely to be so primed" in terms of understanding dangers. Personally I'd worry if a child that old hasn't learnt something so basic by that age. You don't have to be particularly intelligent, just not stupid . Of course, children learn at different rates, and for that reason it is only sensible to supervise a child who isn't clued up yet. This is mainly a parental responsibility, but in the past we did have Tufty and the Green Cross Code man to cover those kids whose parents had the Stupidity Gene but who may not have inherited it themselves. Adults are another matter, and they're the ones that really annoy me when they don't behave responsibly around roads. It's astonishing that a rational, apparently intelligent, adult can step out into the road without first looking to see if it is safe to do so. We can talk about drunks and the pharmaceutically impaired, but come on. Getting so drunk or stoned that you're no longer capable of using the pavement safely is just as stupid as wandering into the road while you're sober. One is simply failing to exercise your judgement, the other is deliberately supressing it. This may sound harsh, but if they get run over my sympathy goes mostly to the family and the driver.

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

You sound pretty vociferous yourself, so I assume its a good thing. I can read your comment in two ways. First, you think your needs are more important than the people who live near the road. That's not true now. Second, you would not object if a section of road is subject to reduced speed limits due to local complaints, as long as it is aligned with the opinion of a trained engineer. I would only differ with that by adding that, where locals and engineers can't reach a consensus, politicians will arbitrate. That appears to have been done in this case, and I am happy with the outcome.

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I am not sure where this attitude fits in then

Nice sentiments, though the term levy implies a financial cost rather than safety considerations. I'm sure you're not talking about tolls though just speed restrictions? I suspect we'll disagree over the necessary levels rather than the need for a restriction in principle.
I like the do-as-you-would-be-done-by approach. Presumably that means if I promise to pay attention and not drive on the pavement, pedestrians will agree to pay attention and not walk into the road.


It wasn't so long ago that you seemed less than keen on the input of engineers. Have I misread you? You seem to be saying that local demand should only influence the setting of limits if supported by engineers. That suggests that if the engineers find no case for revising the limit the locals should not get their way.

Ah, obviously not. It's almost a given that local politicians will take the side of the locals over the engineers, expecially if local elections are looming. This has absolutely nothing to do with safety. Local politicians would be the last group I would want to arbitrate on such a matter as they have a vested interest in keeping one group sweet. Arbitration is supposed to be independant and unbiased, and councillors will almost certainly not be. The engineers would normally be the most impartial.

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

Just getting back on topic for a second, I was nearly rear-ended twice this morning, amazingly, the same driver each time. Wet road (& muddy for the first near-miss). There's nothing quite like seeing a sliding, panicked Escort van getting big in your rear view mirror to encourage you to appraise your own driving style. Proud to have passed the test today, if I hadn't have followed the tailgating advice referred to in previous posts I would have been on the phone to the insurers all morning.

Having said this, both incidents occurred well under the speed limit, so surely there couldn't have been an accident?