Safe Speed Forums

The magistrates said it was because the other bloke was driving without due care and attention. He got a nine month ban. He was 18 years old. He came around a very tight turn in a white van on a 40 mph stretch of of the A1123. He was going to fast to make the curve, strayed way over into into our lane and we happened to be in the wrong part of the road at the wrong time.



That's an interesting conclusion, in the light of what happened.



In my case, an 18 year old yahoo was going too fast to make the curve. It would have been better for him if he had been driving under the limit, and much better for us. How many 18 year old yahoos have crashed head on into you when you are halfway around a bend and unable to take evasive action? When one does, let me know and you can join the club.

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It isn't a conclusion. It is a simple statement of truth. There is no automatic causal link between speed and collisions and the fact that plenty of vehicles travel safely at high speeds every day proves that. Where inappropriate speed is a factor in an accident the inappropriate speed is a consequence of other actions or failures and it is those actions or failures that are the cause.



That is a classic example of inappropriate speed for the conditions. You really are naive, simplistic, and ignorant of Paul's arguments, aren't you? You state that in your case it would have been much better for everyone if the 18 year old had been under the limit. In another situation (say snow or ice) even being on or just under the legal limit might have been inappropriate for the conditions.

The rest of us would argue that it was ignorance and inexperience that caused the accident. Teaching the ignorant and inexperienced to read the road conditions and set their speed accordingly would have prevented accidents in both scenarios above. Teaching the ignorant and inexperienced to blithely comply with the limit would have prevented only one.

That is the fundamental credo of SafeSpeed.

Since when has the natural speed of a road been equal to the maximum speed of the vehicle you're driving along it at the time? Every time I'm behind the wheel I've got a potential 146MPH under my right foot, but I've never, EVER, even remotely considered the natural speed of any road I've driven on to be near that figure. Surely the natural speed of a road is the speed at which, in the absence of any deliberate attempts to slow the traffic down (scameras, humps, chicanes etc.) the majority of vehicles are being driven. There are some urban 30MPH roads in central London where 15-20MPH feels suicidal, conversely there are some dual carriageways/motorways with a sub-NSL limit where NSL or above feels more appropriate. So no, I don't think the performance of the vehicle you're driving has much, if anything, to do with the natural speed of a given road.



I beg to differ. The natural speed of a road changes with the weather, the volume of traffic, changes to roadside structures (e.g. barriers moved closer to or further from the carriagway), alterations to the available width of road (narrowed lanes through roadworks, parked cars on both sides of a road, traffic calming schemes etc.).

If you think the idea is silly, consider what would happen if we tore down every single speed limit sign in the country, ripped up every hump, chicane and other lumps of tarmac and concrete laid down in the name of traffic calming, and scrapped every speed camera. How many drivers, given complete and utter freedom to drive at whatever speed they liked, would choose to drive much, if at all, faster than they do right now? Whilst we can never be certain of the answer to that question, my gut instinct tells me that we wouldn't see a noticeable change in the behaviour of the majority of drivers. Sure, you'd get some idiots taking advantage of the situation to tear through the city centre at 100+, but these are the same idiots who ALREADY tear through city centres at speeds which, if they were ever caught, would see them faced with an immediate ban (which, of course, they'd promptly ignore, just as they ignore the existing laws regarding speed limits, car tax, insurance, MOTs...).



The question you need to ask then is, if the system is naturally tending towards a behaviour that is out of specification, is it the behaviour of the system that's wrong, or the specification...

Yes, one thing leads to another. Those things are important, so go up there and deal with the theoretical stuff that you find. Don't expect me to though - I'm more focused zapping bad drivers who zoom along, thumb in bum mind in neutral.



Right on - he should have been under the limit, and the limit should be 30 mph by that corner, and they need a camera right there to spot these turkeys and others like them. The locals are asking for one and I'm putting in a report to back that.



That is another odd conclusion. I think the limit is the absolute top limit, and slower is better. The top speed should be the lower of the safe speed for the conditions, and the absolute max.



and then



This guy failed on both counts, which is worse than failing on just one of them. Yet, you sound as if you belivee that one precludes the other. Drivers must read the road conditions and set their speed accordingly, within the top limit.

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Basingwerk, Are you now saying that if we all drove at 10 mph or under we'd have 100% accident free roads?

Surely you can see that this is not the case?

If you drove everywhere at 10 mph, the 15 minute journey you make into town whould become 45 minutes.

the 15 minute journey you make along the motorway would become an hour and a half.

do you really want to have to get up for work at 5 am just because you have to go there at some mind numbing speed? Excuse my simplistic argument, but isn't speed the thing that keeps us interested in what's going on in front of us? Try driving everywhere at 10mph for a week and see how much attention you can pay to the roads. Notice how safe you feel? (on an empty road) Notice how you now have ages until that corner arrives? notice how hungry you are? notice how you wonder what's for dinner? notice how you wonder if anyone's replied to your post on here? notice did you feed the cat? notice how you've just crawled over that pedestrian (who also wasn't taking any notice of you because you're going "too slow to pose a threat") and into the ditch?

With all due respect I am beginning to think that your accident may have in some way affected your ability to think rationally, or perhaps (as I was tempted to post in my last response to when you considered merely what would have prevented your accident) you are simply selfish.

You state these factors are important and then choose to ignore them??!! The causes of actual accidents aren't theoretical - the causes exist and have to be investigated if they aren't to be repeated. As I have already said it is insufficient to waste time and resources merely mitigating their effects or confusing cause with effect when the cause can be established and prevented.

By your argument perhaps we should just ignore research into cancer prevention as we can just go on hacking people up and removing the big lumps that eventually would otherwise kill them??? The lumps are the effect of cancer and cancer is the cause of death. The lumps aren't the cause. This is called a chain of causality and is (was ) a well respected legal procedure.



Now I think you are winding us up. I live in an area that is subject to snowy conditions perhaps 5 days in the year. By your guage the limit on the roads around me should be set to the appropriate speeds for those 5 days and that limit should apply ALL YEAR ROUND? Did your head take a knock in that accident by any chance???



Chain of causality again my ignorant friend - one does indeed preclude the other, but it isn't a two-way correspondence. Had he succeeded on my count then he may have succeeded on yours automatically and been under the limit.

However, regardless of whether or not he was under the limit, had he been educated to drive, at all times, at an appropriate speed for the conditions your accident would have been avoided, as would an accident in worse weather conditions. Had he succeeded on your count only then your accident would have been avoided but others wouldn't. That is my point about ignorance and ultimately misguided selfishness on your part.

I expect there could be a few cases of people getting run over if they were particularly slow at crossing the roads, and some people would still run over their kids backing out, so no, that's not right at all. Why do you ask?


Consider yourself excused, Volkswillow.



Danger keeps us interested! We should make cars out of glass to increase driver awareness. Drivers would be more "interested" at low speeds, then.



I assume you are referring to London, which is a poor place for driving, 10mph being optimistic. It has improved since the congestion charge, I am told. But that is not the limit in town, 30 mph is. If you suffer from a disorder that makes you bored when you drive at this speed, then please stay of the roads until your condition improves.

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I've often said that we should drive as if we're a bonnet ornament, meaning that we'd be far safer drivers if we took ourselves out of our little pods and said hello to the real dangers.

As for the 30 mph limit, what happens when you get yor wish and the speed limit is lowered to 30 everywhere and you find we still have accidents? You'll just wish for the speed limit to be put down to 20, then 10, eventually cars will be banned and we'll walk everywhere, will they?

Yes, it would make the roads safer, but what happens when your child stops breathing? wheres the ambulance to speed him/her to hospital?

and Yes, the sad fact of the matter is that danger keeps us interested, as humans we're subject to boredom and in boredom we become distracted. If we know there's something ahead to deal with, we'll be distracted by that, once we've done that ,the next thing and the next.

I've never driven in london, but if the case is that it's improved since the congestion charge was introduced, then in your "stick to the limit" blindness, you're saying you'd happily drive through the centre of london at 30 mph if it were possible?

For the record, I do not have a condition that makes me bored at 30 mph, but my condition would make me bored at 10mph. As I said before. it's called humanism and unfortunately, we all suffer from it, even you

My selfishness knows no bounds. But I'm also political, and I can make a deal with people who make sense. Scrapping the speed limit makes no sense, not does ignoring it (which is the same thing), unless we are living in a world so surreal that some of the codes of road behaviour don't apply because some individuals don't like them.



And I have encouraged you to do that. But the best place for me to expend effort is in encouraging the use of technology to track down and punish testosterone fueled dimwits who continue to zoom along thumb in bum, mind in neutral.



Go for it, r11co, it might work. But please leave me to get along with my speeder-bashing crusade; those boneheads need all the speed cameras we can afford to empty thier pockets and subsidise my safe driving.



Are we going down analogy lane, again? OK then, By your analogy, we would stop removing the big lumps that eventually will kill them, in order to devote all our resources to long term research into cancer prevention, saving no one in the short term!



No way. Set your speed to less than or equal to the lower of the safe speed for the conditions, and the absolute max.




Yes, and when I came round, the path to take was clear to me!




If you say that makes sense, I'll have to trust you on that one, r11co.





Smart and slow is safest, but if you are stupid, then you may as well be slow. I can agree with that, especially the part about me being selfish!

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Next time you think about making a stupid statement like that Basingwerk, remember where you are and who you are talking to.



I disagree entirely. Smart is safe, stupid shouldn't be going anywhere. 'Fast' and 'slow' then becomes irrelevant as speed becomes implicit in 'safe'.....SafeSpeed.

basingwerk, this is what I mean by making things too simple. As simple as possible, but not simpler, right? Because solutions that are too simple can be ineffective. Here you want to treat a symptom rather than a cause - zap the drivers rather than address their driving. It's made even less effective by the fact that the treatment is necessarily delayed by up to two weeks. Longer in fact for vehicles that have been borrowed, leased or hired. Time for the driver to forget what exactly it was that earned him the ticket. In the mind 40mph may have become only 35mph, no-one got hurt, he didn't put anyone in danger, why don't they go catch some real criminals etc. Had he been stopped by plod at the time for a lecture and/or ticket the thought processes may have been different. A little more guilt and humility for the copper, as opposed to feeling aggrieved and put upon when a NIP lands on the mat. And of course, the copper will be more alert to other factors that may have contributed to the overspeed - slurred speech by a drunk driver, car smelling like a Dutch ashtray etc.

Of course, even this is an over simplification in that the copper that stops a motorist is still treating a symptom rather than the disease. As long as the symptom is our prority the disease remains more or less unchecked. The disease I'm talking about is the one that upsets you, the thumb in bum mind in neutral mob. I don't believe that camera policy has done anything to cure this. We've had over ten years of it, in which time the numbers of speeding tickets issued has continually increased while the roads have failed to actually get any safer. Contrast that with the anti drink driving campaigns which changed drink drivers from being socially acceptable to being almost pariahs in a similar period of time. And drink driving now appears to be on the rise again since we've taken our eye off that particular ball to some extent.

The simplest course of action that will still be effective to deal with mind in neutral drivers is to encourage them to put their minds in gear. Anything else is still treating symptoms. This means education - better tests, perhaps continous reassessment, incentives to improve by taking advanced tuition. Better yet, start early and teach driving skills in schools before kids ever get behind a wheel. Combine it with safe road use lessons - for example, the ten year olds get the Green Cross Code and cycling proficiency, the fifteen year olds learn about the two second rule and so on. Stitch in time, right? Of course we're all only human, and asking for a 0% failure rate is probably a bit ambitious (though still worth trying IMO), so we'll still need plods about for the drivers who choose to ignore their road education or to allow their skills to deteriorate. And then combine that with making dodgy sections of road safer by engineering out the problems (not possible in every location of course, but where it can be done it's inexcusable not to do so).

We need fewer mind in neutral drivers (or drivers who have their minds in neutral less often), roads that tend to be more forgiving of momentary lapses on the part of the road users (by which I mean all road users), and more plod about to catch and punish the inevitable minority who don't want to play ball with the rest of us.

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Here is another tracking device story, this time it's about car thieves.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3620024.stm

And SafeSpeed is on about Alcho-Locks on another topic. Hm... things are hotting up in the high tech department, as I thought. Soon, cameras will go - trouble is, real-time monitoring replace them.

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basingwerk, there's a huge difference between the tracking devices mentioned in the BBC story and the sort you would like fitted to cars. Not in the system itself, perhaps, but in it's use. That article is about tracking people who have already been found guilty in a court. They've been through the judicial process, possibly more than once, and they've probably been in prison already as well. To track all vehicles would be prejudicial. It assumes you're going to commit an offence sooner or later so we'll make bloody sure we catch you when you do. That's one reason why I'm totally against the idea. Another is that I don't see what business it is of TPTB if I decide to pop down the shops or use this road instead of that one. You might say that they're only interested in where and when I'm driving if I commit a motoring offence, but that's not the point. The data will be available to someone, and I will have no idea who that is or whether they are trustworthy. You simply can't compare it to tracking convicted thieves and burglars who would otherwise be in prison and have therefore already forfeited their freedom to an extent. Apples and oranges, mate.

The alco-locks device is something else as well. There may be technical problems to iron out, as has been suggested already in the other thread. But even if it works it's simply a preventative device, not a monitoring system. And again, as I understand it, the idea is to fit them to cars belonging to persistent drunk drivers rather than the entire motoring population. On a side note, that seems to me to be the biggest flaw in the system. Throwaway cars have already been discussed and I can't see what prevents habitual drink drivers from buying a crappy old car for £150 or so and leave the one with the alco-lock at home. What a great idea... now they'll be pissed and uninsured and driving a dodgy old banger. In fairness, I have to say that the way premiums go up with a drink driving conviction I expect a quite a few people can't afford insurance afterwards and end up in throwaway cars anyway.

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The journalists and public equate all this track and trace stuff as one thing. And to give them their due, in the end it does all come out the same. The movers are shakers in this society of ours are not the knowledgeable technologists, but the politicians, and their paymasters, the voters. The technologists provide them with a pallet of options, and they choose what they want. Right now, on the pallet, are RF tracking, satellite tracking, networked but centralised databases, pay-as-you-go schemes, micro payments, secure transactions, real-time data transfers and so on. Most of this stuff is layered and complementary. The technology is largely objective oriented components that can be reused in similar designs without overhead. Technically, these things are just different combinations of the same, pre-canned suite of components that can be put together in innovative and novel ways to solve a diversity of problems. This was not true in yesteryear - each solution was a handcrafted gem. What this means is that costs have tumbled, so the price of a system is less and less of a constraint on its deployment. Other issues, like privacy, fitness for purpose, quality and so on come to the fore, in other words, how desirable is this thing?

All this debate about cameras is obscuring the real issue. Cameras don't matter, because, pretty soon, there will be a hundred different measurements available to track anyone’s progress on the roads. This convergence will happen because, however undesirable some of the side effects may be, a tipping point has been reached where all this functionality will be scaled in to the same system baseline, where most of the goods come for free. For example, the cost of converting a preventative device into a monitoring one is (approaching) zero if the infrastructure for sending messages is already in place. In such a case, the only decision is whether a monitoring device is desirable, as it has zero cost.

Integration like this is the holy grail of technology. Zero cost reusability brings great new opportunity and massive questions of desirability. For example, if it costs nothing to do something, one can afford to do it and back out of it if it goes wrong. Once secure RF transactions are in place for one purpose, the entire infrastructure is at the disposal of every other application that needs to use it.

This is essentially the same effect as the PC. No one would buy a PC for £800 if it just did one thing, like play solitaire. But the logic processor you need for solitaire is sufficient also to run a spreadsheet, process words, surf the net and write emails. I get the impression that, by focussing on cameras, SafeSpeeders are missing an important issue – the deployment of large scale big brother systems. The question is not whether cameras are any good, but (in the words of information commissioner Richard Thomas) whether it is desirable for the UK to sleepwalk into a surveillance society as a result of ID cards and other plans.

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But we all know that it's not the same thing at all, regardless of what the pollies and journos say. Same or similar technology, but the two systems are being used for quite different purposes. A bit like the difference between a hammer being used to nail two bits of wood together and a hammer being used to break a window. Nobody would object to a hammer in the hands of a carpenter, but we'd be concerned with a hammer in the hands of a burglar. In case of tracking systems we have one use that seems pretty reasonable - tracking criminals who have already been through the judicial process and have been found guilty. And then we have a second potential use which presumes guilt on the part of 30 million motorists, or to interpret it more kindly, it equates the ability to offend with the probability of offending. So do we make all women wear chastity belts since they all have the ability to be prostitutes? Or put bromide into the tea of every man as potentially they all may want to use prostitutes? It may sound like a ridiculous comparison, but it's actually pretty similar in that it involves control/monitoring on a massive scale on the grounds of presumed guilt. Free country? Not if we're prepared to chuck out our values and swap "innocent until proven guilty" around to make prosecution easier.

Ah. So there's no industry lobbying going on then? None at all. No worries there then .

And when choosing what they want the pollies, being only human like the rest of us, are going to pick what looks likely to make things easier for them. That doesn't always mean better for everyone else. Their main concern is that any new system, be it technological, administrative or whatever, provides a track record that looks good come election time. The main concern of any industry supplying or bidding to supply such a system is that it should appear to the politicians to do that.

We also have at the moment, and this is only my opinion, a parliament fairly full of people obsessed with technological solutions. Look at the proposal for GPS based per mile charging. As I've said before, we already pay for road use by the mile. A very rough bit of mental arithmetic comes up with about 10-11p per mile for me, based on 80p per litre of fuel, about 65p of which is tax/duty, and my car's fuel economy (not that good). So the government will get twice as much money out of me each year if my annual mileage doubled, and they know that there is simply no way for me to evade this cost without stealing fuel. No satellites needed, no GPS transceiver in the car, no computer systems neeeded to run it, no concerns about people tampering with the equipment as there isn't any, no worries about people using the road and then not coughing up as everyone paid in advance when they put fuel in the car. Not only that but it's an incentive for people to get cars with decent economy. It's bomb proof. Changing this for a GPS based track and charge system is technology for technology's sake, and much as I detest politicians of all hues I find it hard to believe that they're all so thick that not one of them has noticed this. So why are they so keen on it?

Couldn't agree more, mate. That's the big question. My concern is that very few politicians seem to have any interest in addressing it.

Okay, say you're right about zero costs (and I assume that's over the long term), you've yet to address the desirability part, though you admit that it is an issue. I'm still not sure which side of the fence you're standing on, basingwerk. Or are you sitting on it? From what you've said your position seems to be that we're going to end up with these systems sooner or later, and the actual desirability of them isn't going to get a look in so we'd better just get used to the idea. Excuse me if it looks like I'm in no hurry to sign up to that.

Not quite. If the advantages of any system outweigh the disadvantages then we may accept the disadvantages, which is what the camera proponents would like us all to believe. Debating how effective cameras are is part of that. The way I see it if people can be persuaded that several thousand cameras have been put up with no discernable benefit they may then question the next Big Idea To Improve Society more than they would have otherwise. I think richard Thomas is right to worry about us sleepwalking into the surveillance society, and the only way to avoid that is to get people to wake up.

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Another story, on biometric keys this time.

http://www1.computing.co.uk/features/1155997

The actual article implies that, this autumn, secure mobile files will go on sale that use advanced finger print biometric technology to prevent theft. If they are fitting them in phones (a well known target for theft) they will be fitting them in cars soon. Coupled with road side RF, we'll soon be able to pull in those tax dodgers and no-insurance pests, and replace the cameras to boot.

I monitored it for years expecting this stuff to come in, but nothing changed. Then, after cameras and mass Internet and mobile phone adoption, first a trickle of technology came out, but now, well judge for yourself. We’ve been monitoring it for a week, and we have a good list of stuff already. This stuff is definitely snow balling. Mobile RF exchanges, biometric keys, satellite tracking, centralised database, secure transactions … yes, a pattern is emerging.

As for which side of the fence I am on, I don’t know yet. I could pick up some work from all this automation, as I’ve been in and out of that field since 75. On the other hand, I am concerned about identity systems, which allow governments to treat people like jostling atoms and less like individuals. Identity systems replace the need for trust with direct control. Sure enough, this catches the speeders, fly tippers, insurance fiddlers, thieves, tax dodgers, skivers, trouble makers and anti-social twits. But it ties all the average Joes and saints in with it. Furthermore, anonymity is essential for whistle blowers and complainers, and without them, well, we would have good cause to fear bureaucrats such as Jo (good day to bury bad news) Moore, rather than laugh at them.

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Because a per-mile charging scheme based on the cost of petrol can only provide a per-mile charging scheme. A per-mile charging scheme based on GPS could also be used to track a vehicle, check if it's exceeded the speed limit anywhere, if it's gone the wrong way down a one-way street, performed any illegal u-turns... Oh yes, I can see why a per-mile charging system based on knowing exactly when and where the vehicle is at all times would look very attractive to a government who seem so determined to press ahead with other similarly civil liberty-infringing ideas.

Yes, it allows variable per-mile charging, or congestion charging, with its obvious flip side, cheaper driving where there is less congestion, like where I live (BW attempts to conceal selfish snort!).

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Further proof you're living on a different planet to the rest of us Seriously, given the way the government strives to extract as much cash out of us as possible, and appears to be considerably anti-private-motorist, do you honestly believe the cost of driving will be reduced in any way by these ideas? I really can't see Tony and chums setting up a scheme which benefits motorists in any way, so if such a scheme were ever to be introduced I'd not be in the slightest bit surprised if the cheapest driving possible under the scheme was merely no more expensive than it already is at present... But maybe I'm just being too cynical and untrusting of those lovely people in the big asylum down by the Thames who only have our best interests at heart and would never even remotely consider introducing a policy that reduced the quality of life for the majority of the tax-paying citizens they govern

Here's a URL to help you with your netiquette.

http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Good luck with your social skills. With respect to your other points, we don't live in a communist country or a dictatorship, and the treasury exists, as it must in all civilised places, to raise taxes. Some money is redistributed in other areas, such as health, unemployment insurance, road improvements, education and defence. Or perhaps Gordon puts it under his bed.



You must think that money for health, unemployment insurance, road improvements, education and defence grows on trees. Here you are lambasting the foundations of free society, while enjoying the fruits of it’s prosperity! What is your big idea, Twister? Maybe we should just print off some more money.

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