Safe Speed Forums

Provided they see us! Some do not even see our flashing lights....

I know - they should not be allowed out - but there you go!

Even better when they get all upset and call you rude names too

Some .... you do wonder if they will ever get the message ... and those are the ones we should be weeding out. Ironically - they are the very ones who may pass the scamera test too....



Someone in Lancs got it badly wrong ..... but that seems to be a problem overall in that county. As said before - results of the revised policy on the Speed Course may show a difference - one does hope so - as it is a very good initiative and certainly every report on that course does inidcate a very positive and solid course .



I doubt it too - maybe if patrolling in front or behind as only a real fool takes the proverbials in front of us....

Certainly we do not sit at bends - far to dangerous.... Like said - scam should have been close to t he bend and very clearly visible. A few VAS/SIDs in vicinity may have served better warning too.



We combined armed, trafpols and others into one compact unit to give value for money and have more presence as well. Quite useful really having Tone's constituency on our patch as well .....

Of course - we could do with more staff - we keep asking.... We are in line to get some plastic ones .... and I guess it is how well we deploy them to benefit properly.

True - daft guidelines and perhaps daft excuse such as the radar response. But then again - you could argue the case for a false reading from burpy's black box..... Perhaps the scam should have been on the straight on the other side of the bend - along with numerous hazard warinings of a dangerous bend.

But hey - since when did we go by the guidelines anyway

Seems to be a standard now, I wonder who's idea that was. Finance probably.

Good luck with them, they may be more use than Phil and Nige (off Early Doors).
Keep it safe and cheers.

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It's Champion Man

I'd almost agree with that, so:

What "rate" is that then? How do you specify it? How do you advise it? And how do you enforce it?

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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

No, it's you that has missed it - if you drive legally, you are more likely to drive safely than if you drive illegally.

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I stole this .sig

Have you got any basis for that? I've seen an awful lot of dangerous yet legal driving. And probably far more safe but illegal driving.

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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

It is not legal to drive dangerously. There is a specific offence for it. This implies that if you have seen any illegal safe driving, then you must have seen more of it, because there is no such thing as dangerous legal driving. But I dispute that you have ever seen any illegal safe driving!

The grounds of my dispute are that, even if you are illegally driving safely in a direct sense, your behaviour may influence other, lesser drivers to do similarly and endanger themselves, which means that your behaviour is indirectly dangerous, making it impossible to drive safely but illegally.

I know that you want a less slippery answer, but there you are – if you have seen truly dangerous driving, then it was not legal, and you cannot have seen illegal safe driving because it’s influence on other drivers to act ‘off-protocol’ and against the highway code makes if unsafe.

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I stole this .sig

Yes, very slippery.

You're bending and stretching the definition of "dangerous" to suit your point. At the "exceeding the speed limit" level you're using "dangerous" as a finely relative term. Elsewhere you wish to impose the legal definition - usually applied to extremely dangerous practices likely to result in immediate injury or worse. It's not fair pal.

Care to have another go, and fairly this time?

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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

If I may butt in, I'd say that you specify it through a political process that assesses the wishes of the stakeholders and sets the rates accordingly. This assumes some degree of compromise between the stakeholders, whose goals may not be aligned.



Via a published code of behaviour (the Highway Code) and via road side notification (signs, rules etc.) where necessary. Document it in the highway code, put it in the driving test, warn everybody and that’s that. What more can you do? I believe that roadside RF would be an excellent way of propagating warning limits to individual drivers, and annunciate violations unambiguously. Lacking that, use general rules about built up areas or something, and use signs and so on until we get a proper IT system in place to deal with it comprehensively.



As cheaply and effectively as possible, with a combination of technology and people.

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I stole this .sig

Very funny. Deliberate misunderstanding is it?

Now try to quantify any "rate that increases the risk to others of death or serious injury".

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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

Perhaps you do that as well. But yes, you are right that there is a difference between 'legally' safe or dangerous and 'practically' safe or dangerous. The legal system is the product of politics, and must work efficiently as well as effectively. This more or less means that the system cannot afford exhaustive investigations to determine whether a particular instance of an offence is 'practically' dangerous or merely 'legally' dangerous. In other words, the system aggregates this with rules by looking at the likelihood of a whether particular offence is 'practically' dangerous or merely 'legally' dangerous. Any offence of speeding is definitely 'legally' dangerous, and the system also 'decides' that speeding is likely enough to be 'practically' dangerous that it warrants sanctions. So there you have it - theory and practise.

Now let’s try this out. Let's remove the word 'safe' and use 'considerate' instead. Then, let us divide behaviours into four segments. Let us say that driving behaviour can be legal and considerate, legal and ill-considerate, illegal and considerate, and illegal and ill-considerate.

If I had to choose, I would prefer to share the road with drivers who are legal and considerate, rather than legal and ill-considerate, illegal and considerate (!), or illegal and ill-considerate. I don't change my opinion if we switch it back to 'safe'. This seems logical to me, so what problem do you have with that?

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I stole this .sig

The rate is a compromise between those who think it is too high and those who think it is too low. To set it is the job of politicians, who must listen to engineers, road users and people affected by the transport system and judge the politically acceptable rate. That has been done, the rates are set and now everybody who drives signs up to that. Only those who break that deal get tickets. I should add that a review procedure should be in place to make sure rates are current and rational given the state of the roads, the users and so on. Is that the missing link?

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I stole this .sig

I don't do that sort of thing on purpose, but it's an easy mistake to make.



"The system" has not made any such decision. When speed limits were conceived and set we had no conception of digital and automated enforcement. Technology has overtaken the intentions of the law and left us in this mess. Unfortunately, too few understand how this has come about or why this is wrong.



I think that's fair - thanks.

But it's wrong wrong wrong because of the prevalence of unsafe legal behaviours. As we emphasize the important of "legal" more and more we suppress the significance of "safe". This is tipping the scales (the scales of importance) away from safe and towards legal.

We also have to consider the very wide prevalence of illegal safe behaviours. Since they are so very prevalent, we can be assured that they are not dangerous on average.

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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

Oooo you ARE being slippery today. Slippery, slippery, slippery.

You know it's absurd to try to specify "an inrcrease in risk" that takes place at any quantified rate.

That's why you haven't even attempted to actually answer the question.

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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

Yes, my slipperiness is only exceeded by my selfishness. But again, you make the same moves. We know the distinction between merely "legally unsafe" versus "practically unsafe" are the nub of this discussion, and yet you divert me onto a fruitless discussion on how to measure "an increase in risk" that takes place at any quantified rate, whatever that is! The limit is the limit is the limit. It is very simple to understand, does not need much judgement and provides a modicum of safety from abuse. I’d agree that the limits, rules and sanctions were set before the age of remote monitoring, but now that we have that, it is too much to expect remote monitoring to melt away, so how should the limits, rules and sanctions be changed to fit the new reality? What is the new political balance?

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I stole this .sig

We've gone down the wrong road and people are dying in very large numbers as a result. The only solution is to do a U turn PDQ. That's what I'm going to help bring about in the interests of mankind.

We have to scrap all the speed cameras. They are killing us. Flawed British science is being exported and it's killing in other countries. I simply am not going to stand for it.

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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

Well, thats shut me up!

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I stole this .sig

That's not the response I expected!

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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

The Speed limit was 50 mph, the appropriate speed for the bend was 40 mph in a car.

Even if the Van was travelling within the limit, the crash would of happened.

The speed camera will only take a photo and send the NIP in the post, somewhat after the event.

The speed limit signs, that flash up when vehicles are traveling too fast, are far more effective than a camera.

Accidents happen as a result of driver error.

The van driver was travelling too fast for the bend, not always above the Speed limit. The police estimated the van to be doing 70 mph. This estimate is not based on credible calculations. The van could well of been traveling at 50 mph.

Every day thousands of motorists are caught by cameras, they do not prevent the speeding offence.

The only way to address accident reduction is to prosecute ALL drivers that cause an accident.

This only happens to drivers in less than 1% of accidents on our roads, where drivers that cause an accident are actually prosecuted.

Cameras sole purpose are to raise revenue, that is their only result. Despite hundreds of cameras being sited on our roads, we have seen no reduction in death in any form.

Despite, major leaps forward in vehicle safety, ABS, Traction control, Air Bags, Deformation zones, which have all contributed to a reduction in death on our roads. The removal of traffic police, has increased the death rate back up.

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Steve

3.3 mph does not even regiter on the speedo.

It has no classification on our dials

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Steve