Damage to my car due to pothole in road.

Poppy9

CrazyChemist wrote:

Nobody ever thinks of teaching children not to wander into roads in the first place. I pay my road tax which entitles me to use my road space. Pedestrians should cross at designated crossing points.
:rotfl:

Of course parents teach kids to cross the roads properly but children are easily distracted and are not always able to judge the speed of approaching cars. My OH was also knocked down by a car outside his school as a child. He was on the pavement when a speeding car lost control and mounted the pavement. Speed humps would have prevented this. Recently in my area a young child was hit on the road I used to live on by a speeding motorist. She lost her life. I lived on that road and I know that boy racers saw a long open road and put their foot down even though there were 10 side road junctions on the road. I moved from the road because of the speed of traffic and number of accidents. The residents and family of the child have been asking for traffic calming measures for years. It took a child to be killed before the Council would initiate a study.

Speed humps have only been installed because there have been complaints from residents, a large number of accidents or there is a school (or similar public building) on certain roads due to excessive speed. Drivers cannot be relied upotn to obey the 30mph speed limit where applicable.

CrazyChemist_2

Poppy9 wrote:

Of course parents teach kids to cross the roads properly but children are easily distracted and are not always able to judge the speed of approaching cars. My OH was also knocked down by a car outside his school as a child. He was on the pavement when a speeding car lost control and mounted the pavement. Speed humps would have prevented this. Recently in my area a young child was hit on the road I used to live on by a speeding motorist. She lost her life. I lived on that road and I know that boy racers saw a long open road and put their foot down even though there were 10 side road junctions on the road. I moved from the road because of the speed of traffic and number of accidents. The residents and family of the child have been asking for traffic calming measures for years. It took a child to be killed before the Council would initiate a study.

Speed humps have only been installed because there have been complaints from residents, a large number of accidents or there is a school (or similar public building) on certain roads due to excessive speed. Drivers cannot be relied upotn to obey the 30mph speed limit where applicable.

Then traffic police numbers should be increased on our roads instead of wasting money on lumps of tar. Traffic police are proven to be more effective than static measures, e.g. humps/cameras.

I sympathise with the people mounting the pavement, but this is a result of bad driving, not speeding. For example, a fully trained traffic officer is capable of driving safely at speeds of well in excess of double the speed limit. I have no problem with this because I know that it's bad driving combined with speed that kills. If you eliminate the bad drivers, there isn't any need for such draconian speed restrictions!

I always obey the speed limit as long as I know what it is and it's clearly posted. Unfortunately not everyone else drives defensively like I do...

Poppy9

But in the real world we are not going to get enough extra traffic police officers to monitor all the roads. It just isn't cost effective. The salary (with on-costs) of an experienced officer is at least £35k. Add to this the cost of training. I know a basic response driving course for a police officer is a min. of 3 weeks and is usually 3 police officer to one instructor. Further course are needed for traffic officers. Yes they maybe taught to drive above the speed limit but they are still killing people in the course of their duties.

I dislike driving over speed humps as much as the next person but I can see they are cost effective for Councils in traffic management. They do slow down traffic where traffic calming has been requested.

In the future they might not be needed (nor speed cameras) because we will all be tracked via devices built into our car which show our speed on every journey which are relayed to a Big Brother computer. Speeding fines & penalty points would be automatic. I think most people would soon reach the 12 points as we all think we know when it's safe to exceed the speed limit. Nobody thinks of themself as a bad driver - we all think we are the best (especially when a police car pulls out behind you)!!

lisyloo

Hi Crazychemist,

I agree with a lot of your comments but I'm not sure what you hope to acheive here.
Why not make your claim and try to make a legal test case?
If you are successful and lots of others follow then you might be a catalyst in getting the policy changes.

Getting on with it would do more good than debating on here.

Let us know how you get on.

CrazyChemist_2

Poppy9 wrote:

Yes they maybe taught to drive above the speed limit but they are still killing people in the course of their duties.

So if we remove all traffic police officers, we solve a problem?? :rolleyes:

What a good idea. :rotfl:

lisyloo

we solve a problem??

You ain't solving it here.
You should be putting your efforts into a test case.

CrazyChemist_2

lisyloo wrote:

You ain't solving it here.
You should be putting your efforts into a test case.

How on earth do I start a test case?

lisyloo

How on earth do I start a test case?

If you want to make a legal case against the council then you have to get legal advice.

You may be able to get this free if you have it included in your house insurance. Otherwise you will have to find a solicitor. A lot of solicitors will give you an introductory meeting without cost.

A lot of solicitors will advise against legal action IMO but what you are trying to do here is ground breaking so you have to expect a lot of that if you are going up against current national practice.

You may actually have to take the case on yourself if you can't find anyone to represent you.
Sometime people who are "ground breaking" have to do this.