9 points , a speed awareness course ..now a fine

wantonnoodle

sharpy2010 wrote: »

Try telling that to the family of someone who has been killed in a car crash by a speeder.

Idiot.

I dispute that argument. According to RoSPA, of the 200,000 casualties on Britains roads every year, only about 430 are deaths due to speeding.

The statistics prove that speed on its own is not a major cause of road deaths. More deaths are caused by lack of experience and careless and/or reckless driving.

So while I don't agree that it is a victimless crime (400 deaths is still too many), I think that too much emphasis is put on speeding as an offence.

Lum

The government's own figures show that 4% of KSIs (accidents where someone is Killed or Seriously Injured) had speeding as a main or contributory factor.

The much publicised, media friendly, version of the figures said that 33% of KSIs (with emphasis on the killed part) were "speed related" which we're supposed to equate with "speeding".

In fact the vast majority of that 33% were due to "failure to judge another vehicle's speed or distance" which is very much a failure in observation.

But even if we take that figure as twisted into meaning that 33% of accidents are due to speeding. That's still 67% of accidents not due to speeding, and yet the vast majority of Police focus is still on speed.

rdr

The victims of speeding are no just the people hit by cars -- they are also the pedestrians and cyclists scared off the roads, the kids who aren't allowed to make there own way to school because there are too many nutters on the road and the people caught in traffic because speeding causes jams.
I also agree that speed cameras are sometimes too much of an easy win for the police and are used instead of dealing with non-speeding dangerous driving.

pendulum

sharpy2010 wrote: »

Try telling that to the family of someone who has been killed in a car crash by a speeder.

Idiot.

Do you not realise most speed traps are set up on straight, safe roads to catch people out who are driving perfectly safely? That is why people are against too much speed enforcement, because it concentrates on just speed, and not whether the actual driving was safe or not; and yes, before you ask, you can drive safely above the limit - if you think you cannot, then you're the idiot.

sharpy2010

pendulum wrote: »

Do you not realise most speed traps are set up on straight, safe roads to catch people out who are driving perfectly safely? That is why people are against too much speed enforcement, because it concentrates on just speed, and not whether the actual driving was safe or not; and yes, before you ask, you can drive safely above the limit - if you think you cannot, then you're the idiot.

Yes I realise perfectly well that speed cameras are merely revenue generating devices.

Hitting someone at high speed kills them. Do you not realise that?

Lum

^^^ Yup, and when you put that camera on a 70mph dual carriageway, you just ensure that if someone is going to hit a pedestrian they hit them at 68mph rather than 79. In either case the pedestrian is going to die is the blunt truth of the matter.

I'd prefer policing efforts to be focused on catching and correcting people with p1ss-poor observation so that they don't hit the pedestrian at any speed, rather than the current system where the worst drivers are diverting too much of their attention towards the little red needle and/or to looking for little yellow boxes at the side of the road.

rdr wrote: »

The victims of speeding are no just the people hit by cars -- they are also the pedestrians and cyclists scared off the roads, the kids who aren't allowed to make there own way to school because there are too many nutters on the road and the people caught in traffic because speeding causes jams.
I also agree that speed cameras are sometimes too much of an easy win for the police and are used instead of dealing with non-speeding dangerous driving.

Now that depends on the road, unlike some people I'm actually ok with enforcement, including camera enforcement, in towns, villages and particularly around schools and routes to schools.

But that isn't what happens. They don't put the camera in the village. They find a village with a 30 limit that includes a 500 meter "buffer zone" on either side of the village. The buffer zone is an old traffic engineering trick that ensures that even people who aren't paying much attention have actually slowed down to 30 by the time they reach the village. Then they put the camera right at the start of the buffer zone.

In cities, they don't put the camera outside the school, they put it on a nearby fenced off urban dual carriageway that features pedestrian bridges.

pineapple

I was done for driving at 34 mph in a 30 limit. And yes I was doing 34. No 10% + 3 in my case! The signs were on the run up to a school but it was the middle of the school holidays. In fact because so many workers were also on holiday, the whole road had speeded up and I had momentarily increased speed to ease a traffic problem. No speed awareness course in my area. So no alternative but to take the fine and the points. It's not just that - some insurance companies ask for a history going back 5 years.
That said, cameras near a school? - fine. But I've seen them on long clear sweeps heading out of town into open space. I can think of one that matches the description of Lum's last comment, above. Heading out of Sunderland's boundaries towards the A1. What's all that about? No don't answer that!

Lum

With the school thing, I'm a big supporter of variable speed limits. Make the limit 20mph at the times when there are likely to be kids about, and raise it to something more appropriate to the conditions outside of those hours and on days when the school is closed.

You don't even need the hugely expensive and fancy HADECS system they use on the motorways. The "20 mph limit when the lights are flashing" signs are perfectly fine for this task, or you could just have revolving signs. Just make sure that the sign is in-shot of the gatso camera so that people can't argue the toss and it will work fine.

It would work particularly well in areas where the schools run 8-3 because then you could up the limit at 8:15 to allow commuters to use it at a decent speed., bring it down at 2:45 and keep it down till 5pm to allow for extra curricular study and activities, then bring it back up again for the commuters.

e999sam

pendulum wrote: »

Do you not realise most speed traps are set up on straight, safe roads to catch people out who are driving perfectly safely? That is why people are against too much speed enforcement, because it concentrates on just speed, and not whether the actual driving was safe or not; and yes, before you ask, you can drive safely above the limit - if you think you cannot, then you're the idiot.

Clearly if they are speeding they are not driving safely.

Harry_Flashman

e999sam wrote: »

Clearly if they are speeding they are not driving safely.

What utter claptrap! :mad: