Speeding offence

kwmlondon

AdrianC wrote: »

Go back to the OP's father.

Was he driving legally? Unquestionably not.
Was he driving sensibly? Unquestionably not - if for no other reasons that the likely consequences to his licence.
Was he driving safely? You say "unquestionably not". I say "I don't know, I wasn't there."

This is my worry about the OPs dad. I think that if the man is unable to drive sensibly and legally after getting 9 points he's probably not a safe driver. I suspect he has simply grown old but instead of adjusting his driving to to cope with his changing abilities (which many older drivers do - they may be slow but they are very safe) he's still driving like he was a younger man. He may have been safe before but I really think he could be better off the road now.

AdrianC

Bantex wrote: »

I have never said that driving within the limit is safe or unsafe.

No, you haven't. But it's absolutely integral to whether speeds outside the limit are inherently unsafe or not. As I've already said, UNLESS you can always say that a speed below the limit is automatically safe, then you CANNOT say that a speed above it is automatically unsafe. Because, to do so, you HAVE to assume that the speed limit is somehow always related to some magical upper-bound in safety - which, clearly, it isn't.

Bantex_2

kwmlondon wrote: »

Because it's fun!!!!!!

Taking a motorbike way past the speed limit on a winding road is like sliding down a banister with a pond full of alligators at the side, it's dangerous and stupid and very addictive and takes a lot of self-control not to give into but it's a helluva adrenalin rush!

I had to grow up a lot or get points. I grew up. And got a bicycle!

Have to admit that I had been banned 3 times by the time I was 20. Doesn't seem so clever looking back on it though.

Iceweasel

kwmlondon wrote: »

Because it's fun!!!!!!

Taking a motorbike way past the speed limit on a winding road is like sliding down a banister with a pond full of alligators at the side, it's dangerous and stupid and very addictive and takes a lot of self-control not to give into but it's a helluva adrenalin rush!

I had to grow up a lot or get points. I grew up. And got a bicycle!

If you want a twisty road with no speed limit you could always try the Nurburgring or even the Isle of Man which is cheaper.

brat

kwmlondon wrote: »

If the cameras are so lucrative couldn't they pay for more traffic cops to cope with the driving transgressions that are not speed-related?

The information about the safety and life saving benefits of speed cams has been so pervasive, so convincing to those who give it little thought; and so wrong, but it convinced the layperson that the speed camera was so effective a road safety tool that intelligent road policing could take a back step.

This is one of the reasons why road policing has been decimated over the last 20 years. The loss of the regular trend of fatality reduction that went hand in hand with speed cam growth and road policing reduction relates to between 12,000 and 20,000 lives. Those two factors cannot be said to be the total cause of that loss of trend. But, laying aside the personal grief and hurt of each life lost, as the average cost to the nation of a road traffic fatality is somewhere around £1million, the cost to the nation of the loss of trend could be as much as £20 billion over the last 20 years. That is way more than has been saved by speed cams and traffic cop wages.

matttye

kwmlondon wrote: »

it's like drink driving. If you drive a car so ratted you are barely able to see and don't hit anyone else, is it okay? Is it acceptable that on THAT occasion you were very lucky?

People don't understand risk.

I can cut a blind corner every single day for a year and not hit another car. Then, one day I could plough head-on into someone else.

Just because I've been lucky 364 days doesn't mean that my actions are safe. It just means that I've been doing something very dangerous and gotten away with it.

Please tell me what the risk is of going over the speed limit on a quiet motorway at night.

I could literally do donuts in lanes 2-4 on parts of the A1(M) at night and I wouldn't get hit by anyone.

The entire motorway system could benefit from higher variable speed limits. I don't see any reason why you couldn't travel safely at 100mph on parts of the A1(M) (and I'm sure many other motorways) at night. There are 4 lanes and lanes 2-4 are empty save for the odd car every few hundred metres.

---

I find it laughable that so many decisions on the road are left up to the judgement of the driver yet if you slightly exceed the speed limit it's viewed as "hurr durr dangerous."

I was following someone yesterday who was travelling 50 in a 60 but was swerving all over the road, right up to the middle of the lane. I'd much rather see someone who was slightly exceeding the speed limit but properly in control of the vehicle.

Joe_Horner

PenguinJim wrote: »

Errr... Joe Horner, [...] Claiming that it's safer for you to do 35 than 30 in a 30 zone doesn't scream safety as a main concern to me. Just impatience and arrogance.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to get on your case about this, but people like you and the OP's father are the cause of the problem. We would all be able to go faster if it wasn't for poor drivers like you[...]

PenguinJim wrote: »

[...]If people like Joe Horner did not speed and kill or seriously injure 25,000 people in the UK every year, the UK would not need speed cameras.
[...]
I'll try one last time to try to convince Joe Horner not to smear a toddler's head over the pavement in order to save a couple of minutes.

Now you're simply being gratuitously rude, which speaks volumes about who the arrogant one is.

Saying "I'm sorry, I don't want to get on your case about this" doesn't excuse it either. It's exactly the same as starting a sentence with "I'm not racist, but...." followed by a string of racism.

You've also entirely mis-represented what I said in order to do so. At no point have I ever suggested that "it's safer to do 35 in a 30 limit". Obviously, it's "safest" to sit parked up doing zero mph, and risk increases with speed. But that doesn't mean it's never safe to do 35 in a 30 limit.

I really don't need to justify myself but, to make a small point about road awareness, this is the scene of my second (camera van) crime of the century:



The entry to the right is the entrance to Anglesey Aluminium, which had been closed for 6 months at the time and had barriers across it. So fair bet that no-one was going to emerge. The view into the grounds is also excellent as you get nearer, so plenty of time to react if they do.

The red arrow is the change from 30 to NSL, and the blue dot in the far treeline is where the camera van was.

Thanks to it being Brunstrom's Zero Tolerance Wales at the time, ACPO guidelines about not targetting at a change of limit were ignored. That's perfectly legal because they're only guidelines. The van was positioned so that the change to NSL was just inside its maximum range, because that was his policy.

As I said in my earlier post, I didn't begrudge getting caught like that but I do begrudge internet rude boys suggesting that I kill babies because I happened to creep up to 35mph (actually 36, but who's counting?) before the magic marker in that scenario.

My point with that is that if you really can't see that 36mph is no greater safety risk than 30 at that point then you clearly have no road awareness or judgement other than "under the limit = safe, over by a millimeter per hour = baby killer", which makes you a potentially very dangerous road user because you mus drive on autopilot.

matttye

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Now you're simply being gratuitously rude, which speaks volumes about who the arrogant one is.

Saying "I'm sorry, I don't want to get on your case about this" doesn't excuse it either. It's exactly the same as starting a sentence with "I'm not racist, but...." followed by a string of racism.

You've also entirely mis-represented what I said in order to do so. At no point have I ever suggested that "it's safer to do 35 in a 30 limit". Obviously, it's "safest" to sit parked up doing zero mph, and risk increases with speed. But that doesn't mean it's never safe to do 35 in a 30 limit.

I really don't need to justify myself but, to make a small point about road awareness, this is the scene of my second (camera van) crime of the century:



The entry to the right is the entrance to Anglesey Aluminium, which had been closed for 6 months at the time and had barriers across it. So fair bet that no-one was going to emerge. The view into the grounds is also excellent as you get nearer, so plenty of time to react if they do.

The red arrow is the change from 30 to NSL, and the blue dot in the far treeline is where the camera van was.

Thanks to it being Brunstrom's Zero Tolerance Wales at the time, ACPO guidelines about not targetting at a change of limit were ignored. That's perfectly legal because they're only guidelines. The van was positioned so that the change to NSL was just inside its maximum range, because that was his policy.

As I said in my earlier post, I didn't begrudge getting caught like that but I do begrudge internet rude boys suggesting that I kill babies because I happened to creep up to 35mph (actually 36, but who's counting?) before the magic marker in that scenario.

My point with that is that if you really can't see that 36mph is no greater safety risk than 30 at that point then you clearly have no road awareness or judgement other than "under the limit = safe, over by a millimeter per hour = baby killer", which makes you a potentially very dangerous road user because you mus drive on autopilot.

Need any more be said to show that they are simply to earn revenue?

There is even a gap between the two lanes here, so any chance of a collision is reduced as the traffic has more space.

Joe_Horner

matttye wrote: »

There is even a gap between the two lanes here, so any chance of a collision is reduced as the traffic has more space.

Ahh, but the divider stops at the point it becomes NSL (ie: safe to go twice as fast).

Oh, hang on, I see what you mean....

Bantex_2

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Now you're simply being gratuitously rude, which speaks volumes about who the arrogant one is.

Saying "I'm sorry, I don't want to get on your case about this" doesn't excuse it either. It's exactly the same as starting a sentence with "I'm not racist, but...." followed by a string of racism.

You've also entirely mis-represented what I said in order to do so. At no point have I ever suggested that "it's safer to do 35 in a 30 limit". Obviously, it's "safest" to sit parked up doing zero mph, and risk increases with speed. But that doesn't mean it's never safe to do 35 in a 30 limit.

I really don't need to justify myself but, to make a small point about road awareness, this is the scene of my second (camera van) crime of the century:



The entry to the right is the entrance to Anglesey Aluminium, which had been closed for 6 months at the time and had barriers across it. So fair bet that no-one was going to emerge. The view into the grounds is also excellent as you get nearer, so plenty of time to react if they do.

The red arrow is the change from 30 to NSL, and the blue dot in the far treeline is where the camera van was.

Thanks to it being Brunstrom's Zero Tolerance Wales at the time, ACPO guidelines about not targetting at a change of limit were ignored. That's perfectly legal because they're only guidelines. The van was positioned so that the change to NSL was just inside its maximum range, because that was his policy.

As I said in my earlier post, I didn't begrudge getting caught like that but I do begrudge internet rude boys suggesting that I kill babies because I happened to creep up to 35mph (actually 36, but who's counting?) before the magic marker in that scenario.

My point with that is that if you really can't see that 36mph is no greater safety risk than 30 at that point then you clearly have no road awareness or judgement other than "under the limit = safe, over by a millimeter per hour = baby killer", which makes you a potentially very dangerous road user because you mus drive on autopilot.

Did you realise that you were doing 35mph?