Be Excellent To Each Other

I once got a parking ticket for parking in the wrong place, and it cost me £30, which was very upsetting and pissed me off no end. Now if I was of Dudley's mindset, my argument would probably be along the lines of 'I don't care if the double-yellow line was there, it was perfectly safe to park there so why shouldn't I be allowed to?', which is clearly nonsense. It was my own fault for not paying proper attention, in this case, to where I was parking.

Heh. However tyre noise increases exponentially with speed.

Just because it's measurable doesn't make it sane to judge based solely on it.

Edit: and no, I'm not saying 80 past a school is alright - because the likelihood of kids and deranged women in Chelsea tractors are part of the circumstances.

If you don't like a law, lobby to get it changed. You don't get to beak it. It's that simple. I went through this at length on WoS with Stu so I'm not going to bother repeating myself here, but suffice to say Socrates agrees with me. And Socrates is cleverer than any of you lot. Ergo I win.

Yeah, I could swear some dead people are still alive, despite not having a measurable heartbeat. These things need an entirely subjective second opinion, I reckon.

I don't mind speed cameras in principle as long as they are cited where they are needed - for instance outside my father in laws house the road narrows, there is a couple of traffic islands and everyone parks on the side. Once every six months or so, someone wipes themselves out by doing 50 and not spotting the rapidly decreasing gap between lampost, traffic island and parked car. So yeah, a speed camera would definitely help.*

What I object to is that the traffic police have not been taken off speeding duties to do other traffic stuff, but seem to have disappeared. My own personal bugbear is attached.

Most traffic flowing "down" towards the roundabout near the top left is heading to the M60 (the motorway on the right). The roundabout splits into two lanes, the "left" lane as you look at it is marked turning "left" and "straight on down". The "right" lane is marked "straight on down" and "right" (towards the motorway). However, approximately 40% of drivers (and, in my experience 100% of people in BMWs, Mercs, Audis and SUVs) can't be bothered to queue and jump down the "left" lane before swerving "right" towards the M60. Given the traffic turning "right" is heading south on the M60, they move to the outer of the two lanes heading motorway wise.

This is *incredibly* dangerous, and I've had to swerve out of the way of some fucker bearing down in the wrong lane at stupid MPH.

The kicker, the really annoying thing is, look at the junction. See that layby? That is where the traffic cops meet up. They are there, sitting in their car, watching car after car drive in a dangerous manner and they don't do a fucking thing.



*Amusingly, there is a bunch of flowers and a card say "We remember you" tied to the lamppost. I do indeed remember it. Mainly because my father in law was picking bits of bike out of his front garden afterwards. The police estimated he was doing 60mph when he hit the lamppost. Twice the limit.

When I did my bike test, the instructor said "When you get pulled o er, and you WILL get pulled over at some stage, if the copper says 'how do you rate your driving on a scale of 1 to ten, say 4' ALWAYS say 4, then they give you the 7 day wonder and it's all a lot easier".

Yes it does. Lines have to be drawn somewher,e on some measurable basis, because the alternative is a horrible, unenforceable mess.

"He was doing 45 miles an hour, but he's a very good driver so that's ok"

"She was doing 30 miles an hour but is crap and has slow reactions, so even that was unsafe"

You accept there are laws, and you stick within them, even if they're restricting you to below the level you think that you're safe at. Speed limits are there to prevent accidents, see, (or to make accidents less serious if they do happen) and I'd rather play safe than sorry. Safety>>>>>>you getting somewhere a bit quicker.

No, I believe we should leave it to adequate policing based on specific situation rather than cameras with no power of judgement.



Given there are plenty of people alive who have at some point had no measurable heartbeat and entirely subjective second opinions is EXACTLY how we DO declare people dead, that was nearly as daft as the parking ticket thing

And hey, dead chicken tastes nice but like your comment, that's irrelevant to the discussion.

Some stats for people to mull over. I present these from a neutral standpoint.

First this report from 1996.


Also, here is a graph of RTA stats up to the middle of the decade. I compiled this a few years ago from numbers released by the Department of Transport (I can't cite that link at present, can't refind it. It was a PDF report on the DoT website). The are in deaths per a scaled measure of "traffic"; I forget the definition of that, something like thousands of cars per hour per mile. The idea is to account for the fact there are a lot more cars on the road so there will naturally be more accidents.



Bear in mind that there have been staggering improvements to car safety over this period. Note the lack of much improvement in statistics since the mid-90s, whilst speed camera investment has increased many times over during the same period.

Also:


I think £110mill a year is a lot of money. I am unconvinced that the RTA stats I quote justify that sort of investment. They also do not agree with Darling's heavily spun public statement of "42% reduction".

Are you moving back to feudal times with Comical, then?

Chris is doing a far better job of nullifying the counter-arguments than I am, and since it appears he agrees with me, I'm happy to leave him to it.

Also speed cameras do have the power of judgement, they can judge if you're going over the speed limit, which is illegal. Hence, they can easily tell if you're doing something illegal. Voila!

Sorry, obeying the laws is feudal, is it? Laws that are there to prevent twats in Golfs who think they're rally drivers from putting other people at risk? Don't be so daft. If you haven't got anything constructive to add, there's the bits and bobs thread over there. I'm sure you can travel that way at whatever speed you see fit.

There's a wealth of info on this site, which though I've known of for some time have only just visited. The guy who founded it was concerned with road safety overall and not the blanket implementation of numerical limits.

He was a fierce critic of the government and their policies of speeding fines as the answer to what were frequently questions of road safety not related to speed at all.

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/index.html

Or more likely.

"He was doing 45 miles an hour but overtaking on a perfectly straight road and doing so allowed them to get back in sooner thus making it safer"

vs

"She was doing 30 miles per hour in the rain with 10ft visibility and just overtook on a blind bend".

The camera catches the top guy. The policeman would only stop bottom girl. I can't believe anyone sane would argue the cameras way is better.



No they can't. They don't catch the person weaving lane to lane in the wet at 1mph below the speed limit, which is 20mph above any sane speed. They catch one, usually not dangerous thing at the cost of allowing a lot of very dangerous driving through.

This would only work if the police were on every metre of every road all day every day.

In the absence of police, we have to have a law restricting how people drive. That law has to be based on certainty. Sadly for you, the speed limit is the only way of providing that certainty. We cannot exxpect, and nor could we safely rely on, individual's determination of how fast is safe on any given stretch of road. Given, as I've now repeated ad nauseam, most people are shit drivers and have an overinflated sense of how good they are behind the wheel. So they have to be told the maximum speed they're allowed to go, so they know. It's really that simple, and you've suggested nothing useful to the contrary.

No, my point is that if everybody just said "oh, that's the way it is we'd better just accept it", we probably wouldn't be able to have this ever-popular argument because the local king would just have us killed for not agreeing with him completely.

And hey, thanks for reducing my entire set of contributions to the thread to my attempted joke without taking care to understand it before ridiculing it.

In a kind of funny, related story... I was stopped by the police once on a stretch of road for going over the limit. The office was half way through telling me off when his colleague pulled over another car who pulled up in front of where I was.

The officer asked the passengers to get out of the car and as they did, the officer who was telling me off became visibly distracted by the fact that 4 very attractive ladies got out wearing short skirts, skimpy tops etc.

The police man telling me off told me to go on my way and went to have a closer look at the bevy of ladies his mate had pulled over, thus saving me receiving a fine!

That's a great bit of policing right there... Crime won't crack itself!

I never said they were capable of doing more than reading your speed, hence the name SPEED CAMERA.

I like Dr. Gaywood's post though, it's the kind of considered statement I'd expect from the man. My theory with regards to your statistics is along the following:

Lets assume 50% of all drivers are law abiding nice people who keep to the speed limit, and lets assume the other 50% are cuntbags who will happily exceed the speed if they can get away with it. It's reasonable to assume that some people will be more swayed by preventative measures than others, so lets say 40% of them will be brought into line by speed cameras, which would account for the initial reduction in offenses/accidents. However, there will always be the 10% of gutter-scum to whom no deterrant is effective, so even if you were to have cameras at every lamp post, you'd still have these bastards going too fast, which would manifest on a graph as a line that evens out over time, leaving a hardcore of 'cunts'.

I've probably posted before about this, but certainly in Lincolnshire where it's all windy roads, irrigation doitches and tractors, one of the main causes of accidents is people overtaking when it's not safe to do so. I had to beep my horn at one who nearly didn't get back in his own lane time yesterday.

They're not actually called Speed Cameras though are they? They're called Safety Cameras.

They're called "safety cameras" now, and while I understand the point of the rename (along with requiring them to be yellow, visible and adequately signed beforehand) it does rather make them bad at their job, unlike their old name.

Edit: THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS POST.

I was taking the pee, but my parking ticket post was entirely reasonable, you mean man, you.

+10 points for pedantry. It doesn't detract from the fact they measure only SPEED.

Half the roads I drive down every day are winding, unmarked, one-and-a-half lanes wide, full of bumps, full of dips and have ragged edges that further reduce the width of the road in places. And they often have cyclists and dog walkers on them in inconvenient places.

They're unrestricted, speed limit wise. I've never seen anyone go down them at 60mph. Though some people do go a bit too fast. I just drive a bit slower than maybe I could get away with to make allowances for people in Audis and 4x4s coming the other way a bit too quickly.

I'm not sure I have a point.

Mental note: Don't start speeding threads. It leads to people getting... antsy.

The only place speed limits need fiddling, in my opinion, is on the motorways. 70mph is a bit slow with modern cars... and the limit was set in the sixties when your brakes were wooden and your tires two inches wide.

Elsewhere, the problems are idiots.

First, on the M4, I had just overtaken someone going slowly in lane 1, by using lane 2. Audi A3 follows me around the slow car. However, as soon as he's past, he immediately swerves into lane 1 to UNDERTAKE me. And I do mean send me to the undertakers, as I only noticed just as I was about to flick my signal on that this cretin was inches away from me, in my blind spot, doing something illegal and dangerous. The terror they undoubtedly experienced as they realized their error and braked hard while swerving onto the hard shoulder has, with any luck, taught them not to be cunts in future.

Secondly, riding to work over Caerfilthy mountain, a 206 is right up my arse. People don't understand bikes - they have a blind spot behind them, and can also stop approximately 200 times more quickly if they want to. They (especially me, being inexperienced) also slow down a bit PRIOR to bends as braking while going around a bend on a bike is not always wise. This 206 is practically touching my topbox the whole way across and down the mountain... whereupon the road opens out and is straight, mostly level, and it is now safe to do the speed limit (/)

206 gets left behind as I accelerate up to 60mph, while she mysteriously remains at the 40 or so she'd been doing. Until much later, when we're going down the speed camera-lined North Road into Cardiff, and she's back, right up my arse, until I move out of the way and she tears off at 40 in a 30 zone. So, at no point was this daft bitch doing the appropriate/legal speed.

That, I think, is the problem, more than speeding. People who don't know the rules of the road and don't treat their fellow road users with respect.

I tend not to speed, as I don't want to get caught.

Car stop a lot faster than bikes do.

Both stop equally as fast when hitting a wall.

My brother's trick for tailgaters is to drop down to 4th to pick up revs, ease on the handbrake slowly so as to drop speed whilst not putting on the brake lights, and then tear away after casuing the tailgater to poo themselves copiously.

This is NOT a recommended course of action, plus he's been properly trained as a driver and other such disclaimery gubbins.

I have to say, a large part of the reason I speed on motorways these days is because of other drivers - I'll eventually get ticketed I'm sure but the less time I'm sharing tarmac with all the idiotic swerving, phoning, cutting-up, tailgating, undertaking, lane-hogging, non-indicating, early-and-over-braking cunts (speeding or not) the better, frankly. Speeder I may be, but I try to be as correct, forgiving and polite in every other aspect as I can be (which doesn't mean all the time; I refuse to sit behind someone hogging the outside lane against empty inside for more than a few miles, for instance. As much as I can bear, though, which is quite a lot).

Really? Not what I was told.

At the top end certainly but I'd have thought your bike could stop quicker than a 206... am I wrong?

I aim to please.

If this is true, how does this justify an increase in speed camera expenditure? It would suggest in fact that it is counter-productive to spend any more than we did in the mid-90s.

I can't wrap my head around where this 42% reduction has come from. Only thing I can think of is that it's a 42% reduction localised around the camera install (if you read the report this makes sense in the context), but as the national statistics show only a very small decrease in deaths, I'd suggest these localised stats aren't all that significant.

Furthermore, looking at the abolute numbers of deaths on UK roads, they are actually pretty fixed. The gradual tail-off in the graph I posted earlier is probably due to increasing traffic, not falling accidents.



I still don't see enough here to justify hundreds of millions per year.

FTFY

I'm guessing that the increased momentum of a ton and a half of metal versus the increased friction of braking with four wheels would kind of even out.

My dad does this.

I simply stop accelerating, they'll pass me eventually.

Or if it's a really twisty road, I simply drive at a safe speed for the conditions, conditions which do of course include the fact some cunt is up my arse.

My record so far is a mini that was driving so close to my Corsa, with such badly adjusted lights that HIS lights went further down the road in front than mine.

18mph in a 40 for a good couple of miles that.

That and cars don't rotate around the handlebars when you slam on as hard as you can.

They do, on account of bikes being limited in grip by their rear ends raising off the ground. And also having four wheels.

Of course, you can't just compare bikes to cars as a generalisation anyway.

Too much guessing in this thread, that's the problem. Statistics and citations we need.

Motorbike braking is skill-based, as has already been pointed out. You have two brakes to use, you have no computer to control the pressure for you, and if you start skidding you're quite likely going to come off. It's quite variable. Modern car straight-line braking with ABS is just "stomp as hard as you can" though, making even a chump the equal of an F1 star as long as you remember to keep your foot down when the peddle starts juddering (many people subconciously back off. Some cars even compensate for this -- you can tell which ones by their dented bootlids).

I don't do anything to annoy tailgaters, I try to let them pass. Whiplash hurts. On the other hand my enormous car has a towbar, so I am aware that in the event of a rear collision I am going to badly fuck whatever hits me. This is a comforting thought.

Nobody can agree on the whole bike vs car thing - I've just read several threads debating it - the whole 'but the car weighs over a ton!' vs 'but the bike is small' thing being the most common.

Never mind, forget I said it.

It's easy to prove, as 0-100 and 0-100-0 tests are both standard automative magazine numbers. Find some for a sports bike, some for a performance car of your choice, and subtract one from the other to determine the 100-0 times.

I wasn't being contratian at all.

IO just keep in my mind at least that a car, if it decides to stop in fron of me, can do so an awful lot quicker than I can.

I'm guessing you smell of wee, doc - I'm sure I can rustle up a citation if necessary.

Is suspect a lot of it is people buy good bikes and average cars.

Like I say, a sports bike probably does stop slower than a sports car.

But most people have 206s.

I should say I was doing 30 in a quite narrow valley 30 when they caught me.

They stayed attached to me when I accelerate to 40 in the subsequent (still narrow with blind corners) 40 which is the point where I thought "Well this is fucking dangerous" and two fairly solid dabs on the brake only scared them off for mere seconds, so they got the other treatment.

I think a lot of what's been said here has been idealism vs pragmatism.

In an ideal world traffic police would be able to make an accurate and sensible judgement about road safety, speeding and dangerous driving, and would be able to apply it equally for all roads, and to cover as many of those roads as possible (or indeed all of them).

Of course, this is impossible, though traffic cops in cars certainly give a bit of leeway at the moment, as one let me pass him at about eighty on the motorway on Thursday.

The pragmatists are thinking more that this would be lovely, but since it's impossible due to resources, speed safety cameras are a decent if not perfect alternative.

Yes, it's safer to drive at eighty in a straigth line than at seventy whilst swerving all over the place in rain... but it's not as if that's happening all the time on all the roads, and anyone driving at the speed limit is a crazy nutter. It's far more likely (I believe) to be people driving over the legal limit that are also undertaking, tailgating and swerving around traffic.

Speed alone is not a perfect measure of safety, and I do think that more motorways should have variable limits that go higher than 70 depending on conditions, but it's the best one we have to hand, until we can afford 50,000 more policemen to patrol the roads.

From a personal standpoint, I drive at the speed limit in built-up areas, but I do speed on the motorway when I believe conditions are safe to do so. On Thursday I was bombing down a relatively empty M4 at 90mph, but previously I've been on the Best Road Ever (M6 Toll) doing 40mph, because it was absolutely pissing it down.

If I get caught I'll shrug my shoulders and take the punishment. It's not a perfect system, but I know the risks and the laws, so there's no point whining about it should I get caught.

£110m a year would buy an awful lot of officers and cars, mind. Especially if they disbanded the Highways Agency patrols as the real thing came on stream, then took the camera partnerships off the motorways.

Obviously, there would then be outrage at the number of traffic police, despite them being more use than the Highways Agency and camera partnerships, and also responding to other jobs during slack periods (such as car theft, which a speed camera won't help with).

I agree to an extent. Although the argument is perhaps more that the emphasis on speeding is disproportionate to any possible benefit in terms of road safety. The policing of speed limits is achieved by yet more surveillance, which for all sorts of perfectly good reasons people don't really like. The idea that we should have either 50,000 more police or 50,000 more cameras needs better justification than it currently has. Of course some do object simply because they feel they should to be able to tear-arse around however they see fit as their incredible driving skills mean that it's perfectly safe.