1999 are to hand, 3952 people killed in domestic accidents, so its time to be tough on living in houses and the causes of living in a house:D

in the same year nearly 2000 people concussed themselves by running into tree trunks, I kid you not, time to chainsaw every tree in the country down then, time to be tough on trees and the causes of trees,

source DTI

Think this is getting a bit off plot now.

Ray.

Yes Ray - off plot but it neatly illustrates the point I was making about sensible and proportional action...keeping things in perspective.

Yes it is wrong that someone '' can get away with it '' once they are caught commiting an offence.

Most people however '' get away with it '' every day of their driving lives.

The average driver ( Including me ) makes mistakes. In addition some drivers are incapable of driving properly because they are idiots or on drugs ( And I include medicines in this ) and some drivers drive in an extremely aggressive manner, using their vehicles as weapons to bully people out of their way.

The police can't be everywhere at once and as andy says they are the ones who have to deal with the aftermath. The speed limits act as a control element. If you police them properly and enough drivers obey them they become a very basic safety measure.

But speeding is only one of a plethora of traffic offences. yet, it is the only one that the authorities seem interested in. It does not make sense if you are trying to have a properly integrated policy towards road safety. Errrrr....hang on....we don't have one, do we? :rolleyes:

twpd

Yes I agree, but speeding can be measured with ( In theory ) reasonable accuracy and with few grey areas.

If the camera / patrol car says you were exceeding the limit then you are guilty in law. If you are driving badly / dangerously then it is up to the judgement of an individual police officer who stops you and can be challenged, apparently successfully in court.

Where things seem to fall down at the moment is in a lack of police traffic officers and a lack of real penalties for the worst offenders. I.E. the latest one I read of was a young man driving at well over the speed limit and performing dangerous overtakes and eventually killing a young woman in another car. His sentence I believe was 4 years, so he may serve say 18 months / two years max?

He drove like an idiot and killed someone. If I handled my rifle like an idiot and killed someone I would probably get 7 years minimum.

I drive for a living ( As near as I can to ' the system ' ) and see some abysmal
driving every day, but I can drive all day and see no police traffic cars, so who is keeping me safe?

The £750k was the cost 9 years ago, so no doubt it will be £1m now. That figure was given to me by the President of the ILE, (Institute of Lighting Engineers), which is the professional body who design our lighting for roadways. Their interest is of course that lit roadways have less accidents than similar unlit roadways. And for us on 2 wheels they are of course much easier to navigate at speed at night.

TWPD, not sure why you are getting upset with me when all I am stating is what those who want to curb speeding would say about the cost of road death.

In the interest of diplomacy I will refrain from making comment about smoking.

too true, the worst I see regularly are

undertaking
racing from the on ramp to the third lane immediately with scant regard for what is behind.
running red lights in London where I drive daily
tailgateing

I'm not upset with you. I don't know where you get that idea from. Can you explain please?

The crux of this issue is that there are serious flaws in the arguements that the powers that be use to try and justify the focus on speed enforcement.


Some are taking perfectly legal action to try and expose those flaws fully. The government is in a mess legislation wise, both in complexity and ambiguity with other areas of both it's own legislation and that coming from Europe.

The police are in effect, caught in the middle, trying to fully enforce poor complex legislation against an increasingly sceptical public and legal challenges from the public with the time, energy and cash to do so.

The powers that be are relying on ever more complex technology that is criminalising an increasing numbers of the public, then the local scamerati use bully boy tactics when the loopholes in the poor legislation that are trying to enforce are exposed when people don't just roll over and take the points and fine and choose to got to court to defend themselves using the very same legislation that got them there in the first place or other legislation that is at odds with it.

All the original article that was mentioned at the start of this thread illustrates IMHO is that the bully boy/scare tactics have stepped up a level, i.e. have your day in court and loose then you'll get a big bill for costs. It does appear that precedent may have already been set to kibosh this tactic.

A very interesting court room battle to be fought in the next two weeks:D

The game goes on, no one likes to lose, especially on a technicality or because their understanding of the rules of the game wasn't quite as good as the oppostions, or the person in charge of the game has a different agenda (Ask Flav.............is FIA really Ferrari International Assistence)



Ray.

I just spent 15 mins replying to this - only to lose it when i posted - now i can't be arsed to do it again:mad: