Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Police clamping down on speeding evaders

[twpd]

Originally Posted by 749er

on a more serious note the anti speeding lobby would tell you that even if you are the only fatality, it costs the taxpayer about £750,000 to clean up and sort out your death.

Whilst neatly avoiding telling us how much other deaths cost us.

[andyb]

Originally Posted by twpd

Whilst neatly avoiding telling us how much other deaths cost us.

Like what, War? well we know that costs millons......

It was my understanding the figure for road deaths was over a million as well

[twpd]

Originally Posted by andyb

Like what, War? well we know that costs millons......

It was my understanding the figure for road deaths was over a million as well

Any number of deaths - assaults, smoking, pollution, deaths by falling down the station stairs, errr... deaths caused by the police wrongly shooting innocent people in "anti-terrorist operations". Undoubtedly the beancounters know the cost of all these.

It doesn't matter, again it's misleading to blankly quote a cost without a meaningful comparison. I personally doubt that cost - it's probably dreamt up using some very simple calculation with a whole host of assumptions being made.

As for wars...you underestimate the costs by an order of magnitude 1000's. It's billions - not millions. Like I said - perspective is required and the authorities don't seem to have it.

[andyb]

Well Assaults or murders run into the millions, primary smoking as far as im concerned shouldnt cost us a penny. You know the risks is it that difficult?
Secondary or passive smoking is a different thing.

Yes the London bombings will/have cost millions!

I believe there is a reputable study that has been done on the financial cost of a road death, and it does run into a million. Ill see if i can find it.

[twpd]

Originally Posted by andyb

Well Assaults or murders run into the millions, primary smoking as far as im concerned shouldnt cost us a penny. You know the risks is it that difficult?

Presumably you mean treatment should be witheld from smokers? If you do mean that then how about unhealthy eaters, those who don't exercise enough, drug users, alcoholics....where does it stop? How about poor people who can't afford a decent diet?

You know that just isn't practical and isn't fair - it smacks of the extreme nanny state. The authorities forget who they serve.

I'll go so far as to say that the level of deaths we have on the roads is tolerable/acceptable when you consider we have about 20 million vehicles on the roads...3000-4000 deaths per year is a drop in the ocean compared to deaths from other causes which we do little to address. The proportion of those that are killed directly through speeding is even smaller again, yet a huge amount of resources is thrown at the subject. It doesn't make sense.

[twpd]

Good post Ray. I don't know if you have the figures but, I believe somewhere in the region of 10,000 people die each year in domestic accidents.

[Ray]

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

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.

[749er]

Originally Posted by andyb

I believe there is a reputable study that has been done on the financial cost of a road death, and it does run into a million. Ill see if i can find it.

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.

[twpd]

Originally Posted by 749er

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.

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

[Ray]

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

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.