excellent idea for speed campaign!!

excellent idea for speed campaign!!

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Discussion

prelude4ws

Original Poster:

591 posts

279 months

Wednesday 9th January 2002
quotequote all
Found this on another friendly board today, why cant we do this here?

"These days, Holland like many other European countries have policies to stop speeding.

Our government claims that they enforce speed limits to improve public safety and to reduce the death toll in traffic. However, we all know that they place cameras out on the roads to steal our money. Well, so far so good.

In Holland, 95% of all speeding tickets (5 million in 2001 alone) are for violations of 1-10km/h. Off course this results in a public outrage. To teach us Dutch folks to drive, there is an organization 3VO (Trafic safety organization). They have a spokesman in the person of Bert Woudenberg to confront us with our driving behaviour.

Last Thursday, a Dutch televsion station made a program in which they confronted police officers who manned mobile radar points with their own driving behaviour after they packed their radar and cameras. They have done this during two to three weeks and the results where shocking.

On a very high scale, officers who where checking the speeds of normal citizens violated traffic rules on hughe scale. They drove through red lights, violated speed limits with up to 36km/h etc. To be claer, the officers did not have the need to break the limits what so ever to do their work.

On one occasion, the journalists followed an unmarked police car which violated the speed lilits with 20-30km/h. Everytime the police officer in that car saw a Stationary Gatso device near the highway, he slowed down to 100km/h. After he passed it, he went back to his normal speed, 20km/h-130km/h.

As a Christmas gift to all Dutch citizens who have speeding tickets on regular basis, they managed to follow some Dutch high placed officials who are responsible for enforcing the traffic rules.

And yes, they managed to follow Bert Woudenberg, the spokesman of 3VO from his home to work for about 30 or 40km. Within that time, that same guy who indoctrines us with "safe driving", violated the speed limit with 76km/h over the limit in a road construction zone. For the rest, he cruised with 30km/h over the limit, did not keep safe distance to cars in front of him etc. His violation of the speed limit in the road construction zone is enough to revoke his license when he was caught by a police officer.

When the journalist (Peter de Vries) confronted him with his driving style, he could only make some pathetic excuses. When asked if a judge would buy his excuses he only managed to come up with more pathetic answers. Bert Woudenberg completely lost his temper and control in that interview. But what is better, he lost his credibility.

You can imagine that when this is broadcasted nation wide in the Netherlands, all Dutch people who faced the greedy government more than once, can only smile.

But what is better, Bert Woudenberg lost his credibility also and it will take a while before we will see his face again.

Oh by the way, I allways keep it safe."

anyone own a TV station?

darrenlens

2,526 posts

288 months

Wednesday 9th January 2002
quotequote all
What a good idea, anybody know the email address for Mark Thomas from Channel 4, its an ideal subject for one of his shows.

CarZee

13,382 posts

272 months

Thursday 10th January 2002
quotequote all
www.mtcp.co.uk/

There's no reason why it couldn't be done here with some organisation.. create a web site with early results, and draw attention from the media with a press release. Then get buy in from the tabloids and/or Mark Thomas etc before going after poeple like Prescott & Byers...

Problem is that I think you'll find Mark Thomas' politics are a bit too left leaning to have any sympathy with our cause...


Ali_D

1,115 posts

289 months

Thursday 10th January 2002
quotequote all
Now I understand why they chose a transport secretary who couldn't drive!

Edited by Ali_D on Thursday 10th January 09:25

Jason F

1,183 posts

289 months

Thursday 10th January 2002
quotequote all
None of the Top ministers need to drive, they are all Chauffer driven !!

The Sun is getting on their case now, they also did a report of Speed Camera manning cops who speed themselves...

Just need a lot more support to reduce speeding from a crime that is worse than Infanticide to a slap on wrists crime (within reason of course)

mr_tony

6,339 posts

274 months

Thursday 10th January 2002
quotequote all
quote:

Mark Thomas' politics are a bit too left leaning to have any sympathy with our cause



B*ll*cks! Mark may be an old style socialist, but embarrassing authority is his main aim. I'm sure this would be right up his street!

manek

2,977 posts

289 months

Thursday 10th January 2002
quotequote all
quote:

quote:

Mark Thomas' politics are a bit too left leaning to have any sympathy with our cause



B*ll*cks! Mark may be an old style socialist, but embarrassing authority is his main aim. I'm sure this would be right up his street!



Absolutely! There's plenty of us left-leaning petrolheads about....

-Manek-

CarZee

13,382 posts

272 months

Friday 11th January 2002
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Okay, maybe 'left leaning' was not the appropriate euphemism, but if you look at what sort of things he gets involved with, it's mostly to do with human rights and the environment.

And when he finds his cause, he then thrives on embarassing the authorities within that context, but I reckon the chances of him getting invoved with something like this are pretty slim...

Look at his website and check what sort of things he's involved with...