Thames Valley - 'The Safer Roads Campaign'
Discussion
Saw this in a Reading freeby.
Speeding motorists caught on camera have paid for a 10-man traffic squad to patrol roads across the Thames Valley.
Thames Valley Police is using cash from fixed penalty speeding fines to pay for the speed enforcement squad under a Government pilot scheme, The Safer Roads Campaign, allowing it to use some of the money fro road safety.
Inspector Malcolm Collis, head of the campaign, said: "The new team will provide a visible deterrent to speeding motorists and will also be able to explain to drivers why reducing speed is a crucial part of road safety.
"We know some members of the driving public are critical about the focus on speed enforcement but we have to take every measure available to make roads safer.
"It is correct to say speed reduction is not the only way of reducing casualties as there are a number of factors which cause collisions and injury.
"But reducing speed is one of the most efective ways of reducing injuries on the road as our figure indicate."
etc etc
Nice to see some public acknowledgement from a senior officer that there's more to road safety than speed.
However, a comment in the same article from a Thames Valley Police spokesman spoilt it a little.
"This is a scheme which means that some of the money from camera fines are given back to magistrates, the Crown Prosecution Service, police and the Highways Agency provided it is spent on cutting collisions by reducing driver speed." etc etc
When will it sink into the policy makers' little heads that there are many effective ways of reducing collisions/casualties that do not continually rile the car driver by using zero-tolerance machines on safe roads to impose silly speed limits? As the police units have to follow policy from above (JR - interesting point made in one of your posts) it seems the policy makers need to come out into the real world, away from government Rovers and Whitehall.
But then you miss out on great designs just because a pedestrian can't be bothered to look. That's the problem with all this, the invidualism is lost whilst everyone has to conform. Bonnet emblems for example - Jags cat was ditched because it was unsafe for a pedestrian if knocked over and hit bonnet. I think they should get real and realise we've had sodding cars for over 100 years now and they are a part of life. Get used to it, educate everyone on how to watch out for a large block of metal moving at speed in a straight line and let natural selection deal with those that are too stupid to listen.
Exactly !!
Quite simply, most "accidents" aren't !! They could be avoided if people were looking what they were doing (this applies equally to drivers and pedestrians I hasten to add).
It's really not that difficult to avoid banging into things and if people thought about what they were doing, rather than assuming their car is fitted with an autopilot, then many "accidents" wouldn't happen in the first place.
Maybe we ought to introduce third party insurance for pedestrians and cyclists so if they step out in front of a car without looking then we can claim on their insurance !!
Personal accident insurance is standard in Germany. It covers all sorts of things. When explained to me (I lived there for a while) the examples were spilling wine on a neighbours carpet and causing an accident as a pedestrian/cyclist.
A collegue was even called as a witness for a driver trying to reclaim damage costs from a cyclist who did not have insurance!!
Just a point re pedestrians, the majority killed are usually young ie children, or old age pesioners, the young ones have not yet developed road sense and are not able to judge speeds very well, the old ones have similar problems as well as not being able to react very fast, personally I feel the only way to help these two groups is to design safer cars and where possible limit speeds where the are a lot of pedestrians, to a great degree this is being done because of public demand. Insurance for cyclists is a good idea, but it would be a nightmare to enforce
Manufacturers do not chose to put people in danger, they (we) are under large financial pressure, it is a competitive market, we make cars as safe as the public demands and is willing to pay for. If everybody was as Safety concerned then everybody would drive Volvos (in my opinion, and many others, the safest cars on sale), they don't. Most amnufacturers make money in US, only some do in Europe, and only then on some models...
It entertains me that Jaguar happily places the Leaping Cat (quite rightly) on its US market cars with there product liability laws, but cannot in Europe...
But then in the US they have Jay Walking Laws!!!
quote:The problem with making the cars safer is that the drivers then assume a greater level of safety (if I hit something the airbags will save me being injured) and so drive with less observation. Also, the costs of these safety features will be paid by you and me, do you really think the car manufacturers would really just swallow the costs? Cars were less well specced here due to customer demand, no one wanted seat belts and no one wanted to pay for them, hence the manufacturers didn't fit them and reduced the cost of the car, there is no big conspiracy between the manufacturers, it is simply market forces, giving the customer what they think they want, not necessarily what they actually need!! ================ Graham and Rosie
It would be nice if, for once, the government mentioned that the best way to stop people dying on roads is to make the car manufacturers build safer cars. Although safety is now improving this has not always been the case, and the car industry is notoriously only concerned with making money and has actively lobbied against government enforced safety measures. England has historically been continually behind the rest of the world in the minimum legal safety standards that are imposed on car companies. These manufacturers are global and so there was a time when, in the US, car makers were fitting seat belts to all front and rear seats whereas in England they weren't! The same companies, same technologies, often the same factories and models yet to save a few pennies they willingly put the lives of drivers and passengers at risk in the UK simply because they could get away with it. Whilst speed control is an obvious and enforceable way to prevent accidents its not the be all and end all, and putting in place tougher controls on the motor industry is perhaps an even more obvious solution. And it would cost absolutely nothing, as the car companies would have to pick up the bill. It isn't as if they cannot afford it.
quote:The young should be under the supervision of their parents until they are of an age suitable for allowing out on their own. That's the parents responsibility - do you let a young child play in the kitchen with the sharp knives or do you do the responsible thing as a parent and make them play elsewhere WHERE IT IS SAFE ?
Just a point re pedestrians, the majority killed are usually young ie children
quote:There are proper crossings designed to help these people, there are traffic islands in the road, the drivers themselves know where a brake pedal is and are aware of the surroundings, OAPs haven't known a world without cars therefore throughout their younger years they must have got some idea on how to cross a road surely!?!? If the still choose a blind corner and crossing inbetween parked cars whilst having their eye's closed and the hearing aid off then I'm afraid to say they're asking for it really aren't they? It's common sense.
old ones have similar problems as well as not being able to react very fast
quote:None of this is ever done in a common sense way John. Everything would be slowed down with no other routes speeded up. If they were to spend more time thinking about WHY does the driver do 40 down a 30 or hack down the rat-run-residential road to beat the slow moving traffic then they would achieve something. There is a road near my parents that is full of kids but you get the rat run drivers hack down it at sometime 50mph. What's the solution though? 20mph? humps? speed cameras? That's what the council would do. Instead they could look at the cause of the hold-up i.e, phasing of lights, 40 limit, install a roundabout instead, etc., on the main road to ease flow and stop people needing to use the rat run in the first place. Next thing we know they will put foam covers on street lamps for the poor oaps that are blind and bump into them or electric kerbs that automatically lower when someone with a free bus pass approaches them. Ridiculous crap the lot of it, I'm off to install some spikes on my front bumper...
limit speeds where the are a lot of pedestrians, to a great degree this is being done because of public demand. Insurance for cyclists is a good idea, but it would be a nightmare to enforce
Speed control needs to be targeted - which I guess is why we qustion cameras on "safe" roads. I imagine most pedestrian accidents occur in built up areas, outside schools etc, and that's where traffic calming measures should be, including highly visual police cars, speed traps, road humps etc. As JR rightly says, there are no pedestrians on motorways, who's raison d'etre is to move the populus and goods quickly and safely. Why then, when everyone exceeds the speed limit on m'ways, and there's hardly a car which won't do 100mph, are motorways policed so rigorously? Surely it would be better to target unsafe driving, but obviously you can't catch tailgating, undertaking etc on a simple robot camera :. it's too expensive. If a law is thought by the people to be stupid, it is far less likely to be obeyed, and politicians are supposed to serve the people, not dictate to them. 
New this site Hi everyone!! just reading through all these messages, there seems to be some misconceptions about the design and safty of cars. Europe and the rest of the world, except the US have pretty much the same standards of making cars "safe" the US is different becouse of bumper laws and some lighting regs, but most maufactures that i've worked with use the most stringent euro regs as a base. the resoning being that if it complies with these it will be ok any where. only where cars are destined to be sold in the US are any changes made, and these are normally just a case of designing new bumpers and lights. Cars however are not made to be "safe" they are made to protect you as much as possible in the event of an accident. there are limits, and these are not at the expense of profits. we could make cars that will prevent death ecept in the most extreme cases. the problem is that people want to be able to use them everyday, they do not want to be straped in so tight they cant move or where crash helmets to the shops, or have to limbo in over vast roll cages!! it would also make cars so expensive that no-one would be able to buy them even after winning the lottery. Take the Mclaren F1, built to race car standards, capable of sustaing very high speed impacts with minimal damge to its occupents. small problem of the price tag!! Volvo's the supposed "safest cars" are only as safe as the people driving them, i admit that if i was going to crash a car a volvo would be my choice of car to be in!! but only becose it would offer me the best protection. anyway just my 2p worth!!
Mark.
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