Do you Speed (or mums net has taken over the asylum )

[Toltec]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

I won't argue with any of that. All I ever said was that killing a cyclist doing 100 in a 60 would land you in a whole load of trouble, and very possibly prison. I never said "should", just "would". "Should" is a separate debate.

This neatly highlights one of the key issues with speed limits and safety. While you can argue that they do not work very well or that they are unfair, from a pragmatic standpoint they do provide a check on those without self control and a benchmark to simplify allocation of blame.

As much as I would like to be able to drive at a speed I would prefer there does need to be some system which puts a strong bias on doing this safely. A balance might be making exceeding the posted speed not an automatic offence, but a point at which legally the onus to prove safe action falls on the driver.

It may mean that you could be prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving even in the absence of an accident/incident should police officers report your driving standard. Modern technology in the form of telemetry and in car cameras could be vital in proving your innocence.

What if having video/telemetry equipment could be used instead to quash a speeding prosecution if it shows your driving to be safe? Would you accept this as a compromise to provide a way of exceeding a posted limit?

[Phatboy317]

Toltec said:

A balance might be making exceeding the posted speed not an automatic offence, but a point at which legally the onus to prove safe action falls on the driver.

I fear that would have the effect of skewing justice, not only in favour of those with the deepest pockets and so able to afford the best defence, but in favour of the State - in the face of the wholesale ratcheting down of speed limits.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

9mm said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Zod said:

For Heaven's sake! This has been a purely hypothetical situation since the beginning. Part of the hypothesis that you are disputing is that the accident investigation concluded that the cyclist's death would have occurred whether the speed was 50, 60 or 100. Arguing against elements of the hypothesis is absurd.

Now we have singlecoil too, prepared as ever to enter an argument for the sake of it!

I'm done here.

Hitting a cyclist at 100 in a 60 is hypothetical. An accident investigation team concluding beyond all doubt that the cyclist would have died at 60 anyway is moving from hypothetical to fantasy. In my long experience (over 30 years) of court proceedings in relation to motoring offences following RTAs, it would never happen. Can I ask, do you have any professional experience in this field?

Don't the authorities regularly tell us there's such and such a percentage of killing someone at x speed, y speed, etc and aren't those numbers rather low, like 20pph, 30mph, etc? Based on that, I wouldn't have thought it would be too difficult to argue 60 mph would kill you and if anyone's going to say 60 mph might not but 100 mph definitely would, they would surely have to demonstrate just how that works. i.e the human body cannot survive more than a 73.6 mph impact.

That's all true. But, if someone is killed being hit at 100mph, then as the event has already occurred, no one can say with 100% certainty what the outcome at 60 would have been. The prosecution will argue that by driving at 70% above the limit, the cyclist was never given the opportunity of survival. In court, you'd be hung out to dry.

[Mr2Mike]

Dammit said:

At the risk of interrupting the circle jerk before it becomes a tornado of self congratulatory jizm, what other laws do people ignore on a daily basis?

There must be dozens and dozens of them. Some of the more obvious:

Littering
Parking on double yellows
Letting your dog crap in a public place
Not wearing seat belts
Using a mobile phone to call or text (without hands free)
Watching TV without a licence
Having an out of date address/name on your licence
Downloading pirated films/music.
Stealing stuff from hotels
Pretending your kids are younger than they are to get a concession