A poem for those that love speed limits
Discussion
turbobloke said:
If vh is employed by 'the authorities' or the employer is dependent on 'the authorities' then it'd be unwise to step too far off-message.
If vh acknoweldged that speed limits are widely in disrepute and largely unrelated to safety, so it's perfectly safe to exceed the speed limit by some margin on a great many occasions - as is self-evident to anyone who drives a car further than the end of their road and back - then apart from the problem above, it would make the job of 'advanced' driving instructor less justifiable, less worthy perhaps, and it's a rare individual in this kind of environment that would openly disparage their job.
It might be that vh likes to think that nobody has frequently driven at very high speed safely (apart from vh and various protegés) when a lot of folk on here have experience and expertise like that derived from travelling abroad a lot, circuit training, and even everyday driving in some of the highest performing cars available.
Secret gardens must remain secret.
Again I have been quite clear where I stand on this I think.
It is possible to travel safely at speeds far in excess of our limits at times.
It is possible to only travel safely at speeds far below our limits at times.
The limits are just society's drawn line that we are expected & licenced to make a safe decision up to & not beyond. It is not the number that ultimately determines the maximum safe level of progress that is achieveable at that precise moment. That will be dependent on a whole host of factors, but I do believe (based on my expereince of people's driving) that we do need to have limits in place to manage the risks that higher attainble speeds represent.
It is entirely possible & probable that with wider performance envelopes available people can & will exceed their boundaries where no restrictions exist. With training the vast majority (IMHO) can be trained to deal with wider performance envelopes safely.
I have also said that the principle of people being allowed to drive at speeds above our current limits doesn't fill me with dread (where it is safe to) & further training/testing shouldn't be needed where changes to those limits are relatively small. But if we are to have larger changes to our current limits, I would personally rather we have compulsory further training & testing to a higher standard first. That of course is dependent on it being allowed in law & as such have the sanctioned approval of society as a whole first. Undoubtedly there are skilled individuals out there that will require little or no training, just testing. But we do need a common standard of competency IMHO, not just people thinking they are good enough, because (also in my experience) perceived ability & actual ability rarely accurately reflect one another.
For me it is not desirebale that we have people making their own decisions about what speeds they can travel at outside of society's wishes, because their use of speed & the subsequent risk it poses does affect other people's lives.
I am not job protecting here either. I have no interest in making a living teaching such stuff if it is ever open to the public. My future career path (after I've finished with my current job), is hopefully in a very different direction from any involvement in driver training.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Monday 17th April 18:46
vonhosen said:The very best of luck in your present and future roles vh.
I am not job protecting here either. I have no interest in making a living teaching such stuff if it is ever open to the public. My future career path (after I've finished with my current job), is hopefully in a very different direction from any involvement in driver training.
vonhosen said:That is a philosophy that is based on a non-existent entity, namely "society's wish". Application of this entity is attempted by people who claim to have knowledge of it, but do not (not aimed at you vh), they merely use that claim to exert control for their own ends.
For me it is not desirebale that we have people making their own decisions about what speeds they can travel at outside of society's wishes, because their use of speed & the subsequent risk it poses does affect other people's lives.
H L Mencken said:
The desire to save humanity is almost always a false front for the desire to rule it
There is also the matter of an alternative and profoundly different philosophy.
Arizona Highways Department said:
The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal
That's more reasonable.
turbobloke said:
For me it is not desirebale that we have people making their own decisions about what speeds they can travel at outside of society's wishes, because their use of speed & the subsequent risk it poses does affect other people's lives.
It is this particular member of society's wish that it be so & a wish that I am confident I do not stand alone with. I am just as confident that there are others who's wishes are different to mine. I will agree to abide by the rules imposed by our elected representatives in relation to these issues. I will voice my own opinion about these issues to those representatives, where I feel a need to & where their intended ruling conflicts with my wishes (as is my democratic right ).
turbobloke said:
The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal
That's more reasonable.
They don't practice what they preached though, because it's not entirely practical.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Monday 17th April 19:14
vonhosen said:They do because over here more and more judgements on traffic violations are made by robots on an arbitrary basis using purely technical criteria with insufficient regard to safety criteria or reasonableness. It's the views of both citizens in the equation that matter in these contexts - one is the view of a motorist, the other belongs to the second citizen in uniform. Together these considered and competent views of reasonable people work in harmony where possible and where not, due process works.
They don't practice what they preach though, because it's not entirely practical.
Today "society's view" is claimed by people who have no right to that claim. Did you read my post on that anonymous village where the council claimed to be enacting "society's view"?
These claims are almost always a sham, a travesty of the truth.
turbobloke said:
They don't practice what they preach though, because it's not entirely practical.
These claims are almost always a sham, a travesty of the truth.
I simply don't believe that the majority of people in the UK want to have speed limits removed on any of our road types. Until evidence that satisfy's me of the contrary is produced, that will continue to be my belief. I would be contacting my MP should there be any chance of such limits being removed without a much higher test of competence first.
vonhosen said:You're assuming too much there vh. Even silly laws, as per some of our speed limits, can be made to work to everyone's good if they are enforced by reasonable people with those considered and competent judgements I posted about.
I simply don't believe that the majority of people in the UK want to have speed limits removed on any of our road types. Until evidence that satisfy's me of the contrary is produced, that will continue to be my belief. I would be contacting my MP should there be any chance of such limits being removed without a much higher test of competence first.
A trained and impartial police officer can and will exercise discretion, an armed GATSO will not. To punish a driver for an act that wasn;t any risk to anyone but might be a risk at some time in the future under very different conditions is a monstrous tyranny (J J Leeming) and there is no justification whatseoever for criminalising safe behaviour (natural justice).
I realise, as you have pointed out, that there are a myriad of views on this forum, though continual mentions of police officer and judiciary involvement might have given you a strong enough hint that arbitrary, rigid and automated enforcement of road traffic laws is what is causing problems far more than the assinine laws themselves. Lots of people cuss when they stub their toe on the pavement but they don't get arrested for public order offences (yet). That's acceptable. Blanket criminalisation of large proportions of society for swearing would be rightly seen as ludicrous, doing the same for driving safely is not only idiotic and ludicrous, it is positively dangerous and a foolish trend to pursue because it removes respect for the law from otherwise law abiding people.
The following essay was from a poster on Pepipoo (Observer: same as the one that posts on here perhaps?):
In the words of the Honda advert..."I couldn't have put it better myself".
>> Edited by DeMolay on Monday 17th April 19:50
Observer said:
Neither I nor, I believe, most sensible drivers object to speed limits (we may grumble about limits which seem to have no justifiable road safety purpose); or, within reasonable limits, speed cameras and other methods of speed enforcement. The problem I have, and I think most speed camera opponents would share, if they addressed their mind specifically to the point, is the SCALE of the enforcement activity combined with the indiscriminate nature of the enforcement systems that are now in widespread use.
It only takes a moment's thought to realise that speed limits are not, never have been and never will be anything but a guide to safe speed. In absolute terms, it is reasonable to estimate that millions of speeding offences occur every single day (counting every discrete occasion on which any vehicle, anywhere, exceeds a posted speed limit), but only a vanishingly small percentage of them result in actual harm. If "speed kills" (meaning speed above a posted limit), we would be measuring fatalities in the hundreds of thousands or millions per annum.
Speeding is an absolute offence and it is understandable that it must be so, because enforcement would be almost impossible if it were not. Therefore (unless one takes the view that a crime is a crime only if the offence is detected), there are millions of criminal speeders (reportedly 99% of the driving population) whose culpability in law depends on no more than luck and/or their ability to avoid detection. If it was possible to detect all incidences of 'speeding' and enforce the law accordingly, it is clear that very few drivers would retain their licences for more than a few weeks or even days. If speeding really represents the danger to public safety that the 'speed kills' lobby would have us believe, that would be a desirable outcome. In fact, that would be an absurd result which would be hugely damaging to the country as a whole. (This is not the case with other crimes; for example, if it was possible to detect all incidences of burglary or theft and enforce accordingly, that WOULD be in the public good.) So, in establishing and maintaining this system of law, it must follow that the state (consciously or sub-consciously) acknowledges that it is NOT the legal definition of the offence itself, but the scope and scale of activity employed to detect offences and punish offenders, that defines the real boundary between criminal and non-criminal behaviour. Put another way, it is not exceeding the speed limit which represents the crime but whether the speed limit is exceeded so frequently or flagrantly or unsafely that, at a given level of detectablility of the offences and enforceability of the law, the offender is detected and prosecuted. Therefore, speeding is a "technical" offence.
Hitherto (before widespread use of automated speed detection), a (hypothetical) reasonable careful and reasonably competent driver, who exceeded the speed limit from time to time where the conditions were safe to do so, may well have avoided detection for speeding during an entire driving career without causing harm or alarm to anybody; although, on simple application of law, he would have been guilty of numerous criminal offences. The reason he would have escaped detection and conviction is that the narrow legal definition of the technical offence was balanced by the limitations of the previously existing detection and enforcement mechanisms so that, give or take a bit, the level of detection and punishment of offenders was proportionate to the harm which the offence actually caused. The introduction of systems which, on a previously unimagined scale, are able to detect the 'technical' offences, together with corresponding law enforcement systems, has destroyed that balance and re-defined the boundary between criminal and non-criminal behaviour.
In the binary world of speed enforcement, there can be no distinction between those people who exceed a speed limit and are detected, prosecuted and convicted, and those (reducing in number) who exceed a speed limit and are not caught. Each is equally culpable. Speaking in the House of Commons on 8.12.2003, Caroline Flint, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department said: "There is no doubt that speeding is a serious criminal offence". Therefore (if the reported figures are correct and, from observation, I do not think it a wild exaggeration), 99% of drivers are serious criminals. This is complete nonsense. The competent and careful actions of a majority of responsible people should obviously be considered legal (unknown author acknowledged). But, according to law, they are not. If, as acknowledged earlier, it is necessary to retain the existing legal definition of a speeding offence in order to preserve a reasonable degree of enforceability, it becomes clear that the pre-existing boundary between criminal and non-criminal behaviour must be restored by removing speed cameras altogether (or drastically reducing their number) or by some other adjustment to the detection and enforcement mechanisms.
The state has re-drawn the boundary of criminal behaviour and seeks to turn a majority of its citzens into serious criminals. That is a bizarre but unavoidable conclusion. We, the public, must turn back the tide. That could be achieved if a sufficiently large number of enforcement targets do no more than require the state to meet the ordinary standards of procedure and evidence which apply in all criminal cases.
The more adventurous among us can and should go further by using every trivial and non-trivial legal device available to frustrate the enforcement process.
In the words of the Honda advert..."I couldn't have put it better myself".
>> Edited by DeMolay on Monday 17th April 19:50
DeMolay quoted a PePiPoo poster who said:We were posting at about the same time and it's interesting to see virtually rhe same points made. It wasn't me on PePiPoo, I don't frequent Mike's forums as often these days.
The state has re-drawn the boundary of criminal behaviour and seeks to turn a majority of its citzens into serious criminals. That is a bizarre but unavoidable conclusion. We, the public, must turn back the tide. That could be achieved if a sufficiently large number of enforcement targets do no more than require the state to meet the ordinary standards of procedure and evidence which apply in all criminal cases.
These issues were raised some time ago:
Ayn Rand said:
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has
is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a
crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.
This is what we now face.
vonhosen said:I agree with much of this, but I don't agree that society chose the limits. Why and how the motorway speed limit was imposed has been done to death on this forum, so I won't revisit it.
It is possible to travel safely at speeds far in excess of our limits at times.
It is possible to only travel safely at speeds far below our limits at times.
The limits are just society's drawn line that we are expected & licenced to make a safe decision up to & not beyond. It is not the number that ultimately determines the maximum safe level of progress that is achieveable at that precise moment. That will be dependent on a whole host of factors, but I do believe (based on my expereince of people's driving) that we do need to have limits in place to manage the risks that higher attainble speeds represent.
It is entirely possible & probable that with wider performance envelopes available people can & will exceed their boundaries where no restrictions exist. With training the vast majority (IMHO) can be trained to deal with wider performance envelopes safely.
Anyway, I apologise for suggesting you might be a fantasist, but will continue to try to make you see that while you can post something that is reasonable like the above (even if I don't agree with it entirely, that does not mean that it is not reasonable), you do have a habit of descending to one-dimensional polemic.
turbobloke said:
I simply don't believe that the majority of people in the UK want to have speed limits removed on any of our road types. Until evidence that satisfy's me of the contrary is produced, that will continue to be my belief. I would be contacting my MP should there be any chance of such limits being removed without a much higher test of competence first.
A trained and impartial police officer can and will exercise discretion, an armed GATSO will not. To punish a driver for an act that wasn;t any risk to anyone but might be a risk at some time in the future under very different conditions is a monstrous tyranny (J J Leeming) and there is no justification whatseoever for criminalising safe behaviour (natural justice).
I realise, as you have pointed out, that there are a myriad of views on this forum, though continual mentions of police officer and judiciary involvement might have given you a strong enough hint that arbitrary, rigid and automated enforcement of road traffic laws is what is causing problems far more than the assinine laws themselves. Lots of people cuss when they stub their toe on the pavement but they don't get arrested for public order offences (yet). That's acceptable. Blanket criminalisation of large proportions of society for swearing would be rightly seen as ludicrous, doing the same for driving safely is not only idiotic and ludicrous, it is positively dangerous and a foolish trend to pursue because it removes respect for the law from otherwise law abiding people.
And equally I can say I think you assume too much (if you are saying that the majority do want to be rid of limits)
I have continually said that I prefer discretionary enforcement of limits by Police officers over cameras. I however also believe that cameras & automated enforcement does have a valid role to play. It of course requires that it be used in targeted problem areas only & I do not seek to justify blanket use of them for speed enforcement, but if an area is identified as suffering from excessive speed leading to unacceptable risks then advertising of the fact combined with automated enforcement is entirely proportional.
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