Ed Balls Admits Speeding

[limpsfield]

56 in a 50. I think he will garner some sympathy.

http://news.sky.com/story/1074399/ed-balls-admits-...

[Eric Mc]

He should have made Yvette Cooper take his points.

[greygoose]

A lesson to Lib Dems in how to handle a ticket .

56 doesn't seem that fast to get done, obviously not much leeway there.

[tim0409]

Ed Balls...sympathy....no chance!

[MonkeyHanger]

Well old Balls has finally done something for me. He's confirmed that i'm right to sit at exactly 50mph every time i pass that way on my way to Oulton Park

[Wills2]

That's the very least of that tts crimes!

[vodkalolly]

So 50 +/- 10% + 2mph = 57 SO 56 should be officially under the limit

I think a thorough horsewhipping followed by hanging for the speed camera operator.

This countries buggered This speeding rubbish needs stopping.

Balls is pillock though.

[DukeDickson]

vodkalolly said:

So 50 +/- 10% + 2mph = 57 SO 56 should be officially under the limit

I think a thorough horsewhipping followed by hanging for the speed camera operator.

This countries buggered This speeding rubbish needs stopping.

Balls is pillock though.

If it weren't such an ungodly hour, someone else would have already pointed out - that isn't a limit - t'is advisory. 51 would have been sufficient. Both 51 and 56 potentially dumb though.

However, pillock is being kind & politically sensitive

[Colonial]

Who cares?

[jmorgan]

Last few sentences of that article are more concerning.

[Funkateer]

jmorgan said:

Last few sentences of that article are more concerning.

Indeed, especially this bit...

Balls said:

Our course instructors explained that casualty rates have fallen over the past decade, as drivers have become more aware and car design has improved. The worrying thing is that this trend has started to reverse in recent years.

How can this be?

I've never felt right about the current obsession with speed limits. However Balls seems to want to prescribe more of the same medicine that's not working.

Edited by Funkateer on Saturday 6th April 08:07

[Crafty_]

Funkateer said:

However Balls seems to want to prescribe more of the same medicine that's not working.

Thats his general approach for everything.

Edited by Crafty_ on Saturday 6th April 20:08

[colonel c]

Interesting. If he had elected to take the points and fine would we be any the wiser? Instead he went on a speed awareness course and posted about it on his blog. Thus the story becomes national news. I guess that he would expect most people to be sympathetic if he seen as being honest and upfront as opposed to the way Chris Huhne behaved in similar circumstances.

[JDRoest]

Funkateer said:

Balls said:

Our course instructors explained that casualty rates have fallen over the past decade, as drivers have become more aware and car design has improved. The worrying thing is that this trend has started to reverse in recent years.

How can this be?

I've never felt right about the current obsession with speed limits. However Balls seems to want to prescribe more of the same medicine that's not working.

I spent some considerable time with the RTA death stats many years ago, and kept up to date with them. Since the 70s and 80s, car design and safety became a much more important thing (compare the Cortina to the Sierra if you will - which one do you want to be in an accident in?). Companies like Volvo made safety sexy, then came the safety standard and then everyone is spending time and money making cars safer (not only to be in at first, but also to run people down in nowadays).

You also have a modern fleet on the UK roads, so better safety in design very quickly makes it's way into the market in considerable numbers.

So you have this continual down trend on deaths in RTAs, purely down to car design.

But against this you have a road network in the UK that was the safest network in the world since stats started (until about 97/98). The UK literally led the world in safe roads by a country mile. And it's not difficult to see why - the signposting is wonderful, the markings are consistent, the speed limits (were) sensible, and above all, Plod would pull you over when you stepped out of line.

Then you get fkwits playing around with the roads, speed bumps everywhere (which distract you from driving and avoiding small children to concentrating on an object in the road), width restrictions, speed limits that are too low (equally distracting), built out bus stops (so you can't see round) and so forth. A myriad of things appeared in our roads from 97/98.

Driving in town today isn't a lesson in safety, it's an obstacle course.

Read Jalopnik for instance about the safety of cars for instance - the guys who wrecked a 2010 Mustang GT at 130mph and walked away from it without a scratch. Cars cannot get much safer. Or the 5th Gear episode when the Renault Megane wiped out the Volvo estate.

My conclusion is that cars have got safer, and the death rate went down accordingly. Roads however have not got safer in the slightest as drivers are unconcerned ("speed kills, so 20 should be ok..."). But we've reached a point where maybe cars cannot get any safer than they already are. THe upwards pressure is now about driving standards, in part brought around from bad road design and a simplistic "speed kills" philosophy.

One of the problems with the road safety lobby in 97/98 (and leading up to that election because that's where things radically changed) was to look at UK roads and say "What are we doing wrong?". We should have looked at our road system and the deaths, and said "What are we doing right?".

If you take the former "What are we doing wrong?" then you start importing ideas from countries that have a worse death rate than our own. If you take the latter "What are we doing right?" you can investigate what made the roads so good, and improve on it.

[davepoth]

Cars can get safer, but I think you are right that the government needs to put a bit more thought into road design in terms of safety rather than just reducing speed.

[sidicks]

davepoth said:

Cars can get safer, but I think you are right that the government needs to put a bit more thought into [u]road design[/u] in terms of safety rather than just reducing speed.

AND driving standards!

[JDRoest]

sidicks said:

davepoth said:

Cars can get safer, but I think you are right that the government needs to put a bit more thought into [u]road design[/u] in terms of safety rather than just reducing speed.

AND driving standards!

The problem is that the message of "driving standards" has long since been lost in "speed kills" yet driving slower does not make you a safer driver. And the real problem is that organisations like BRAKE! are so blinded by "speed kills" they will never accept anything other than the motorist pushing their car everywhere.

[chrisw666]

Colonial said:

Who cares?

This.

I don't care how he drives or where Osbourne parks, what I do care about is their lack of ability to be in charge.

[moparmick]

JDRoest said:

The problem is that the message of "driving standards" has long since been lost in "speed kills" yet driving slower does not make you a safer driver. And the real problem is that organisations like BRAKE! are so blinded by "speed kills" they will never accept anything other than the motorist pushing their car everywhere.

That's because their nice salaries and big pensions rely on it.

[aw51 121565]

chrisw666 said:

Colonial said:

Who cares?

This.

I don't care how he drives or where Osbourne parks, what I do care about is their lack of ability to be in charge.

, I mean... Either of these motoring-related non-events are news???

Lack of ability to be in change is cause for grave concern .