Ed Balls Admits Speeding
Discussion
56 in a 50. I think he will garner some sympathy.
http://news.sky.com/story/1074399/ed-balls-admits-...
http://news.sky.com/story/1074399/ed-balls-admits-...
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.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.
However, pillock is being kind & politically sensitive
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
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.
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.
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.
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!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.
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.
Lack of ability to be in change is cause for grave concern .
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