Ed Balls Admits Speeding

[lord summerisle]

Ed Balls said:

"Like many local people, I was caught out by the never-ending roadworks on the M62. Pulling on to the motorway at Morley I realised too late that the speed restrictions were still in place," the Labour MP wrote.

Hmm these are roadworks that have been going on for the last couple of years, and are well known to be going to remain for at least a further 12 months - the Morley junctions being slap bang in the middle of the 20mile section of 50mph limit - with huge 50 signs at the on ramps, millions of cones + the hard shoulder corndoned off & Average speed cameras every mile or 2 -s'not like he was caught by a Gasto camera.

[vodkalolly]

DukeDickson said:

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

EH? Why is doing what is done routinely by everyone trillions of times a day dumb? If its advisory then the response is "I have listened to the advice and I thinks its ste" Next.

Has the undemocratic gummint got rid of the 10% + 2mph rule then? I know they have in the magistrate court cos any crap goes there but in a proper expensive court?

OK Balls is a total pillock

[Pistom]

JDRoest said:

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.

I love posts like this and it make PH worth reading. How do we get this poster into Government. They'd get my vote!

[skyrover]

Pistom said:

I love posts like this and it make PH worth reading. How do we get this poster into Government. They'd get my vote!

Agreed...

Someone who can eloquently put into words what we were all thinking