"Scrap Speed Cameras Week" - tell the press
Discussion
Chrispy Porker said:
Not in a week they wouldn't.
make a big statement though if they got no cash for a week.
You really think? I would see it as a big political opportunity for the scameras; 'look, our efforts are working, if we increase surveillance we can wipe out these dangerous speeders and lower speed limits'make a big statement though if they got no cash for a week.
Chrispy Porker said:
How about everyone stick to the limit for a week ?
If they get no money they'll soon go out of business
How about everyone speeding through a known working camera or scamera van, then rejecting the conditional offer, and take the case to court.If they get no money they'll soon go out of business
How many years would it take for the courts to trial every case? The system would collapse?
Folks, see this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml...
'Scrap speed cameras now'
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/06/2007
They might be good for the organisers of track days but speed cameras are killing ordinary road users, says Paul Smith, of the Safe Speed Campaign
British road safety is in trouble. The number of road deaths isn't falling as expected and recent figures from Europe put our rate of road safety improvement behind 20 other European nations. We used to have the safest roads in the world but we have been overtaken.
Although it appears that Department for Transport (DfT) targets are being met, it's only the trend in serious injuries that provides this positive result. Unfortunately for the DfT, and for the rest of us, the numbers being hospitalised following road crashes haven't fallen for a decade. The only reasonable conclusion is that serious injuries are not falling either, but DfT statistics suffer an increasing degree of under-reporting.
When asked to investigate why road deaths were not falling as expected, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) deduced that "some drivers must be getting worse".
I have spent the last six years looking at road safety as a system and I'm pretty sure I know what's going wrong. Modern traffic policies are making drivers worse. This has been allowed to happen because the DfT has no working definition of what it means to be a good driver or even a proper understanding of what drivers really do. Yet driver behaviour, specifically the quality of driver behaviour, is the hidden fundamental on which all road safety depends. Unfortunately, the DfT has been taking driver quality for granted or possibly ignoring it altogether, an issue that Sir John Whitmore addressed in his most recent Telegraph Motoring column (June 2).
The process of driving is one of real-time risk management. Drivers who manage risk well stay out of trouble. They recognise risky situations and wait, hang back or steer clear.
Of course the potential risks involved in driving are enormous. Shutting your eyes for 20 seconds would probably cause a crash, possibly ending or ruining several lives. And while driving blind would certainly be daft, this actually tells us something important. It's not so much what we see that matters, but what we do with what we see. We use it to manage risk.
Sadly, most people haven't been taught to drive as risk managers. We are taught manual skills (steering, clutch control, gear changing) and rules (go this way or that, stop here, don't stop here, don't speed, don't drink and drive).
The necessary risk management skills are acquired gradually with experience (at least as far as that experience goes in everyday driving) and they are easy to overlook because they are mostly subconscious. We learn where to look, how to recognise danger and how to respond to danger when we see it, making all sorts of subtle, semi-automatic judgements.
In particular, we learn to adjust our speed in order to remain safe in the prevailing road, weather and traffic conditions. The speed at which you choose to drive is an output from your own internal risk management system. Yet the DfT regards speed as an "input".
Road safety policy should have one overarching purpose - to make our roads safer. And the critical measure of success is the way road deaths are changing. If the number of road deaths isn't falling as expected in Britain, but it is falling as expected in other countries with similar economic conditions, then we know that something is wrong with our policies.
And there is something wrong with our policies. Not only do they neglect driver quality, but they are actively making us worse. We are prioritising and concentrating on the wrong things. At the heart of our policies are speed cameras, which have largely replaced comprehensive traffic policing. The dream is that cameras reduce risk, but the reality is that they are reducing the quality of our risk management.
Cameras give us legal compliance targets, not safety targets. And the divergence between the two is now very marked. We now have a nation of drivers concentrating on compliance rather than safety. The whole concept of speed cameras denies that we are capable of managing risk, yet road safety absolutely depends on individual risk management in real time. So the DfT has not only failed to understand what driver quality is but has given us policies that undermine it. Worse, it has fed us a false dogma to justify its policies. That false dogma has infected our road safety industry, with millions now believing that the only way to safer roads is slower traffic.
Yet our roads are not becoming safer. After falling for decades in spite of vastly increasing traffic, the number of fatal crashes has remained fairly static since the DfT replaced traffic police with speed cameras. If it had announced that all those traffic officers would be issued with blinkers and stopwatches and would sit on a chair at the side of the road looking neither left nor right, we would have thought it madness.
The only possible route forward is for the DfT to admit its fatal mistake and pull the plug on the failed speed camera programme. This would certainly be a dramatic step, but it is an essential one, as a mere change of emphasis would leave the false dogma intact.
We really need a fundamental change of attitude. We need to lead the world again and show the way.
Speed cameras and the official propaganda that justifies them are the cause of our current problems, not the solution. They have to go and they have to go now.
That's why the Safe Speed campaign is launching "Scrap Speed Cameras Week" tomorrow (see www.safespeed.org.uk/sscw.html ), and why more than 25,000 people have already called on Downing Street to scrap speed cameras. To add your name to the online petition, which closes at midnight on Tuesday, June 26, go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scrapcam .
Paul Smith is founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign.
For more information, go to http://www.safespeed.org.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml...
'Scrap speed cameras now'
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/06/2007
They might be good for the organisers of track days but speed cameras are killing ordinary road users, says Paul Smith, of the Safe Speed Campaign
British road safety is in trouble. The number of road deaths isn't falling as expected and recent figures from Europe put our rate of road safety improvement behind 20 other European nations. We used to have the safest roads in the world but we have been overtaken.
Although it appears that Department for Transport (DfT) targets are being met, it's only the trend in serious injuries that provides this positive result. Unfortunately for the DfT, and for the rest of us, the numbers being hospitalised following road crashes haven't fallen for a decade. The only reasonable conclusion is that serious injuries are not falling either, but DfT statistics suffer an increasing degree of under-reporting.
When asked to investigate why road deaths were not falling as expected, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) deduced that "some drivers must be getting worse".
I have spent the last six years looking at road safety as a system and I'm pretty sure I know what's going wrong. Modern traffic policies are making drivers worse. This has been allowed to happen because the DfT has no working definition of what it means to be a good driver or even a proper understanding of what drivers really do. Yet driver behaviour, specifically the quality of driver behaviour, is the hidden fundamental on which all road safety depends. Unfortunately, the DfT has been taking driver quality for granted or possibly ignoring it altogether, an issue that Sir John Whitmore addressed in his most recent Telegraph Motoring column (June 2).
The process of driving is one of real-time risk management. Drivers who manage risk well stay out of trouble. They recognise risky situations and wait, hang back or steer clear.
Of course the potential risks involved in driving are enormous. Shutting your eyes for 20 seconds would probably cause a crash, possibly ending or ruining several lives. And while driving blind would certainly be daft, this actually tells us something important. It's not so much what we see that matters, but what we do with what we see. We use it to manage risk.
Sadly, most people haven't been taught to drive as risk managers. We are taught manual skills (steering, clutch control, gear changing) and rules (go this way or that, stop here, don't stop here, don't speed, don't drink and drive).
The necessary risk management skills are acquired gradually with experience (at least as far as that experience goes in everyday driving) and they are easy to overlook because they are mostly subconscious. We learn where to look, how to recognise danger and how to respond to danger when we see it, making all sorts of subtle, semi-automatic judgements.
In particular, we learn to adjust our speed in order to remain safe in the prevailing road, weather and traffic conditions. The speed at which you choose to drive is an output from your own internal risk management system. Yet the DfT regards speed as an "input".
Road safety policy should have one overarching purpose - to make our roads safer. And the critical measure of success is the way road deaths are changing. If the number of road deaths isn't falling as expected in Britain, but it is falling as expected in other countries with similar economic conditions, then we know that something is wrong with our policies.
And there is something wrong with our policies. Not only do they neglect driver quality, but they are actively making us worse. We are prioritising and concentrating on the wrong things. At the heart of our policies are speed cameras, which have largely replaced comprehensive traffic policing. The dream is that cameras reduce risk, but the reality is that they are reducing the quality of our risk management.
Cameras give us legal compliance targets, not safety targets. And the divergence between the two is now very marked. We now have a nation of drivers concentrating on compliance rather than safety. The whole concept of speed cameras denies that we are capable of managing risk, yet road safety absolutely depends on individual risk management in real time. So the DfT has not only failed to understand what driver quality is but has given us policies that undermine it. Worse, it has fed us a false dogma to justify its policies. That false dogma has infected our road safety industry, with millions now believing that the only way to safer roads is slower traffic.
Yet our roads are not becoming safer. After falling for decades in spite of vastly increasing traffic, the number of fatal crashes has remained fairly static since the DfT replaced traffic police with speed cameras. If it had announced that all those traffic officers would be issued with blinkers and stopwatches and would sit on a chair at the side of the road looking neither left nor right, we would have thought it madness.
The only possible route forward is for the DfT to admit its fatal mistake and pull the plug on the failed speed camera programme. This would certainly be a dramatic step, but it is an essential one, as a mere change of emphasis would leave the false dogma intact.
We really need a fundamental change of attitude. We need to lead the world again and show the way.
Speed cameras and the official propaganda that justifies them are the cause of our current problems, not the solution. They have to go and they have to go now.
That's why the Safe Speed campaign is launching "Scrap Speed Cameras Week" tomorrow (see www.safespeed.org.uk/sscw.html ), and why more than 25,000 people have already called on Downing Street to scrap speed cameras. To add your name to the online petition, which closes at midnight on Tuesday, June 26, go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scrapcam .
Paul Smith is founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign.
For more information, go to http://www.safespeed.org.uk
I have to say i'm getting fed up of the "scrap speed cameras" line all the time from Paul Safespeed.
a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
J500ANT said:
I have to say i'm getting fed up of the "scrap speed cameras" line all the time from Paul Safespeed.
a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
Speed cameras are the foundation stone of the false dogma that's doing so much harm.a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
Perhaps read the Telegraph article line by line. If some part of the chain of logic seems wrong to you, then point it out.
And believe me, speed cameras are going. They can't get away with killing with bad policy for much longer.
J500ANT said:
The logic is fine, its the way its worded - put across - assimilated to the masses. We all know we need real road policing, there's probably not one person on here that'd say otherwise. But "scrap speed cameras" is getting boring and going nowhere.
Article says:The only possible route forward is for the DfT to admit its fatal mistake and pull the plug on the failed speed camera programme. This would certainly be a dramatic step, but it is an essential one, as a mere change of emphasis would leave the false dogma intact.
Is that wrong? Is there another possible route forwards?
safespeed said:
J500ANT said:
The logic is fine, its the way its worded - put across - assimilated to the masses. We all know we need real road policing, there's probably not one person on here that'd say otherwise. But "scrap speed cameras" is getting boring and going nowhere.
Article says:The only possible route forward is for the DfT to admit its fatal mistake and pull the plug on the failed speed camera programme. This would certainly be a dramatic step, but it is an essential one, as a mere change of emphasis would leave the false dogma intact.
Is that wrong? Is there another possible route forwards?
Edited by J500ANT on Saturday 23 June 23:11
J500ANT said:
I have to say i'm getting fed up of the "scrap speed cameras" line all the time from Paul Safespeed.
a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
Sorry mate, but just because you're getting "fed up" with someone else's efforts to curb the yellow cashcows doesn't mean everyone else is. The way I see it, the bloke is at least making a stand for the motorist. What are you doing?a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
seems to me that scrapping speed cameras is a fantastic idea. I'm sick of having people slam their brakes on before a camera and the ripple backwards of panic that happens. they are not "safety cameras" at all.
but your right, if you've not acheived goal and your getting on someones nerves you should stop. The french resistance didn't defeat the nazis straight away so they should have stopped. And africans are still straving to death so bob geldof should stop trying to help.
but your right, if you've not acheived goal and your getting on someones nerves you should stop. The french resistance didn't defeat the nazis straight away so they should have stopped. And africans are still straving to death so bob geldof should stop trying to help.
ukwill said:
J500ANT said:
I have to say i'm getting fed up of the "scrap speed cameras" line all the time from Paul Safespeed.
a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
Sorry mate, but just because you're getting "fed up" with someone else's efforts to curb the yellow cashcows doesn't mean everyone else is. The way I see it, the bloke is at least making a stand for the motorist. What are you doing?a) because it aint gonna happen and
b) because its getting peoples backs up, people who previously held a lot of respect for him (ie me and a few other people i've spoken to)
Over the past few months just about every comment from Safespeed has been "scrap speed cameras" in reply to every posting thats police related. Its not going to get anywhere is it?
By doing this, Paul, the positive press that you have had in the past will be gone in minutes. In the past i've donated to your cause as I felt it was worthy and more focused on general road safety, not any more.
So why not demand proper road policing and use that as your tag line?
J500ANT said:
The logic is fine, its the way its worded - put across - assimilated to the masses. We all know we need real road policing, there's probably not one person on here that'd say otherwise. But "scrap speed cameras" is getting boring and going nowhere.
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