For all those speed camera haters it brings me great pleasure to announce that more of the dreaded Yellow boxes could be switched off - Bournemouth are considering following in Swindon’s footsteps and removing its fixed speed cameras according to a recent report by the Bournemouth Daily Echo.
A committee has been set up to discuss the necessity of the cameras just two weeks after Swindon became the first town in the UK to turn off five of them because the council claimed the £320,000 maintenance bill was too high.
There are 20 speed cameras in the south coast town of Bournemouth - which has a Conservative council - and the committee are said to be investigating whether or not the cameras actually help prevent accidents or reduce car speeds.
So it could only be a matter of time before Bournemouth’s motorists start celebrating the demise of the speed camera.
We all know the risks of driving while under the influence of alcohol and now a new study has shown that texting while driving is even worse.
The RAC Foundation has found that the average reaction times for driving slowed by a third (35%) while the driver was writing or reading a text. This compares to 12% for those who drank alcohol and 21% who had taken cannabis. The study was carried out in simulators using drivers aged between 17 and 24.
Apparently as many as 50% of drivers aged between 17 and 24 admit to texting while driving. The study showed that when texting the drivers lost concentration and drifted out of lanes and had poorer steering control. The Times reports that the steering control of texters was 91% poorer than those drivers concentrating fully on the road.
There has also been more recent call to ban smoking when driving. This was highlighted back in 2007 when there were concerns that the ban on smoking in public places may encourage people to smoke more in their cars. Like drinking, eating and using your mobile phone, smoking is a very dangerous distraction. If you are trying to light a cigarette or if you drop a cigarette when you are driving your attention is immediately taken off of the road and this makes you much more likely to have an accident.
Unfortunately some innocent people have lost their lives due to these kinds of distractions. There are new laws coming in that could see drivers being jailed for up to five years if they cause a death while using their mobile phone, applying make up or eating and drinking. If you need to have a cigarette, have something to eat or need to contact someone on your phone, then pull over and do it safely, don’t put other innocent people and yourself in danger.
The Telegraph has reported that men behave like Cavemen when behind the wheel.
Personally I’m a bit fed up with drivers who think that they own the road. Speed limits are there for a reason, particularly in certain built up areas, and whilst I admit that I don’t stick exactly to the speed limit, I try not to exceed it too badly. It really annoys me when other drivers feel the need to drive within 2 inches of my rear bumper trying to either make me drive faster or move out of their way. People have absolutely no patience or manners on the roads.
In a report for the Commons transport committee, Professor Geoffrey Beattie of Manchester University puts this down to our men’s caveman routes. He concluded: “Our 21st-century skulls contain essentially ’stone-age’ brains and this can help to explain the differences between the sexes in terms of their risk-proneness while driving.” He said: “Stone-age man did not drive. But the legacy of his hunting, aggressive and risk-taking past - qualities that enabled him to survive and mate, thereby passing on his genes to future generations - are still evident in the way in which he typically drives his car.”
However, I am not sure that it is just men that drive like Cavemen. I am constantly shocked to see some women driving like complete maniacs on our roads and often being verbally abusive. And it is often the younger drivers that feel that they own the road and have more to prove. Unfortunately it is this behaviour that leads to many tragic accidents on our roads today.
New government plans revealed recently could mean that speeding motorists get six points (and a £100 fine) instead of the current three points (and a £60 fine). This increased tariff could mean drivers being banned after just two instances of driving over the speed limit - having duly accumulated 12 points.
Is this a good thing? Will it help drive home the message that ‘thou shalt not speed’? Or, are we just going to see thousands of perfectly safe drivers banned, fined and forced to pay increased insurance premiums?
It’s a hard one to answer: on one hand there is the argument - forwarded by motoring campaign group Safe Speed -that going over the speed limit does not automatically make you a dangerous driver, yet, on the other hand there is the simple arguement that rules are rules - break them and pay the consequences.
It is worth noting that amidst the furore, and ahead of the planned government consultation, Jim Fitzpatrick the Transport Minister did note that the six point punishment was intended only for those who are excessively speeding - not just drifting over the limit, but way beyond it, so say 45mph in a 30mph zone, 70mph in a 50 zone, and 94mph in a 70mph zone. On this basis, the proposal does seem to have merit: at these speeds we are surely not talking about careful drivers but ones with no heed for the legal limits, who presumably believe it to be safe, or else a worthwhile or acceptable risk, to drive way over the limit. Surely, were this to be introduced, this could only help make our roads safer? Let’s see what emerges from the consultation…
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the speed limit on residential roads. First, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) came out last week and said they were in favour of dropping the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph, and that this would halve the number of road deaths.
So far so good, unless you are the Association of British Drivers (ABD) who claim that 20mph will see more accidents.
The reason? Well, according to Nigel Humphries, ABD spokesperson: “Concentration, alertness, and observation are fundamental factors required for safe driving, which are maximised by the driver setting a speed appropriate for the prevailing road conditions. Forcing drivers to travel below an appropriate speed is therefore detrimental to road safety.” Apparently, the concern is that drivers will spend so much more time reading their speedometer to ensure that they are not breaking the 20mph limit that they will be more likely to not be looking at the road ahead.
Opposing these views, some might argue that drivers get a feel for the speed they are travelling at and will quickly know what 20mph feels like or that it only takes a fraction of a second to glance at one’s speed. Others might argue that the ticketing process can allow for a 2-3mph margin of error, and that in any case statistics show that at 20mph, the results of being hit by a car are far less likely to be serious as at 30mph (serious injury likely) or 40mph (death likely). Yet then, ABD come back with more concerns namely that “a 20 mph speed limit will cause more congestion and increase vehicle emissions” and that (anti-speed cam lobbyists) “Safe Speed has already pointed out that DfT figures for 2006 show that there were more killed or seriously injured casualties in 20 mph zones than in 30 mph zones.”
They say that in war, the first casualty is the truth - and as the residential speed limit debate rages it will be interesting to see what issues are drawn into the battleground. Saving lives and money sounds good, but will this be at the expense of the environment? Doubtless we are likely to see all manner of statistics bandied about in the coming months. Before it gets too out of hand though, it might be worth noting that average car speeds in the UK have just been are reported to be amongst the slowest in Europe (London at 11.8mph is the slowest with Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol and Belfast all averaging under 20mph).
In this scenario, you have to wonder whether an official reduction from 30 to 20mph would actually make much difference!
I saw this on Times Online via their blog The Click. It’s a public service commercial from Australia which seeks to persuade men not to speed when driving. Rather than persuade drivers that slower driving will protect pedestrians or other road users in case of a collision, this appeals purely to the self-esteem of the driver, seemingly suggesting that men from Down Under that speed are seen by women as somewhat less than adequate, er, Down Under.
Do visit The Click blog to view their other clips of weird and wonderful things including ‘Human Tetris’ but here is that Aussie ad - we’ve gone and found it on You Tube, so you don’t have to…
An interesting post on the Telegraph website by their Transport Editor, David Millward. He reports that Government’s speed camera programme could be in jeopardy because its casualty calculations could be flawed.
It seems the Department for Transport (DfT) is going to look again at how it works out the number of serious road injuries because of a huge difference between the statistics over the period 1996-2004 from the police (a large drop, down 32%) and those from hospitals (a slight increase, around 1%).
So which is it? More or less?
Well, no-one seems quite sure because whilst the police record their statistics using individual judgement (without knowing the extent of any injuries or indeed whether a person is admitted to hospital), hospital figures are, by contrast, just based on numbers of patients admitted into wards. Later this month then, the DfT will reveal whether or not they will switch to hospital figures.
Now, if they do decide to do this, this may well influence road safety policy and the use of speed cameras since, as a former Met. Police head of traffic notes, in Millward’s article:
“We have put our entire road safety programme into a box marked speed cameras…the figures were the justification for the policy and if they are called into doubt the whole thing is undermined.”
Whilst for some this might sound like a positive thing - y’know, lots of people drove too fast and were lucky enough to perhaps only have to pay a small financial price rather than the higher price of injuring or killing themselves or others through dangerous driving - many other people regard speed cameras as being little more than a money-making exercise with cameras not only sited at ‘dangerous hot-spots’ but just about anywhere and everywhere the authorities can put them.
Furthermore, according to the Safe Speed campaign, speed cameras actually promote dangerous driving, due to the stop-start braking and acclerating patterns they cause and their view is that Government policy on road safety would be better directed elsewhere. On the site, founder Paul Smith says “Cameras give us legal compliance targets, not safety targets. We now have a nation of drivers concentrating on compliance rather than safety.”
Well, we’ll have to wait and see what happens regarding the re-evaluation of the official figures and what that will mean. It is a difficult area for sure: despite the grey area over injuries, the DfT says that independent research shows safety cameras help to save around 100 lives per year and that - serious injuries aside - the actual number of road fatalities has fallen by 11% since the mid 1990s.
It seems Safe Speed and the Government will have to agree to disagree, but I do applaud their challenge on assumed wisdom regarding speed cameras. We all want safer driving and the more thinking that goes into helping bring this about the better.
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