Excellent excellent excellent!

[Dean Lofthouse]

But they don't take the role of a Police officer - a police officer will (or should) collar people for a whole range of BAD driving, which may well be inappropropriate or excessive speed, but also includes tailgating, not wearing a seat belt, using mobile phones, defective vehicles, overloaded vehicle, excessive noise/smoke/music, illegal use of fog or other lights, bike racks etc that obscure the lights/number plates, defective trailers, driving like a pillock, etc etc etc. They are also effective at spotting the low-life who's just nicked your new Timberwolf and increase the chances of recovering it - a speed camera won't do that unless it is being stolen very fast.

 

Speed cameras do one thing and one thing only, and don't even do that very well.

 

Speed cameras a very poor substitue for proper traffic policing in just about every respect, but they are much cheaper than traffic officers. If every fixed speed camera was replaced with at least one traffic officer, then we might see a difference. However there is no chance of that because the country's economic wellbeing was destryed by the idiots in numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street and there's no money left.

 

Exactly

[LancsMike]

I'm learning to drive at the moment and not once have I gone over the speed limit - reason being I've seen what speeding can do, years ago my Dad was in a horrendous accident due to a drunk driver speeding at well over a 100, ploughed into a woman/mother in a little hatchback [ think it was a little Saxo or something ] killed the daughter and smashed into my dad doing well over 80 mph head on and all but nearly hospitalised my dad - the only reason he wasn't in a worser condition was because he was in a Land Rover Discovery with bullbars and that was a total write off.

 

As for speed Cameras, I don't see a problem with them personally, if you're not speeding then you won't get caught out so its not really a stealth tax, just a clever way to make sure people don't race about like nutters although I do agree, there should be more police on the roads pulling over people for driving like a prat tailgating etc. Last week during one of my lessons I had a white van man tailgating me that bad if I tapped on the breaks he would have banged right into the back of the Mazda I was driving.

[skyhuck]

Does any one know when the law on speeding was changed???

 

You used to have to speed for a measured mile in order to break the law.

 

You used to be allowed to exceed the speed limit when over taking.

 

Now if you happen to exceed the limit by 2mph as you pass the camera you get done.

 

Speed does kill yes, but an attentive driver in a well maintained car doing 35mph is likely to stop or have slowed dramatically before any impact.

 

A gormless muppet doing 28mph may well still be doing 28mph at the time of impact.

[LancsMike]

You're right Sky, I'd happily stick with an attentive driver any day of the week thats a little bit faster than a muppet behind the Wheel.

 

On the speed thing, I was talking to my Instructor during my lesson today and he was telling me for a fact there is a 10% allowance + 3mph, so if its a 30mph zone you can be doing upto 36mph / 50mph - upto 58mph but obviously you want to keep a bit below that and so on. From what I can gather the police allow that threshold due to the possibility of Speedo's being a bit off but for me personally I'd rather keep it a bit lower than the actual threshold and keep it on the line of 30/40/50 etc. Hope that helps mate.

[Mesterh]

On the speed thing, I was talking to my Instructor during my lesson today and he was telling me for a fact there is a 10% allowance + 3mph, so if its a 30mph zone you can be doing upto 36mph / 50mph - upto 58mph but obviously you want to keep a bit below that and so on. From what I can gather the police allow that threshold due to the possibility of Speedo's being a bit off but for me personally I'd rather keep it a bit lower than the actual threshold and keep it on the line of 30/40/50 etc. Hope that helps mate.

 

Tbh I had to attend a speed awareness course it receive 3 points for doing 36 in a 30 and the above got mentioned . The instructors said it was a loaf of rubbish and that I'd you were caught doing 1mph more than the speed limit you could still get done. I was told the same as previously and most of the others thought the same.

 

Its just black and white apparently.

 

Speeding has got to increase the chances of having an accident it just depends if it is the main contributing factor our not.

 

I agree that its more than likely unattentive drivers that are the problem. But, after all we are only human and not concentrating for a second in the wrong circumstances is possibly more than enough time too cause an accident.

[LancsMike]

Tbh I had to attend a speed awareness course it receive 3 points for doing 36 in a 30 and the above got mentioned . The instructors said it was a loaf of rubbish and that I'd you were caught doing 1mph more than the speed limit you could still get done. I was told the same as previously and most of the others thought the same.

 

Its just black and white apparently.

 

Speeding has got to increase the chances of having an accident it just depends if it is the main contributing factor our not.

 

I agree that its more than likely unattentive drivers that are the problem. But, after all we are only human and not concentrating for a second in the wrong circumstances is possibly more than enough time too cause an accident.

 

Thanks for the heads up Mester, good to keep in mind definetely. As said for me I always keep it at the line or a little bit below like today in 30 zones, I was more comfortable going at 25-29mph rather than sitting it on the line.

 

You're right that were only human but I guess it just makes me want to be even more vigilant - last week during my 2hr lesson I was practicing taking road junctions and an older woman, guess she was in her late 40's or early 50's decided to blindly do a U turn coming from my left at the junction, carved me up and nearly caused an accident - only reason there wasn't one was because I clocked her darting out from behind the hedge to my left and got on the brakes quickly, she was already 50% into her U turn, looked across saw me and my Instructor and just shrugged her shoulders like she had done nothing wrong despite my Instructor was swearing like a sailor and shaking his fist at her

 

Edit : The thing that really narks me more than unattentive drivers though are people who sit right on your rear bumper at Traffic lights/junctions going uphill, for me as a learner its even more alarming because even though I'm comfortable with my clutch control all it'd take is for me to make one slip up, roll back and crunch the front end of their car. Why do people insist on getting as close as possible on an uphill Junction / Traffic lights ? damn infuriating to say the least.

Edited July 27, 2010 by LancsMike

[armchairarborist]

i like to get real friendly with the back bumper of the car infront, especially if its a learner on a steep uphill, just to intimidate them into fluffing up their clutch control and rolling back into the landy hahahahaha. then i'd not acknowledge the incident in any way and just drive off.. good luck with the lessons mate, dont forget to check yr mirrors, i'll let ya drive the landy offroad friday if you want practice

[LancsMike]

i like to get real friendly with the back bumper of the car infront, especially if its a learner on a steep uphill, just to intimidate them into fluffing up their clutch control and rolling back into the landy hahahahaha. then i'd not acknowledge the incident in any way and just drive off.. good luck with the lessons mate, dont forget to check yr mirrors, i'll let ya drive the landy offroad friday if you want practice

 

Now how did I know you'd be the type to do that Ed that'd be really cool mate on Friday, forgot to call tonight mate I'll give you a bell tomorrow, what times best ?

[armchairarborist]

Now how did I know you'd be the type to do that Ed that'd be really cool mate on Friday, forgot to call tonight mate I'll give you a bell tomorrow, what times best ?

 

try when im sat having a cut of scalding tea with a choccy digestive, not when im up a tree, or driving, or dragging 3branches uphill, or trying to talk to a client..

[Treewolf]

On the speed thing, I was talking to my Instructor during my lesson today and he was telling me for a fact there is a 10% allowance + 3mph, so if its a 30mph zone you can be doing upto 36mph / 50mph - upto 58mph but obviously you want to keep a bit below that and so on. From what I can gather the police allow that threshold due to the possibility of Speedo's being a bit off but for me personally I'd rather keep it a bit lower than the actual threshold and keep it on the line of 30/40/50 etc. Hope that helps mate.

 

Not so, I am afraid.

 

The 10% +3 threshold was one that ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers) decided was sensible simply to prevent police forces (sorry - they're "services" now not forces) from being overwhelmed with paperwork and prosecutions. If you book *everybody* who is even slightly over the limit the whole system will grind to a halt due to the sheer volume of speeding tickets. However it is not the law and it is not mandatory. Now it is fashionable to assume (a) that all motorists are evil and should be punished, and (b) motorists who exceed the speed limit are the most evil and should be treated like would-be murderers, many police "services" are choosing to ignore the ACPO guidelines and prosecute everyone.

 

The issue of speedometers is equally misunderstood. By law a speedo may be inaccurate by (if I recall correctly) no more than 10% but it must not under-read at all, so if for example it is reading 50mph you could actually be doing anything from 45mph to 50mph but not more than 50mph. However it is not cost effective to manufacture a speedo to these specs (i.e, making one that is guaranteed not to under-read) and most good modern speedos are approximately plus/minus 5%. They are therefore designed to over-read by 5%, since they will therefore be legal with the +/-5% accuracy on top of this - they will never under-read. In this way if you have a +/-5% speedo designed to over-read by 5%, when it shows 50mph you ought to be doing 47.5mph +/- 2.5mph which keeps everything legal.

 

Police traffic vehicles have calibrated speedos (expensive) which will probably be less than 1% variant from true.

 

The bottom line is that if you are even 1mph over the limit you could be done for speeding.