Back in August it was announced that the Road Safety Grant, like so much other central government funding was going to be ceased. The grant was around £80-£100 million per year and was given to local authorities to install and maintain their speed cameras. Ironically, it was a self-funded grant as the number of people breaking the speed limit in the UK remains so high that fines which were handed over from local authorities to central government were the same as the grant. Interestingly, national government is still happy to take the fines, but will no longer fund the speed cameras. Of course, local authorities, being charged with making cuts somewhere from 25%-40%, saw no sense in continuing with the speed cameras, which cost £40,000 each, because they get no money from them.
Speed cameras have always been controversial and online you can read how they were apparently part of Gordon Brown's 'Stasi state' (the Stasi being the secret police of East Germany), though ironically the first mobile speed cameras were introduced in 1982 under the Thatcher government. The technology had existed since 1905. Cameras are not only used to catch speeders but also people driving private cars down bus lanes or jumping red lights or approaching level crossings, and, around the City of London for security. They attracted greatest attention, however, from 1999 when Safety Camera Partnerships were introduced to promote the use of the cameras with 15% of the revenue from fines being used to improve road safety. Whilst the scheme ended in 2007, this use of the fine revenue to boost road safety in general and not simply to install or maintain cameras continued. The fines from speed cameras averaged around £1.3 million (€1.59 million; US$202 million) per year which suggests a lot of people violating traffic laws. They were increasingly portrayed as simply revenue raisers for local authorities and this led in the early 2000s to attacks on the cameras. Right-wing councils in the late 2000s began to be swayed by the populist arguments against them and in 2009 Swindon, which has an appalling road network (I tried to navigate it back in August), was the first to switch off its cameras, followed by Oxfordshire county council in July 2010 and many more since.
I have never seen speed cameras as having anything to do with revenue. I am glad that they were self-funding, but I am also disappointed that that was the case, because it suggests that so many people are driving dangerously. Very selfish people, and you can still find them very actively promoting their arguments across the internet, said speed cameras were actually a hazard, forcing people to slow down suddenly (despite the fact that most road maps and sat navs indicate very clearly, certainly since 2006 where the cameras are and there are always warning signs and markings on the road to show them) and to keep checking their speedometers (they must be bad drivers, I can tell how fast I am doing within 2-3 mph without looking at the speedometer, from experience I know). They often blame injury to pedestrians on the pedestrians rather than their speed. I have been struck by just how fast people do speed at especially in residential areas. Just within a few streets of my house (where cars should not exceed 30mph) I have seen a car which has crashed through a brick wall and into the front of a house; cars which have almost levelled lamp-posts and others which have literally gone into houses. Even with speed cameras in action people are driving too fast especially on rural roads and in residential areas. Portsmouth felt the problem was so serious as to introduce 20mph limit throughout most of the city.
What happened when the media covered the government's announcement of cut-backs and the statements from some local authorities that they were switching off their speed cameras? Well, I guess you could have been driving in any part of the UK to know the answer. Instantly drivers seemed to assume that no camera was working, even though in many areas, of course, there had not even been an announcement that they would be switched off. Of course, even if a camera is not there to catch you, you are still breaking the law. If you exceed 33mph in a 30mph area you can be stopped, arrested, prosecuted and fined, it just takes longer than if the camera was there. This is what the speeders disliked, that they would be caught by the camera, whereas they think they have far greater chances if it is left up to the police to catch them. Now, these reckless drivers feel they are free. It was reported in August that immediately some areas where there were police patrols, speeding offences had risen 90% once people believed the cameras were off. Worse than this, it is almost as if, freed from the worry about being caught on camera anywhere, many more drivers feel it is fine to speed and, in fact, that they need to demonstrate that freedom.
I often drive across a large housing estate filled with pets, young children and mothers with push chairs. A mother and child in a pushchair were killed when a car decided to overtake one that was slowing and just went straight into them. The whole estate has a 30 mph limit with a 40 mph limit on the roads around the diameter. The day after the announcements about the speed cameras (which are numerous along the route I take), I was driving across the estate OBEYING THE LAW, driving at 30mph and what do I get? I have cars and vans behind me, revving their engines, hooting me, gesticulating and then accelerating past me at 50 mph and faster, just because they feel they can. I am made to feel I am in the wrong, just for obeying the law and, in fact, fulfilling the duty of every driver, which is to drive in a way I feel is safe given the prevailing conditions, which may in many circumstances, for example, foggy or icy weather or during heaving rain or when schools are turning out the children, actually be slower than the stated speed limit. I am ridiculed and insulted for trying to keep myself and other people in the vicinity alive.
The Coalition government is going to pay a high price for its policy. The price ultimately will be financial for all the street furniture damaged and, above all, for the medical costs of all the additional children and adults who are going to be maimed and killed by reckless driving. In this ridiculous situation, in which the rights to be able to behave dangerously and to drive as fast as you like are somehow taken to be greater rights than the right to safety, I encourage anyone on a housing estate or in a village or anywhere else which particularly needs cars to drive safely, to take steps. It is ironic that you can be fined for making a fake hand-held and mounted speed cameras (even though there are companies specialising in fake cameras) and even making mannequins to look like police officers. I suggest we need to find ways, such as ensuring that those cars you find abandoned, are abandoned where they act as traffic bollards or they happens to be a lot of building materials delivered in piles which happen to narrow the road and slow up traffic or mannequins of small children appear along the roadsides or 'men at work' signs, one of which I found abandoned near my house as well as some police traffic cones, find their away to places where they may make a speeding motorist think twice. If this government is going to pander to the killers, and that is what these speeders are, then those of us in favour of life and the right to live it in safety, should act.
May I suggest, if there enough of you and you have enough time, you follow the example of the people of Chideock in Dorset. This is a lovely village in a very steep-sided narrow valley (appalling for radio and mobile phone reception) through which the A35, the main road connecting Bournemouth, Poole, Dorchester, Bridgport, Axminster and Exeter, runs. There is a pedestrian crossing which in May this year, Tony Fuller kept pressing and crossing the road. He did this with neighbours, totally legally, to bring the whole road to a standstill in protest at the noisy lorries which charge through this village every day, seemingly all hours of the day.
We need to assert that it is safety and not the right to be a killer that should win the day, despite the government's foolish step to pander to the ignorant of the UK by taking away the one tool which had actually helped make our roads that bit safer at a time when knowledge of road laws, let alone road custom and practice are at all time low.
P.P. 08/04/2011
In a situation like this I hate to be able to say 'I told you so'. However, it was with interest that I noted that Oxfordshire county council has decided to switch its speed cameras back on after a sharp rise in casualties since they were turned off in August 2010. There are 72 fixed cameras and 89 mobile ones in the county. In the period August 2010 to January 2011, 18 people were killed compared to 12 in the same period the previous year, i.e. August 2009 - January 2010. To my mind, 12 was still too high, but there has been a 50% increase since the ending of speed cameras. The rise in non-fatal injuries has been even greater, from 19 in the six month period of 2009/10 to 179 in 2010/11 period, more than an 800% increase. Interestingly, what drivers who overtake me seem unaware of, there was no general switching off of speed cameras, they are still on in many areas. The number of fines imposed for speeding has fallen from a peak of 2 million in 2005 to about 1 million today (that is 1 million individual fines, the sum of money raised is far higher), not due to better driving but because first time offenders can opt to go on a training course instead. Portsmouth has only turned off its speed cameras this month. This is a real shame as it is a city with a 20 mph speed limit in residential areas which I felt was a model for other towns. Bristol is another large urban centre which has only just switched off its speed cameras. An AA spokesman quoted in 'The Guardian' noted, the public announcement of the turning off of speed cameras had a grave effect on their deterrent impact. However, as I have noted here, I think that deterrent effect evaporated the moment the ending of the funding was announced and many drivers charge through towns assuming that no camera is on and I am glad to hear that many of them are being caught, however, it seems far too few. The real tragedy is those who have been injured or killed as a result of the turning off of cameras. If the level has risen that much just in the single county of Oxfordshire with a population of only 635,000 people (compared to 200,000 people living in Portsmouth and 420,000 people in Bristol; not their surrounding counties), then the national rise in casualties must be alarming. I imagine, however, that until one of these drivers is injured themselves or has a close family member injured they will not even think once about their speed and ironically perceive themselves as the oppressed freed by this wonderful coalition government [sarcasm].
Showing posts with label speed cameras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speed cameras. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Stepping Into A Parallel British Society
I am in the fortunate position of having leave to 'use up'. Many businesses force you to take a certain amount of leave in a year and partly due to my failure to have a holiday I have been compelled to take time off despite the fact that this is generally a costly experience. Anyway, it gives me some more time for blogging. Like today I was on leave yesterday and that enabled me to step into a very alternate British society. No, I did not slip through a portal into a world where Hitler had won the Second World War or even just where Callaghan won the 1978 election, I simply went to the New Forest & Hampshire Country Fair. There are many of these kinds of events, I used to run into much smaller ones in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire when I lived in Milton Keynes, and I guess that I probably encountered the kind of people I am about to talk about there. I think the thing about this fair was the scale of it and probably Hampshire is more prosperous than those Midlands counties. Also the New Forest which I sometimes skirt while driving around the South of England, attracts the very wealthy. It is picturesque and comparatively close to London so probably no surprise. So scale, prosperity and the fact that unlike Buckinghamshire-Northamptonshire-Bedfordshire which for some reason are the realm of bikers, there were not the usual leather-clad bike brigade to leaven the mix of people.
Why did I find it so unsettling? Well, many of the things there you would probably find at any fete in a country area. There were stalls selling cakes, there were marquees of flowers and handicrafts, there were car dealerships and various charities with stalls too. So, far so normal. There were more livestock. Having recently re-seen the episode of 'Father Ted' featuring the 'King of the Sheep' contest it was fun to see one for real. There were a lot of horses and people show jumping or driving coaches very fast or pulling those commercial carts with shire horses. So, it was rural. However, it was the people that made the whole thing a little scary. The event runs Tuesday to Thursday rather than over a weekend, so this presumably filters out office workers and shop assistants for starters. I would normally have been at work. So walking around, for all the conservationis and the modern farm technology on show (and a great deal of older stuff like 'vintage' tractors and a huge steam-powered combined harvester) you felt as if you had stepped back to 1928.
There were middle class people there but they seemed mainly to be traders. However, predominantly the people seemed either to be squires and big landowners and their numerous offspring or they seemed to be farm labourers granted the day off and their families, greatful for a day's break, tugging their forelock in their gratitude. There was a clear pecking order with 'members' areas where men were wearing suits and ties (despite the heat) and there was a commissionaire in full uniform to police entry into these areas. Colonel and Mrs. Blimp seemed to be everywhere, he in a navy blue jacket, carrying a shooting stick and she in a floral dress and large straw hat. There is a younger version too, who presumably in time will grow into these people. Their dress code was different but equally as alien: young women in leather hats with jodhpurs and these peculair knee-length boots in a kind of hard suede. The young men dressed the way Princes William and Harry do off duty, I suppose unsurprisingly, because they belong in this same alternate reality. There were dogs, dogs by the score. Some were for showing in events, but the bulk were just brought by visitors. Many people had two or more, everything from beagles to labradors and the odd poodle or dalmatian. You could believe if someone started shooting pheasants from the air there would be a thousand dogs rushing to catch the kill. There was a stall with a whole range of shotguns sitting on it, so maybe they do that when 'outsiders' like me have gone home. Despite the hunting ban it was interesting to see the book stalls there had hunting books in great prominence.
I clung to the conservationists because at least they seemed to have come from a world I knew. They were put at the far end of the event from the groups like the gundog handlers and the Countryside Alliance that seemed to be more in tune with attitudes of the bulk of the visitors. I do remember in the 1970s people spoke of the Green-Brown alliance in West Germany. By this they saw some commonality of interests between the Greens and the Browns (brown was the initial colour of the Nazi Party) who represented landed interests and the people who are subservient to them. Both groups want to leave rural areas untouched, though for very different motives. The Greens (in this situation represented by conservation groups, and by this I do not only mean pressure groups, but also official bodies such as the Forestry Commission who weree there in force) are democratic and want to encourage all kinds of people to enjoy the rural areas of Britain and the more Brown tendency founded on exclusive access for the 'right' people and no interference from outside. Now sometimes there is overlap but it is an uneasy relationship on both sides. You could almost see that represented physically at the event I was attending.
My concern, I suppose, was that I had stepped into a society (in large numbers, there must have been thousands of people there) which bore no resemblance to what I know UK society is like. What was frightening, was that the people there whether they were from the top or the bottom of society seemed to believe in a society founded on strict hierarachy and privilege. Most alarming they believe whole-heartedly that their view of Britain and especially the rural areas is the correct one. They believe that the elites should control everything, should be free to exploit the rural spaces and block out anyone else. Of course they need poor people to work for them, but these people must be grovelling and grateful for the meagre wages and the minimal privileges that the elite grant them. I was reminded by what I read in the 'Metro' (a free newspaper in London and some other cities) which had a comment from Claire Armstrong of Safespeed (an organisation opposed to speed cameras who talk under madness in trying to get people to have the 'right' to speed) commenting on the need that near Preston in Lancashire, the local authorities have had to put a CCTV camera to guard a speed camera to prevent it being constantly vandalised. Armstrong said '[t]he culprits were probably law-abiding citizens taking direct action against speed cameras'. How can these people be 'law-abiding' if they are vandalising a piece of safety equipment? I am sure these same people would want young taggers birched for vandalising through graffitti. In addition, these people are disabling speed cameras so that they can commit more crime, i.e. speeding, without being penalised. Of course, in the screwed-up parallel society which lives beside our own, there is a very different sense of what being 'law-abiding' is. Their definition is about protecting privilege while keeping down those who lack power and wealth or will not kow-tow to them.
The bulk of the attendees of the New Forest & Hampshire Country Show, feel that their view is the correct one. However, they are fortunately only a minority. The bulk of the population lives in cities and suburbs and has at least a semi-democratic view of how UK society should function. What is alarming is that the ordinary people of the UK in fact have so little power and with David Cameron on the horizon as the next prime minister or the one after next, they are actually going to climb into the ascendancy once more. In that kind of society wages are kept low while bonuses are in their millions; people are free to speed and run down people with impunity. The bulk of us come into a kind of serfdom and forced to be grateful for that. An afternoon at a country fair has shown me a potential UK of 2015 and unless you are of the navy-blue blazer brigade, for us it is going to be a country with an unfair, oppressive and divided society.
Why did I find it so unsettling? Well, many of the things there you would probably find at any fete in a country area. There were stalls selling cakes, there were marquees of flowers and handicrafts, there were car dealerships and various charities with stalls too. So, far so normal. There were more livestock. Having recently re-seen the episode of 'Father Ted' featuring the 'King of the Sheep' contest it was fun to see one for real. There were a lot of horses and people show jumping or driving coaches very fast or pulling those commercial carts with shire horses. So, it was rural. However, it was the people that made the whole thing a little scary. The event runs Tuesday to Thursday rather than over a weekend, so this presumably filters out office workers and shop assistants for starters. I would normally have been at work. So walking around, for all the conservationis and the modern farm technology on show (and a great deal of older stuff like 'vintage' tractors and a huge steam-powered combined harvester) you felt as if you had stepped back to 1928.
There were middle class people there but they seemed mainly to be traders. However, predominantly the people seemed either to be squires and big landowners and their numerous offspring or they seemed to be farm labourers granted the day off and their families, greatful for a day's break, tugging their forelock in their gratitude. There was a clear pecking order with 'members' areas where men were wearing suits and ties (despite the heat) and there was a commissionaire in full uniform to police entry into these areas. Colonel and Mrs. Blimp seemed to be everywhere, he in a navy blue jacket, carrying a shooting stick and she in a floral dress and large straw hat. There is a younger version too, who presumably in time will grow into these people. Their dress code was different but equally as alien: young women in leather hats with jodhpurs and these peculair knee-length boots in a kind of hard suede. The young men dressed the way Princes William and Harry do off duty, I suppose unsurprisingly, because they belong in this same alternate reality. There were dogs, dogs by the score. Some were for showing in events, but the bulk were just brought by visitors. Many people had two or more, everything from beagles to labradors and the odd poodle or dalmatian. You could believe if someone started shooting pheasants from the air there would be a thousand dogs rushing to catch the kill. There was a stall with a whole range of shotguns sitting on it, so maybe they do that when 'outsiders' like me have gone home. Despite the hunting ban it was interesting to see the book stalls there had hunting books in great prominence.
I clung to the conservationists because at least they seemed to have come from a world I knew. They were put at the far end of the event from the groups like the gundog handlers and the Countryside Alliance that seemed to be more in tune with attitudes of the bulk of the visitors. I do remember in the 1970s people spoke of the Green-Brown alliance in West Germany. By this they saw some commonality of interests between the Greens and the Browns (brown was the initial colour of the Nazi Party) who represented landed interests and the people who are subservient to them. Both groups want to leave rural areas untouched, though for very different motives. The Greens (in this situation represented by conservation groups, and by this I do not only mean pressure groups, but also official bodies such as the Forestry Commission who weree there in force) are democratic and want to encourage all kinds of people to enjoy the rural areas of Britain and the more Brown tendency founded on exclusive access for the 'right' people and no interference from outside. Now sometimes there is overlap but it is an uneasy relationship on both sides. You could almost see that represented physically at the event I was attending.
My concern, I suppose, was that I had stepped into a society (in large numbers, there must have been thousands of people there) which bore no resemblance to what I know UK society is like. What was frightening, was that the people there whether they were from the top or the bottom of society seemed to believe in a society founded on strict hierarachy and privilege. Most alarming they believe whole-heartedly that their view of Britain and especially the rural areas is the correct one. They believe that the elites should control everything, should be free to exploit the rural spaces and block out anyone else. Of course they need poor people to work for them, but these people must be grovelling and grateful for the meagre wages and the minimal privileges that the elite grant them. I was reminded by what I read in the 'Metro' (a free newspaper in London and some other cities) which had a comment from Claire Armstrong of Safespeed (an organisation opposed to speed cameras who talk under madness in trying to get people to have the 'right' to speed) commenting on the need that near Preston in Lancashire, the local authorities have had to put a CCTV camera to guard a speed camera to prevent it being constantly vandalised. Armstrong said '[t]he culprits were probably law-abiding citizens taking direct action against speed cameras'. How can these people be 'law-abiding' if they are vandalising a piece of safety equipment? I am sure these same people would want young taggers birched for vandalising through graffitti. In addition, these people are disabling speed cameras so that they can commit more crime, i.e. speeding, without being penalised. Of course, in the screwed-up parallel society which lives beside our own, there is a very different sense of what being 'law-abiding' is. Their definition is about protecting privilege while keeping down those who lack power and wealth or will not kow-tow to them.
The bulk of the attendees of the New Forest & Hampshire Country Show, feel that their view is the correct one. However, they are fortunately only a minority. The bulk of the population lives in cities and suburbs and has at least a semi-democratic view of how UK society should function. What is alarming is that the ordinary people of the UK in fact have so little power and with David Cameron on the horizon as the next prime minister or the one after next, they are actually going to climb into the ascendancy once more. In that kind of society wages are kept low while bonuses are in their millions; people are free to speed and run down people with impunity. The bulk of us come into a kind of serfdom and forced to be grateful for that. An afternoon at a country fair has shown me a potential UK of 2015 and unless you are of the navy-blue blazer brigade, for us it is going to be a country with an unfair, oppressive and divided society.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
What Annoys Me About ... Drivers
As I have commented before I drive around 400 miles (640 Km) per week. Last weekend I covered 680 miles (1088 Km), so I experience a lot of traffic. I have driven in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece so have quite a good deal of knowledge of driving conditions and behaviour in my part of the World. I have heard that in some countries driving is worse than in the UK, and Italy and Malta in particular have been pointed out to me as examples, but I have no experience of driving in those two countries so am in no position to comment. However, I would still imagine that the UK is near the bottom of the table for bad driving.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
Friday, 11 May 2007
Caught at Speed - the Public & Safety Cameras
Today I step away from politics, though I noticed that 'The Daily Telegraph' a newspaper I am hardly a fan of had the headline 'The End of New Labour' and it appears they agree with my diagnosis that it has been the personal party of Tony Blair that has been in power in the UK for the past ten years, not something broader or more firmly established.
Today I am turning to speed cameras or safety cameras as they seem to have been rebranded. They were invented in the 1950s using film and have grown in use in the UK since the 1980s especially with the introduction of digital ones in the following decade. They are used for various purposes to catch people jumping traffic lights that are on red or driving down lanes reserved for buses as well as photographing people who are breaking the speed limit. The UK is one of the most monitored countries in the world in terms of cameras and CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) but I have no problem with the ones that catch people making traffic violations. I drive 60 miles (96Km) and stick to the speed limits. In the UK the highest speed you can drive on a public road is 70mph (112kph) but daily I see people driving at 90-110mph. The stopping distance at 70mph is the length of 24 cars, but most drivers leave just room for 2 cars stopping distance. Even at 30mph it is the length of 6 cars, double what it is at 20mph. On average locations where there are speed cameras serious injury and fatalities are reduced by 22%-40%, the fact that it is not more is due to the fact that many drivers are not even paying attention to the road, are still on hand-held mobile phones despite the increased penalties or expect pedestrians simply to get out of their way.
You would think that the bulk of the population would have no problem with speed cameras, but you are wrong. They are the source of constant complaint in public and even radio DJs complain about them constantly, portraying them as a form of tax or a way for the police or local authorities to raise money. There have been attacks on speed cameras with people setting light to them or trying to blow them up. Speed cameras are not a toll on our roads, if you stick to the speed limits you will not get caught by them; you will not have to pay a fine. The same applies to traffic light and bus lane cameras; they help keep you the driver alive as well as people around you. They are there for a purpose. It might be a big business to supply these cameras, I accept that, but they would raise no revenue if everyone drove by the rules.
The main complainers about speed cameras are men (and some women) who drive large and fast cars and feel that they are outside the law. Why should they have one set of rules and the rest of us another? Why should they be permitted to put the lives of people at risk just so that they can show off their wealth and status. Even if they do not care about their own lives they need to be made to care about those who have no ability to choose in these situations - the general public and the passengers in the cars these maniacs are driving. Many of those who oppose speed cameras stand very strongly on law enforcement. They want longer prison sentences, they want the death penalty, but for their own personal offences they want no restrictions. If they support the removal of speed cameras, should they not also support the removal of CCTV from shops so that people can have the 'right' to freely shop lift? Should they not also support the removal of cameras from cash point machines so that people can have the 'right' to commit card fraud?
Why is the freedom to drive fast and to kill different from the freedom to commit other crimes which society has decided should be stopped? We do not live in primeval times, we live in a society which these people profess to support; they need to learn that that means taking responsibility and not being driven by childish urges. If they grew up and took their responsibilities seriously there would be no need for any speed cameras at all because everyone would be complying with the laws of the road not trying to subvert them.
Today I am turning to speed cameras or safety cameras as they seem to have been rebranded. They were invented in the 1950s using film and have grown in use in the UK since the 1980s especially with the introduction of digital ones in the following decade. They are used for various purposes to catch people jumping traffic lights that are on red or driving down lanes reserved for buses as well as photographing people who are breaking the speed limit. The UK is one of the most monitored countries in the world in terms of cameras and CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) but I have no problem with the ones that catch people making traffic violations. I drive 60 miles (96Km) and stick to the speed limits. In the UK the highest speed you can drive on a public road is 70mph (112kph) but daily I see people driving at 90-110mph. The stopping distance at 70mph is the length of 24 cars, but most drivers leave just room for 2 cars stopping distance. Even at 30mph it is the length of 6 cars, double what it is at 20mph. On average locations where there are speed cameras serious injury and fatalities are reduced by 22%-40%, the fact that it is not more is due to the fact that many drivers are not even paying attention to the road, are still on hand-held mobile phones despite the increased penalties or expect pedestrians simply to get out of their way.
You would think that the bulk of the population would have no problem with speed cameras, but you are wrong. They are the source of constant complaint in public and even radio DJs complain about them constantly, portraying them as a form of tax or a way for the police or local authorities to raise money. There have been attacks on speed cameras with people setting light to them or trying to blow them up. Speed cameras are not a toll on our roads, if you stick to the speed limits you will not get caught by them; you will not have to pay a fine. The same applies to traffic light and bus lane cameras; they help keep you the driver alive as well as people around you. They are there for a purpose. It might be a big business to supply these cameras, I accept that, but they would raise no revenue if everyone drove by the rules.
The main complainers about speed cameras are men (and some women) who drive large and fast cars and feel that they are outside the law. Why should they have one set of rules and the rest of us another? Why should they be permitted to put the lives of people at risk just so that they can show off their wealth and status. Even if they do not care about their own lives they need to be made to care about those who have no ability to choose in these situations - the general public and the passengers in the cars these maniacs are driving. Many of those who oppose speed cameras stand very strongly on law enforcement. They want longer prison sentences, they want the death penalty, but for their own personal offences they want no restrictions. If they support the removal of speed cameras, should they not also support the removal of CCTV from shops so that people can have the 'right' to freely shop lift? Should they not also support the removal of cameras from cash point machines so that people can have the 'right' to commit card fraud?
Why is the freedom to drive fast and to kill different from the freedom to commit other crimes which society has decided should be stopped? We do not live in primeval times, we live in a society which these people profess to support; they need to learn that that means taking responsibility and not being driven by childish urges. If they grew up and took their responsibilities seriously there would be no need for any speed cameras at all because everyone would be complying with the laws of the road not trying to subvert them.
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