More UK Government Harassment Of Diabetics

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have Type 1 diabetes which comes about because of a disease or a failure in the body, typically before middle age rather than Type 2 which tends to arise from obesity or old age.  For some reason the current government is particularly hostile to diabetics.  As I noted in 2013 we are treated as if we are drug abusers and if involved in a car accident that was not out fault we can be arrested and the perpetrator let off: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/diabetic-driver-discrimination.html   The difficulty the police have with diabetics was re-emphasised recently as new laws are coming against drugged driving.  Diabetics are being told to carry medical 'evidence' or face being arrested as if we were abusing heroin or cocaine.  This is ironic because, unlike drug abusers, diabetics are highly aware that with care they can maintain good health and prolong their lives, so they tend to safety-minded rather than reckless.  In one step, however, people with a disability (diabetes has been considered a disability legally since 2005 in the UK) are now assumed to be on the same level as criminal and drug abusers.  I might as well have a letter from my doctor tattooed on to my body to ensure that even if I am beaten unconscious by the police who decide to stop me, the medical evidence cannot be lost.

Anyway, today's posting is about something slightly different.  Britain has long been proud of its state-run health service and its welfare system.  However, there has long been a concern that provision should only go to 'deserving people' and that both run the risk of abuse from 'scroungers' and 'fiddlers'.  Diabetes is one of ten conditions which means you get free prescriptions.  The reason for this is that I take four injections per day of two types of insulin and I take four other sets of tablets.  Each prescription lasts me twenty-eight days (when the doctor gets it right, sometime they only prescribe a fortnight's worth).  At the current rate of £8.05 per item I would be spending £629 (US$968; €849) per year just on the medicines, this does not include the needles for the two insulin injectors or the blood test strips which tell me my blood sugar levels and which I have to use 30 minutes before every time I drive and then every 2 hours of a journey, so getting through a pack of 50 a week very easily.  An acquaintance of mine in the USA has to keep down a good job to fund his Type 1 diabetes and it eats into the money he has for rent and food, the costs there are so high.  The UK prescription charge is a fixed rate not what I would have to pay to buy this medication and appliances on the open market.

With the drive of the coalition government to reduce public expenditure to the level of the 1930s they are incessantly trying to hunt down and charge people who are defrauding the system, that is unless they are high salary tax avoiders or bankers.  Today Diabetes UK reported that many legitimate diabetics were being fined for apparently trying to defraud the NHS (National Health Service) by claiming exemptions from prescription charges.  It was stated in the news that most of those affected were people diagnosed before 2000 when the need to renew your exemption certificate every five years was introduced.  Before them you had a certificate for life because at present Type 1 diabetes is incurable.  The NHS Business Services Authority said it was down to the individuals to make sure that they complied with the rules as they now stood.  What was neglected on the news was that even people who do still face fines.

I have had Type 1 diabetes since the 1980s.  In 2000 I was told by my pharmacy in East London that they could no longer serve me without an exemption card so I got one and have renewed it every five years since.  I have a current one at the moment.  However, even this has not spared me for receiving a fine of £96.60 (US$148; €130).  The letter was very threatening and starts from the assumption that you are guilty.  There is only a tiny section which tells you how to contest the charge laid against you.  If you do not pay within a month they add another £48-50 on to the fine.  Obviously I rushed to contest the fine, though of course they were not there on the weekends.  They finally admitted that they were wrong. 

Apparently the problem arose because they had an old address for me and that did not match the one I was now using.  I asked them how it came about that they did not have my latest address.  Every time I move house I have to register with a local doctor and from there my new address goes on to my NHS file and is not only used by the local surgery but also hospitals in the surrounding area so that they can call me for associated checks on my eyes, my feet and my diet.  I could not understand why they did not receive the same information as I had been at this address for seven months already.

It turns out that the NHS Business Services Authority is not connected to the NHS records system so every time you move you have to inform them separately.  All they do is compare fee-exempt prescriptions coming in against a list they hold and if something does not match then they send out a fine.  What this seems to be is a private company doing something for the government as so often is the case these days.  It does not bother with the processes in place and simply applies its own rules, funding itself from the fines it gathers.

There is a further unpleasant aspect to the Business Services Authority's approach and that it utterly disparages the staff working in pharmacies.  As I collect a prescription from mine every two to four weeks, I am well known in there.  However, every time I go in, I have to produce my exemption card and it is checked by the staff even before they accept my prescription.  Clearly however the Business Services Authority has absolutely no trust in the assiduousness or the capabilities of the pharmacy staff even when dealing with patients they are very familiar with.  Their whole approach is an insult to these professionals.

One can imagine that similar cases will come forward from those with one of the other nine conditions that have been treated in the same way.  I do fear that given this government has overseen two steps to harass diabetics what will happen in the next five years if the Conservatives are even part of the government let alone if they have a majority.  This is despite Prime Minister David Cameron having had a disabled son.  What will he next steps be?  To ban diabetics from driving even though no-one has shown any evidence that they are any great risk and certainly not more than the speeding Clarkson-wannabes who apparently are in full health?  Will the next Prime Minister choose to follow the path of Winston Churchill in the 1900s and seek the sterilisation of those deemed to be at risk of 'sullying' the Great British blood?  By 2020 will I find myself at a risk of not simply an unwarranted fine but a summons to an institution to house me where I will never return from and will be lost to 'complications'.  Remember the Nazi regime killed 70,000 disabled people even before they started the Second World War.  Diabetes is an 'unseen' disability so if people with it are suffering harassment what can be expected for those with more visible conditions?

P.P. 24/03/2015 - The Penalties
Just to sum up how horrendous the prejudice is against diabetics these are the penalties now in force that I will suffer as a Type 1 diabetic if someone decides to crash into me.  In contrast, they may walk away with absolutely no penalty.  This comes from the UK government official website:

"Prescription medicines

It’s illegal in England and Wales to drive with legal drugs in your body if it impairs your driving."

However, if you are involved in an accident that was not your fault they still can arrest you as if it was, because as a Type 1 diabetic you are no longer considered to be like normal people.

"If you’re convicted of drug driving you’ll get:

• a minimum 1 year driving ban
• an unlimited fine
• up to 6 months in prison
• a criminal record

Your driving licence will also show you’ve been convicted for drug driving. This will last for 11 years."

So all I need to spend time in prison and get a criminal record is to have one of those Clarkson-deluded speeders shunt me.  If this is not discrimination against a minority, I do not know what is.

Cameras Off? Excuse to Drive Like an Idiot?

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].

Extreme Weather; Extreme Behaviour

As many commentators have noted during the recent snowy and icy weather, the trouble in the UK is not that we experience extremes of weather, and in fact what we have seen is considered normal in many neighbouring states (remember London is as far North as Moscow), but that we do not experience them often enough.  For comparisons we have to look back to 1981, 1963, 1947 and beyond rather than, say, 2006 or even 2001 which other countries could draw comparisons with.  This applies to all 'extremes' of weather in the UK.  The hot summer of 1995 could only be compared to 1976, 19 years earlier.  The bulk of the weather in Britain is tepid and this allows us all to forget how to cope when it gets a little colder, hotter, wetter or drier than has been the case in the past decade.  Combined with this is the tightness of public funding especially at a local level as councils have been facing constraints really non-stop since the mid-1970s when 'cuts' first became a common phrase for British local authorities.  So, given that you are likely to only have harsh weather in winter one year in twenty or thirty, it is clear that it is a gamble they are willing to take to save a little money in not buying salt or grit and keeping it in storage and the necessary lorries maintained. 

The other factor is the privatisation of so many public services in the UK. Why would a train company risk being sued by stranded customers or penalised for a string of late arrivals by trying to run a comprehensive train service.  In a hot summer, it is far easier for water companies to declare restrictions on the use of water and to reduce the water pressure than for them to spend money to repairing the high level of leakages in the British system which means around 25% of British water is lost compared to 14% of French and 10% of Dutch.  Greed and penny pinching make it far harder for the UK to be adaptable when something slightly different occurs.  Of course, we have just finished one six-year war and are still in the middle of one that has now be raging for coming up to its ninth year (almost as long as the First and Second World Wars combined) so costing millions of pounds in resources and a constant haemorrage of British people through death and injury.

Anyway, given the context that the weather and the response of the local authorities, who I acknowledge do the best they can with the resources they have, creates, how do the British people respond to it?  Well, this goes to 'extremes' as well.  People talk of the 'Blitz spirit' or the 'Dunkirk mentality', once again having to rely on nostalgia for a war that ended 64 years ago (in fact going back 69-70 years to those specific events) rather than finding anything of merit from the British public in those intervening years.  It is fascinating how with a single snowfall British people suddenly start talking to each other.  I know the weather is a common topic of conversation but it seems that it needs to really begin disrupting people's lives before they break through to talking to their neighbours let alone strangers.  Even among colleagues I have seen a change.  Those stranded at home yesterday did not sit in front of their radiators whining they were out checking on elderly people, fetching food and helping people dig out their cars.  In some ways the British cannot be stirred from their apathy unless it is by a 'crisis'.  It has to be a tangible crisis, as the failure to alarm us all about terrorists in the early 2000s showed, something which is intangible will not stir us, it has to be immediately visible and physical and so snow and floods in particular flick the switch in the average Briton's head.  Ironically, it seems, in my experience, and I accept that is very limited, to even push aside the usual whining about immigrants, dole 'scroungers' and so on and emphasise for many people the commonality of humanity. 

A new focus of complaint, however, are those who warm us about global warming.  There is a saying 'one swallow does not make a summer' and the same can be said in this case 'one snowfall does not mean there is no global warming'.  The climate does shift steadily, we know the 11th century was warm enough for people to farm on Greenland and the 17th century cold enough for people to have bonfires on the River Thames but within those periods there were hot or cold, dry or wet seasons.  As a spokesman for the Met(reological) Office noted on BBC1 yesterday, even if in 20 years when the global temperature is 2-3oC warmer we will still get snowy winters.

This beneficial, communal spirit which gets turned on by 'extreme' weather does have a counteracting behaviour too, sometimes among the very same people.  Britons are, on the whole, very selfish and often find it difficult to comprehend that anyone else may have equal and/or different needs that have any validity let alone greater validity than their own perceived needs.  This is most apparent when British people drive.  The bulk of British drivers want no-one else to be on the road and if there are other drivers, for them to get out of the way.  They see themselves as driving in a bubble, looking only a short distance ahead rather than what they are in fact, a cog in a complex machine of traffic.  This situation has worsened and drivers now often do not feel obliged to signal, they complain at attempts to make them stick to a speed limit, and in my experience, these days occasionally feel it is appropriate to drive on pavements if it can get them where they 'need' to be, that little bit quicker.  They take no responsibility for their actions, always blaming the others, especially if those others are cyclists or pedestrians. 

Rather than tempering this behaviour the snow has apparently exacerbated it.  Partly, I think, it is accentuated by the fact that 4x4 drivers, who assume they should be granted a superior position on the road at normal times, actually have it in such slippery conditions so apparently legitimising their arrogant attitudes and the fact that they are driving so far removed from the road.  Ironically, talking to a man this week who lives in rural Devon, he said that now the 4x4 drivers have conditions which suit their vehicles many drivers are too afraid and lack the expertise to use them properly and so end up blocking village high streets.  Despite the conditions many drivers are going too fast and are impatient with people trying to get over icy patches or going up and down hills cautiously.  In my office we discussed how one car was tipped on its side on a road.  Even stunt men find this a challenge, it is not the result simply of ice and snow unless the vehicle has slid sideways off a particular camber, it is achieved by driving too fast.  Too many people in the UK speed in normal conditions and apparently have no appreciation of the stopping distances needed even on dry roads let alone on icy ones.  Speeding among too many people, including, it seems newspapers like the 'Daily Mail' (complaining this week about the £15 increase in speeding fines to pay compensation to victims of other crimes, seemingly forgetting that speeding is a crime and that people who speed are criminals), is not seen as a criminal offence, rather it is perceived as a right, one that even outweighs commons sense.

The occasions on which such behaviour becomes insane is in the attacks on workers driving snow ploughs and gritting lorries.  Interviews last night with such drivers showed that they had had objects thrown at their vehicles on some occasions smashing the windscreens.  Apparently this stems from frustration that the roads have not been sufficiently cleared or not soon enough or that side roads are neglected or routes in rural areas cannot be kept open constantly.  Attacks on the gritting vehicles is like shooting yourself in the foot because you are tired from walking.  Yet, to too many people it apparently seems rational behaviour.  However, perhaps it is unsurprising in a country where ambulance and fire fighting crews are attacked when carrying out their duties.  If you have a problem with the services protest to the people who actually control it, vote for someone who will adopt a different policy, do not attack the people trying to deliver a life saving service, doing an ordinary job like the rest of us, under tough and dangerous circumstances anyway.  Think about it, someone who drives a gritting lorry has to get up early on the coldest days of the year and drive constantly in the most hazardous conditions.  Less severe, but equally moronic is the people who rush to overtake gritting lorries and snow ploughs.  Think about it.  If the road did not need a plough or gritting, the lorry would not be there and before a lorry has passed over a particular section the road is likely to be even more dangerous than usual, and you want to hurry on to that untreated road surface?

The other unhelpful thing is the attitude of employers who are given privileged opportunities to whine about how much the weather is damaging the economy.  It is the same whenever there is a bank holiday, they are allowed to come on to radio and television and produce some huge figure about how badly industry is missing out by people being off for a day or two (in the case of bank holidays, of course, the UK has five fewer than the next nearest number in the EU and many of our competitors have many more than us.  I imagine only the fact that the additional 2012 bank holiday is linked to the Queen's diamond jubilee that has meant no complaints from business leaders about it).  Apparently the snow is losing business £600 million per day.  Of course fuel utility companies and even many supermarkets (given the British tendency to stockpile food at any hint of a crisis) are actually benefiting from the cold weather.  The new twist is the complaint from employers that too many schools have closed too quickly and so compelling parents to take time off to look after their children. 

What the employers forget (or choose not to notice) is that often teachers cannot afford to live anywhere near the schools they work at because house prices have risen far faster than teachers' salaries over the past forty years and schools are fearful of being sued if any child has an accident even in good weather so are terrified they will get a slew of litigation if children slip over in the snow.  Added to this, much investment in school buildings and heating facilities has been neglected over the past thirty years, there are regular reports on the poor conditions many schools actually are in, so it is unsurprising when their aged boilers pack up or single-glazed classrooms are too cold to study in.  None of these considerations is allowed to get in the way of employers yet again telling us we are lazy and negligent and so are costing the country money (though of course not reducing their salaries or bonuses a jot).  Hassle from employers makes many people feel they must get on the road to reach their work, often adding the hazards and accidents.

Extreme weather shows how shabby the UK's infrastructure has become from decades of cuts and when this is combined with an unassailable belief that satisfaction of all individual wishes is the only legitimate concern, it creates 'crisis' that neighbouring states must look upon with bemusement/amusement. I wonder what happens in places like western Normandy and Brittany which, like the UK, benefit from the Atlantic warm currents that stop the climate being as cold, most winters, as, say, northern France, the Benelux countries and Germany.  In these regions of France they must have mild winters but the occasional harsh ones too, yet I never hear Cherbourg or Rennes or Brest grinding to a halt when this occurs.  I suspect it means keeping things in store that you might only use once per decade, but at least you know they are there.  I guess to it stems from an attitude which is not all 'me, me, me' when harsh conditions bite.  I may be wrong and would be interested to hear from people who have had experiences in these regions.  I have certainly travelled around Belgium in the winter when the temperature is often -10oC or worse without difficulty and without the madness that seems to affect too many Britons whenever snow comes.  The weather might be extreme for the UK but let us hope that negative extreme behaviour can be moderated and the positive behaviour become normalised rather than needing extreme weather to trigger it.

P.P. 12/01/2010: One contributory factor to schools closing that I had missed, but is now being reported widely, are the league table ratings around percentage of attendance.  This means that if a school opens and say, even a third or a quarter, in fact anything more than about a tenth, of its pupils cannot get in then it slides quickly in terms of its standing for attendance.  I should have remembered the messages that I have seen coming home from the school that the 8-year old who lives in my house attend.  The headteachers writes of figures like 92.4% attendance and a drive to get this figure higher.  It is unsurprising then, that heads shut the school and so have that day null-and-void for the statistics rather than risk dropping even a 1-2% and so looking worse than last year when we had a mild winter.

Another point of behaviour that I forgot to mention is drivers using their fog lights when visibility is good.  Many drivers, even now where there is a lot of thawing going on, certainly in the counties I have been driving through, seem to assume these lights are simply 'bad weather' lights.  They forget that on frosty days often the air is far clearer than even on rainy days and so there is no need for fog lights.  You can be fined if you have them on when visibility is more than 50-100 metres.  On the back fog lights can be up to 30 times more powerful than normal rear lights.  I know when you are driving up and down valleys on foggy days you go in and out of fog and may be excused for leaving them on in clear patches, but some people switch them on just when it is cold and frosty, every one car in ten I passed this morning had them on and there was not a scrap of fog on the 190Km I covered.  I do wonder, if, as with drivers who keep full beam on at all times, whether these drivers actually know how to operate the functions on their cars or get stuck with a certain setting.

Caught At Speed 2: Swindon & Safety Cameras

Last year I did a posting in response to the rising hostility to speed cameras in the UK which has even led people to vandalise them, let alone constant whining in public and in the media about how they are a 'stealth tax' on motorists. Of course, in fact they are only a very visible fine on criminals who break the law by speeding. Yet, the British feel they have a right to drive at dangerous speeds unchallenged by anyone else. They blame the people they hit for the accident not their own poor driving. One of the highest rated irritations on the road is 'people not getting out of the way of faster cars'. If you are driving at the speed limit then there is no need to get out of the way. I have been driving through the road works on the M27 and there is a limit of 50 mph right through them and they are covered entirely with speed cameras, but this does not stop people trying to force me to go faster, constantly flashing their lights and hooting.

Anyway, this brings me to Swindon council. I do not drive as much in Wiltshire as I used to, but it is a rural, quite prosperous county in western England and Swindon is one of its main towns. In the town, the council has 16 speed cameras, 3 cameras to catch people jumping red lights (it is important to remember that not all safety cameras are speed cameras and some do other road safety jobs, I saw a man jumping a red light caught by one the other day and was very pleased) and 11 mobile units. They pay £400,000 for these to Wiltshire & Swindon Safety Camera Partnership for these. Now they want to scrap them all arguing that it is 'a blatant tax on the motorist' and again I emphasise, in fact they do not affect any motorist who stays within the law, who drives at the correct speed in towns and does not jump red lights. In fact what is going on here is that Swindon Council is actually annoyed that it does not get the money raised by the fines, this goes to central government. If it went to them I am sure they would be putting up cameras all over the town. Even if Swindon Council pulls out of the scheme the cameras would not go (despite what many in the media think) as £1.2 million comes from Wiltshire County Council. In its effort to get more money Swindon Council has foolishly lashed itself to the bandwagon of the virulent libertarians who seemed to be becoming dominant in the UK and insist they have the right to behave how they like unchecked by any authority. Of course people elsewhere will use the 'stealth tax' argument to campaign for the removal of other cameras when in fact it is simply criminals wanting the policing of their activities put to an end. Would anyone pay any attention if shoplifters insisted that CCTV cameras in shops should be removed because it was a tax on them as they have to buy goods instead of steal them? The relationship to speed cameras is no different.

A lot of this is about social class. Alongside the reports about Swindon council's actions is an announcement about more plans on behalf of the government to tackle youth crime. One proposed action is to evict families from council houses whose children behave in a criminal manner. Few people these days live in council houses as so many have been sold off, but clearly this is aimed at the poorest segment of society, it is not aimed at the 4x4 drivers whose children are equally as criminal, often spending far more on drugs because they have the cash. I think we must insist that expensive cars are repossessed in situations when it is the wealthy children who break the law. Who thinks making families homeless for the sake of their children's behaviour is a sensible policy anyway? It will just make the parents have to turn to crime too. Given the current love of the Thatcherite policies, no-one seems willing to face up to the truth of what those policies brought. The denial of society by Thatcher, very explicitly, and her emphasis on individuals and the popularity of 'greed is good' ethics, the sense that you are no-one unless you own things, especially a house, have all led to a society in which children behave the way adults to and bully others to get what they desire. In addition, no different to the adults, they feel they have to keep consuming all the latest items or be no-one. No credit is given in UK society for achievement in any other field except consumption and this is fuelled by the obsession with celebrity.

Some parents are bad at their jobs, but the bulk try their best. It is just that in our society they have very little control. The only way they can punish children is by denying them access to the consumer goods they want, and so what do the children do, they simply go out and steal or deal to get what they want. People blame the permissive 1960s for where we are now, but a lot of what is seen bad about that era, was in fact about gaining respect for people especially those from ethnic minorities and women. What we are seeing now is the consequences of the fragmentation, 'me first' culture of the 1980s. If the rich libertarians want to be free to commit crime, they have to realise everyone else will want to and in fact there is no difference between dealing drugs, shoplifting, speeding or running down a pedestrian, they are all crimes and are all about disrespect for other people and for society. The break down in law cannot be selective and the rich cannot be exempt and blame the poor for all society's ills.

I can see why Swindon Council has behaved as it has done, but the councillors have foolishly opened a can of worms which I believe will simply exacerbate lawlessness among all sectors of society in the coming months and years.

When Will Cars Be Considered the Weapons They Are?

Driving through one English region recently I was struck by the range of sentences handed down for similar crimes. These were:

Wife attempting to murder her husband using anti-freeze leading him to be disabled but to survive: Attempted Murder - 30 years

Man punched and kicked a man to death in a fight: Manslaughter - 14 years

Woman killed a cyclist by running him over in her car while texting someone on her mobile phone: Death By Dangerous Driving - 4 years

On these grounds it is actually more risky in terms of a prison sentence not to kill someone with anti-freeze than it is to murder them with a car. While researching this posting I came across similar comments from the late 1990s about people getting light sentences for being convicted for the offence of Death By Dangerous Driving:

http://www.iankitching.me.uk/articles/death-driving.html

Ian Kitching points out that if this offence which carried a sentence of 6 months to 2 years in those days, though in theory it has been raised to 14 years so in line with Manslaughter (though I yet to hear of a case in which a dangerous driver gets 14 years and guidance to courts is generally 2-5 years). Kitching shows cases in which drivers who have killed one or more people were getting sentences as short as 6 months. You can get 5 years for Actual Bodily Harm and Greivous Bodily Harm sentences can be 5 years to life and in these cases the person attacked is still alive; in addition aggravation such as a racial motive adds typically 2 years to the sentence. So for beating up someone on racial grounds you could get 7 years in prison but if you ran them down with a car you could get away with 6 months to a maximum of 4 years it seems.

Why is it in the UK that the car is not considered to be a weapon? I think partly it stems from the people who are judges. In 2004 16% of judges were women; judges earn £96,500-£129,900 (€128,35-€172,235; US$194,930-U$261,590) which is four to six times the national average salary so they are all very rich people. Though I accept that there are aggressive female drivers the bulk of the aggression on the roads is caused by men. The number of incidents of drivers following others home to attack or berate them has increased sharply even in the past two years (this happened to me and is very frightening, the motives for why they are offended by you are usually obscure). Thus, I believe that judges who rarely walk around outside or find themselves fighting in pub car parks are more sympathetic to accused who harm people using a big car like they drive. They can easily see themselves mowing down some defenceless pedestrian or cyclist without noticing, so they are lenient on the people like themselves, careless, rich men in many cases. It also explains why sentences for rapists are so lenient too and why attempted murder by women of their husbands conversely receives such strong punishment as the judges want to send a warning to their own spouses.

Until the sentences for causing death using a car come in line with sentences for using a knife or a gun or your fists (or ironically tools from a car like the jack) to commit violence then people are going to continue to drive around recklessly fast, using hand-held equipment and know that they are going to get off lightly.

I always warn the six-year old who lives in this house that he is far more likely to be killed by a driver than any other weapon. In 1997 following the Hungerford and Dunblaine attacks most handguns in the UK were banned and deaths from shootings in England, Scotland and Wales combined were only 58 in 2005/06 and 67 in 2006/07 (down from a peak of 102 in 2001/02). In 2005, 3,201 people were killed by or in cars; 48% of these were people not using the cars themselves, which suggests that 1,537 people were killed through a car inadvertently or intentionally used as a weapon. Hence you are 22 times more likely to be killed by a car than by a gun in England, Scotland and Wales (in fact the chance is far greater in Scotland where gun deaths have been in single figures through the 2000s). In 2004 in England and Wales, 282 murders were committed using a sharp implement, predominantly knives so it suggests that in England and Wales you are approximately five times more likely to be killed by a car than a knife.

Why then do courts and sentences see cars for what they really are? Commonly available lethal weapons given to people who would often be refused any firearm or even a knife? A kitchen knife, like a car, is a mundane object, but that does not stop people for recognising it for the lethal object it can become. A car is many kilogrammes of metal able to travel fast enough to smear people across a road and kill them instantly. Even at 30mph (56 kph) someone hit is 10% likely to be killed, this rises to 90% by 40mph. Cars drive down my residential road at 60mph (the speed limit is 30mph but is uneforced by speed cameras) guaranteeing anyone who steps or is on their bicycle and is hit by a car will die. Pro-speeding organisations like SafeSpeed contest the government's figures for road deaths, but to me 827 pedestrians killed by cars in 2001 plus 39,470 injured is far too high and exceeds by many times the deaths from shootings or stabbings for which people receive far, far longer sentences. Speeding in Britain is seen like gun ownership in the USA as some kind of God-given right and one that to these arrogant, usually prosperous men (who resent that the rest of society comes anywhere near their perceived 'level' of course in fact none of us want to go down to their caveman behaviour) is far more important than life itself. The death of even one person from a car is excessive and the sense that there are 'tolerable' levels such as the 107 child pedestrians killed by cars in 2001, is sickening, to seek to do as SafeSpeed does to put the blame on pedestrians for daring to get in the way of their speeding cars, is akin to a gunman saying it was the dead person's fault for not moving out of the way of the bullet that was being fired at them.

It is simple:

Cars are weapons. Reckless drivers are armed murderers. Murderers should be sentenced in line with the law on murder.


P.P. After posting this, another thought came to my mind in regards to sentencing of criminals. In setting down the sentence the judge will often consider how much there is a risk that the criminal will offend again. This is why sometimes people who have murdered their partner or family members get quite light sentences on the assumption that they do not have such a close relationship with the bulk of the population and so are not a hazard to people they are not related to. The things about killer drivers is that they are highly likely to offend again and they are a threat to anyone in society. In the large majority of cases they have no idea who they actually killed, often they have not even seen them when they run them down, and as SafeSpeed makes clear, these kind of people blame the victim for the collision not themselves. Thus, they are actually far more dangerous to the population as they do not believe they did anything wrong and also because their victims are totally random. Even someone running round a US town with a rifle tends to target people he knows or knows of whereas a killer driver in the UK is a risk to all of us. Thus, on this basis their sentences should be higher rather than lower than those people who have a restricted pool of targets. I fear that the issue comes round premeditation and that killer drivers are seen as 'accidental' killers. That is generally true but they have taken a premeditated decision to drive too fast and dangerously and so are effect setting themselves up to kill even if they have not yet selected their target. This is playing Russian Roulette with other people's lives and they should be sentenced in the way you would sentence someone who runs through a city centre blindfolded and firing a pistol and kills someone, they are as dangerous as that. The judges cannot apparently see that, as they are so similar to these criminals in their own behaviour.

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.

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.