Couldn't agree with you more, Bystander. Compare and contrast with the wails over a rail accident where one person loses their life and the calls for millions to be spent to avoid a repeat. And then look at the reaction of Mr Toad and his friends when the authorities try to do anything to reduce the carnage on the roads.
Just don't get me started on lost three-year olds.
Whilst I agree with Bystander on the tragedy of loss of life on the roads (I myself have been, am one of those grieving relatives), I do HOPE this isn't going to be another speed limit crusade.
In terms of sense of proportion, I would say that the road incident (I believe police use incident rather than accident these days to describe such situations) should warrant more lines in tomorrows papers than that of a certain missing girl.
But if there's one thing I've come to realise over the past few years it's that you can't assume that people will react in the same way to the same events as you will.
We all have issues that are close to our hearts which, for us, may make them more relevant/important than other issues.
Er maybe its because the law (or its implementation) is being changed for shoplifters and there is no change in the law on road safety?! Just a thought!
Sorry, don't see the connection.
Theft and fraud are moral and legal crimes that strike at the basis of commercial life. The police have given up on investigating these and "fraud squad" is just a hollow memory. These crimes can ruin lives. We're not all comfortably off.
Have you already decided that this RTA involved a criminal offence? If it did throw the book at them but spare us the "I feel your pain" attitude in the meantime. I had my identity stolen the other day. That's a crime. Feel my pain and get your colleagues to ask our Kafka like "Ministry of Justice" to do something about it.
Bystander, how can I put this, most of the comments about the road use and/or speed limits have been about the pure law or the application of the law. Not on the tragic consequences when things go wrong. No comment I read advocated reckless activity or condoned braking the law, the discussion was about the fixed limits set and the morality of rigidly and officially enforcing the limits.
There is no indication in you post that any traffic law has been broken, therefore while I feel for the families involved, you attempt at moral relativism is misplaced. As I have said before you judgment seems to be excellent and well balanced except where a car is involved , where unfortunately it seems to be irrevocably clouded. While I would happily bow to your judgment in most cases, I would hope never to be before you in a driving matter.
Bystander:
The cases are quite different. Deaths in a road accident area tragedy. It is the undoubted duty of everyone to drive with as much care as he is able, and to not drive if he is unable to do so with reasonable competence.
There is some overlap, but not complete congruence, between driving safely and carefully and obeying the posted speed limit.
By contrast, a burglar or shoplifter commits a malicious act of evil each time he commits his crime. The results may be less painful to the victims and their families, but the stain on the soul of the criminal is much darker.
One death is a tragedy.
A thousand deaths a statistic.
But each of those one deaths leaves a hundred tragedies.
Will society's indifference to road deaths diminish magistrates inactivity in controlling crime the best they can?
Letting of shoplifters wont stop car accidents - so why do it?
If you feel sensitive then stop letting people comment.
Bystander, how can you even be thinking about a few road deaths when there are millions starving in Africa? What sort of monster are you?
There is such a story on the BBC about such a crash on the M40.
Unusually, I find myself at odds with Bystander. Of course death on the road is always a tragedy for someone. Last year there was broadcast an account by a mother who had lost her newly medically qualified daughter who died at the hands of an illegal driver; anyone who heard that was unlikely to have avoided weeping. A person responsible for causing a road death by deliberate or reckless behaviour should feel the full weight of the law. So should those who go out and deliberately steal.
However, where neither party on the road was at fault (perhaps an unforeseen mechanical failure) the situation is not analogous with dishonest behaviour. If you choose to commit a criminal offence, you should expect to be punished by the courts (and obtain a criminal record) and not be handed a fixed penalty by the police.
Rogerborg
Cynical Vic I may be. But all the trillions poured into Africa and still they're at square one. We see starving millions in the news and at the same time well fed soldiers going off to fight the civil wars. Then there's the 90% of aid that gets siphoned off into swiss bank accounts. Every time I go into a shop, I put the change into a charity box - provided it's doing good in this country.
Noone is in dispute that road safety needs to be addressed. However I believe the improvements in car technology have done far more to address this fact than any road safety campaign has done.
I'm not opposed to chicanes and road narrowings in high risk areas. I am opposed to the current trend of populating britain with speed cameras in the belief it will solve the problem.
If you really wanted a radical policy to cut deaths on the road, the best thing you could probably do is demand the automatic scrapping of all cars over 10 years old. It would force more to use public transport, reduce congestion on the road, improve the safety of vehicles on the road, reduce fuel emissions, virtually eliminate uninsured drivers etc.
Bystander, what has happened to your sense of proportion? And why do assume that society is indifferent to the 3,500 or so people who die on the roads each year? I see no justification for such a sweeping statement. Just stop to consider: at peak periods, there are probably at least 20 million vehicles on the move, all with different characteristics, negotiating complex manoeuvres at varying speeds, using grossly inadequate infrastructure, under the control of people with very different personalities, attitudes and levels of expertise. Under these circumstances, such a low number of deaths is really quite an extraordinary achievement, surely? Certainly, it's about as low as it's ever been, despite huge increases in traffic volume and a large influx of foreign goods vehicles in recent years. Those few countries with marginally better rates do not have anything like the overcrowded and antiquated road system we have to endure. Frankly, I suspect we’ve now reached a figure that is approaching as low a rate of killed or seriously injured as is ever likely to be achieved. Unless, that is, we abandon the current irrelevant, one-trick approach to road safety (yes, I mean speed cameras) and concentrate on proper traffic policing, driver education and really hard, effective action against those repeatedly charged and found guilty of serious traffic offences. The last of which is where we are all let down very badly indeed.
LOST IN WEST LONDON AREA
One sense of proportion, desperately missed. Reward offered for return.
Typical fine in Mags court for No Insurance £100; for careless driving £100 (perhaps even if you've killed someone); for shoplifting - get off free; for going past a camera on an empty road at 3am - maybe lose your livelihood. Yes, perhaps the courts need to get a sense of proportion first.
Mr D - Surely if your livlihood is at stake because 3 more points will mean the loss of your licence, its up to you to watch out for the cameras, which lets face it are very easy to see. When we get people who have totted up to 12 points arguing extreme hardship if they had to face a 6 month ban, its always at the back of my mind that if I was on 9 points I would make very sure that I didn't get 3 more. You only lose your licence for speeding (unless you are doing something extremely reckless) if you are a persistent offender. This ties in with other offences where the penalties for third and fourth time offenders are more severe.
That 3,500 people die a year is tragic however you can never eliminate risk and as long as people move about in Tin boxes accidents will happen. Considering how busy the roads are I consider it remarkable that there are not more fatalities.
Bystander seems to forget that many people are reliant on their wheels for their livelihood. Taking away a persons income for driving 37mph in a 30 seems to me a little ridiculous.
"Taking away a persons income for driving 37mph in a 30 seems to me a little ridiculous."
Yes but that will never happen will it? As John's post immediately above yours points out, you won't lose your licence for one infringement like that. You've got to have got caught breaking the speed limit in that manner several times and refused to take a hint.
If someone really is that unaware of their surroundings that they manage to get caught speeding a 4th time, I would suggest they are *precisely* the sort of inattentive and inconsiderate driver who should most certainly be taken off the road for the safety of others.
With respect to the previous poster. You have to refuse to take a hint over 3 (or is it 4) years. With the extremely high number of miles that we do, momentary lapses when you've taken the hint are extremely possible. Even insurance companies are beginning to regard speeding offenses as an everyday fact of life rather than an indicator of a real risk, which speaks volumes, since they would be the first to flag something that affects their bottom line.
I'm not certain but I got the impression Bystander was a little surprised by the sandbagging he received over the drug offender case. Reading through most of the opinion though, it is not the drug offences that the comments are targeted at, it is the means (theft) by which the offender supports his habit which impinges on the welfare of others. It is the theft that the majority of society wants protection against. Most of society (certain tabloids excepted) seems to have come round to the view that even if a persons choice of lifestyle is personally destructive, it is a medical, not a criminal issue.
I have to admit that I'm somewhere towards "lock 'em up and throw away the key" with most offences, so I've got precisely zero point none sympathy for people who decide to abuse themselves with drugs then abuse the rest of us in order to fuel their fall from humanity.
Day after day of fighting with chavs who disagreed with your being there to process them for breaking some rule or other (not that the term 'chav' had been coined back then) does that to you.
As for speed, I've *never* had a speeding ticket and I've been driving for a good while now. I've simply discovered that most places I'm going to aren't actually going to grow legs and move if I'm a bit late. I just don't see how you can get a speeding ticket unless you're not paying attention to your road and your driving.
However, no, I'm not in support of speed cameras. I'd much rather see traffic police back out there enforcing all the aspects of good driving on a sensible basis.
Anonimouse has got it right; for the trivial offence of driving even a little faster than some arbitrary speed limit, just once in nine months, over a three year period (representing perhaps fifty thousand miles or more of safe and responsible driving), livelihoods can be lost. At some time or another, every driver exceeds the speed limit inadvertently, usually by a nominal amount and probably because other matters are more worthy of the drivers attention; the sheer number of tickets being issued tells us that. For such "inattention" the punishment will, in many cases, be entirely disproportionate. Yet, of those 3,500 killed annually, 3,325 had nothing whatever to do with speeding (DfT report Sept 2006). No wonder so many drivers regard speed cameras as having little to do with road safety; they see it confirmed in the official statistics! Since the absurd pre-occupation with speed cameras that started in the early 1990's and continues to this day, no improvement in accident rates has been forthcoming - does no-one in control of policy have the wit to ask why? Or are senior police officers so reluctant to admit their mistake that road safety is being compromised?
A desperate excuse. A road accident is very different from that of a shoplifter which nethertheless is a sympton of far wider social problems which wreck many lives.
I have been a victim of crime a darn sight more times than I've been involved in road accidents.
I can drive around as much as I like without any realistic danger of being involved in an accident, but I can't sensibly leave my laptop on the seat when I'm parked.
That's why MY 'sense of proportion' leans rather towards punishing criminals and away from about obsessing about what is essentially a solved problem.
"I just don't see how you can get a speeding ticket unless you're not paying attention to your road and your driving."
You are assuming that not actually exceeding the speed limit is sufficient to prevent you getting speeding tickets.
Currently, ways you can be issued speeding tickets for not exceeding the limit include; ANPR misrecognitions, miscalibrated speed cameras, laser speed measuring devices being used outside their approved operating range, laser speed measuring devices which are known to have flaws in their measuring methodologies and someone else having fitted clones of your plates to their car so they can speed with impunity.
All of these things operate with a presumption of guilt, so the minute the NIP is printed, it's up to you to prove that you either weren't speeding or weren't even there. Otherwise, you get done even if you didn't do it.
That's the thing that hacks me off about modern road "policing". Obeying the rules doesn't actually seem to provide much protection from prosecution.
"as long as people move about in Tin boxes accidents will happen."
Technology is being developed to keep these boxes apart from each other. Also, bumpers are being redesigned to reduce injuries to pedestrians.
And I think bumps in the road are more effective than signs with MPH limits on them.
In other words, don't rely on laws to prevent accidents - find an engineering solution.
(Likewise, shoplifting would go right down if the self-service layout was replaced by the old-fashioned counter with all the goods out of reach of the shoppers.)
ah yes, one of bystander's periodic troll-poking posts. Nice to see you all rising to the bait as predictably as ever ...
"as long as people move about in Tin boxes accidents will happen."
Delete tin boxes. Insert 'aluminium tubes' or 'high speed trains'.
Now watch the press reaction.
Why dont you people who who find it difficult to observe a speed limit lobby the car manufacturers to make it easier to be aware of the speed in which you are going. Why are cars sold in this country with speedometers going up to 130 mph? why is 30 mph marked by a faint line between 20 and 40? Why is`nt the speedometer given more prominance on the dashboard? Why not head up displays? Why not a manualy set audible warning when a pre-selected speed is reached? Do`nt tell me that it would be too expensive in this day and age of electric windows,air conditioning,four speaker sterio systems,etc.,Aa usual its just a matter of priorities .
Jesus Christ Bystander! You have really thrown the s**t at the fan on this one.
Although I note that you have not maligned, reduced, mitigated (or any other long words which some may be surprised to hear from a copper) shoplifting or any other crime in this thread, despite the woefully predicable Daily Mail-esqe responses of some individuals would suggest.
And while I may disagree with you on certain things I don't think anyone, at least no rational person, could argue that you are indifferent about victims of crime, as is evident in your blog's content and by the fact you volunteer your own time as a magistrate.
You are never going to get proportionality, because the human condition is irrational, self-interested and insanely self-delusional. By all rights people should be more worried about road accidents, putting more energy into combating those needless deaths. However, the fear of some insane druggy stealing your wallet and eating your babies (note - I am not maligning actions of a section of drug -users/addicts whatever you want to call them - just the simplistic, one-dimensional, nauseatingly pseudo-moralistic and irrelevant caricature of "druggies" presented by certain sections of the media and so willingly swallowed by a depressingly large amount of people) is far greater since people's perception of that possibility happening is so much greater than dying in a collision. People rarely get into a car and think “I could die today”, they do think “I could get robbed/stabbed/burgled” with a far greater frequency, I leave it to you to decide why that is…
JE,
Putting aside the scandalous apostrophe abuse for a moment, that is typical of the stilted view engendered in the populace by this and the previous government.
The idea that total compliance with the speed limit would reduce road deaths is simply not supported by evidence. Ten times as many road deaths are caused by inattentiveness or simply nodding off as are caused by speed limit non compiance.
In your ideal world, where 80ish% of the time a drivers speed would be determined by the state, do you seriously contend that there would not be a dramatic increase in inattentiveness and or sleeping at the wheel.
I do not know the specifics of the tragic accident that has been mentioned but it is a good bet that it was caused in the slow lane by a HGV driver nodding off. Would his attention have been maintained had his vehicle not been fitted with a speed limiter.
By the way did I mention the apostophes.
Diogenes - a slip of the finger can perhaps cause a misplacing of an apostrophe as easily as its misspelling.
"To err is human...".
I venture to suggest that the vast majority of road accidents are precisely that - "accidents". I doubt that many motorists set out with the deliberate intention of causing injury or death, especially as there's a reasonable chance that said injury or death could be their own. We are all human, we make mistakes. Thankfully, the vast majority of those mistakes have no serious repercussions, but some, actually a vanishingly small percentage, unfortunately do.
4,500+ people are killed in accidents in their own homes, 1,000 of which manage it by falling down stairs... Should we ban stairs or start installing "stair cameras"?
The official figure for hospital-related fatal infections is, I believe, now over 5,000 for MRSA alone and something approaching 20,000 for all assorted infections.
Considering the number of vehicles on the road at any one time and the number of cyclists / pedestrians / etc who are in a position to come into contact with them we actually do quite well in this country. Compare that with the death rate occurring within the minority of the population who attend hospitals - who's deaths are not a result of "accidents", they're the result of near-criminal levels of negligence, yet no-one seems to get too excited, or at least no-one that "matters".
I guess that very few people "accidentally" shop-lift or commit burglary either.
AlsoJP,
Quite so. My humble and blackberry pie is delicious, thank you.
This is an interesting point of view:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motor...it/
mfwhit02.xml
^^^
>These measures [prohibiting night driving, mandating alco-locks, limiting passengers] might seem intrusive, but they work
The evidence for that being...?
>When we all behave in a mature and responsible way, Big Brother can go home.
What is he advocating? Enforcement or education? I can't get past the liberal fuzziness to see what practical measures he's actually suggesting.
Oh, hang on a second: he's just setting out the problem and pimping his book, in which All Is Explained. Thanks for tricking me into reading an advertisement. I guess the tpyo in the first sentence was a good warning about the quality of the article.
How is a small stupidly driven buzzy car with two baseball capped teenage occupants instead of four either less likely to tailgate me or less likely to crash into me?
Really. All this is saying is that some teenage drivers are clinically bonkers {which anyone who's been on or near the roads recently already knows} and we should try and limit the number who consent to getting killed in one go instead of fixing the underlying problem which is that drivers in general don't regard themselves as responsible for the safety of everyone else on the road.
Limiting passengers. What a brilliant idea. Instead of one bodykitted Peugeot 106 with darkened windows and a paint can for an exhaust, they'll have to take two. Brilliant. Then they can RACE to the pub...
And how will this be enforced, anyway? There aren't any traffic police to count the occupants...
"These measures [prohibiting night driving, mandating alco-locks, limiting passengers] might seem intrusive, but they work"...
My jurisdiction's licensing regime (Ontario, Canada) was overhauled 15 years ago to include those very features, minus the alocolocks (we do have zero tolerance of alcohol for new drivers, though. I mean 0% BAC). It dropped the teenage crash rate 30%, and the system is considered a roaring success. Next?
"just the simplistic, one-dimensional, nauseatingly pseudo-moralistic and irrelevant caricature of "druggies" presented by certain sections of the media and so willingly swallowed by a depressingly large amount of people)"
A drug addict is a victim. Sure.
They are a victim of themselves, the person that they were before they chose to walk down the path to addiction. The person who chose to take that first hit and then to come back for even more.
I have a lot of sympathy for someone who falls into the cracks and attempts to dig themselves out. I'll help someone like that any way I can. BUT... I've got no sympathy for people who choose to make other people victims of their addiction in one way or another.
A lot of long thoughtful posts today, so just a short one from me. Was this post dream't up at the freemason lodge after your third Gin & tonic? makes no sence at all
Shaun
Why does Wycombe Magistrates' Court only have an 0870 number?
'A drug addict is a victim. Sure.'
Please cite where I said that RobM.
What I was saying is that reality of drug use if far more complex and varied than the reactionary tabloids and viewspapers put on.
Blimey! How paranoid do you have to be to make the jump from a comment on road traffic collisions to reading it as "speed cameras good".
News just in ASBO's are being used to seize the cars of speeders.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news...ews/17/
1750.asp
I wonder how bystander feels about this.
Please cite where I said that RobM.
-- beg your pardon, I wasn't trying to claim you did, merely to expand my own point of view - to try and justify, I guess, that I agree with what you say below.
My apologies for any confusion or distress caused
On an unrelated note, I quite enjoyed your typo (?) for newspaper below. Seems that the majority of tabloids deal with views rather than news these days.
--
What I was saying is that reality of drug use if far more complex and varied than the reactionary tabloids and viewspapers put on.
>My jurisdiction's licensing regime (Ontario, Canada) was overhauled 15 years ago to include [two of] those very features. It dropped the teenage crash rate 30%
Super! Can you find a reference source that shows a causative link, rather than a correlation?
No arguments on the 0% BAC, although I don't see why it's considered OK for anyone.
Bystander,
It ill behoves you to complain about people breaking the laws of the road when you and your colleagues bend over backwards to ensure that so many other laws can be broken without any inconvenience to the perpetrator.
/Such as? - ed/
Edited By Siteowner
Since Rogerborg asked:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/co...000003/
00108971
and http://www.drivers.com/article/210/
Unfortunately the underlying report has been taken down from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation's website. Likely due to the fact that it dates from 1998.
The main article there comparies novice drivers from 1993, the last year of the old system, to 1995, the first full year of the new system which was implemented in 1994. This class of driver was the only class affected by the new restrictions.
A more complete report can be found here: http://www.icbc.com/library/glp_eval.asp, which is from British Columbia. Their decline was more modest at 16% but more typical of what is seen with these programs in North America. Experience across most American States and Canadian Provices is similar, as Google shows.
So, training makes you more likely to crash, and women can't drive at night or at speed?
Bystander,
Your blog is packed with examples of you giving serial offenders their fifteenth last chance.
"In other words, don't rely on laws to prevent accidents - find an engineering solution."
Agree, but think we're also missing the need for ongoing training - most people have no top-up training after they pass their test. We wouldn't accept this for airline pilots or train drivers. We should be giving mandatory top-up training every 3-5 years.
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