Archive for category Motoring

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a keen motorcyclist, and there’s nothing we motorcyclists like more than a far-reaching ribbon of ultra smooth tarmac. Britain has some amazing rural routes with lovely bends and fabulous scenery, but it doesn’t have too much of the aforementioned high quality roads. Indeed, our rural B roads are only resurfaced on average every 79 years. This is just about twice as long as the recommended resurfacing interval of 40 years. In fact, our road network is now in need of a whopping £8.5billion spend just to bring the road surfaces up to a minimum standard.

This is hardly just an issue affecting bikers. Poor road surfaces increase the dangers to all road users and increase the damage inflicted upon our vehicles. Sadly, the powers that be choose to spend their time and money focusing on speed limit reductions and enforcement that have no discernable impact on road safety. Even as we speak, there is a campaign afoot to reduce the speed limit on rural roads to 50mph. Given that the majority of road traffic accidents on rural roads occur at speeds below 50mph or above 60mph, this change will make no difference to accident statistics. Rural roads will likely be difficult to police anyway, unless (as I suspect) the change is just an excuse to bang up a load more speed cameras. All this limit change will do is cost money and ruin our landscape. At the moment rural roads are by default set at National Speed Limit (60mph for car or motorbike), whereas if they are set at 50mph, there will need to be vast numbers of speed limit signs installed. This represents a vast expense and an unnecessary blight on our beautiful countryside. In most cases, the roads themselves dictate the naturally safe speed limit and this is often well below 60mph.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) believes there to be more than 1.5million potholes in need of repair on UK roads. This figure has been dramatically affected by the recent cold weather, and is only likely to increase as winters become more extreme, and funding for road maintenance continues to be cut. As with many things in life, prevention is far cheaper than the cure. This is certainly true in the case of road re-surfacing, where basic re-surfacing costs about £14 per square metre, whereas full reconstruction costs a whopping £70.

How much does the government net from road tax? £47billion! More than enough to maintain our road networks in exemplary condition and vastly reduce the number of road deaths and accidents as a result. The problem of course is that most of this money goes nowhere near the roads.

When will you sit up and take notice of the sad state of neglect of our rural roads? Will it be before you round that corner on your bike only to be met with a giant pothole that sends you and your bike sliding down the road or into oncoming traffic? Will it be before you hit that broken surface in your car and are unable to brake effectively causing a collision with another road user?

Why is the transport network so low on the agenda?

The sky is blue, the sun is shining and England’s fine green land beckons the motorist. What’s not to love? Leafy lanes, hedgerows thick with ripe brambles, a picturesque village complete with thatched pub and high-vis jacket clad residents wobbling a handheld radar gun in your general direction. Welcome to modern England, where it is apparently acceptable for one’s peers to stand in judgement of one’s actions without any crime having been committed or indeed any charges brought.

According to the Community Speedwatch website: “Community Speed Watch is a scheme to help people reduce speeding traffic though their community. The scheme enables volunteers to work within their community to raise awareness of the dangers of speeding and to help control the problem locally.

The use of the radar devices will not lead to prosecution - drivers will get a letter from the police instead - but will help to underline the community’s commitment to reducing speed.”

I’ve never found myself in receipt of any Community Speedwatch letters, though I think if I were to receive one I would be more likely to consign it immediately to the recycling box than allow it to have any impact on my driving. I am a safe driver thanks to skills that I have honed over the past 14 years and the more than a quarter of a million miles I’ve covered in all types of vehicles, in this country and abroad. No doubt such a stance will get right up the nose of the kind of busybody that feels it is their community duty to spy on others, but it is based on cold simple facts.

The aforementioned website has the title “Speed or Safety: Slow Down for Life”. This makes no sense whatsoever in the real world and is typical of Government propaganda and boolean logic that has no place in sensible policies. Bizarrely though, despite knowing that the Government and many of the members of Parliament are corrupt liars (as is frequently exposed in the media), some people insist on believing all the spun statistics they’re fed, rather than actually doing some research and reading some real impartial and proper statistical reports on excessive speed and road safety. But why let the facts get in the way of an opportunity for jumped up self-importance?

Here are 12 things off the top of my head that a radar gun manhandled by a volunteer cannot do:

1. Identify a vehicle being driven at speeds inappropriate for the road, weather or traffic conditions, when said speeds are below a prescribed limit.
2. Identify prolific speeders (who slow down for speed traps and then speed up again immediately after).
3. Identify a stolen car.
4. Identify a driver that is drunk.
5. Identify a driver that is high on drugs.
6. Identify a driver that does not have a license.
7. Identify a driver that has no insurance.
8. Identify a vehicle that has no current road fund license.
9. Identify a vehicle that has no current MoT certificate.
10. Identify a vehicle in an unfit condition for use on public roads.
11. Identify a driver failing to concentrate on the road (e.g. using a mobile phone).
12. Identify a vehicle that has been used in a crime.

Here is 1 thing that it can do, assuming that it has been correctly calibrated and that the individual using the radar gun has received sufficient training in its use:

1. Determine the speed of an oncoming vehicle within a given error margin.

Frankly, the same can be said of any automated speed trap also - especially speed cameras. These kind of traps only seem to catch drivers who have a lapse in concentration. A prolific speeder would be most unlikely to be caught out by speed traps, particularly when most sat nav units feature speed camera and trap locations. Regular speeders will most likely have a Snooper installed as well.

Road deaths which were in decline until the introduction of the speed camera policy in the UK, are now on the increase. Any perceived safety benefits are usually negated by the Government’s spin doctors’ deliberate omission of standard statistical considerations such as annual deviation and regression to the mean.

Clearly, a toothless standard warning letter from the police is always going to be preferable to a fixed penalty notice issued by your local scamera partnership. Heck, we pay enough tax for our cars already, without having to donate to the Chief Constable’s pension plan every time we choose to watch the road instead of driving along with our eyes glued to our speedometers. Still, I object to the whole idea of people (usually retirees with too much time on their hands and probably less driving experience than half the people they point their radar at) waving their radar gun at me, and more unbelievably, their camcorders! I haven’t found anything on the Community Speedwatch that says a video camera should be used. This is nothing more than voyeurism.  These volunteers most certainly do not have a right to spy upon my family or I as we go about our private business.

The value these people bring to the community and the public in general is negligable. We need real, properly trained police offers to solve our road safety issues. Let’s not forget that only a tiny proportion of road accidents are actually attributed to excessive speed, despite what the pro-speed camera lobby would have you believe. Go and read the actual accident data people and WAKE UP!

If you want drivers to be more safe on the roads, make the driving test more difficult and introduce a scheme of regular re-testing to maintain standards. And, if you are someone with too much time on your hands, remember that there are so many great volunteer programmes that bring true benefit to communities - why not invest your time in a more worthy cause?