Road Safety not Consensus Edmund.

From: Local Transport Today 29th October 10

Road safety should be left to those with genuine expertise

Keith Peat, Association of British Drivers, East Midlands regional co-ordinator, Sutton on Sea

AA president Edmund King, in defending his massive public poll on road safety and driving matters, is also defending himself (Letters LTT 15 Oct). There are too many inexpert cooks interfering and controlling the life and death issue of road safety. And many, like the AA, who are in the motoring insurance business, have a vested interest too.

Mr King is regularly referred to by the media on road safety and driving matters but how does being the president of a motor repair, recovery and motor insurance firm, make him an expert driver and road safety spokesman?

Likewise the ladies of BRAKE, who are supposed to be a victim support charity, are treated as experts too. Yet BRAKE’s list of sponsors also means they have a massive vested interest.

Road safety is the only life and death matter that I can think of where every Tom, Dick and Harry has a big say. Mr King compounds this problem by trying to make it a consensus issue of thousands of other non-experts like himself.

The Association of British Drivers, unlike Mr King and the AA, are totally independent experts with no vested interest and who, as self-funding volunteers, have no reason to tell it other than as it is.

Like any poll you can get the answers you want to get. At the moment a poll I am running says that 87% think the road safety industry’s billions of pounds, of which insurance is a part, would save more lives in the NHS and emergency services. But is this how we want road safety to be run? By vested interest in-experts craftily polling thousands of other in-experts?

Charity Commission complaint.

BRAKE is sponsored by profit vested interest companies from motor insurance, public transport and yes even a speed camera firm.

Part of my complaint to the Charity Commission:

'........It's interference, commentary and media statements are way beyond victim support, which I applaud and is into the very dangerous life and death realms of matters on which it has no expertise or understanding; as such BRAKE is therefore not only political but probably highly dangerous as well. The danger is that most of the very lucrative Road Safety Industry that supports BRAKE, are not only with a vested interest of massive profit but most of its activity does not stop one single road accident either. Incorrect conclusions in road safety will also kill!

The above is contrary to BRAKE’s stated aim of ‘stopping carnage’ then. And most of this is achieved by exploiting charities like BRAKE to present an emotional false case on the Industry’s behalf.

If the Charity Commission are to allow BRAKE to make statements on other than victim support or to interfere in the life and death issue of road safety, then I charge that they have vested interest supporters and are thus themselves with a vested interest and that must cease. If they wish to continue to make statements about driving and road safety then they should acknowledge independent experts who are willing to assist a correct conclusion otherwise they will be no more than a political anti driver group with little knowledge of their subject. Is that what the Charity Commission supports as this subject is far too serious to be made a political one as seems to be the case with BRAKE...........'

Prince Michael's Awards Innocent!

HRH Prince Michael of Kent can be forgiven for believing that the pious Road Safety Industry is just a nice, caring, benign, charitable and costless necessity when in fact the reverse is the truth.

Its very sound-bite and mantra, 'Speed kills!', fails scrutiny. Fact is speed being motion, quite simply, without it the heart stops and we die; so actually the slogan 'No speed kills' is more the truth. It is also a fact that since man took to the horse, the train,plane, faster shipping and production, the faster it went so life expectancy has gone up not down in the faster economies.

So their very untrue sound-bite is a metaphor of the Industry itself. Why would anything honest need an untrue sound-bite anyway?

The Road Safety Industry is a very aggressive and highly costly industry which actually promotes anti driver and dangerous inexpert comment from charities like BRAKE for example. They are supposed to confine themselves to victim support but are increasingly commenting on the highly intricate matters of driving and road safety; aspects for which they are not qualified.

Why is it that in any other life and death issue we would rely very heavily on experts and yet in driving and road safety, virtually everyone from civil servants, councillors, MPs, most police officers who are not specialist, every Tom Dick & Harry and I suspect Princes too, are experts? A recipe for exploitation if ever there were one. But not only is this a life and death issue, people are prosecuted and even imprisoned too.

Surely before awarding people and groups with medals, His Royal Highness should ask a few questions of truly independent experts on this life and death matter and certainly ensure that there is no vested interest involved.

He could do no better than ask himself why so much focus and interest in it when there is more death from accidents in the home?

I can tell him that there certainly are vested interests behind both the medals I am aware of this year. In fact it looks to me very much like the Industry awarding itself. I doubt if any truly independent and voluntary experts will be invited to the presentation ceremonies or even be considered for a medal either.

I have written to Prince Michael to offer my time for him voluntarily and at my own expense.

Watch this space!!

Spending cuts and speed limits.

Since 2006 there has been a very costly and totally unscientific speed limit review set up by the last government and is still ongoing until 2011?

I have been surveying these and they are not based on any rationale or accident history at all. For example: 50 limits on dual carriageways, will inevitably mean that overtaking where it would be safe becomes illegal so crashes will inevitably be created by this policy on two way roads and single carriageways with opposing traffic.

Most of the unscientific limits of this review has cost the country billions to install and in the unnecessary slowing and criminalisation of a major infrastructure, about £3 billion per annum for every 1 MPH reduction.

Has this nonsensical speed limit review been considered for immediate abandonment within the financial cuts not withstanding the highly dangerous elements as outlined?

Open letter to Institute of Advanced Motorists

Why is IAM promoting speed cameras?

'Speeding' That is to go above an arbitrary and unscientific number on a pole cannot cause an accident. Too fast does, both above or below the limit but no camera can see that.

Does IAM agree with that statement and that most drivers or people answering its recent poll would not know that?

Since when was life and death road safety a non expert consensus matter? Or indeed how many of those polled were driving experts?

Given that without speed/motion we would all die, is 'speed kills' a false soundbite which may have influenced your poll?

East Midlands