Here an Association of British Drivers' member looks at the Charity Commission response to the BRAKE complaint:
'The Charities Commission are an organisation who were integral to the last Government's agenda and find themselves at the centre of this Governments.
The way forward?
"The charity's objects include environmentally related purposes and the Commission's role does not extend to determining the accuracy or scientific basis for statements made by the charity in furtherance of those purposes."
Translation - Spout any old green BS and we'll call you a charity.
"We acknowledge that the charity's website lists as Supporters/Donors a number of organisations and commercial enterprises which could indeed be held to have interests in areas associated with motoring. These interests are however beyond the remit of the Commission to address or comment on."
Translation "We don't care how you finance yourself or how corrupt your Charity is"
"For many people, an atmosphere which becomes un-breathable/unhealthy due to increased carbon content"
Translation "We know stuff all about science"
Are the Charities Commission the right body to oversee the the introduction of the 'Big Society'? Use Brake as a specific example of why the CC needs reforming if the 'Big Society is to be delivered with any credibility and write to the Daily Mail.
CC doesn't agree with my crazy claims so it must be corrupt. Come off it you lunatic. You have no valid challenge everything is normal in BRAKE's sponsorship. Who do you think should sponsor them; a soap company?
ReplyDeleteHere we go. I publish this comment by angry Bob Bobbit. When posters like him get so wound up and personal then we know we are on the right track.
ReplyDeleteSorry Bob. BRAKE are sponsored by camera firms and insurance companies both of whom gain from over-slowing a major infrastructure and the prosecution of safe drivers. They have no expertise in road safety or driving and have a clear green political agenda against drivers and cars. Now you may think that good enough to hamper and prosecute unnecessarily? Well you will be in a minority on that.
Calm down Bob
Posted for Bob Bobbit
ReplyDeleteYou mistake my comments as made in anger, you couldn't be so far from the truth, they are made more in mockery of your challenge.
Why is it that you believe that speed camera manufacturers and insurance companies are ignorant of road safety matters? In my experience these 2 examples have many experts in that field and yes, they even have ex traffic police within them also.
It always amazes me when traffic police and ex traffic police or even just ex bobbies believe they have some sort of inbuilt road safety expertise; just why would that be?
Do they run classes in road safety in the police or do they concentrate on law?
Do they have some form of expert analysis training that allows them to scrutinise and comment upon road traffic injury reduction?
Does scooping up bodies from the road into body-bags allow an officer to assimilate accident prevention knowledge?
You know the answers to these questions and I would say if you admitted what the answers are you cannot claim to have an expertise in road casualty reduction because the job you were in only trains a minute few to even understand the elementary principles of the matter.
It is clear you have no idea of road casualty reduction principles from your commentary; you are simply embarrassing your self and the ABD, if indeed it could be any further discredited, by making your superficial and naive objections public.
Serious and established organisations that you are lobbying don't see you as a serious threat or knowledgeable road safety analyst at all, as is evident from their recent short rebuffs.
Yours truly Bob (never annoyed but often amused) Bobbitt
Firstly Bob most police officers are not qualified to talk on driving or road safety since most of them are either in other specialities or like most patrol officers Jacks of all Trades or Acts and Sections. The even with traffic experience it takes a mensarian mind to think outside that box and look inwards at it all. So yes there are very few of us that can and so do that.
ReplyDeleteBut of course the establishment are trying to ignore me but the public aren't. That is why I have such a large following. Why BBC Radio Five Live refer to me and TalkSport and local TV and of course the print media. One of my most recent successes was exposing Edmund King, President of a motor breakdown and recovery firm and now plumbers too as no expert, in Local Transport Today, read by road officials and those in transport nationally. So I think I am pleasing many of the 30,000,000 drivers.
As I ask what is wrong with the most efficient road safety for the money, less hampering and unnecessary slowing of a major artery and no prosecution of perfectly safe drivers? Only a corrupt Road Safety Industry would disagree with that aim surely Bob?
First of all well done for not suppressing interested comment; for that I thank you. It is to be expected if you make a public blog like this one that you will attract some form of opposite or analytical commentary.
ReplyDeleteI have read a number of Local Transport Today issues; they are emailed to me for my attention; I have to say I cannot recall the one you were in but do not deny that you were.
BBC Radio 5 Live and TalkSport are not really good indicators of the efficacy of your views and analysis but of course they will be interested in an alternative view such as yours. Their interest is not a sign of quality or accuracy.
The lifting of limits in their entirety or the raising of speed limits to increase the average speed of the traffic infrastructure is not a safe option and there is no practice or analysis of merit that suggests that is so. You are welcome to make references to such research if you have access to it or can provide a link or links but such evidence has escaped me and the road safety establishment around the world. Pointing to an old analysis such as the "Soloman bathtub" isn't going to do it as that has been discredited on several occasions since its publication, interesting though it is.
There have been a couple of cranks who have latched onto this publication because it serves their purpose however they are not willing to or have missed all that has been said about it afterwards.
You repeat accusations of corruption but where you have made practical attempts at having such corruption investigated it appears that there is none evidenced other than in your own interpretation based on suppositions on what you don't know rather than what you do. I do hope that you wouldn't have made prosecutions based on similar principles when you were serving; maybe the 70's and 80's really were like we see on the TV.
Awkward, superficial and immature analysis and commentary like that at the head of this particular page do not serve the cause of the ABD well at all and will perpetuate the disdain with which they are held in the official circles you wish to influence.
In summary the view at the head of this is rather silly and the overall impression of the ABD is that it is cranky and anarchistic.
Bob (still not at all wound up) Bobbitt
Of course there is corruption Bob. How can anything be honest when good profitless road safety ideas are dismissed whilst those that make billions but not stop one single accident are vigorously promoted? Why so much piety in 'saving lives' for massive personal gain? As a result people are dying who needn't and perfectly safe drivers are being prosecuted for personal gain too. What are BRAKE? If they are really about road safety and not simply another green anti driver anti car lobby, why should they want to 'get people out of their cars', 'Save the world from destruction'? 'Cut emissions?' So they are a green lobby group but a fair question: What exactly is their Road Safety and Driving expertise since they have a lot to say on the subject?
ReplyDeleteWith regard to speed limits: Who says they are correctly, scientifically and appropriately set before we prosecute people? As a copper, I had to have faith in what I was doing. Read my piece about why I am unhappy about speed cameras;it is explained.
Yes I have no doubt that my views will be treated with derision by those in the industry but they need to get used to them becoming widely known by the very public they are earning their wages from. I am sure they hate every minute of it Bob but at long last ABD is now getting at the truth and If I am helping them to be more effective,so much the better.
How can anyone, who is honest, scoff at the only true altruistic and philanthropic speakers and experts there is with no axe to grind and no profit motive?
Thank God I am not in the popularity contest with the people you seem to think I need to be Bob.
Now let's end with our Mission Statement at the very top of this blog page and leave you to figure out how any honest broker can fault it! Let's see how many of the 'official circle' will unequivocally join me in it. And there is your answer. We, ABD still have the moral high ground with that one Bob unless you can get these 'officials' to make it their shared objective too that is!
It appears you and the ABD are a one song outfit who are aggrieved at the prospect of the enforcement of road traffic laws.
ReplyDelete"Better road safety at lower cost" nice sound-byte no suggestions.
What could be better than making the offender pay? The costs of not doing so are too high in my opinion.
No the ABD are voluntary experts with no axe to grind and no vested interests. Not funded by the massive multi billion pound Road Safety Industry we can say it like it is.
ReplyDeleteIf you have followed me I have provided plenty of simple and obvious ideas to reduce road accidents that are costless. How predictatable that profitless and sound ideas are shunned then by the industry. Do read my piece about how if I was still a copper, knowing what I now know about speed limit setting, I would never point a camera at drivers again.
Why should perfectly safe drivers be prosecuted and harried who are not about to have or cause an accident? They are not the enemy of the State but are keeping this economy going at great cost and time. People don't drive because they like it; they drive because our whole economy is based on it now. If we all packed in thousands and and thousands more would die very soon. So a balance has to be struck and that means getting a true and altruistic road safety regime to replace the greedy one we have now who really have no interest at all in lives otherwise we would be hearing more about all the other more fatal situations needing to be fixed instead.
I suggest you read JJ Leeming's book Road Accidents, prevent or punish? And Stephen Hayley's book Mind Driving. But in the meantime
Follow the money.
I believe your ideas are not at all helpful. SO do road safety professionals evidently.
ReplyDeleteWhile you say it is not fair and you would not point a speed enforcement device at a driver who is apparently driving safely I believe it is unfair for drivers to exceed and maximum speed. The reason I am a firm believer in this is because if there was an accident then teh speed in that collision causes more injury and of course death.
Yes, you can be quite clever and say "oh I got away with it that time, how safe am I" and "look how good a driver I am managing and assessing risks while going as fast as I feel safe" but what if that very driver IS in a collision? It is unacceptable, irresponsible and deadly to take the speed limits into your own hands and while thinking collisions are not affected. They are and the injuries in the collisions are massively affected.
As long as road safety professionals keep ignoring and/or rejecting the ideas you and your compatriots have a degree of safety will me promoted. If more accepted speed management responsibly then fewer deaths and injuries would be experienced.
Thank goodness you have matured into irresponsibility and naive safety theories after you left the police; your ideas don't belong within that fraternity.
I will just add a couple of final comments here. FRC demonstrates three of the major flaws, and indeed what creates the opportunity for road Safety profiteering.
ReplyDeleteFirstly most who spout about road safety and consider themselves professional, have no road safety or driving CV at all. They are in it for the pay and the profit. No other dangerous human activity allows such amateurs with vested interests to have any influence whatsoever. Then from the smaller group, 'The fraternity' as he puts it, a large number of these will be tunnel visioned and never question the mantra and challenge it's obvious flaws. This then leaves just a tiny minority, of which I am one, whose CV is totally appropriate but also being a mensarian able to look at the whole thing from a fresh dimension to disclose 'The Emperor's Clothes'.
The second mistake is to accept that the speed limits are correct and set by experts. They are not at all. They are arbitrary and set by local politicians; very often at the behest of some parochial chairman who is no expert either. And on this the 'fraternity' are happy to blindly take people's licences away? Not the 'Fraternity' I belonged to.
The third classic is to talk about impact damage and effect, which of course is the effect of speed after the accident. Whereas my ideas are primarily to stop the accidents first. How come, by the way, that all these items that mitigate effect after an accident, seat belts, air-bags, crash hats, booster seats are for so much profit? The 'fraternity' I belonged to would not have seen any merit in profit for saving lives; especially at the expense of not stopping the accidents happening in the first place. But on your logic the answer is simple. Stop all road traffic, very few road deaths but kill thousands more from the economic impact of it. You display your lack of understanding and expertise. 'Speeding' cannot, I repeat cannot cause an accident. So prosecuting safe driving for 'speeding' is to do so on limits that are totally unscientific and inappropriate, for an an offence which cannot cause an accident, whilst there are some really good and cheap measures that could be taken to prevent accidents dismissed out of hand. Follow the money FRC. And remember: Sense is not a majority condition. The World's best thinkers, often derided, were usually in a minority at the time.
When millions of drivers drive in the same environment they ned to be managed.
ReplyDelete.
To do that they need to do as they are told.
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There is no room for creative thinking and recreation in defiance of the laws and regulation.
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Please outline how you can achieve what you propose as sensible policy in the regulation of traffic. I believe you have not, as yet done so.