Time to shut these amateur road safety natterers up!

Brake are at it again.

When will media learn that these shrill amateurs are simply unqualified in driving expertise, road safety, road accidents and indeed driver prosecution. So why give them the oxygen of influencing a life and death policy and driver prosecution?

Brake are by no means the only ones allowed to do this. Rod King of 20's Plenty

is another as is Edmund King of the AA
 and there are many others such as Professor Allsop of the RACF and other road safety quangos and NGOs.

One of the problems is that their prime motivation is rarely road safety but mostly anti driver or environmentalist or pro cyclist and so on. Road Transport is essential infrastructure so why support any of these people?

Here is BRAKE'S latest effort.

I have written to the paper as follows:

Why does media pay any attention to BRAKE, a charity, when discussing road safety and driving? They are one of the many charities feeding from our Insatiable lucrative Road Safety Industry who have no qualification whatsoever in the subject. (Urging drivers to put their brakes on 27/8) If anyone wants to see the list of so called road safety charities and vested interests they need only visit the Drivers Union web site. Given that, after about 300 billion driver miles a year, there's less death on our roads from all causes than from accidents in the home, one could be forgiven for asking: 'Why no home death charities?' The answer is simple; there's no money in it.

Virtually all road safety charities, are sponsored by road safety profiteers and actually have a green anti driver agenda but no expertise. They are not top road driving experts, have never dealt with accidents nor have they prosecuted after them either.

The rhetoric used by BRAKE in the article was pure wild speculation and generalisation with no evidence. They publish that 19% of drivers admit to 'speeding'. What nonsense. Anyone who says they don't ever speed is deluded so that figure is 81% out for starters.

Last year 50,000 speeders were caught in Lincolnshire and the lack of 50,000 accidents to go with them, supports the fact that speeding actually causes nothing to happen. The ladies of BRAKE would deny the physics that says 'simply exceeding a number on a pole won't cause something to happen'. Most speeding is unintentionally caused by limits set too low or a speed inducing road layout which can be corrected by the authorities. It's absolutely clear that we now have a lucrative Speeding Industry where 50,000 speeders isn't seen as a failure to be rectified but an income source to be maintained.

One thing is for sure. It's long overdue that we shut these amateur commentators down. Their costs to the community would save far more lives if spent in the NHS, Ambulance, Rescue and police services not to mention the economic benefits from sensible road safety policy too.

Wishes

Keith Peat

General Secretary Drivers' Union

www.driversunion.co

Hampshire Police 20 MPH Propaganda

Against this emotive poster, 

Hants (Fleet) Police

posted 'It's 20 for a reason' Well I know from research, interrogation and official responses that it is not for road safety reasons since most of the blanket limits are on streets where accidents simply are not happening. In fact if you go to this item you will see the bogus rationale confirmed. and also look at why any expert driver would prefer drivers focusing on the road in these busy residential congested areas than worrying about a number on a pole and points on their licence. See dangerous 20s and I challenge any expert police driver to disagree with that.

But this poster is appalling in its propaganda and assumption. For a start the figures are entirely speculative theory and not based on fact. But it misses the central point. I wouldn't like to see anyone hit by a ton of metal at 20 MPH; people can die by just falling over and bumping their head. But I would prefer that my child wasn't hit at all by drivers focusing on the street than hit by a driver at 20MPH whose mind is on his speedo in these congested areas. And so it is proving. Accidents in the areas that have adopted 20 zones are on the up, just as I predicted. And Hants police are happy with this? They could be. More money from speed awareness you see!  

A Dinosaur's Guide to Libertarianism (For drivers)

Godfrey Bloom's new book does what it says on the tin.

Like me, he knows how he is portrayed and perceived by the left leaning progressives and miserable anti people people.

From a drivers' perspective this is a must read as it contains a compelling chapter on why drivers are treated as an enemy in the UK and that their rules, safety, prosecution and general oppression is governed by a mixture of profiteering and anti driver ideology.

It is available for pre-order at Amazon and other outlets for around £10.

AA President gets bitchy with road safety & driving expert.

The following Twitter comments based on a factual statement by AA's media spokesman to a select committee see the full story here reveal that Edmund King has no patience or time for genuine road safety expertise and is reduced to silly playground rhetoric when faced with it.  Drivers E. Midlands@EastMidsDrivers @AAPresident said he wanted to see 'police prosecuting drivers first' 'Let's dish out more £100 fines' He said. bit.ly/1jHpTQN - 09 Aug

Edmund King@AAPresident @EastMidsDrivers  Oh my, do you have inferiority problems? I sense your shoulder has a large chip on it? Yes Edmund I do have a massive chip on my shoulder about profiteers in road safety, profiteers from the unnecessary prosecution of many thousands of perfectly safe drivers, public spokesmen with no background in road safety, prosecution and expert road driving, being consulted by select committees on the subject and yes I do have a chip on my shoulder when UK's drivers are not given the respect they earn and deserve.  If you and the AA don't have a chip about those things too then I advise drivers to join the RAC instead.

The cheek of Chris Boardman

In this story Boardman says it's ridiculous to build roads  He goes on to say that priority should be given to walking and cycling and that there are no 'downsides' to road cycling.

So all these deaths and injuries to road cyclists is imaginary is it? Do see the very latest list of UK fatals here.

Well, selling expensive bicycles he really does have somewhat of a vested interest in all this. I have already noted that he fooled the Transport Select Committee into demanding £10 a head from all of us, some £650,000,000 a year for road cycling - something the vast majority of us have no interest or inclination to do. See it here.

I would suggest that hard work, hard saddles, wet and wind and snow and ice are downsides to road cycling too. Boardman is a like the other peculiar minority of people who jog and thinks everyone else should. If there were no downsides Chris, how come most people don't want to do it?

Another downside is that cyclists delaying and impeding the smooth and efficient speed of essential infrastructure is of course a massive economic downside too.

But priority to cyclists over essential infrastructure? Are these people for real?

It's about time politicians admitted that the upsides to road cycling are far outweighed by the downsides.

6 years for phone use.

 



 
 

 See story here  I hold no mandate for using phones and driving. Phones and driving simply don't mix.

Would you take a phone call on your driving test? No. Your test is a contract with the public as part of your licence. As most things, including conversation, are not conducive to best driving, they are all, to different degrees, distractions from the one and only objective, to get there safely. So even conversation, other than that conducive to the drive, is taboo too.

Let's get it clear. This woman wasn't jailed for killing whilst making phone calls but for causing a death by dangerous driving. The phone history was an aggravation of that and also a corroboration to it. It also didn't help that she was speeding by 10 MPH or that she had two previous convictions for phone use while driving.

Even in a rush to get to a hospital where your child is dying, the drive ought to be your primary concern. The problem is that driving is so much a daily and regular chore, we become too blasé about it; we shouldn't.

This case is a very good example of why we shouldn't engage with any phone conversations while driving. They are too demanding of your attention and decision processes.

How on earth did we manage before mobile phones?  If these calls are so important, why not just pull over to take them, or ring back? I cannot envisage any incoming phone call that cannot wait for a few minutes anyway.

But we must be very careful. Far too frequently now because someone is injured or dies, an offence is being assumed. Death and injury do not imply driver blame on their own. Like drink drive offences, the question must always be: 'Did the drink cause the accident?' same with phone use. If we automatically associate a phone call or a failed breath test as the cause of an accident, we risk not only convicting the wrong person but also missing the actual cause of the accident.

It seems to me that finding calls on a phone immediately prior to an accident is not evidence in itself of blame or if they caused the accident. The police should only use such evidence or corroboration after the case for death by dangerous or careless driving is already made out in its own right.