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Monday, 28 March 2016

Police, wrongly, translate local concerns about dangerous driving into being about 'speeding'



Here police encourage public to forward their concerns about speeding. and in these tweets I correct the authorities about what they are saying and doing.


Image result for speed watch






 This promotes a very lucrative and police labour costly activity based on misinformation - such as an outfit called Speedwatch - whereby police use unqualified vigilantes, usually supervised by equally unqualified beat officers, often mere PCSOs, when the community would much prefer these officers dealing with crime, vandalism, violence and anti social conduct. See more on these vigilantes here.

But police are being dishonest. Because people are unable to measure a 'speeder', what the locals are really complaining about is the obvious extreme speeders, the speed merchants, where their high speed is not 'speeding' but dangerous driving. If the police know that, why are they promoting something entirely different and prompting the wrong response to the wrong issue?

They should know that it isn't speeding that causes accidents, but driving too fast for the circumstances that does that and it's always dangerous driving. To suggest anything else is to mislead the community.

What makes things worse is that, the minor speeders that are caught, are driving perfectly safely and are mostly only 'speeding' because of a faulty limit, an enticing layout, or inadequate signage. If there is a high volume of these but no crashes, this is evidence of a site fault that needs to be corrected. Maybe the limit is far too low and like many, are entirely political and not based on any expertise or accident history at all. See a classic speed limit order.

So is this what we really want? Perfectly safe drivers put on record at great cost, when we should be just focusing on dangerous drivers? 

How many unqualified nimbyist complaints are needed before we divert valuable police to the wrong places in the community like this?   


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