Why speed cameras worry me.

When I was a copper I always had to believe in the justness and fairness of any prosecution I instigated. I always needed to be convinced that, before I caused someone worry, threatened their livelihoods, their licences, their jobs and yes even their families, it should be necessary and fair. And this is what concerns me about speeding prosecution. If my ex colleagues were to apply those morals and questions to their work now, none of them would ever pick up a speed gun again.

I am able to say that because, unlike them, I voluntarily study and survey speed limit orders and it is on these orders that the whole 'speeding' and camera policy is based, that the whole issue of speed limits and cameras is flawed.

Let's just ignore the fact that physics would never support that 'speeding', that is the act of exceeding a number on a pole will cause an accident any more than not to won't, and ask who sets the limits? How do these lolly pops with numbers get there? Shouldn't we as police officers be interested in that? The Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership, who run cameras and prosecutions, actually confessed on a radio show that they care not a jot about the limits themselves 'That is not our remit' they told the Peter Levy Radio show.

I am continually appalled by the lack of content and information contained in the speed limit orders; bearing in mind that, based on them, people become 'speeders'.

What special road safety or driving background do the speed limit setters have? There is never any accident history contained in the orders and most I survey are set unjustifiably too low.

Worse still they are often at the instigation of no more than local parochial councillors and village NIMBYS. All these speed limits join up and all these roads and streets are national. So we have a national speed limit policy based on nothing more than local unqualified opinion and on that basis police are pointing speed guns? Prosecuting people?

How many of these police & prosecutors are taking the time to survey and study speed limits before they rush someone into the courts? If they believe that there is science to speed limits then ask themselves what can possibly be scientific about the mathematical coincidence of the exact numbers 20,30,40,50,60,& 70?

Police should see it as their first duty to justify to themselves any prosecutions and never take their role in that lightly. They should be of the people and for the people and independent. As it stands, they are being used by a very aggressive and profitable Road Safety Industry fronted by well meaning charities as well as local busy bodies. Not their role at all.

Keith Peat

'It's our fault if we crash' So that's all right then!

I have written to Mike Penning, Transport Minister via my MP to point out that when they restrict the safer dual carriageways so that you cannot legally pass HGVs there, you push the overtakes out onto the two way roads and opposing traffic instead and cause crashes. He and his merry men, having set the trap, say its our fault if we crash. So that's all right then!

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And this little gem from his man at the ministry: 'As I explained in my previous email, there is simply no need for drivers to overtake slow moving HGVs if it is dangerous to do so. A driver’s responsibility is to ensure they and all other road users travel in safety and it is not sufficient to blame a drivers dangerous and unnecessary acts on changes of speed limit.' So there.

Paul Cox

Department for Transport

Partnership cares little of speed limits

Lincolnshire Partnership's, John Siddle confesses to BBC Humberside the Peter Levy Show, hosted by Caroline Davis, that whilst happy to run the speed cameras and criminalise people, they have no idea if the limits are properly set and appropriate to justify their cameras and their tickets in the first place. 'It is not their business' they say. In an answer to Keith Peat.

The same Partnership somehow got the Lincolnshire Echo to publish the misleading statement that fatals had been 104 in 2003 prior to the cameras being 'rolled out'. The Partnership and its cameras have existed since 1998 and there were 104 fatals in 1999 and in 2003. Why the deception?

Humber bridge car tagging.

The HBB are now after recognition tags to be fitted to cars where the drivers supply their banking details to speed up bridge tolling. There are a number of obvious snags to this but whether we agree with tolls or not, this is the thin edge of the wedge for the use of these tags and also the ANPR system to be applied anywhere. Where next? Grimsby? Lincoln? Louth by-pass?

The fact is that the cash bins on the QE2 Crossing auto tolls work very well so there is no need for an expensive and intrusive tag option at all.

We must oppose this loudly. Take the survey on this page.

Drivers Action

Well the survey has ended and 88% of drivers who took the survey would consider some sort of simple protest and demonstration to show that they are very important to the community and the economy.

But why did allegedly 'driver campaign groups' be so negative and un-supportive? People who could and should have announced the survey as a fact, would not do so!!

Is it because they are more interested in promoting only their ideas and initiatives?

Well it is a fact that drivers are a powerful lobby group and should demonstrate their power.

Next time I run this survey, I will name and shame any driver's group that do not support us. Better yet I urge my own group, the ABD, to run one much more publicly. This 88% has shown that drivers will back selective action.

Driver's Retail embargo protest.

Complete the survey (Right).

Would you consider selective use of your car for three days if it didn't inconvenience you at all?

It is about time that our 30,million drivers demonstrated their power. Truth is if we all stopped doing it the economy would collapse and thousands more would die than are from any driving cause.

We are being mercilessly criminalised, over taxed, hampered and slowed by officialdom on the behest of profit and gain and to feed the public transport lobby too. Why? Because they pretend they are doing us a favour and not the other way around.

Perhaps it is time we showed how vital we all are!

Would you consider selective use of your car for three days if it didn't inconvenience you at all?

Excluding all those who drive for their profession for obvious reasons, I think we can still make an impact by avoiding use of our cars and motor vehicles where it would impact most. Retail parks, or Hypermarkets or filling up and non urgent garage servicing during those three days. Re-arranging our routine around the three days and avoiding the theatre or cinema or favourite restaurants etc.

By shopping locally and avoiding out of town precincts and retail centres which rely on the car during that three days.

Limited only by our imagination, we, as private drivers, could show what impact the driver can have without even using the professional wing of the driver army.

I am running a survey, (right) for a month to see if there is the will and the interest for it.

Keep an eye on how it is going and if it takes off, we will set the three days to run it.

Pass this on.

Road safety bad for health

First we have Bob Gifford of PACTS writing to the Health Minister (click here): And for those of you who do not know PACTS, (Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety), sounding very important and official, is nothing but a private lobby group of non-experts, and is overloaded by vested interest groups, from public transport, insurance, speed camera manufacturers and so on.

Then here is my letter to the same minister:

3^rd June 10

Dear Mrs Milton,

False road safety policy affects public health.

I congratulate you on your appointment as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health.

I am writing as an ex traffic officer, who has dealt with road accidents, compiled the statistics, prosecuted traffic law, prepared accident abstracts for the legal profession, a class 1 advanced police driver and motor cyclist, and my trade was motor engineer. I think I can claim to be an expert driver and an expert in road safety.

Unfortunately nearly all those who will advise you on healthy transport will not be experts at all and in most cases have a vested interest and another agenda. I do not. I am totally altruistic in my work and my concern is in three basic areas:

1. We fail to address real accident causes. A subsequent health issue.

2. We criminalise drivers needlessly. This causes stress.

3. The cost of the massive and profitable Road Safety Industry to the economy means that there is less money for health and thus people die.

You would never imagine, from the publicity and promotions that since 1993 road casualties were dropping massively before expensive Road Safety Partnerships and their cameras and in fact have flat lined since. Do you appreciate that, after about 300,000,000,000 driver miles per year, there is less death on the road from any cause than by accidents in the home? About 4 times more for breast cancer and about 4 times more for asbestos related illness and about 6 times more from NHS failings?

So the Road Safety Industry, represented by a private Parliamentary lobby Group and several other charities and foundations it sponsors, tend to overstate the negatives of the private car owner and road transport too. This is always in favour of the public transport operators and operators and manufacturers in The Road Safety Industry.

That this is a multi billion pound industry, where no-one in it is so for altruistic reasons,(Why not if it is about the good cause of human safety and life or death?), can be judged simply from the very costly equipment that is now required, from crash helmets and seat belts to booster seats, air bags etc., that apart from the profit motive, although they undoubtedly save lives, don’t actually stop one single accident happening in the first place.

The falsehoods about speeding, perpetrated by a simplistic and untrue slogan and the official use of non legal terms such as ‘excessive speed’, ‘too fast’ ‘in a hurry’, all of which are used by officials and in police statistics and yet do not exist in the Road Traffic Act. These all come under dangerous driving and are simply used to muddy the facts to justify false speeding policy which is costing this country billions.

We estimate that for every 1 MPH we slow road transport, it costs on average £2,000,000,000 pa. (About £20 billion a year total). How many hospitals could you build with that? How many ambulances and fire engines could you buy with that? How many lives could we have saved? So what is the cost of this highly lucrative Road Safety Industry, its in-expert lobby groups and charities, in the terms of lives lost to its false policy and costs?

When a motorway is closed for 11 hours or a city closed for half a day, whilst a road accident is treated like a murder scene, how many millions of pounds are lost? What of the knock on accidents later in the day through stress, making up time or tiredness? Who is costing the activities of this industry and the impact it does have on the NHS and the economy? No one? Why not?

A study of trends will show that there has been very little gain but so far there is no study of the impact of the costs of road safety policy.

Why do we have over 40 road safety partnerships all spouting the same mantra? Send the emergency staff back to their stations to save lives there and make up the shortages in the police, ambulance and fire service from where they came. Employ the civilians elsewhere until, by natural wastage, they are not replaced.

We need to think radically about freeing up the driver, restoring speed limits to a natural level as the 85%tile method did. Focussing on real accident causes and above all, understanding that the British driver is doing very well and if they were not doing it, the economy of this country would collapse overnight and many thousands would die from it.

Beware of approaches from vested interest and unqualified lobby groups. This life and death issue should only rest with independent experts in the subject.

We now need to be turning these costs around and saving lives at the same time; both directly on the roads but also by efficient use of the driver and the roads.

I will be most happy to assist you further. Best wishes and good luck in government.

Sincerely

Keith Peat