BRAKE Charity Commission replies?

Dear Mr Rogers,

I am indeed very disappointed with your finding. Here we have the life and death issue of road safety, and the life changing prosecution of perfectly safe drivers and among other supporters who gain financially from BRAKE's inexpert and unqualified statements on this important issue, there is a speed camera manufacturer. Well everyone I talk to is appalled about that evidence and its effect on reputable registered charity.

But since when was 'saving the planet' and the green agenda a charity? What right have we or BRAKE to 'save the planet' as we like it anyway? It is ever changing, once too hostile for mankind and it will return to that too no matter what we do. No-one is going to be fooled that 'Saving it from destruction' is anything but shrill green political rhetoric. 'Getting drivers out of their cars'. How does that assist genuine road safety?

Surely people need to know what BRAKE is about. Is it road safety or a green agenda? The point is that a green agenda is anti driver and driving and this then is very dangerous if it is the basis of any road safety and prosecution of drivers comment isn't it?

I have already sent out a media PR that, at your request, further paperwork to show vested interest and a political agenda have just been submitted for your attention. It says:

BRAKE.

Further to my submission to the Charity Commission re the activities of BRAKE, it seems that the two categories, 1) Vested interests and 2) Likely to bring charity into disrepute are matters that the Commission can concern itself with and they have asked me to forward further evidence for their enquiry to consider the matter.

Basically the complaint I have made in detail is that several of BRAKE'S supporters and backers would gain from Road Safety Policy as promoted by BRAKE and that speed camera & CCTV manufacturers or firms involved with such equipment, could actually be regarded as an unhealthy & disreputable link to a road safety charity by many.

I have also noted that, as emissions and 'preventing the destruction of the planet' as well as 'getting people out of their cars' is nothing to do with Road Safety at all, these aims form part of a totally green agenda and are a political attack on driving. The inclusion of such statements in its aims is evidence that BRAKE may not be about road safety primarily but its policies would however be in line with a sympathetic green lobby group.

Do you think that you have given yourself enough time to consider all of my submission and its implications before so readily dismissing this very important matter?

Best wishes

Keith Peat

Subject: RE: Brake - 1093244 CC:07412466

Dear Mr Peat

Thank you for your emails of 9 and 10 November 2010, in connection with the above charity and your concerns regarding vested interests/political subtexts associated with its activities and funding.

We appreciate the time and effort taken to prepare the additional information you have provided and having carefully considered all of this we would advise as follows:

1. The Commission has considered your concerns and determined that none of the issues raised are ones which require us to raise them with the charity, or take any regulatory action.
2. 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.
3. 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 - for our purposes we can simply note that for whatever reason they have chosen to make donations to, or support, the work of the charity. It is not uncommon for charities across the entire spectrum of the third sector to have such support - indeed many charities could not continue without such support, particularly in the current economic climate - nor is it a cause for concern provided the funding received is applied to further the charity's objects.
4. For many people, an atmosphere which becomes un-breathable/unhealthy due to increased carbon content could reasonably be said to represent 'the end of the world' for life as it currently exists. We understand your argument that the world itself may well physically continue, albeit with an altered atmospheric content, however we do not believe that the statement or underlying principle represents a cause for concern requiring our involvement.
5. Similarly, while we agree entirely that statistics and percentages ideally require a clear base value to enable informed consideration, it is not within our remit to require charities quoting particular figures to include relevant base values. Interested parties are of course able to request these figure directly from a charity if needed.

As we have already advised you, how a charity achieves its purposes (within the framework of charity law) is a matter for its trustees not the Commission. We are not the arbiter of how a charity should best express its goals/aims to the public - except where there is evidence that these are expressed contrary to its objects. While we have no reason to doubt the sincerity of your interpretation of the various statements made by the charity, it simply is not for us to test which interpretation is correct.

The actions or motives of non-charitable organisations or commercial concerns are beyond our remit and authority, we can make no comment in relation to concerns focused on their activites.

We appreciate that you may well be dissatisfied with our decision not to take up your concerns and, while this does represent our final decision, you may care to review our internal complaints process as detailed on our website. The following link will take you directly to the relevant guidance:

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

Challenge to ROSPA: For or against road fraud?

ROSPA have just published their top accident causes and included was just enough nonsense to justify the continued prosecution of safe drivers. Here I challenge them BRAKE, RAC & AA to denounce it.

Hi,

When will ROSPA accept that physics would not support the notion that to exceed an arbitrary and unscientific number on a pole can cause anything, let alone 5% of accidents, any more than not to won't? That is why most accidents are below the limits. What you have is simply 5% of untrained and unqualified reporting officers ticking a box that shouldn't be in the STATS 19 form.

Speed is a factor in all moving accidents but not 'speeding'.

It is focusing on 'speeding' that feeds an insatiable Road Safety Industry and causes death by deflecting from real accident causes. Further more, the habit of slowing traffic unnecessarily costs about £3 billion a year for each 1 MPH, about £40 billion a year. How many lives could we save with that?

Is ROSPA interested in the lives lost to this profiteering at all?

The official use of terms like 'excessive speed', which are not even in the R.T Act and are really elements of reckless driving at any speed, to muddy the water between 'speeding' and reckless driving for profit, is criminal conduct and fraud to my mind.

Where is ROSPA, BRAKE & AA on all this? Does ROSPA, BRAKE & AA condone this fraud?