Tolled Express Lanes. Virgin Roads?

Quoted in the Daily Mail Today and on LBC Nick Ferrari Show re privately funded tolled Express Lanes.


It is very difficult to be negative about the idea of new sections of road that will not cost the UK driver more of his money to build if it relieves existing roads but we believe that drivers are paying eight times the driver taxes needed for good roads anyway. So why should any new road need to be tolled? 


The price will need to be pitched high enough to keep ordinary drivers off it most of the time or it will get jammed up and become counter productive for its objective. So most drivers will not be able to or choose not to use any tolled sections anyway.


It concerns us that, having paid all the tax, it creates a them and us for drivers with most being excluded.


It also concerns us that any tolling could be a thin edge of the wedge for the introduction of general road pricing too.

So we have very mixed feelings about this idea.   Another Virgin enterprise maybe? 

Humber Bridge. Good news? Let's see

Good news. If local politicians can get HMG to do this and sell them the Humber Bridge Debt so they can run it, great stuff. Story here. Here is the story of the proposal

The false stats of 'Speed Kills!'

Here is why over slowing of roads kills us elsewhere and how the stats to do it are utter 6th Form Bunkum.  

Lincolnshire Echo 9/11/11

Why not free Park & Ride

Think about it. Why should drivers have to pay not to drive?

Karl Turner a legend in his own mind?

Karl Turner, a Hull MP whos Bill to jail drivers for seven years on mere hostile perception of their driving, no accidents and no injuries involved and who was forced to withdraw it for the nonsense it was, is boasting that he has now been voted by Brake as their Parliamentarian of the Month. This then shows the logic, or dishonesty, of this claimed 'road safety' charity with no expertise in the matter at all. No Mr Turner, apart from the jailing, your proposal was nothing at all like the Bill now being framed was it?  So why are you and Brake

trying to pretend it is? 


He told BBC Radio Humberside that he needs cameras and tickets to keep himself law abiding which is an astounding admission for a law maker. Most of us manage to be lawful by.................just being lawful actually MR Turner.


It is no surprise to us that an anti driver lobby would canonise an MP who wants to jail drivers, his own constituents for nothing but hostile perception, but Mr Turner, in taking no heed that most of his constituents are drivers or certainly depend on drivers, is delighted to offend them further by aligning himself with the most illogical and anti driver lobby there is it seems. Or is it that he can't resist an award. 

It is also no surprise that the award is sponsored by  Direct Line Insurance too. Their vested interest in all of this could stem from the fact that by slowing everything up there is less paying out to do and by giving people points they raise the premiums so cameras and penalising safe drivers is win win for them. More premiums for less payouts. Or have we got that wrong then?


Well drivers. Take their names. Karl Turner MP don't vote for him again and as for Direct Line? What do you think we would suggest for you? 

Our Monthly Echo Column 1 Tyres

5 Years Jail

We are very surprised that at a time when death on the road is at an all time low and 

We are very surprised that at a time when death on the road is at an all time low and drivers are doing so well, Kenneth Clarke, a man renowned for his policy of softer sentencing in other areas, decides to invent a new offence with draconian sentences for drivers. Why?

 

Sentences should never be based on outcome and injuries from driving, nor on the inexpert views of victims but solely on the actions and the intent of the driver. For example a car reversed dangerously into another car and causing only bent metal will not even merit the attendance of the police. Another, reversed accidentally into the same car but with someone in between, will cause horrific injuries from exactly the same scenario with a prospect of five years. Who decides between dangerous and accident is our concern?

 

The fact is that society, for economic expediency, allows large lumps of moving machinery to be operated by any Tom,Dick, and Harry among humans and such tragedies will occur.

 

This new offence is actually in response to the Bill by MP Karl Turner of Hull, for seven years jail for no accident at all, due for its second reading this month. I was in contact with MPs and ministers about it and I am glad that not only is this new Bill for two years less but also requires serious injury too; I was clearly successful against Turner's Bill.

 

However I am now asking Kenneth Clarke to consider that dangerous driving is based merely on the hostile perceptions of inexpert witnesses and this is not good enough to justify a five year term. In all other offences, carrying such terms, an expert witness is exactly that and is objective too. The same standards should apply in this.

 

I am also concerned, as I have explained, that the severity of injury is incidental and should never be a basis for imprisonment. In view of that, I am asking, when he frames the new Bill, that there must be absolute requirement to prove that it was not just by genuine driver error and a mistake; we are human, will make mistakes and don't deserve prison when we do. That principle should apply to all of us; including drivers.

 

We are encouraging all drivers to write to their MPs along those lines now and whilst the Bill is being framed.