In car distractions

Phillip wrote: I see your valid point Nigel. And I don't want to appear "stroppy" but its also the serious point of "bad "drivers. These cameras cost money to intall etc..and there is a real issue that all the time there is an increasing number of drivers who drive drunk/drugged, not insured, no tax or MOT. Now I dont know the figures but there seems less police on the road watching drivers than ever before. I do 600 miles a week just to and from work and its a rare sight to see a police car (except parked in the little chef-with no-one in it) from one week to the next. Over the entire Xmas period I didnt see one car pulled over, and I do drive around at throwing out time, and neither did a single person I know. Now whilst I realise that there are other police duties to be carried out I just feel there is a direct link between cameras and less "police presence" on the road. Peolpe are getting away with serious law breaking as mentioned above. Just to finish off, my own choice would be to see the guy who is drunk or drugged  or uninsured get pulled over--not the guy who goes over the limit at night by a few mph (speeding is bad, yes, but at least if a policeman sees you he can use his judgement to decide if 70 mph in the dead of night in a 60mph limit was actually dangerous or not, a camera has no discresion)

I agree with everything you say, but its still not a reason to remove the cameras.

The chief constable of an area has been set targets by our stupid government, unless he achieves these, bang goes his job and pension ( except Herr Brunstrom, old 6% seems exempt this), so who can blame them.

I am also advised that speeding is a criminal offence, so if your convicted your a criminal.

Horsey or Jonners, is this true of false ?

Its still surprising though, that even when we know speed cameras aren't needed, aren't achieving anything, etc etc, we still haven't come up with a good argument for having them removed.

Its a good one that " they are upholding the law, whats wrong with that ?, you support law and order don't you ? "

Praktisk wrote: Nigel wrote: Just something to make you smile Toby. I have a Tom Tom Go sat nav system, a snooper radar detector, and a road angel gps camera detector, it was pointed out to me recently, by one of my collegues who doesnt like these devices, that all three units are mounted so as to be within the sweep of my windscreen wipers, making all of them illegal, well the mounting of them anyway ! Your dashdoard must be on a parr with that of the Nebuchadnezzar(Matrix ship) Nigel. So many buttons to press, so little time eh?  ... <Snooper S5i - "beep beep beep beep">  - "Damn, false alarm, it's only a pelican crossing!" Put mine on Ebay last month, was doing me blinking nut in.

Sounds like mine, Sat Nav, Phone & Radar, no time to watch Road !

in car distractions...

what about out of car distractions ..

today i was doing the M62  doing about 90 ish as is the genral flow at that sort of time .and as i was passing a slip road.as i allways look what comes on and off .them .today exiting one.there was this volvo but with the not the norm lights on in daytime rouitine.coming off the slip.mr pma slows to 75mph ....just in case the lilly law were embarking on the rd.and the police have that canny knack of making volvo lights turn off on request..dony they

Wow, lots of strong veiws.

A couple of things spring to mind.

Skull, the bloke who was jailed for hitting the old bloke. Well if he genuinely only looked at the speedo then hit him he must have had his eyes down for a while. Unless of course the old bloke was running very fast. Otherwise he would have seen the man at the side of the road before he looked at his speedo. Also I can glance at my speed in a second. Not long enough for some old bloke to get from the kurb to in the middle of the road.

B7VP, you do like to make lots of anti labour statements including Bliars slime etc etc. If you think any other party will do it better then vote for them in the up coming election. How many of them have said they will remove speed cameras if they are elected? Er that would be none. 

Spokey, your ideas for making the roads safer are all very interesting. The thing that strikes me is that they would probably meet with the same kind of response as speed cameras. Can you imagine people wanting to take there test every 5 to 10 years!!

Coasting made a very good point. It's very easy to critisise, but not so easy to come up with a vaible alternative.

Don't get me wrong, I hate speed cameras and the whole idea behind them.

LOL...thankfully my job isn't dependant on having a driving license.

I don't think ignoring the situation will make it go away, I just don't think that any party (that is likely to win an election) will do anything to change it. Also the biggest obstical in the way is that a lot of people support the whole anti speeding issue. If there was a lot of support for getting rid of cameras the opposition would have jumped on the bandwagon in an attempt to get more votes. The anti speed camera lobby is either a minority not worth listening too (from a politicians point of view) or the issue itself is not considered important enough to affect an election outcome.

What you need to do is convince the general public that the issue is worthy of their attention. Once everyone cares about it then it will become an issue that the politicians will address. You need to get a news paper onside to tackle it in a way like the Daily Mail has done with imigration. It has been constantly kept in the public eye so that the polititians now have no choice but to deal with it.

Also don't forget that with many issues such as speed cameras, imigration, i.d cards etc etc, a lot of people simply don't agree with you and never will. Since we live in a democracy you can't have it all your own way. The only way that would happen is if you were a totallitarian dictator who made everyone live by your rules.

A final though. No matter how right anyone ever thinks they are, there will always be people who think they are wrong and almost every aspect of life is ruled by politics. I learnt that very quickly at work!