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Good article in the Guardian



 
 
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  #1  
Old January 14th 04, 09:57 AM
dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers
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Default Good article in the Guardian

I like it!

see

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...122571,00.html

"The roadhog right cannot deny it: speed cameras work

The government should be proud of its record on reducing road deaths

Polly Toynbee
Wednesday January 14, 2004
The Guardian

The roadhog right is a peculiar beast: its conviction that freedom to drive
fast is God-given inhabits the same quirk in rightwing brains as their belief
in freedom not to pay taxes. So speed cameras are to them the perfect devilish
red plot against the innocent speeding middle classes.
The Times, Mail, Sun, Telegraph and the rest have been foaming at the mouth
over speed cameras for the last year - despite, or because of, the cameras'
ever-greater success at slowing down drivers, collecting fines and cutting road
deaths. Yesterday their road rage knew no bounds as the home secretary
defiantly proposed a £5-£30 surcharge on top of existing fixed penalties for
drivers. It was a rare moment when David Blunkett faced down a populist
campaign.

The extra fines will go to a fund offering support for crime victims with
much-needed money for Victim Support, rape crisis centres, women's refuges and
an ombudsman for victims and witnesses who feel badly treated. Brake, the road
safety campaign, is delighted that there will be money at last for the bereaved
of traffic accidents, who are often left with no practical help once the police
have delivered their terrible news. The wrath of the roadhog right has been
most enjoyable: after all, they are usually the ones complaining that all the
sympathy goes to understanding criminals too much and the victims too little.

But then they are not rational beasts; they want to drive fast, end of story.
The cacophony of bluster about speed-camera highway robbery is wonderfully
contrary from the very same papers that hype up public terror over any tiny new
risk they can find - except for the one clear and present danger that faces us
all every day of our lives, the killer car.

Forget toxic salmon, death-dealing deodorants, lethal neon lighting and the
thousand other front-page shock-horrors that offer us a daily fright. This is
what to fear: you stand a one in 200 chance of dying horribly and brutally on
the roads. (It says so in bold type on the back of the Highway Code.) Every
year 3,600 die, and around 40,000 suffer serious injury. Roads are the biggest
killer of 12- to 16-year-olds.

Now compare that to the mere 800 who have died of Sars worldwide, causing
global panic and economic calamity. Road accidents are not acts of God, but a
man-made horror that can and is being reduced with man-made measures by this
government. It is one of Labour's big success stories - just about their only
transport success. A target to cut death and injury by 40% by 2010 had already
reached one third of that by the end of 2002. Two-thirds of the target to
reduce child deaths by 50% has also already been reached years early.

But road deaths fail to frighten; they have never been high politics, compared
with GM, mad cow or cancer waiting times. It is extraordinary how little this
splattering of human body parts on the roads frightens the very same newspapers
that love to terrify their readers. But if any of their scares from obscure,
unrepeated tests on rats had a death rate like the roads, there would be mass
hysteria. What's more, if most of the deaths were preventable, yet the
negligent government did nothing, it would cause instant regime change at
Westminster.

But cars are in a zone somewhere outside the normal rules of politics, panic
and blame. The bizarre anti-speed-camera campaign sweeps along usually sensible
commentators in its car-mad wake. Their outrage focuses on the idea that this
is a new "stealth tax" to be paid by "motorists whose offences are usually
victimless". The Mail leader yesterday stormed: "Isn't it time the police
focused on catching violent criminals rather than acting as uniformed tax
collectors?"

Simon Jenkins calls speed cameras the Dick Turpins of the highways, nabbing
law-abiding middle-class folk doing a couple of miles over the speed limit on
empty straight stretches at night just to land cash for the chancellor (42% of
road deaths are at night). As for "victimless" speeding, some might not think
so, including parents of the 200 children killed annually - the equivalent of
more than 13 Dunblanes every year.

The irrefutable proven facts are these: higher speeds mean more crashes and
more deaths. A pedestrian struck by a car going 20mph has a 90% chance of
survival. At 30mph, that chance of surviving drops to 50%, and at every mph
over that it drops very rapidly, reaching just a 10% life chance at 40mph. Has
every driver in the land speeded at some time? Yes, probably. Should we? No. Is
it bang to rights if we get caught? Of course. Does catching people make them
drive slower in future? Certainly. Speed cameras have cut deaths by 35%,
despite spurious arguments that they are all in the wrong places, or some
outrageous abuse of statistics purporting to show that they actually increase
road deaths.

Widely quoted factoids from the drivers' lobbies include some straight
untruths. The RAC claims those caught by cameras are middle-aged male company
car drivers doing high mileage, whereas young drivers cause most accidents. The
figures show it is these same middle-aged company car men who are also 50% more
likely to be involved in accidents than others, even after their longer road
hours are discounted.

Overconfident men cause crashes, old and young, of all car-owning classes.
Another fox to be shot is the claim that cameras are a big tax revenue spinner.
Local police and councils only keep enough to cover the cost of the cameras,
the Treasury only gets a small surplus; £73m came in from camera fines last
year and there was only a measly £7m for the Treasury. Hardly worth inciting
roadhog fury, if cameras didn't save lives.

The government is entirely right to ignore the noise of the drivers - and the
Tories and Lib Dems look cynically opportunistic for trying to attach
themselves to the anti-camera brigade. They plainly haven't examined the six
main polls taken on this subject, which show consistently that three-quarters
of the public support speed cameras.

That's just as well, for this highly efficient policing is about to be greatly
expanded. Following pilot trials, a new generation of digital cameras can catch
3,000 car number plates an hour, automatically checking them against police
computers, ready to despatch nearby police cars after millions of unlicensed,
uninsured or disqualified drivers, as well as stolen cars and suspected
criminals. In the pilots it has lead to a tenfold increase in arrests, with
large amounts of stolen property recovered and car crime cut sharply.

The Treasury wouldn't put up the money for it - they increasingly demand all
new initiatives must be self-financing. So the new higher fixed penalties will
pay for new cameras that are becoming one of the most effective and efficient
forms of policing. All this is cause for celebration: Britain now has one of
the lowest road accident and death rates in Europe."

Cheers, helen s

--This is an invalid email address to avoid spam--
to get correct one remove dependency on fame & fortune
h*$el*$$e**nd***$o$ts***i*$*$m**m$$o*n**s@$*$a$$o* *l.c**$*$om$$


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  #2  
Old January 14th 04, 10:03 AM
David Martin
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Default Good article in the Guardian

On 14/1/04 8:57 am, in article ,
"dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers" wrote:

I like it!


see


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...122571,00.html

"The roadhog right cannot deny it: speed cameras work




I normally find Polly Toynbee to be a well meaning but intellectual
lightweight when it comes to technical issues (sometimes facts and
conclusions are somewhat distantly related) but this time she is bang on.

There is also another article by Paul Kelso (front page on the web) that is
extremely scathing about the anti speed camera stance of certain other
papers.

quote--
The Mail called the proposed levy an outrage, and described speeding on
British roads, which causes an average of 10 fatalities a day, as a
"victimless crime".
--unquote

touche..

...d

  #3  
Old January 14th 04, 10:07 AM
Colin Blackburn
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Posts: n/a
Default Good article in the Guardian

On 14 Jan 2004 08:57:51 GMT, dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers
wrote:

I like it!

see

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...122571,00.html

"The roadhog right cannot deny it: speed cameras work
[...]
Speed cameras have cut deaths by 35%,
despite spurious arguments that they are all in the wrong places, or some
outrageous abuse of statistics purporting to show that they actually
increase
road deaths.


Hmm, I wonder who she's talking about there?

Colin
  #4  
Old January 14th 04, 12:06 PM
Ambrose Nankivell
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Default Good article in the Guardian

In ,
dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers typed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...122571,00.html

snip
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday January 14, 2004
The Guardian

snip
All this is cause for
celebration: Britain now has one of the lowest road accident and
death rates in Europe."


All very good, but then she spoils it with that. Britain has had one of the
lowest road death rates in Europe for the whole of my life. Why newsify it
by the superfluous "now"?

One of my journalistic bugbears, that. Saw a report on the front of one of
the xenophobic papers about some 'new' loophole that let asylum seekers use
unregistered cars, and obviously there was nothing new or different about
it, just the fact that people can by cars for spares and then fix them up to
drive, unregistered. Only takes a minutes thought to work it out, but some
journo has to go along and shout about how ingenious and clever it is. I
guess it appeals to the target audience, even if it just makes me think the
editorial staff of the paper are a bit dim.

A


  #5  
Old January 14th 04, 12:37 PM
W K
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Default Good article in the Guardian


"Ambrose Nankivell" wrote in
message -

All very good, but then she spoils it with that. Britain has had one of

the
lowest road death rates in Europe for the whole of my life. Why newsify it
by the superfluous "now"?


You have your own answer.

OTOH I read that france is now below 6000 dead per year, and from the stats
of the first 11 months of 2003, they had a 22% drop in casualties.
At this rate they will have better stats than us soon, and by 2009 they'll
be actually creating lives in cars.


Although they had no speed cameras until november, they have been
campaigning hard and clamping down since the start of 2003.



  #6  
Old January 14th 04, 01:05 PM
Ambrose Nankivell
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Default Good article in the Guardian

In ,
W K typed:
"Ambrose Nankivell" wrote
in message -

All very good, but then she spoils it with that. Britain has had one
of the lowest road death rates in Europe for the whole of my life.
Why newsify it by the superfluous "now"?


You have your own answer.


Sadly, yes. I feel better for having ranted about it, though.

OTOH I read that france is now below 6000 dead per year, and from the
stats of the first 11 months of 2003, they had a 22% drop in
casualties.
At this rate they will have better stats than us soon, and by 2009
they'll be actually creating lives in cars.


They seem to be redefining Liberté to mean freedom from people driving into
you rather than freedom to drive into other people. This can only be a good
thing. It remains to be seen whether Protection Routière will be allowed to
feature wine on anti drink-drive ads, though.

Although they had no speed cameras until november, they have been
campaigning hard and clamping down since the start of 2003.


Good job. It would be nice if we could use this as a salutatory lesson for
our country: enforcement saves lives. I wonder if the general attitude has
been accepting or complaining of this crackdown. My impression from the 2nd
hand reports I've had is that it's being accepted, but it's a small sample.

A


  #7  
Old January 14th 04, 02:05 PM
Simon Brooke
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Default Good article in the Guardian

"W K" writes:

OTOH I read that france is now below 6000 dead per year, and from the stats
of the first 11 months of 2003, they had a 22% drop in casualties.
At this rate they will have better stats than us soon, and by 2009 they'll
be actually creating lives in cars.


I thought they'd been doing that for some time (or am I confusing them
with the Merkins?)

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; If God does not write LISP, God writes some code so similar to
;; LISP as to make no difference.
  #8  
Old January 14th 04, 02:07 PM
Dave Larrington
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Default Good article in the Guardian

Ambrose Nankivell wrote:

One of my journalistic bugbears, that. Saw a report on the front of
one of the xenophobic papers about some 'new' loophole that let
asylum seekers use unregistered cars, and obviously there was nothing
new or different about it, just the fact that people can by cars for
spares and then fix them up to drive, unregistered.


Well, quite. All over London are older LHD Mercedes, BMW's etc. on foreign
plates. 95% German, quite a few from former Warsaw Pact nations. Remarkably
few of them seem to be driven by Germans[1], Latvians, Poles, etc. And Plod
and his cohorts probably has no way of telling whether the car arrived from
Germany a year ago or the day before yesterday...

1 - clue: if they carve you up something rotten, call the driver
"arschloch". If he looks totally bemused...

--

Dave Larrington - http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk/
================================================== =========
Editor - British Human Power Club Newsletter
http://www.bhpc.org.uk/
================================================== =========


  #9  
Old January 14th 04, 02:26 PM
B.G. Finlay IT Services
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Posts: n/a
Default Good article in the Guardian

dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers ) wrote:
: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...122571,00.html

: Polly Toynbee
: The Guardian

: The extra fines will go to a fund offering support for crime victims with
: much-needed money for Victim Support

According to the BBC website Victim Support are against the #5 extra on
speeding fines.
Blair.
  #10  
Old January 14th 04, 03:39 PM
mark
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Posts: n/a
Default Good article in the Guardian


"Simon Brooke" wrote ...
"W K" writes:

OTOH I read that france is now below 6000 dead per year, and from the

stats
of the first 11 months of 2003, they had a 22% drop in casualties.
At this rate they will have better stats than us soon, and by 2009

they'll
be actually creating lives in cars.


I thought they'd been doing that for some time (or am I confusing them
with the Merkins?)

--

I was going to post something about American teenagers, but you were quicker
than I was. There are certain advantages to those gigantic American
vehicles...
--
mark


 




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