Monday 9 August 2010

The Sound Of Silence

I expect press releases are furiously being written as we speak.

Eighty-one per cent of respondents to the insurer’s survey admitted to instantly looking at their speedometers, instead of the road, on detecting a speed camera and one in twenty admitted to braking suddenly, risking losing control of their vehicle or a rear-end shunt.

The insurer estimates that at least 28,000 road accidents have been triggered by the cameras since 2001 and nearly one in three motorists questioned said they had witnessed an accident or near miss as a result of other drivers’ erratic behaviour when faced with one of the cameras.
Road safety [fake] charity, Brake, will doubtless be bouncing off the walls at this news, eager to eradicate all those unnecessary accidents. The media noise will be deafening.

Yep. Any minute now.

Err ... hello? Is there an echo in here?


13 comments:

Curmudgeon said...

[sanctimonious bollox]

"but if people were driving within the speed limits in the first place they wouldn't need to look at their speedos, would they?"

[/sanctimonious bollox]

Bucko said...

Response to sanctimonious bollox. You have to keep looking at the speedo every few seconds if you want to stick to the limit. A fair decent driver will happily trundle along at a speed that is safe for the road and conditions, concentrating on what they are doing. Only to brake hard and check the speedo when a camera appears.
I doubt people like Brake would care about any of that though. Drivers all enjoy being child killers (even more so if they smoke).

Rick S said...

Keeping to the speed limit is dangerous on a lot of roads. Quite apart from constantly looking at the speedometer rather than the road, you run the risk of going more slowly than everybody else, which causes disruption, hold-ups and bottlenecks. I was driving along a busy dual carriageway the other day and travelling along quite happily at the average speed, which a quick glance at the speedo showed was about 15mph over the limit.

If I'd slowed down to the correct limit I would have driven everyone behind me mad and quite possibly caused a tail end shunt.

Oldrightie said...

Speed cameras are designed to speed up revenue.

JuliaM said...

I set my new TomTom unit to 'beep' when entering a fixed camera zone. I turned it off after a while, because it was too damn distracting; every time it went off, I automatically flicked down to the console, even though I knew I wasn't speeding...

Anonymous said...

All will become clear after about 5 years. All cameras will have been off for three years and everyone will have known about it for long enough to alter, or not, their bahaviour.

Anonymous said...

No. They will spin it to say that average speed cameras are needed across all roads so that everyone must obey the speed limits at all times.

They never back down, only ever seek to use every situation to strengthen their oppression.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Interesting comments.

Additionally, no-one mentions the dangers of cameras set up to stop red light jumping. I've personally seen three accidents caused by these, the latest of which could have been a lot nastier.

I was waiting to cross the road when a small van slammed on his brakes about 10 yards from line once they turned to amber. Behind him was a car transporter who had correctly judged that he had time to get through before red, and didn't remotely expect the van to stop. The small van was concertina-ed. On impact, I looked up at the lights and they were amber for at least a couple of seconds after.

All three incidents I've seen have been exactly the same. Danger caused where none would have occurred without the cameras.

Julia: Yes, I have TomTom too, but it still requires taking one's eyes off the road in unfamiliar territory .. like France. ;)

Captain Haddock said...

Its a bloody good job that Insurance companies don't conduct surveys into how many "bumps" occur due to looking at scantily-clad crumpet in warm weather ..

Clarkson was right .. you just can't not look .... ;)

The Cowboy Online said...

But isn't this common sense? Or stating the bleeding obvious? If, as most people feel, their driving is being judged SOLELY on their speed, then of course it stands to reason that their speed, as measured against an arbitary limit, is what's going to garner a large part of their attention.

I'm waiting to hear about the impact of road humps on road safety. I know that, instead of looking down the road for possible hazards, a road hump brings my focus / attention to just a few feet in front of my car as I attempt to straddle it so as to minimise the jarring impact.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Well observed, Cowboy. I find brick road 'pillows' where the kerb disappears at the top quite unfathomable too. Surely there is a good reason for kerbs to be raised in the first place?

The bricks are not exactly good for tyre grip in the wet either.

JuliaM said...

And they force ambulances taking seriously-ill patients with spinal injuries to take sometimes-longer routes to hospital...

Ciaran said...

Dick said... "I was waiting to cross the road when a small van slammed on his brakes about 10 yards from line once they turned to amber. Behind him was a car transporter who had correctly judged that he had time to get through before red, and didn't remotely expect the van to stop. The small van was concertina-ed. On impact, I looked up at the lights and they were amber for at least a couple of seconds after."

Seriously, Dick? The car transporter driver hadn't correctly judged anything had he? The car in front stopped suddenly, he could not stop. ENTIRELY his fault, ENTIRELY his bad driving. The fact that this was highlighted, indirectly, by the presence of a camera is neither here nor there.