Hi folks...
This is my first post, so be gentle with me please
This will probably ramble on bit, I'm at work and keep getting distractions
Firstly to say that I'm am not yet an advanced driver (I'm just about to join a RoSpA group in Notts), and I certainly don't consider myself to be a good driver. Although I have held a license for nearly 20 years, I've probably only got 5 years real experience, having not owned a car for the first 15 years. It is at least clean, I've managed never to get caught speeding.
Anyway, I've been browsing this forum for a while now, enough to recognise the names and kind of experience that some of the members have etc, and there's an awful lot of good information here. However, this topic is interesting and at the same time, some of the arguments appear flawed.
Firstly, there are an awful lot of cars on the roads, and a large variation in the skills of those that drive them. We would all agree that we need a system of control to reduce accidents and ensure we can all drive in relative safety. There have to be limits of some kind. It's easy to say that perhaps a small minority of people who speed are actually dangerous, and that exceeding the limit in general isn't dangerous in itself... that it is the attitude of the drivers that counts. Is there such a thing as responsible speeding? If we say "yes" then how do we qualify it? Who can say it's ok for a middle aged, 'experienced' driver to travel 10mph over the posted speed limit, and yet on the same stretch of road, at the very same time it, may not be ok for a 17 year old thrill seeker?
I'm not sure how you can prove somebody's thought processes? How do you know (or more importantly, prove) that one is paying careful attention and one is not? How do you measure the ability of each driver to cope with such a situation without performing some kind of test? Whilst it's a different issue, is anybody against having a fixed blood/alcohol level for drink drivers? There are similarities. One glass of beer/wine/spirit affects some more than others, but we have a fixed limit.
I agree that a fixed speed limit has it's drawbacks, and that breaking that limit may not actually be dangerous for some drivers, but may still incur the wrath of a police officer or speed camera. If we don't have speed cameras, then we would have to have more traffic police. Now that is fine in theory, and no offence meant to those on here who are/were serving Police officers... but we then have to rely on the discretion of those officers to say who gets in to trouble and who doesn't. It becomes
subjective. Hence open to individual interpretation. The goalposts suddenly get much further apart. It also becomes impractical. All of a sudden the whole system would be swamped because people would argue the toss. The courts would be swamped, the police would be run ragged and there would be a lot of confusion.
By having a relatively inflexible system, as in the case of speed cameras, you bring errant behaviour in to focus. There is no debate, you are either doing right, or you are doing wrong. It may not be ideal, but it is extremely practical. I'm not a fan of speed cameras per se, but what are the realistic alternatives?
Education is the key?
Very true. But then we already have a system of driver education.
Surely, anybody who has passed their driving test is regarded as being competent to drive a vehicle on the roads? We are all taught to control a vehicle, what rules to obey, how to obey them and what we cannot or should not do. We get a nice simple booket that tells us the best practice, we get some instruction from a professional instructor, we are passed/failed by an independent third party, and we get a license to prove we are good enough. Some may be better at it than others, but everybody will have been taught the same basic skills and rules. There is a recognised standard.
If after all this, people cannot be bothered to practice what they were taught, are they not being irresponsible? Would it make any difference if the standard of driver education were raised? Would people still take the risks they do now? I don't know the answer, but I suspect that whatever the standard of basic driver training... there are a lot of people who will always think there are better than everybody else, and that they have more right to use the road than those around them. You can lead a horse to water...
In many ways, 'speed' is the cause of a lot of accidents. People are often in a hurry to get places, so they percieve the limits to be too low. 'The car in front is going too slow, so I'll move closer and they might move out the way'. 'If there's a big gap between me and them, somebody might push in and I'm one step further back in the queue... so I'll stay close'. The term "making progress" seems to be used in 'Advanced Driving' circles, and most people want to make progress. Time is always short, and speed is of the essence. The perception of progress might be linked to the perception of speed, and the lack of progress causes frustration, anxiety, anger and even violence. People's priorities become skewed. Arriving at the destination becomes more important than observing best practice. In some ways it is the lack of percieved 'speed' and progress that causes the accidents.
In reality it's time management, personal organisation and focussing on the right things at the right time that will improve road safety. Driving needs concentration, and people are too busy to concentrate on one thing at a time. Which is why we have a simple system of speed limits. It removes some of the burden of deciding what is safe and what is not. It doesn't replace the need to think about your surroundings, but it's a simple, easy to follow guide that should help stop you from having an accident. This road 'should', taking in to consideration all the other factors, be safe at 30mph. At 35mph, it may not, so don't do it. Is it really so bad?
Sorry to ramble on and on and on, and these are of course only my personal opinions. Hopefully this makes some kind of sense to some of you. I'm as guilty as most when it comes to speeding, and I expect to learn an awful lot from the advanced driving group... I have my share of bad habits too. Now I'm off to polish on my halo and wait for the wrath of vonhosen, soren and TripleS to descend upon my head at a high rate of knots