Simon Cowell for PM?

[MikeB]

Apparently Simon Cowell (of Pop Idol fame) has topped a poll of candidates for the UK PM job.

We dont normally print political comment here, but when asked about his agenda on the Des and Mel show he responded:

"I would blow up all Speed Cameras in the UK"

I think most of our readers would agree with that one.[/b]
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Mike Barrett

[lbendlin]

"blow up" as in "increase their internal memory size to hold more photos"?

<gdrvvf>
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Lutz

Report Map Errors here:
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[MikeB]

I suspect it is more like attaching a small explosive device, lighting the blue-touch paper and then retiring to a safe distance.

As we do on Guy Fawkes night!
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Mike Barrett

[Stevie]

Once elected he would visit each camera, stand underneath it and 'blow-up' his fringe in amazement at how he can take so much money from us with them.

[Dave]

[Skippy]

Simon Cowell for PM!

[geraint]

What is it that people don't like about speed cameras? Is it that they infringe our basic human right to drive like bloody idiots and possibly kill someone?

Surely it doesn't matter if they're only being used to raise revenue - that's not the point. The point is that they're supposed to deter us mad motorists from speeding. What's wrong with that? I'm out in the car every day, and the number of total morons I see out and about is frightening. And these aren't just the boy racers.

I heard someone calling speed cameras "the latest government stealth tax". That may be so, but they're entirely voluntary.

Why do we need to drive so fast everywhere?

By the way, it's not going to end with speed cameras. They'll be putting RFID chips in our cars in the not too distant future... and GPS tracking devices.

You think this is science fiction? One major insurance company already have a type of car insurance which requires you to have a GPS tracker in the car. Premiums are determined from how much you drive, where you drive, and how you drive.

[Darren]

The Insurance Company with the GPS Tracker are trialling it as a Pay as you Drive method of Insurance Premium, nothing to do with your driving manner, the less you drive the less you pay.

Speed Cameras are disliked because they are indiscriminate and cannot differentiate between 78 in an 80 at 4am in good conditions and 78 in an 80 at 5.30 in heavy traffic in driving rain.

They are not designed nor intended to catch 'moron' drivers, Police Traffic Officers are the best tool for that, in unmarked cars if necessary. Why don't people dislike unmarked cars? Because you won't get pulled for exceeding the posted speed limit by a few miles an hour, they are there to catch the idiots who endanger us all, they use their judgement and are looking out for poor driving and other offenders who are a danger or drive dangerous vehicles.

For the same reason Vehicle Excise Licence Camera Vans now have large signs announcing their purpose as you approach, a poll revelaed that the majority of the public endorsed these because most of us pay our Road Tax and Insurance and want those who don't caught and prosecuted.

'Most' of us speed on occasion, but the indscriminate use of Gatso's makes offenders of a huge proportion of the general public.
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Darren Griffin

[gokhart]

[nej]

The bigger problem isn't speeding, it's control of the car. I would modestly say that I can drive a car at 85mph on the motorway in perfect safety - I've had a lot of practice at motorway driving. I might get caught by a camera and fined - fair enough, I was speeding - but I was safe.

However, somebody who has just passed their test, for example, and was doing, say, 75mph, might not get fined, but would not know how to read the road, adjust their distance to other cars, or how to handle a car at that speed. They would not get caught but are more likely to cause an accident.

And as for drunk drivers.... they don't usually get caught on camera...

As somebody above mentioned - the best thing is extra traffic cops.

[geraint]

I totally agree that police officers are the best solution to catching speeding (and idiot) drivers. However, I still hear people complaining about getting caught that way too.

But surely if we want the police to go out and catch real criminals (something I hear frequently), then surely installing speed cameras should free them up to do that.

And as far as I know, apart from a stretch of the M25, we don't yet have variable speed limits. Neither does the law allow us to decide for ourselves what the speed limit should be based on our own experience. So doing 95 mph down an empty motorway at 3 in the morning is still illegal, even if I have been driving for 25 years and have never had an accident nor a speeding ticket. Or have I missed something?

[steveh]

The big problem is that the Government has decided that speed is the main cause of accidents - it is merely a contributary factor inabout 8-10% of cases. that means the real culprits are other factors, driver condition(tired, just woken up, emotional issues etc etc), type of car(cars designed to go faster stop quicker than those designed to go slower), and general conditions such as weather, traffic, available daylight. It's really easy to install a lot of self paying devices and say they are working because they are paying for themselves, but deaths and seriuos injuries are on the up, because cameras dont catch the drunk, the uninsured, the driver with no licence, amd those operating outside the system - these people are the real killers. Also I remember from the seventies we had lots of public information films about general safety and the rules of the road - these have gone, so there is no real driver education. The only one we have at present is the one with teh car going at 30 mph and runnin gover the kid, with all it's wheels locked, which is inappropriate for most of teh cars on teh road today as most have ABS as standard.

so we need more traffic police and more driver education - but of course that takes effort and its harder to massage teh figures whe you really try to deal with the issues rather that bypass the real issues and give a load of questionable statictics

steve

[geraint]

Read this...

http://www.ukspeedtraps.co.uk/police.htm
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Geraint

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[MikeB]

Not wanting to fuel this argument, but that link is the view of an evangalist. I am not suggesting that it is an invalid point of view, but there are no facts, statistics, or independent case studies backing it up. It is just the view of a traffic cop.

I am not suggesting that people should speed. The point is that in general where people do speed deliberatly, which is mainly on a motorway, there are very few cameras. Where people speed inadvertantly there are revenue generation machines! As far as I am aware there are guidelines as to how and where the cameras can be placed. In the majority of cases I have seen new cameras these do not appear to be met.

You often see a council reducing a speedlimit and placing a speed camera at the new reduced limit. I wonder why they do that?
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Mike Barrett

[steveh]

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