Speed Kills

No, no, it doesn’t. Julia has picked up on the egregious Brake’s latest campaign to drag us back to the days on the early automobile.

As a professional motorcycle instructor and erstwhile driving instructor, I take road safety very seriously – not least, being on two wheels makes me – and my students – vulnerable. A minor knock in a car that involves broken glass and plastic means broken bones or worse for us. So, speed is an issue. That is, I teach people to use it appropriately. A safe speed is one in which the driver or rider can stop in what he can see to be clear. This has nothing to do with speed limits, which are merely arbitrary lines above which it becomes illegal. A safe speed may be higher, it may be lower, but the likes of Brake and local councils have become obsessed with speed to the exclusion of all else – and now we are faced with the fetish for 20mph speed limits in areas that can safely be traversed at 30mph or even higher because of the kiddies. It’s always because of the kiddies – they are the trojan horse these obsessives use to enforce their unreasonable restrictions. A driver travelling at 40mph in a built up area who is paying attention and reading the road ahead, scanning for hazards and responding to them is a damned sight safer than the one who mindlessly assumes he is safe because he is obeying an absurd speed limit and is more interested in the phone call he is making. Driver attention is what matters, not the speed, for an attentive driver will adjust it to suit the circumstances. Constantly having to look at the speedometer in order to retain one’s licence is taking attention away from the road ahead and does not serve the purpose of road safety. Road safety is not about going slower – only the extremely hard of thinking obsessives could possibly come to that conclusion. it is about reading the road ahead and planning your drive in response to what you see.

Brake is just another single issue lobby group. So, while they are ostensibly interested in the same thing as I am – road safety – I distance myself from them as they are not really interested in road safety at all. For, if they were they would not be attempting to use the death of a child who was killed as a consequence of his own inattention and not speed, as a vehicle for ever more restriction on speed. The combination of cynical manipulation and lying by omission is abhorrent, let alone the use of grieving parents in an attempt to change the law. Eventually, if this nasty organisation gets its way, we will all be looking for men to carry red flags for us.

Still, it will create more jobs, I suppose.

6 Comments

  1. “…scanning for hazards and responding to them…”

    One of the newspapers (I can’t remember which) used to run an excellent weekly series of ‘spot the hazard’ photos, in which you picked up clues from road markings, signs and other features to deduce what might lie ahead.

    One thing they were particularly fond of was signs which implied there could be parked cars at the side of the road ahead – nursery, school or swimming pool, say – with all the associated perils of children running out or the terminally clueless opening car doors without looking – bad enough for cars but presumably a significant danger to anyone on a bike.

  2. ” ……. being on two wheels makes me – and my students – ……” more aware of road surfaces, and the effect they have on tyre adhesion.

  3. Brake is, as you say, a single issue lobby group. It is also a Fake Charity, one of thousands, receiving funding from the taxpayer whether the taxpayer likes it or not.

  4. I understood that Brake were a ‘charity’ who are (or were) largely funded by rail and bus organisations. It is clear to see that the onus they would place on road safety would be one that did as much to inconvenience the private motorist as much as possible. I don’t know if they still are still being part funded by the state – is there any evidence for this?

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