"Martin Angove" wrote in message
...
In message ,
"RichardS" noaccess@invalid wrote:



I could show you a specific position on an open road with clear vision
where
the lives of two motorcyclists were lost needlessly, due to the first
one
breaking to avoid being caught by a speed camera. (A316, Twickenham
westbound, just past the rugby stadium, dual carriageway. Daylight.)



It's not the speed camera which caused this accident, it is the idiots
who were ignoring the speed limit and so desperate to avoid a fine that
they hadn't taken account of other road users.

I'm doing a lot of motorway driving at the moment - M1, A42, M42, M5,
M50... you can guess the rest - and this is one of the things which
causes a *lot* of problems IME. There I am, quite happily tootling along
at as near 70mph as my speedo and prevailing conditions will allow,
occasionally moving to the middle or third lane to overtake something
slower, and all the while people are rushing past at 80 or 90mph, often
impatiently sitting so close to my boot that I can't see their
headlights, when all of a sudden the whole motorway grinds to a halt.

What is it? An accident? A closed lane? A speed restriction?

No; there's a jam sandwich or a battenburg cake sitting in the left lane
doing 60 or 65mph and no-one dares pass it. The resulting "slinky
effect" can cause stop-start traffic for miles.

When they introduced timed speed restrictions on parts of the M25 it
wasn't because of safety concerns, it was simply that it proved possible
to increase traffic flow by forcing everyone to travel at a slower, but
*steady* speed.

Oh crumbs, *very* OT. Sorry, but people who complain about speed cameras
are one of my pet hates at the moment. I'll try to restrain myself in
future :-)

They have them in sneaky places where there are no accident backspots. Then
the public do not cooperate with them on other crime matters. A top traffic
consultant in Northamptonshire dismissed speed as the major cause of
accidents. I think it was poor junction design, poor signs (the UKs are
appalling with ting little signs with lots of little writing), and general
poor driving which he put above speeding. The government ignored him to make
money on cameras.





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