Interesting accident

[sheerwater]

Not good news this one and the real reason may be unknown. Two people were killed beside a speed camera in Northampton this week when their vehicles crashed. I will not comment on this other than to say that ever since they put the camera there drivers have been slamming on their brakes as soon as they see it even though it is a 60mph area. Following someone at 55+ mph on a clear road who slams on the brakes thinking that as its got lamposts it must be 30. It is not a nice experience as many of my friends living in the area will testify. This problem got so bad that the authorities had to litter the road with loads of signs saying that its 60!!! Cheers Nige

[Networkguy]

Regardless of the speed, if somebody slams on the brakes in front and you cannot stop in time, you are driving too close.

[Peter Milnes]

Hobby-horse time again. What you said Networkguy reinforces my view that there are no such things as accidents, they should all be referred to as AVOIDABLE INCIDENTS. In this instance if they knew the road they were travelling on they would not have needed to slam on the brakes thus removing themselves from life. The police do not help by referring to Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs). Why cannot they take a leaf from their criminal side who have INCIDENT rooms? Hope I haven't started a slanging match.


All the best, Peter

[sheerwater]

Interesting points folks. Yep I agree that to close is dangerous and yes I agree that there is no such thing as an avoidable accident. By definition an accident was never meant to happen and therefore cannot be avoided. I totaly disagree with you Peter on the word incident however!! I disagree for the following reason. We have crimes in our area. Lots and lots of crimes. These crimes are committed and reported by what can only be described as poor disillusioned members of the public. Crimes are recorded as crimes on Government figures. Crimes are either solved or unsolved and the percentage of each is recorded to print in glossy coloured slips contained within the council tax returns. Unfortunately most reports are recorded as incidents. Incidents are not recorded in official figures. So when I reported the bus shelter being smashed up it was reported as an incident because the owner of the bus shelter had not reported it as damaged. Three times it was smashed at a huge ost as they are special glass. No recoded crimes only incidents. Same went for the childrens playground being smashed, airguns being fired at pedestrians in the park, motorcyclists driving at persons in the park. You personally can report it but it does not become a crime unless the person involved makes a complaint. A lesson for us all here. It does not matter ho small the damage, graffitti, theft etc, if it happens to you report it and get a crime number. No crime number means no crime. No crime means budgets are cut in your area and the incidents increase. No crime to solve means that the police (and if you dont believe this read the national papers, letter pages from officers) have to get their figures up by booking motorists so they have hard facts to justify their presence. Off my hobby horse...... A competition to think up a new name for an RTA..!!!!!! Cheers Nige

[Networkguy]

>The police do not help by referring to
>Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs). Why cannot they take a leaf
>from their criminal side who have INCIDENT rooms? Hope I
>haven't started a slanging match.

I was told the other week that Greater Manchester police no longer refer to them as RTAs because of the word accident.

They are now refered to as RTCs (road traffic collisions) because as somebody pointed out, if you don't hit anything then there is nothing to report.

I think that what we ALL have to remember is that by the fact that we are on this forum means that we view motoring as MORE than a mere form of transport. The vast majority of road users are disinterested, ill educated & use more of their intellect in conversing with their passenger/ mobile phone than they do on driving/situational awareness.
Cameras, roadsigns etc. are (hopefully) positioned by people with more than a passing knowledge of motoring(I wonder).
I am not surprised at this accident, having to witness the abysmal standard of the "average" motorist every day.
I am glad that I am also a Motorcyclist, as this has led to an inbuilt defensive outlook which has saved me from THREE collisions in the past week! Two incidents of people failing to obey give way signs & one teenage "immortal" in a Nova (Surprise!)coming round a blind bend sideways on the wrong side of the road.
If the powers that be desire to reduce road accidents & traffic congestion, then the best way is to make sure that potential motorists have to learn how to DRIVE, not how to pass the Driving TEST!
Sorry guys, been a hard week.
Mike Sterland

The police now call road traffic accidents road traffic crashes, the theory being that the term accidents suggests there is no blame whereas most accidents are the result of an error. I accept and make no comment on the fact that the term crash carries no suggestion of blame, either. The change of name is intended to bring to the attention of drivers the fact that all accidents are avoidable and in this the police have had a tremendous success. Since the change of name there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of road traffic accidents. And for very little effort. There has been a substantial increase in the number of raod traffic crashes, of course, but that is understandable.

For their next trick they will call burglaries 'insecure house entry'. It is anticipated that there will be a substantial decrease in burglaries following this renaming.

I am a police officer and I should mention that in my force the software that we use to record incidents still uses the phrase road traffic accident and the abreviation RTA and will continue to do so until sufficient funds are available to update the wording.

After 27 years in the police I have turned into one of those officers that I used to avoid when I joined.

Moriarty

[noiseboy]

At the risk of going slightly off topic......

It has occured to me that if all the money plowed into buying GATSOs and other speed camera devices was spent on road improvements and driver education, would we be better off??

After all, to compare to the criminal justice system, is it not better to make the burglar reconsider in the first place, rather than catch him in the act?

Thoughts anyone?

Phil :)

[Networkguy]

>It has occured to me that if all the money plowed into buying
>GATSOs and other speed camera devices was spent on road
>improvements and driver education, would we be better off??
>
>After all, to compare to the criminal justice system, is it
>not better to make the burglar reconsider in the first place,
>rather than catch him in the act?
>
But surely, the idea of a gatso (well one of the reasons) is to do just that. They are high profile and everybody knows what they do so perhaps they will make somebody think twice before speeding or a speeding motorist will see them in advance and slow down (of course they may speed up again afterwards).

As far as driver education goes, we have seen the standard required to pass the UK driving test go up year after year and at the same time, seen the number of unlicenced drivers go up as well. Now it could be pure conicidence but if you make the test too difficult, more people will just not bother with the test and drive anyway.

I thought the main reason for the Gatso was to extract more money from the public?

I am not saying that if you are speeding then you can blame anyone but yourself if you get caught, but these things are hidden behind signs and don't make the world a safer place. People driving too close, people driving like lunatics, and people going too fast for the conditions (not speeding!) just get away with it, until of course they make a mistake and possibly take someone else with them.

As for the speeding up and slowing down at the cameras, this is what makes them dangerous (and yes drivers should be prosecuted for this type of driving), and again this type of driving is something that isn't caught by the cameras themselves.

A greater visible number of police on the road would be a far better solution to this problem, rather than many gatsos catching a very small percentage of traffic offences as we have now.

Stu