Perhaps you should consider the effects that "fast but safe" drivers have when they get it wrong. In our case, Paddy was killed. Words cannot describe the impact that has on family and friends. So with respect, we do not all speed. We may have in the past but losing a loved one in a high speed crash will change the way you drive.
I strongly suspect I have seen the results of bad and dangerous driving very more than you, just not the very personal level you have and I am truly sorry and saddened to hear of your loss ajstoneservices. But I do have to refer back to an earlier post that the driver should, and I hope did, get an appropriate sentence for his dangerous driving, for that is what it very obviously was – dangerous!
I do not speed and constantly check my speedo to make sure I don't.
When I hear things like that it makes my blood run cold. If you are “constantly” checking your speedo you are not giving the road your full attention any more than if you were fiddling with the radio or using a mobile phone. Relying on a dumb posted numerical figure to dictate what is safe for the conditions is not conducive to safe driving. It suggests that if your speedometer broke and you still had 100 miles to get back home you couldn’t do it safely.
We may have in the past but losing a loved one in a high speed crash will change the way you drive.
I see the devastation, pain, suffering and life-sentences caused by bad and dangerous driving in my job. Sometimes I weep in my car after I have come away from seeing things most people are privileged never to see, and which I won’t go into detail here.
But my driving has not changed one bit; it does make me very angry though. Angry at the propaganda surrounding speed, when it is bad and dangerous drivers who are at fault. I respect
all road users and drive with extreme caution, giving the road my full attention. A typical scenario is this…
Someone gets killed on a road when it’s busy and people are ‘milling around’. A speed camera is placed there, but not necessarily anywhere near the accident zone. The camera catches hundreds of drivers who have never had an accident or hurt anyone ever in their life. They are caught at night or at a time when there are no people around and traffic is light and visibility is good. This has done absolutely nothing to target bad drivers and everything to catch drivers whose excellent driving record has been impeccable.
You are quite right that “Speed on it's own may not be a killer, but speed and error frequently are”. I agree with you and it is the error’s that drivers make which needs to be addressed. If someone reverses their car and runs over a small child at <5mph is it still speed that killed or driver error? If someone pulls out onto a main road and a driver ploughs into the side of him, is it the fault of the driver on the main road who may have been doing the speed limit or something more or less than the speed limit, or is it the driver who pulled out?
Demonising speed in this way is not only missing the whole point of whom and what is to blame, it’s an insult to common sense. Yes, the speed will affect the severity in that scenario but isn’t that completely missing the point? You can slow things down to make the roads a safer place until we end up back with a man walking in front waving a flag. Or you can make the roads a safer place by education, training and last but not least - targeting the drivers who really are a danger to us all.
I am not here to try and convince you I am right about this,
“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”. But I know of so very many people now who have had a blemish-free driving history and are very good safe and careful drivers, yet they have been done for speeding in the name of ‘safety’ in recent years. It ought to make anyone ask if current road safety policies are getting it right. As you have probably guessed, this is a subject close to my heart, (made ever closer by what I see in my work).
They are, and have, been getting it very wrong with the over-reliance and overuse/abuse of speed cameras!
