Hi all,

Time for a rant. You know what the doctor says - " A Rant a day......."

From the subject line you've probably guessed what this thread is all about. The previous and current administrations had and have an institutionalised form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder about speeding, commonly referred to as " The One Third Lie" or OTL. The powers that be have told joe public that 1/3 of all deaths connected with the roads is due to speeding.

They define speeding as "Breaking the Speed Limit". They ignore the definition of "inappropriate speed". For example, travelling on an extremely congested 3 lane motorway at 70mph in pea-soup fog with zero visibility is perfectly acceptable because the speed limit is not being broken. However, travelling at 71mph on a deserted 3 lane motorway at 2.00am on a dry summers morning with great visibility will result you being locked up for life within the Nottinghamshire Constabulary run by the truly imaginative Stephen Green (the guy who wants zero tolerance on speeding but wants to legalise heroin, I'll let you come to your own conclusions )

They say they get the OTL from a government-commissioned, "independent" study which published its results in a document entitled TRL323. (I say "independent" because the body who published the report is the Transport Research Laboratory, an organisation hived off from a government department to become a private entity. Read about TRL on the web pages below and decide for yourself just how "independent" they really are ). In TRL323 the number of deaths each year which are directly attributable to speed is 7% (7.3% actually) of all road related deaths. The government and other organisations are LYING to you when they say ONE THIRD. The TRL refuse to permit free issue of TRL323. They would like you to pay £40 for it, something you as a taxpayer have already paid for. An excerpt from the report is attached here http://club-xm.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=584 showing the breakdown of the annual road-related deaths (credit to the Association of British Drivers). Read the attachment and decide for yourself if they are lying.

Consider the amount of effort and expense the government puts into the whole issue of speed. IF the effort paid off in its entirety you would save 7% of 3000 annual deaths = 210 people. What effort then are they putting into saving the other 2790 people? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Why? because there's no revenue to be generated in saving the other 2790 people. It would cost a lot of money to save the other 2790 people. eg 8 % die on the roads each year due to the "Failure to judge other persons path or speed". How much effort would you need to put in to stop that particular 8%? Could you generate revenue at the same time? No.

I'm no fan of conspiracy theories or the like. Neither am I a fan of politicians. As Billy Connolly said "The one criteria which should prevent anyone from ever becoming a politician is the desire to be one". However, I can watch whats going on and put the pieces of the jigsaw together.

Consider this hypothesis:
You wake up tomorrow and every media source starts telling you of a government announcement. "The level of Oxygen in the atmosphere is falling and we should all breath less to conserve stocks". Of course you know its completely untrue but thats not the point. The level of oxygen has been rising over the last 10 years but they predict that it will fall. The government rope in the help of every poodle organisation it can blackmail to sing the same tune. The entire media chant the government slogan of "Breathe Less". In the short term the intelligent level of society see through the scam and continue breathing normally. However, the less well endowed (IQ) take the government at its word and they too jump on the bandwagon. A tax is imposed on those who refuse to breath less. After a while the hi IQ's start to make some noises about this being a scam and ask for it to be stopped. The government cant fight them with the statistics because they know they are lying. So they resort to the oldest trick in the book. They get the low IQ's to believe that its socially unacceptable to breathe hard because it leaves less oxygen for those who really need it and to exert 'inverted' peer pressure on those who fail to comply. People who refuse to obey are caught by the breath police and penalised using the most draconian laws in the land. No other 'crime' in the land is treated more unjustly than the 'breathing' crime. Once caught you have the choice to indict yourself without trial or recourse and have the 'crime' recorded on your tab. If you dare to question whether your trial is fair or indeed if you ever did commit a crime then the penalties are escalated. Alternatively, a number of puppet organisations offer a deal. In order to reduce your sentence you are offered the chance to be rehabilitated. If you accept you attend the local community centre. You sit in a circle with a dozen or so other criminals and under the patronising direction of a jumped up nobody you stand up and announce to the rest of the group that your name is Dave and you admit you are a breathaholic. The rest of the group applaud your bravery and the jumped up nobody in the corner gets another gold star.

Now remember where we started - theres no shortage of oxygen - keep that in mind at all times.

The persecution and the lie continues and becomes ubiquitous subject of soaps and daytime TV. Before you know it 10 years have passed and everyone knows someone who is a criminal such is the success of the Breathe Less obsession. A measurement of the oxygen level in the atmosphere reveals that the level of oxygen has actually fallen in the last 10 years. The government can offer no explanation why, despite the intensely high profile campaign and the millions of pounds of public money invested, the level of oxygen has dropped when it was on the rise before the obsessive campaign started. As time passes peoples memories fade and most people cannot remember clearly what the world was like before the government brought in the breathing tax. So much so that little by little a shroud of tacit acceptance falls over the general population. Before you know it, another 10 years have passed and you've forgotten what its like to have no criminal record.

The lesson to be learned here is that if you perpetrate a big enough lie for a long enough period, eventually, because of the way the brain and its psychology works, it becomes the truth whether you like it or not. Truth after all is a subjective state not an objective one.

The following lilnks all deal with the subject in far more depth and far more eloquently than I ever could. I urge you to join one of the organisations listed and do your bit to fight this abomination. The sites listed below are extremely professionaly put together. The information is presented in a logical fashion so that you can decide for yourself whether the evidence supports or denounces the governments obsession. My bias is clear and I stand by it. I know its a pain but study at least one of the web sites in some detail. I suggest the excellent URL=http://www.safespeed.org.uk]Safe Speed[/URL] . This site is run by a roads engineer from Inverness way who deals with the subject in a very professional, logical and intelligent way.

http://www.onethirdlie.org.uk/
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/index.php
http://www.abd.org.uk/
http://www.pepipoo.com/
http://www.stealthtax.org/default.aspx
http://www.speedcam.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/index2.htm
http://www.policespecials.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/
http://www.petitiononline.com/speedtax/petition.html
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_...age/030766.hcsp
http://www.speed-trap.co.uk/
http://www.speedtrap.org/stetlink.htm
http://www.ukgatsos.com/
http://www.photocop.com/
http://www.ukspeedtraps.co.uk/

Don't fall alseep whilst this cancer eats through this country. Think about it. Does your livelihood depend on you being able to drive? What would happen to your life if you lost your licence?

All views, opposing or otherwise welcome. The only bad debate is no debate at all.

Cheers

noz

Well said, Noz.

The other favourite lie on this subject is promulgated in those roadside posters - "Speed kills!".

No it doesn't, it's the sudden stopping that kills.

Derek

Hi All

I am afraid that I do not think engineering logic or factual argument will sway politicians from supporting a cause that they believe has mass support. As individuals we all wish to be allowed to drive at or near the limit of our perceived ability. As a community we all wish to see a dramatic reduction in the terrible carnage that happens each year on our roads. The roads traffic rules including speed limits are part of the trade off between these two asperations.
As technology continues to develop and is then applied we can expect far greater incursions into the way our driving is monitored. Noz is right, some people may well loose their employment if they do not modify their driving to maintain compliance with the law while being monitored.
A recent example of the increased monitoring is the extra speed cameras that have been installed in the last few years but if this worries you then sorry but I think you aint seen nothing yet.
I am far more concerned about a couple of other pointers for the future.
Insurance companies would like to get you to fit a black box so they can fully monitor the speed, locations, routes and amount you drive each year so they can then use a more accurate risk calculation to determine how much extra to charge you.
Then there was also a little article in a recent copy of one of my engineering magazines concerning the monitoring of the 20mph limit over Tower Bridge in London. It noted that there had been a very significant number of drivers caught speeding. This was due to the different type of speed monitoring that was now used. Two cameras, one at each end of the bridge are used to calculate the AVERAGE SPEED of the vehicle across the bridge using automatic number plate recognition to check each individual vehicle. The report also noted that the cameras were not painted yellow as a heritage organisation had refused permission to install this on a listed structure.
The black boxes will come about because even if they are not mandated for new vehicles voluntary fitting will initially give a premium reduction and enough of joe public will buy that. It will also get road congestion charging up and running too.
We are all doing our bit now by buying the GPS direction units for our cars which is getting the software written and databases populated to form the foundation of the car black box.
Now you would think that the Tower Bridge speed check must be unique to protect a listed structure. Well I think it uses a pair of standard roadside traffic cameras, the only special bit is that the speed check software needs to know the distance between the cameras. If the political will was there it could easily be applied to any road with roadside traffic cameras. So that is not just the motorway network but many A and B roads have large numbers of traffic monitoring cameras. Around my way they are painted blue but I guess they could be repainted yellow as a sop when the politicians authorise their use for continuous speed monitoring. Now if you think I am being a bit of a pessimist and none of this could happen as quick as Noz suggests then sorry but where he says 10 years I think 3 to 5 is more realistic.
The technology is much further advanced that most people realise. It must have been some 5 years ago that at work I had to meet two technical salesmen who asked if my industry had any use for their average speed check system using automatic number plate recognition.
I will leave you with this thought, when I first fitted cruise to my XM's a few years ago I used to dial up somewhere around 75mph on a motorway. These days I dial up 70mph and use cruise much more often just to keep my speed down to the legal limit.

Regads

XMexc

Average speed cameras, they are already in Suffolk.

Earlier this year they had two on the Orwell Bridge, covering a stretch of a tad under 1 mile. They were erected whilst the Bridge was being worked on.

Strange thing though, the workmen went, the cones went, the cameras remained.

Im not sure if they are still live, but the threat is still there.

I wonder how many deaths have occured due to lack of speed? Middle lane M25 and a mini metro doing 35mph. Does this provide a greater danger than a 72MPH driver in the outside lane?


Dont get me started on this one.

Next Ill be onto Ex wives and people who consider the dole as a career.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hi All

Just seen a little review of a recently granted patent based on American research.
It intends to replace the current generation of speed cameras with microphones in lamp posts/ street signs. Using noise cancelling it is possible to identify separate vehicles and record 3 separate speeds for each vehicle. Vehicle speed, engine speed and turbo speed. From this information they believe that they can identify the chareteristic sounds of each type of vehicle so could assess load state and for example check that heavy freight vehicles were complying with a more restrictive speed than cars. They could also construct a set of look up tables to identify if the engine management system of a vehicle is non standard or malfunctioning.
It notes that there will be no laser signal so the sites will be undetectable on approach.

Regards

XMexc

Hmmm, sounds highly improbable. Coming from the master of conspiracies that's saying something !!

The existing cameras already have this angle covered anyway. The older radar type is sensitive to the strength of the signal being reflected which in turn is proportional to frontage area. They laready have the intelligence to have at least two trigger speeds depending on the return signal strength. Don't forget too that it is not the triggering device which is used as the evidence to prosecute you. The triggering device only triggers the camera. It is the camera footage thats admissable in court. Why develop better, intelligent speed detection when the admissable evidence is the film footage anyway? Just switch on the camera (still or video) with any old cheap trigger and let the film footage do the work of prosecuting.

cheers

noz