ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Andy is right everybody complains. But nobody does anything or goes out there way to make a change (strike, demonstration, petition...ffs even bothering to go to a poll station and vote!).

I hate being held accountable for the majority of the lazy general public!

PM on its way after I posted this

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

boomer

...but (as i mentioned in an earlier post, which you conveniently ignored) Professor CarSTOP said that ISA (i.e. ENFORCING SPEED LIMITS ABSOLUTELY) would only save 20% of KSIs - so still lots of deaths then!

I will remember your advise, should i be driving pissed, uninsured, untaxed, un-MOTed, terrorist bomb on board, whilst banned - just stick to thirty

mb

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Remember TRL report 323:

- proportion of accidents caused by excess speed (including excess speed for the conditions but below the posted limit): 7.3%
- proportion of accidents not caused by excess speed: 92.7%

But, which aspect of someone's driving is the only one that can be measured, quantified and compared against a threshold? Right.

scoobydood

I grew up in a country where "stay away" protests had a massive impact on the government and the economy. Unfortunately the dictatorship there eventually had enough and sent the army door to door to beat the members of public senseless who were still at home. They then rushed a new law through parliment to make it illegal to stay away from work....

pslewis

Look at you all ......

Lets all get together, its sooooooo unfair!!

We are going to leave the country, its sooooooo unfair!!

Nasty government are trying to make the roads safer, its sooooooo unfair!!

You'll all do nowt about it, you're all bags of huff and puff .......

Pete

sillysi

Whilst I am against any devices fitted to my car that take away my control or monitor what I am doing I have to say for many people it is a must.

I live on a stretch of road that is about 1/2 a mile long and straight, we have problems with a group of drivers who use this road as a "race track". The road has a 40 mph limit but these drivers regularly exceed this by huge margins. They take great pleasure in overtaking cars who don't exceed the limit, I have seen them three abreast at times. This has to be stopped and yes there have been many accidents on this stretch of road. The police are aware of the problems and very occasionaly bring the laser gun out but it does not help.

Why should I and others put up with this? ISA and the idea to scrap older cars would, IMO stop this extremely dangerous driving overnight.

This puts me in a dilema, I don't want these devices on my car but I do see the need to "control" certain drivers. I shall be writing to my MP regarding my concerns about "monitoring devices" and suggesting that a way forward with what seems to be an inevitable system would be selective installs maybe on new and younger drivers.

I know not all new and younger drivers are a problem, but where I live they are the majority.

pslewis

I say raise the driving age to 35 .... anyone under that are too stupid these days to be allowed to drive!

Pete

unclebuck

Where was that?

That's the way it's going here.... any advice??

unclebuck

Check out lewis lol. He will be the camp commandant!! With the emphisis on 'camp'

Vegescoob

Maybe more profound comment than at first appears.
Dictatorships and Police States never seem to have trouble finding people to enforce the system.
Btw. Help. Trying to pm AndyC 722 and when I hit submit it comes back cannot find but has changed Username to andyc 722.

pslewis

Thats because its Andy 772!

Pete

chrome

I dont see why they just dont bring back the "Green cross code man" and brainwash via the medium of TV (instead of assaulting them with mobile ringtone ads and fecking loan adverts) then the little tikes might actually think before running into the road blindly?

I must see 5 kids do this on the road outside the school around the corner from my house every morning!!
Even my own daughter (who is 8 and had all of a week on road safety at school) occasionally 'forgets' and get's an almighty roasting off me for it..

NOT ONE OF THOSE 5 KIDS STOP'S TO LOOK !!!
Let alone to think

WTF is going on with schools these days?

"speed kills"?
lack of self preservation education more like. There's no bloody cameras outside the school- altho I bet if there was they'd pull in a pretty penny nabbing school run parents doing makeup/using phone/adjusting little johnny' shirt/suzie's hair AND drving the car all of 50yards to drop off their little darling who all then play chicken with heavy commuter traffic

If they are this stupid as little 'uns (and they are being brainwashed into the new way of thinking at school; god help the country as a whole when they grow up etc..

/rant

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

It's AndyC_772 with an underscore

After all my ranting about apathy, I'm amazed by the response I've had asking for sample letters on the subject. It gives me a glimmer of hope and I thank you all. Do keep us up to date on the outcome if you get a reply, my own MP wrote back quickly and seemed to appreciate and understand my comments.

Any more takers?

corradoboy

Does anyone know of a link for the Countryfile article ? Missed it

Diesel

This is exactly what gets the back up of the majority of us who are in favour of decent policing and punishing dangerous speeding but rarely see it happen.

I find most Talivans placed on open roads - generally clear, hazard free stretches where they can sight you half a mile away from the comfort of their sofa and where a small transgression of the speed limit will have no real consequence. However since you have only the odd few nutters nailing it by your HOME the profit margin factor ironically leads them to place Talivans where it matters so much less. They just shoot themselves in the foot for genuine 'safety' credibility all the time.

Write to the Scam Cam Partnership and request they police this stretch. Their response wil be interesting.

D

hedgehog

The tender document for the development of this system very specifically demanded that the devices must work on motorbikes. With this in mind I don't think there will be a problem with bikes, though I am not actually aware of a currently running pilot scheme that is testing on bikes.

It is not entirely clear what will happen with older cars as yet. Certainly most cars manufactured in recent years will be suitable for having the system fitted as the government has been working with car makers for some time on this. It is possible that on older cars the system will monitor your speed, position etc. and will sound an alarm when you exceed the ISA limit for that bit of road. If you don't slow immediately then your fine will be in the post. So, in effect, it will work in a similar way to a Road Angel except that it will automatically issue fines when you break the limits laid down by the green nutters. Just remember that the ISA limit will, in many places, not be equal to the posted speed limit on a given road. The green nutters are aiming to have most roads restricted to 40mph because of junctions, dangerous bends etc. etc.

It has also been suggested that attempts will be made to remove older vehicles from the roads and it may be that there will be a scheme such as there was when handguns were removed. It is possible that the law will be made such that driving an older car becomes very difficult, one suggestion was that a route plan must be filed in advance of any journey for example. For many people this might make the compensation route seem attractive.

I think we need to face up to the fact that this is a well considered scheme that will bring the administration up to £1.45 per mile in new revenue plus an almost unimaginable amount of control over our every movement. There is no way they are going to screw up such an exciting chance to get control over your life.

Jap2Scrap

I work at Leeds Uni and have researched and posted links previously to pdf files relating to ISA and can only say that it's being researched with a very positive bias and I can't see any reason being put forward that will stop us seeing the system introduced at some point.

The only thing I don't understand is the £1.45 a mile figure. If the average mileage is 12,000 miles or thereabouts that represents a travelling cost of iro £18,000. That's just ridiculous! Where did you get the £1.45 figure from hedgehog?

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Indeed, whether or not you believe hedgehog's 'worst case' scenario, it's fairly obvious that £100 a box multipled by about 25 million cars represents a huge commercial contract. A license fee of just £1 a box would ensure that the owner of whatever technology was used made an absolute fortune.

For this reason alone, it goes without saying that any device will be touted as a total success, and marketed very hard, by whoever develops it.

hedgehog

The £1.45 figure came from the government but to be honest I can't find the document or even remember what it was called now. I think more recent documents have revised this downwards to £1.30 per mile which is what was generally thought would happen: they put out some mad figure and then revise it downwards so they can claim to be "listening to the concerns of the comrades, errrr, citizens."

This is, of course, toted as a "maximum" figure for the most congested roads. You can see a BBC report on a similar document here, it quotes £1.40 as the maximum:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3886135.stm

I think it is fairly safe to say that when it does come the charge will be in excess of £1 per mile. The company who run the M6 toll have already bought all the old ITV transmitter sites to allow the system to be put in place, as Andy points out the potential income is vast. So your GPS unit will upload your data to a transmitter on a nearby hill and you will be tracked, charged and monitored.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Well, my PM box is still humming - so those of you who have decided to take action, give yourselves a pat on the back, you deserve it.

If anyone has any feedback on the material I've sent out, please let me know - if I'd known it was going to be this popular I'd have put in the extra effort to make it a bit more generic, and perhaps to include sources for the facts I've asserted too. You'll see that there are some references in there to personal circumstances which may not apply to you, so please, do take the time to read through it carefully and make it your own.

chrome

1984 here we come..
I hate the thought of being tracked all the time
let alone having my driving constantly monitored- the 'insta-fine' mechanism sounds hideous..

Holy Ghost

Well done for bringing this up UB & thanks andyc for making your excellent letters available to us - i've sent my version to my MP plus Alistair Darling at the DoT (aka MiniTran in Newspeak).

sillysi

I have had a quick look round on the Net and it seems that we (UK) are not the only ones looking at ISA. Holland, Spain, France and Sweden all have systems that have been in test for the last five years or so. Volvo has 2000 cars in Sweden actively running the system.

Vipa

Pete..... I agree with you... (WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! )

I hate the thought of I.S.A. and ultimately I think it will be frought with problems which will prove very (if not too) difficult to overcome but I would gladly give up my ability to exceed the speed limit if it saved 1 child's life ('cos that child might be one of mine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

What I see as being the BIG issue is lack of revenue rather than an increase in it.
Surely if I.S.A. replaces 'safety cameras' then the revenue will stop...... abruptly. Without the ability to speed there will be no more speeding tickets?????????

Surely that's gonna make a BIG BIG hole appear in the government's finances?

Paul

NB... Just 1 recent personal example though.....

Saturday night my 2.5y/o daughter woke at 1am with serious breathing difficulties.... this rapidly got worse to the point where we were genuinely concerned that respitory failure was a possibility....

No time for calls to doctor, no time for ambulances...... we live 8 miles from our nearest A & E and my daughter was receiving medical attention an the drugs she needed 7 minutes after bundling her and my wife in the car. With ISA this would have been 16 minutes plus messing about at each end...

I'm not saying my daughter could have died if my speed had been restricted... but who knows.....

I am expecting responses to this along the lines of.... you were going too fast... what about the other children who you could have killed on route....

The journey was made with more 'focus and concentration' than would have been the norm and although quick was safe. (please bear in mind that at this point it was approaching 2am and there was nothing on the road!)

PS... just waiting for the word 'paradoxical' to come up here!

sillysi

But they will recoup this by charging us to drive on the roads.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

25 million cars x £100 per box = £2.5 billion. Given how few accidents are actually caused by excess speed (TRL323, 7.3% - remember that!), I could find much better ways of saving lives with that sort of cash. If it's about safety, it's deeply misguided and based on unjustified assumptions. Note that speed is easy to measure, compare against a threshold and use as concrete evidence. Risk and danger aren't.

Holy Ghost

relative safety on ISA is a convenient smokescreen: the inconvenient data from TRL323 proves it.

this is all about:

1. milking further revenue from the car cash cow
2. increased state control
3. a deliberate derogation of our right to go about our business without interference or monitoring by the state

add to this:

1. detention without trial & the death of 1000 years of habeus corpus
2. compulsory ID cards

and you have all the ingredients for an electronic police state where politicians are our masters instead of our servants.

it's coming. and if we don't kill it off by lobbying, lawful protest and the ballot box then we only have ourselves to blame if we end up sleepwalking into incremental totalitarianism.

do you trust our politicians or an unaccountable, undemocratic EU not to exploit this combination of "initiatives"? i categorically do not.

555wrx

Will ISA be fitted to Traffic police vehicles, after all, if nobody can break the speed limit then there will be no need for traffic police. Also, if nobody can speed, if belived by saftey groups, there will be no accidents.