Driving Test

"Who do you think funds Transport 2000?"

Jenny Agutter and Michael Palin.

Thier website also lists the following as "making up the Transport 2000 'umbrella'":

Amicus MSF
Arriva
ASLEF
Civic Trust
Community Transport Association
Council for National Parks
CPRE
CPRW
CTC
Cycle Campaign Network
English Welsh and Scottish Railway
Environmental Transport Association Trust
Environment Council
First Group
Friends of the Earth
GMB
Go Ahead Group
Light Rail Transit Association
Living Streets
National Council for Inland Transport
National Express Group
National Federation of Bus Users
National Federation of Women’s Institutes
National Trust
Railfuture
Railway Industry Association
Ramblers’ Association
RSPB
SERA
Stagecoach
Sustrans
TCPA
Transport for London
TSSA
UK Noise Association
UNIFI
UNISON
Virgin Rail Group
The Wildlife Trusts
The Woodland Trust
WWF UK
YHA

Matthew

Ah yes, I remember how everything was just lovely for drivers under the last Right Wing govermment. Petrol at 20p a gallon, 100mph speed limits, nice low interest rates so everyone could buy a car, vast stretches of lightly used roads - hard to believe it was only six years ago....

And wasn't it the Tories who said we should all go out and buy fuel efficient bubble cars, who initiated the use of gastos and who royally fucked up public transport so much that it became unusable? Or has that just happened since Tony the boy god has been running things? Mmaybe my memory's failing?

You can blame anything you like on any government - as is your right. But that doesn't mean you ARE right.

Cheers

Harry

What is indisputable is that the Tories fucked up the railways in 1996, making them unusable.

And yes I am aware, I am being very right about that.

jon

Harry

Privatising the railways was a big mistake.

The list of Transport 2000 backers is basically a long list of vested interests, enviro-fascists and left-wing organisations.

By privatising public transport we've created this profit-driven monster that is trying to force people off the roads and make life upon them as unpleasant for them as possible in the meantime.

Naturally, it isn't in the interests of private rail companies to argue in favour of re-nationalisation.

I am in favour of a publicly-owned integrated rail network.

My own political leanings are centre-right. I believe that politicians from both sides of the spectrum, with the odd exception, are a bunch of complete wankers.

Regards,

Steve.

"The list of Transport 2000 backers is basically a long list of vested interests"

It's a campaign and lobby group, Steven. They tend to be supported by "vested interests" as that, er, is rather the point.

"enviro-fascists and left-wing organisations"

The Campaign to Protect Rural England? The Women's Institute? The YHA?

Looks to me like an impressive list of backers from a variety of areas of society that represent the views of a large number of people in this country.

Matthew

Yes, yes, possibly. Keep up!

I've just said that politicians in the UK from both sides of the political spectrum are all a bunch of wankers.

If we weren't fighting an illegal war started on the basis of a pack of lies we'd have more money to invest in outr transport infrastructure.

Why can't we be governed by people who actually want to make genuine improvements, and people who have the interests of this country at heart?

Gradually allowing the roads to become more congested (and deliberately making them so in many cases) isn't going to improve public transport.

Our transport infrastructure has been in steady decline since the sixties when they started to buld the motorway network (but forgot to allow for traffic growth by putting in enough lanes) and axed many rail services.

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Sun 24 October 2004 at 16:12.]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steven Toy:
I've just said that politicians in the UK from both sides of the political spectrum are all a bunch of wankers.

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Yes but you sound like one, Steve! How do I know? Because:-

a) You repeatedly manage the neat trick of saying a lot without actually saying very much at all, and

b) You manage to confuse us all in the process!!

jon

I'm sounding a bit like Blair, aren't I .

I just feel that the "speed kills/cars are bad" propaganda is just a neat diversionary tactic* leading us away from the fact that for whatever reason, (all post-war governments are to blame for this) our transport infrastructure is completely fucked up, and is a disgrace to the developed world.

Personally I'd be happy with tax rises if we saw some benefit, and genuine improvements in healthcare, education and transport in return.

So far taxes have gone up but the money has just been squandered on bigger government and illegal wars.

*Matthewr's above questionnaire is a case in point:

It puts drivers into two categories - low and high mileage drivers. The latter are obviously at greater risk of having an accident but the conclusions reached deliberately attempt to mislead us into believing that it is the attitude to speed that determines a driver's accident risk and not his/her annual mileage.

Regards,

Steve.

Steve good reply
"neat discovery" is also neat income.
Martin

Steven Toy said "*Matthewr's above questionnaire is a case in point: It puts drivers into two categories - low and high mileage drivers"

No it doesn't. *You* put the drivers into those categories for whatever reason.

The questionaire is what it is. I was very careful to post exactly what it said in the Roadcraft book and if you want to dispute its finding I suggest you take it up with the Police Federation.

Matthew

quote:

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It puts drivers into two categories - low and high mileage drivers. The latter are obviously at greater risk of having an accident but the conclusions reached deliberately attempt to mislead us into believing that it is the attitude to speed that determines a driver's accident risk and not his/her annual mileage.

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I think both have an impact, don't they?
Speed has been done to death on this forum, and I won't add any more.
Average mileage can also have an effect, but this would be difficult to measure, surely.

Also, you can make stats read what you like, and also they can be interpreted in loads of differant ways...

andy c!

quote:

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The questionaire is what it is.

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And it's a really annoyingly bad questionaire.

Any Roadcraft trained driver who agreed with the third statement has completely missed the point.

Paul

quote:

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The questionaire is what it is. I was very careful to post exactly what it said in the Roadcraft book and if you want to dispute its finding I suggest you take it up with the Police Federation.

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The wording of the questions is so loaded that low mileage drivers will have low scores and high mileage drivers will have high scores.

Do you dispute this?

The Police Federation has a vested interest in the revenue derived from issuing speeding tickets. Of course they are going to attempt to establish a link between (positive attitudes to) driving fast and a greater risk of collision.

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Mon 25 October 2004 at 5:12.]

quote:

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Also, you can make stats read what you like, and also they can be interpreted in loads of differant ways...

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Absolutely!

Regards,

Steve.

Paul Ranson,

I take it you mean this point:

"People should drive slower than the limit when it's raining"

Like most of the statements in the questionnaire it is highly simplistic and more likely to lure timid and inexperienced drivers to agree with it.

I've just completed a wet weekend driving my taxi:

Friday night the rain was patchy and mainly light drizzle. Whilst the road surface was damp it wasn't saturated with water running off it. I drove as normal, but perhaps allowing a slightly bigger distance between myself and the vehicle in front.

Saturday night the rain was torrential until about 9 pm. Visibility was reduced, the road surface was saturated and there was localised flooding, i.e: some big puddles. My speed was significantly reduced, and was below the speed limit on open roads, i.e: around 48 in a 60 limit as displayed by my speedometer, and I allowed at least 4 seconds' distance between myself and the vehicle in front. I did find that some drivers went too slow though, and I made an assumption that they simply were not used to driving in such conditions and as a result were a little over-cautious.

Tonight there were just a few light showers but there were still floods remaining from yesterday. The road surfaces on the whole were damp but not saturated. I'd memorized the locations of all the big puddles and just drove around them at about 70 mph* on the open road when it was clear that nothing was coming the other way, on wide roads anyway. I entered the bends at a lower speed than normal and didn't acelerate out of them as hard as I would in dry conditions#.

Like on Friday I kept a bigger distance - at least 3 seconds between myself and the vehicle infront.

*Speed shown by my speedometer. My real speed was probably no more than 66 mph and I know this because the recorded trip mileage shown by the trip meter is usually about 6% greater than the distance recorded by my electronic pulse-recording (around 6,000 or so pulses recorded for each mile travelled) and Local Authority-calibrated taximeter. In other words, my speed was just within the tolerance allowed by the police over the 60 mph limit.

#I think skid pan training should be compulsory before taking the driving test. Knowing what to do in the event of a skid in theory only works in, er, theory.

Although the Skoda's cornering is technically superior to that of my trusty Mondeo, I tend to trust my Mondeo more given the Skoda's tendency towards slight oversteer - more difficult to correct a skid in its event.

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Mon 25 October 2004 at 6:06.]

A couple of things:

quote:

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Any Roadcraft trained driver who agreed with the third statement has completely missed the point.

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I am, and I didn't...

also, the police federation are not the be all and end all when it comes to things...

andy c!

Steven Toy said "The wording of the questions is so loaded that low mileage drivers will have low scores and high mileage drivers will have high scores. Do you dispute this?"

Any research into accident risk that failed to account for such obvious issues as mileage would be so fundametally flawed it would struggle to get published. So although it's not impossible, I think it *highly unlikely* that your explanation is correct, not least becuase you have no evidence for your claim at all.

"I'd memorized the locations of all the big puddles and just drove around them at about 70 mph"

Impressive. You should go on "You Bet" with Matthew Kelly.

Matthew

quote:

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Drivers who indicate on this questionaire that they speed often have about three times the accident risk of those who speed infrequently.

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Well, should I be surprised?

On another forum in the same style as this I read that speeding was the cause in only 7% of death accidents in the UK. A couple of years ago the Swedish Road Department did a very throurough research of what had caused over a thousand REAL death accidents. The result was the same, speeding as a cause contributed to only 7% of the accidents.

What was the most ususal cause? It was when there happened something inside the car that took the drivers attention away from the road. Like a fencing a bug, trying to calm a screaming child, messing with the radio etc. etc.

Second most usual cause? Drunked driving (not a surprise, is it?).

The propaganda is more or less the same in Sweden to, i.e. it stubbornly refuses to talk about the number one cause of death accidents and concentrates on the one responsible for only seven percent of them (OK, there are a strong force against drunked driving to).

Why? Several possible causes has been mentioned in this thread, who am I to know which one is correct.

JohanR

You are missng the point, JohanR. The argument is that those scoring high on this test have attitudes to driving that can result in an increased risk of accident. The point is not that speed is the cause of the accidents.

Matthew

Linking attitudes to speed to the risk of having an accident is nothing but a propaganda stunt.

Regards,

Steve.