How to get off a speeding ticket

Tell us more, I cant view anything either.

Denmark has finally introduced "clipping" of driving licences for a range of offenses.

On the first Day (September 1st) a white van man was clocked at 180kph (lose 3 points, lose your license) but he added 3 more points for deliberately tailgating another motorist. So he lost his license twice on the same day.
I wonder if it was the barsteward in the white Merc van with lowered suspension, alloys and darkened windows who tried to side swipe me off the motorway for refusing to break the speed limit while overtaking a lorry?
The speed limit is clearly shown on every lollipop at a few hundred meters intervals. But completely ignored by the hundreds of vehicles travelling nose-to-tail in the overtaking lane.
What will they all do now?

Ah - I should have thought that to view would be similar to the groupee community.

I don't seem to be able to cut & paste the images so I will host them later this evening and provide a link. It's quite an amusing letter in response to a speeding ticket.

Is the answer "keep your speed below the limit"?

Steve

It's better than that, much much better...

Let's build the hype...

LOL the british motorists obsession with 'i am right and I know i am safe at this speed cos i can predict the future and I will win the lottery and I won't hit anything regardless of doing 40 in a 30' etc etc...

ps you need to either argue the speed limit in force, and/or the preosecution policy for exceeding the speed limit....

quote:

LOL the british motorists obsession with 'i am right and I know i am safe at this speed cos i can predict the future and I will win the lottery and I won't hit anything regardless of doing 40 in a 30' etc etc...

Many drivers are lulled into a false sense of security by doing 29 in a 30 though. This is precisely the kind of complacency that causes accidents. As speed limits come down and their enforcement more rigidly applied, the annual death rate has remained the same. "If I hit a child at 30 it lives, if I hit the child at 40 it dies" type propaganda only serves to illustrate the point. The reality is the driver doing 40 who keeps his eyes out for potential hazards is less likely to hit the child (at all) than the sanctimonious prick doing 29 with his eyes glued to the speedo.

While law enforcement focuses almost entirely on the measurable absolute for the purpose of oppression we will never succeed in reducing the annual death rates on our roads.

Safe driving has precious little to do with the logic that you are perfectly safe in compliance with an arbitrary speed limit and a menace if straying just 0.1mph above it.

Uder such a regime of oppression hiding cowardly behind the "safety" banner, it's fair game to avoid detection and prosecution.

Steve - great post, i with many others are getting fed up with the BS surrounding this subject, you just cant measure safety in mph.
Martin
look here also
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/index1.html

I read safespeed and the ABD from time to time.

Andy c! I see a lot of old cars (Rover 214s) with a tail light out trundling along at 29 in a 30 - usually after they've pulled out on me!

It might be a better idea to pull such vehicles over for a little spot check instead of staring down the viewfinder of the speed detection device.

Steve,

From my perspective if traffic law enforcement and prevention was a priority I would not just stop the speeding motorist. Last night i stopped a taxi driver with 3 lights out on his car - after I'd directed one of my officers to stop the same car about 30 mins earlier - he didn't heed to advice my colleague gave him and as such paid the penalty - in his pocket!

I have had good success re lights out on cars etc leading to other things - you are preaching to the converted and u know it!

also its much easier to spot the wreck - if only I had the resources to deploy to that instead of other things! Ah bliss...

Ps you know i am not for speed camera's per se - you may recall my comments over on PFM re this.

rant over and am off to finish me ironing!

Steve

Two words:

Braking distance.

A few more words:

One second to react. How many yards have you travelled without having moved your foot yet?

Answers to the parents of the deceased on a postcard to:

Hi all,
Nobody has mentioned anything about catching the "real criminals" yet.
A guy I work with had a double dealing with our friendly neighbourhood rozzers last week. Firstly he was stopped and done for speeding - 34 in a 30 limit. The officer told him that he should be more careful as "there is a school just up there sir". The guy replied that as it was the school holidays he didn't think that was a valid point. A remark which most likely put paid to any chance of a let-off.
Two days later his car was removed without his consent. Or nicked by some scouse scally in Birkenhead if you prefer. Off to the local nick goes he to report it stolen. He was most aggrieved that the attitude of the duty officer was basically fill in this form and piss off, this happens all the time. And I suppose that's true. It does happen all the time to some poor bugger.
Which brings me back to my original point. Why don't they go out of their way to catch those bastards?
Regards,
Steve O.

quote:

One second to react. How many yards have you travelled without having moved your foot yet?

If it takes you a second to react you shouldn't be driving.

If, on the road, you've put yourself in a situation where you need to 'react' rapidly then you're driving too fast. This obviously has nothing to do with speed limits, whatever the single issue nimists claim.

Paul

Nime: two words

Natural selection.

If the child has no sense of self preservation, it may have saved some future lives by not allowing him/her behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Ban all cars without ABS and pedestrian crash ratings below 4*, that could save lives.

Regards

Guy

http://uk.msnusers.com/Mauricla-bluePaddedCell/shoebox.msnw

Let's see if this works

Damn, it doesn't appear to work. That's computers for me. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

2.5 metres of reation time (1 second) if you travel at 35 intead of 30.

Regards

Guy

It works fine in Mozilla Michael.

Regarding braking distance the accepted standard is one second to react before the foot applies the brakes after seeing a potential danger. At least it is according to the senior traffic police officer on the radio discussing speeding near schools.

I'm all for sleeping policemen. The only proven way to stop people exceeding the local speed limit. They are much used in our area to control rat-runs particularly in villages.

Even better are heavy steel plates across trenches at road works. They have the high street up again and the 1" steel plates are bringing absolutely everything down to a crawl. Drivers are absolutely terrified of that 1" high square edge! There's a perfect traffic calming measure there just waiting for someone to produce a working rise-and-fall model for school arrival and going-home times.

I feel speed bumps are of use, but sleeping police men?

Ripped the sump off my kit car (as they could not be avoided at all) @ 5mph. Had to fit a dry sump at a cost to me of £400. Oh and £140 to be towed home.

Dig those trenches, it'd be cheaper for me!

Regards

Guy

My own mini-based kitcar would have fared even worse today. It was not only lowered but had a dropped floor pan to save my head from constant attack by the roof when running over large pieces of gravel in the road!

quote:

Ripped the sump off my kit car (as they could not be avoided at all) @ 5mph. Had to fit a dry sump at a cost to me of £400. Oh and £140 to be towed home.

Then put in a claim to your local authority for the damage they did to your car. A colleague did this when a speed cushion on a road awaiting resurfacing took out his sump. He put in a claim for £90 and did the job himself for £30.

Nime,

If you keep your eyes on the bloody road you see the child before s/he's even thought about running out. Around blind hazards like parked cars, or a gap in a fence or hedge where children are known to lurk, I generally slow down whatever the speed limit.

I remember looking up from my speedo once as I passed through two GATSOs in Tamworth, only to see a woman and child in the road only two car-lengths in front of me. I was doing 29 mph.

Had the GATSOs not been there I'd have seen them sooner (and on the pavement) and they would not have got so close to the front of my car. The problem with lowered and rigidly enforced speed limits is they put people in fear of being fined and losing their licenses ahead of being in fear of injuring a pedestrian.

Andy,

You gave the taxi driver fair warning for his three bulbs and he didn't heed it, so he got what he deserved.

Occasionally I get a bulb out and I change it at the earliest opportunity. If the only service station open late at night in the area had run out of the bulb I needed, would the fixed penalty you may issue me exceed my lost earnings for the rest of the night, if I were forced to park up?

Would you exercise a little discretion for the sake of one poxy brake light (when both the other brake light and the eye-level brake lights were working) and just tell me to change it the following day?

Oh, and on a couple of occasions I've seen police cars with bulbs out

As an aside it's about bloody time they improved on Edison's bulb design and introduced bulbs that could be expected to last for 5 years or so (provided your battery/alternator were functioning normally) and not the few days as sometimes happens.

LEDs seem to be getting more popular on new models Steve so that problem should be sorted eventually.

While I take your point that watching the road is more important than watching the speedo, you have to accept that many drivers don't drive with the same care and attention that you (and me) give to the road, so enforcing the speed limit is perhaps the only effective way to reduce accidents caused by drivers who care less about hazards and more about getting to there destination quicker.

I think it may be more a case of arrogance on the part of the government in believing that ordinary people cannot be trusted behind the wheel of a car, so speed limits are but a collision damage limitation (as opposed to prevention) exercise.

Over the last 15 years or so there has been a dumbing down of driving standards that accompany the lower speed limits. Meanwhile many pedestrians have learnt to strut across (or even along the middle of) the road in the path of moving vehicles with an air of litigious nonchalance. If you sound your horn, some slow down or even stop in the road in front of you.

Jaywalking should be made an offence so that pedestrians (at least adult ones) share the responsibility for their safety. On-the-spot fines of a tenner would suffice to make the point to offenders.

Andy,

One point about the coppers around here is that generally, if it's late at night and only one bulb is out we are told to change the bulb at the earliest opportunity - even if that is the folowing day... apart from one female officer who hasn't liked me since the day I saw what appeared to be a teenager at the wheel of a car and told her about it a few minutes later. She turned up at our office some time after and threatened to issue me with a ticket - for me telling her how to do her job!

Since then I've not been afforded any such discretion from her at all. She's also affectionally known round here as "PC Scratchings."