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speed does not kill
I understand what you’re saying but don’t really get it when people try and stress this point…
How often do people drive at a speed that is appropriate considering possible hazards and their surroundings?
At what point does driving too fast become bad driving?
Seeing as you won’t eradicate bad driving shouldnt you scrub and monitor peoples speeds? In built up areas at least where you are sharing the space with other modes.
MCamb-
I can see where @TGR is coming from here, maybe it's just a bit of a backlash from the excessive "SPEED KILLS" advertising we've seen over in NI. Coming back to my previous point about the dangers of people doing 40mph on the motorway, I think we can all agree that large speed differentials increase the likelihood of incidents. Whether that's someone doing 70 in a 30, or 30 in a 70. And of course the magnitude of the incident is strongly correlated with the speed at the time of the incident.
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The speed kills message is one heavily promoted by enforcement authorities. Speed is easy to prove in court.
Bad driving is a different thing - not so easy to prove, some time and effort involved and no guaranteed result.
Enforcement of ‘bad driving’ regulations is almost non-existent unless there is an accident. There is very little preemptive work being done to target bad driving.
Saying all that, enforcement authorities have not got the staff to do this. I think I read that road policing staff numbers have reduced by a massive amount in the past five years. I would not be surprised if police services only employ the bare minimum of road policing officers - legislated to cover motorways and a few extra to cover fatal accidents.
So, albeit I believe I have a valid point, there are no resources to address this unfortunately.
mmccarthy
TGR
The speed thing - speed makes an accident more severe. Whether a 20mph or 70 mph limit. Higher speed equals more severe injuries. You don’t need stats to show this.
Speed in itself does not kill - bad driving does. Careless/inconsiderate/reckless driving causes death and injury.
This is not rocket science - bad diving kills - emergency services are trained for higher speeds - which they can travel at lawfully so a blanket ‘speed kills’ is non-sensical.
I will argue this forever - look at YouTube and the massive amount of ‘road rage’ videos - the vast majority are caused by bad driving.
On the auto driving cars - I’d be interested to see how one copes when another driver tries (presumably accidentally) to side swipe you - as happened me two days ago. I had to maintain my position but swerve to avoid a collision without hitting a kerb on the offside. It was one of those moments when horn or lights were never happening as it occurred so quickly.
In summary - speed does not kill, bad driving does.