Horrendousness in Italy

I did clarify speeding is exceeding the limit or too fast for the condistions, as in the Rhyl case where the police cocked up the entire investigation from beginning to end and let a killer driver off withb a £180 fine.

You did also claim that the likelihood of death if the driver was doing 30 would have been the same. This is quite wrong.

It is also a myth that speeding is concentrated on above and beyond other errant driver behaviour. The cameras that impose fines for speeding free up trafpol for other duties, so they can catch other criminals, not just speeders.

Forgive me, I get annoyed when the role of speeding in fatal RTCs is somehow mitigated.

Speeding fines are a voluntary tax paid by those too stupid or arrogant to think the law ought to apply to them. They can be avoided as easily as fines for urinating in the street or spraying cocks on walls. Fines for graffiti or whazzing against a wall aren't a "Stealth Tax" and it makes me seethe when speeding fines are described as such.

Driving too fast for the conditions is not going to get picked up by a speed camera. Neither is it going to be stopped by a car which cannot exceed the speed limit, as was suggested above. It was in response to this suggestion that I specifically used the phrase "exceeding the speed limit" rather than using excessive speed. Excessive speed can be legal speed. (I would imagine that if you had cars that were incapable of exceeding the limit you would get a great increase in accidents caused by excessive, but legal speed, as people would just stick their foot down and ignore the conditions, in the lazy belief that if it is legal it must be safe. This is the same mentality that causes motorway pile-ups in fog.)

The car was being driven on the wrong side of the road, therefore it hit the cyclists head on - the closing speed, even if the driver had been doing 30, would have been in the region of 40-60mph, depending on the speed of the cyclists. Therefore it is entirely possible that even at 30 he would have killed them.

Incidentally the figures quoted on the "If you hit me at 30" campaign were misleading to the point of being an own goal, as evidenced by this article.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8007080/Government-anti-speeding-campaign-exaggerated-risks.html

The Government's high profile Think! campaign told drivers that a pedestrian hit by a car travelling at 30mph had a 20 per cent chance of being killed, while at 40mph there was an 80 per cent chance of death.
However the latest research has shown that the probability of death was now seven per cent at 30mph and 31 per cent at 40mph.
According to the latest research the figures used during the campaign were based on 1970s data, since when car design has changed radically and emergency medical care improved dramatically.

Now I personally think that quoting the accurate figures would have been just as effective in getting the message across - perhaps even more so.

Incidentally the introduction of cameras co-incided with a large reduction in trafpol. This made the roads less safe, as evidenced by the fact that the first time annual casualties went up in years was after the introduction of speed cameras. It also did no good to general crime figures, as most criminals drive to and from the scene of the crime, and it was trafpol who would stop them.