you would only be prosecuted for dangerous driving if you were exceeding the speed limit or similar..That would also be difficult to prove.
Not using an accident investigator it wouldn't - they don't need much data to have a good idea of the speed a vehicle was doing before it hit a pedestrian.
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I agree, unless it can be proved you were driving dangerously/carelessly then you won't be prosecuted. However what really gets to me is that the driver pays for the ambulance regardless of who is to blame. Some years ago I had the mis-fortune to knock down a child - a five-year-old accompanied across a busy road by his seven-year-old sister to buy bread and yes their mother was home watching TV. Happily I was only doing around 25mph but still hit the boy as he ran out between parked cars,he was released from hospital after over-night observation with some bruises. What happened to me? The police checked my car and found no faults, witnesses attested to my safe driving but was told if I wanted to recover the cost of repairs to my car (broken headlamp and dented bonnet, to say nothing of my shattered nerves) I'd have to sue the family - I didn't. Then just to cap it all a few weeks later I'm sent a bill from the ambulance service to pay for the call-out!
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Accidents involving pedestrians can be extremely worrying for motorists even when the pedestrian is to blame. I once knocked down a pedestrian at 11 or so at night in Upper Street, in the rain, driving a friend's Mini. He was crossing the road from the other side, just past the junction with Essex Rd., totally invisible: wearing dark clothing and shoes and with a black or dark grey umbrella down across his face so that he couldn't see me or I him until the last possible moment, as he strode rapidly straight into the car. My passenger saw him first as from my POV he was behind the unwiped segment of the windscreen. I braked but it was much too late. His shoulder came down on the roof bending it, the windscreen dropped into our laps leaving the wipers waggling loosely in space and the pedestrian was thrown several feet landing in front of the stopped car, and knocked out. Definitely one of the worst moments of my life so far.
We were certainly well below the speed limit and the pedestrian, a middle-aged man, had been drinking heavily. Fortunately his injuries were not too serious, but I was very worried both for him and myself, and tried to find out how he was. The hospital wouldn't tell me. Although the accident was certainly his fault, 95 per cent at least, I couldn't help feeling guilty. I was not prosecuted but was aware that all I had to worry about was repairs to the car, while he had been physically hurt. Indeed I still make faces when I remember the occasion.
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This is a reply to No Wheels above. Surely anyone should be worried that in a spate of deaths NOT CAUSED BY SPEEDING, speed cameras are being installed, because this will NOT solve the problem. In fact,it will make pedestrians feel safer and even more unconcerned with their dangerous behavior.
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NoWheels wrote "How about wondering what else the driver can do to avoid causing injury?"
Buy a car that has a good pedestrian NCAP rating ?
Avoid anything with bullbars, mascots etc.
Personally, I think that the drivers of vehicles with such accessories should be prosecuted for deliberatly adding to their victims innjuries.
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Fine thought but do you know of any such accidents ?.
Probably not, I have a bull bar on one of my Range Rovers and have come across this" OOOO that looks dangerous" attitude.
At the last argument ,on checking my facts, i found not one fatal accident directly attributed to a Bull Bar.
I do remember though one incident where a Land Rover driver had a little girl shoot straight into his path on a bicycle, He said that he broke ,felt a bump and the Land Rover went over something and he felt sick, he got out went to the front and found the girl hanging onto his bull bar.
My mothers neighbour used to have a Bedford Midi, this also had a Bull Bar.
Whilst on holiday in Wales he had a head on and woke up with the bull bar wrapped around him,being a Midi it had virtually no front impact protection, try telling him they are dangerous and maybe he will tell you that because of them he still has legs and his life.
On a purely selfish note- we spent a few years away from Land Rovers until one winter i slid across the road and knocked a bank and the car virtually fell apart, boy that was a wake up call, my wife was driving the kids to school in that, i went and bought another Land Rover .
Bring back Tufty I say.
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I got run over when I was in third year. Completely my fault. I ran out into the road and got potted by a car. The woman was in tears even though she couldn't have done anything to stop it.
If I had died, would it have been her fault? She had an old car
and not a pedestrian friendly one. Should she be prosecuted?
Of course not.
Lets say her car had bull bars and I died. Should she be prosecuted? Don't be silly.
There's a chance she still thinks about smashing into me even today. There's an equal chance she hasn't thought twice about it since but why should she have to worry when it was completely my fault?
I'm not being funny but I've only ever heard of 2 pedestrians getting killed when on the pavement. One was when a car skidded into them and the other was on the news. I'm sure there have been loads more but I've not heard of them.
It's all very well and good saying "Well we should share the roads" yadda yadda yadda. Yes we should be people need to realise that a person is a lot more squidgy than a car. It's great being in the right but what good does that do you when you're dead?
One thing's for sure, I've always crossed every road ever since with nothing but the utmost care. People need to realise cars are dangerous things and speed/accessories/design of vehicles aren't going to save lives. In most cases, the actions of the individual pedestrian will.
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speed/accessories/design of vehicles aren't going to save lives.
With the greatest respect, you don't really think that's true do you?
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I am sorry - permit me to modify that statement ever so slightly.
Speed/Accessories or the design of vechicles will not save more lives than say pedestrians not doing something silly like walking into the road withough looking.
All the NCAP stars in the world aren't going to save you when a car mounts the pavement and squishes you against a wall.
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"All the NCAP stars in the world aren't going to save you when a car mounts the pavement and squishes you against a wall."
Nobody's suggesting that it helps in every case.
Crash research has helped car occupants. It can help those on the oustide too and hopefully car buyers will include that in their car choice.
Road designers / maintainers also need to show more consideration to pedestrians / cyclists; and it's probably their work that would prevent you being squished against a wall.
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Lets say her car had bull bars and I died. Should she be prosecuted? Don't be silly.
If your injuries were greater than they would otherwise have been, then she certainly should be prosecuted. Quite a lot of effort goes into designing the front of modern vehicles to reduce the impact on a pedestrian, and if a driver causes excessive injury by fitting something guaranteed to make the vehicle more dangerous, then they should be prosecuted. It's different only in degree from driving around with a big spike in the front of a car.
It's all very well and good saying "Well we should share the roads" yadda yadda yadda. Yes we should be people need to realise that a person is a lot more squidgy than a car. It's great being in the right but what good does that do you when you're dead?
None at all, and it's a foolish person who doesn't take care not to stray into the path of the car. But there is also a responsibility on a driver to avoid accidents, and not simply assume that because they are on a road they are safe to drive at the speed limit. Safe driving involves anticipating other people's folly, and recognising that a ton of metal proceeding at speed is potentially a very dangerius thing.
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>> Lets say her car had bull bars and I died. Should >> she be prosecuted? Don't be silly. If your injuries were greater than they would otherwise have been, then she certainly should be prosecuted. Quite a lot of effort goes into designing the front of modern vehicles to reduce the impact on a pedestrian, and if a driver causes excessive injury by fitting something guaranteed to make the vehicle more dangerous, then they should be prosecuted. It's different only in degree from driving around with a big spike in the front of a car.
Rubbish!
The bull bars are designed to be fitted to certain vehicles. They are a manufacturer approved accessory, and hence fitting them is NOT irresponsible. The responsibility IMO rests with the designers to ensure that they are as safe as possible, as any car should be before it even hits the road.
If someone decides to fabricate his front bumper out of scaffolding, then you may have an arguement to say that he was irresponsible in not tackling the safety factor in his design, only if his design is deemed to be unsafe compared with the manufacturers product.
Otherwise your arguement could be interpreted as saying that drivers of large vehicles should be prosecuted simply because of the shape of the front, and hence they should not have been driving it at the time. What will the haulage companies think of that, or should we all be driving around in Nissan Micras because the bonnet's slightly safer.
Your eagarness in finding ways to prosecute drivers and apportion blame would be funny if it wasn't quite such an epidemic in our society at the moment. So much public money is wasted in completely pointless procesutions that are not in the public interest, in some cases ruining the lives of individuals who have taken every reasonable care in protecting other road users. Negligence is a different issue and should attract prosecution, but fitting manufacturer approved bullbars to a 4 x 4 and driving it is about as negligent as driving a tractor, 20 tonner, and any other vehicle that is designed and responsibly modified to fullfil a purpose.
>> It's all very well and good saying "Well we should share >> the roads" yadda yadda yadda. Yes we should be people need >> to realise that a person is a lot more squidgy than >> a car. It's great being in the right but what good >> does that do you when you're dead? None at all, and it's a foolish person who doesn't take care not to stray into the path of the car. But there is also a responsibility on a driver to avoid accidents, and not simply assume that because they are on a road they are safe to drive at the speed limit. Safe driving involves anticipating other people's folly, and recognising that a ton of metal proceeding at speed is potentially a very dangerius thing.
Now that I do agree with. The HSE say that workplace health and Safety is everyone's responsibility. The same IMO the same applies to our roads. Drivers should be ready to anticipate and respond to common hazards as is practical to do so.
Driving along a school road whilst schools are turning in or out recognising the extra risks is sensible, whilst being able to react whilst driving down a country lane to some idiot jumping out in front of you from behind a hedge is in my view down to luck, and if you don't manage to avoid him, then that's just bad luck on your part. You should not feel guilty about it and certainly should not be prosecuted if you were driving with due care.
H
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Rubbish! The bull bars are designed to be fitted to certain vehicles.
But for what purpose? For roadgoing use, or for trans-African safari expditions?
They are a manufacturer approved accessory, and hence fitting them is NOT irresponsible. The responsibility IMO rests with the designers to ensure that they are as safe as possible, as any car should be before it even hits the road.
Hugo, as you surely know, bullbars are not fitted as original equipment to cars on sale in the UK, because of the acknowledged dangers they cause.
Surely you can understand the simple physics involved?
Concentrating the impact on the small area of a bar is much more likely to break bones than a cushioned impact on a bonnet, and rigid bullbars also make it more likely that a pedestrian will be fall underneath the vehicle rather than being thrown over the top. There are plenty of studies -- for example www.rmd.dft.gov.uk/project.asp?intProjectID=10328
Manufacturers do indeed take their responsibility seriously -- which is why they agreed not to fit them to new cars from 2002, in advance of an EU-wide ban.
The bullbars on offer may well be designed to be as safe as bullbars can be, but on any modern vehicle they will always be a lot more dangerous than the same vehicle without rigid bullbars.
While they are still legal, I can -- just -- see a point in the manufacturers offering bullbars which they have tested. But the fact that their bullbars may be less dangerous than others doesn't mean that they are safe.
(Soft bars are a different issue -- they seem to be capable of being safe)
If someone decides to fabricate his front bumper out of scaffolding, then you may have an arguement to say that he was irresponsible in not tackling the safety factor in his design, only if his design is deemed to be unsafe compared with the manufacturers product.
Bullbars are not original equipment. The issue is whether they make the vehicle more dangerous than without the bars - and there is plenty of evidence that rigid bars do just that.
It's a pity manufacturers haven't stopped selling the bull bars, though as far as I can see they now don't still sell rigid bars. (I fear I may be wrong, but I hope not).
Otherwise your arguement could be interpreted as saying that drivers of large vehicles should be prosecuted simply because of the shape of the front, and hence they should not have been driving it at the time. What will the haulage companies think of that, or should we all be driving around in Nissan Micras because the bonnet's slightly safer.
It's one thing buying a vehicle that has type approval, even if it's not the safest. It's a wholly different matter to take a vehicle and modify it a way which the owner and driver ought to know is guaranteed to make it significantly more dangerous to pedestrians, and which serves no purpose other than to transger the rislk of damageway from the vehicle onto whoever it hits.
Bull bars were designed to protect vehicles in the outback from damage in collisions with animals. There may be a case for them in the UK on vehicles used for a specialised task such as deer farming -- but those sort of uses probably account forv a tiny percentage of bullbars fitted in the UK.
Your eagarness in finding ways to prosecute drivers and apportion blame would be funny if it wasn't quite such an epidemic in our society at the moment.
It wouldn't be such an epidemic if there wasn't an epidemic of drivers doing selfish and irresponsibly dangerous things, such as making their vehicles significantly more dangerous by fitting a superfluous and inappropriate fashion accessory.
So much public money is wasted in completely pointless procesutions that are not in the public interest, in some cases ruining the lives of individuals who have taken every reasonable care in protecting other road users.
If you think that fitting rigid bullbars to a roadgoing car is "taking every reasonable care", then you can't have read any of the research by the likes of TFL or any of the extensive media coverage of the subject, over more than a decade.
Rigid bullbars significantly increase the danger to pedestrians. If they ruin the life of someone who is hit, then a share of the blame rests squarely with the individual who showed such disregard for their safety and turns a survivable accident into a fatal one.
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It wouldn't be such an epidemic if there wasn't an epidemic of drivers doing selfish and irresponsibly dangerous things, such as making their vehicles significantly more dangerous by fitting a superfluous and inappropriate fashion accessory.
It also wouldn't be an epidemic if pedestrians kept to the pavement rather than wandering into the road. But as per usual, it's easier to blame the motorist.
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It wouldn't be such an epidemic if there wasn't an epidemic of drivers doing selfish and irresponsibly dangerous things, such as making their vehicles significantly more dangerous by fitting a superfluous and inappropriate fashion accessory.
Where do you live that is suffering this "epidemic" that is apparently comparable to the compensation culture in the UK? I'm certainly pleased I don't live there with all the selfish drivers that you seem to encounter on a day to day basis! Certainly none of my neighbours who own 4X4s have bull bars fitted, and I honestly can't say that I notice many that are fitted to post 2002 vehicles on my day to day travels. I would hardly call it an epidemic, more like a very rare and pointless addition to a car that is pretty pointless for many UK drivers to start with.
I do however find it quite amusing that you think part of the compensation culture in the UK is caused by the fitment of bull bars to post 2002 (bearing in mind that before that they were normally factory fit) vehicles by the usual selfish, irresponsible vehicle owners that are the target of most of your posts. I reckon that has to qualify as one of your most tenuous links of the year so far! :-)
Blue
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I don't believe you sometimes NW.
IT WAS MY FAULT! MINE ENTIRELY. She could have been doing 5 mph and she would have hit me. I leapt out into the road. She should in no way be blamed.
If she had a Range Rover, there's a chance (no idea how much of one) she'd have killed me. Would it be her fault then? No it wouldn't. And to think otherwise would be be sad and deluded.
IF, the bullbars in SOME way stopped the car from braking quicker OR in some way (impossible) made cars veer onto the pavement, then fair enougn but they don't.
Look at it this way. Lets say, I have a house. And on that house is a wooden window frame through which a burglar breaks in and pinches my stuff.
Now lets say it's got a uPVC window frame in blue - because that's my favourite colour. Lets say Bob (he's the burglar by the way) breaks in now but he has a horrendous allergy to PVC - but this allergy is only triggered by the chemcical used to colour the windows), and he drops down dead slumped over my TV.
My fault?
::Sits back hands clasped behind head smug in the knowledge he's made a watertight argument ;-) ::
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I don't believe you sometimes NW. IT WAS MY FAULT! MINE ENTIRELY. She could have been doing 5 mph and she would have hit me. I leapt out into the road. She should in no way be blamed.
She should not be blamed for the fact of the accident happening: for the purposes of this discussion, I'm quite happy to accept that it was entirely your fault that you got hit.
But accidents do happen, whether through bad luck or stupidity or carelessness or adverse conditions -- I'm sure that most of us have been involved either in accients or in near accidents in some or all of those circumstances.
That's why vehicles have been fitted with a raft of safety measures to mitigate the consequences of accidents when they do happen: airbags, seat belts, rigid safety cages, crumple zones, etc. None of those features directly affects safety until there is an accident, but when there is an impact, they increase its survivability.
Fitting bullbars has much the same effect for pedestrians as removing those internal safety features. Bullbars mean that the accident is more likely to cause death or injury, and in fact that is what bullbars are designed to do -- to ensure that damage is sustained by the object the vehicle hits, rather than to the vehicle itself.
Any approach to safety has two basic components: to reduce the risk of accidents happening, and to reduce the severity of thoe that do happen.
If you had run into a car with bullybars and sustained lots of bone fractures instead of bruises, it still wouldn't be the driver's fault that you had been hit. But it certainly would be the driver's fault that your injuries were so severe.
There's nothing new abut any of this: the same principle applies in accidents elsewhwere, such as at home or in the workplace, where people can expect liability for not being sufficiently proactive in reducing the risk of injury.
In the case of bullybars, it's not just a matter of omission: the vehicle owner would have taken the deliberate step of modifying the vehicle in a way designed to make it more dangerous to pedestrians.
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"Hugo, as you surely know, bullbars are not fitted as original equipment to cars on sale in the UK, because of the acknowledged dangers they cause.
Surely you can understand the simple physics involved?"
Bullbars are also not fitted as original equipment because most buyers don't need them, and the manufacturer can make savings by eliminating them.
As far as the physics involved, yes I do understand them. The front of a Land Rover has a lot of hard aluminium and steel, before the bullbars are even fitted.
Regarding the likelihood of pedestrians being trapped underneath the vehicle, the DoT study you've linked to provides no indication of the shape and type of vehicles the subject bullbars were fitted to. I have seen plenty of car derived pickups and vans with them recently. If the car has a low bonnet then the fitting of bull bars is going to change those characteristics and pedestrians who would otherwise fall onto the bonnet may get trapped under the vehicle instead. On a high bonneted vehicle that risk is there before the bars are fitted.
Yes I consider that bullbars may in some circumstances increase the risk to pedestrians, but they can also reduce the risk to pedestrians and other road users, as in the case posted here where a girl who came off her bike managed to grab/get caught in the bars preventing her from being dragged underneath the car.
I do consider that the fitting of bullbars should be done for functional reasons, not simply to accessorise a vehicle. However I really don't believe there is hard evidence out there to condemn them out of hand. Unless NW you can find a report that is much more conclusive than the DoT one you've found me so far.......
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Bullbars are also not fitted as original equipment because most buyers don't need them, and the manufacturer can make savings by eliminating them.
They are also not fitted because manufacturers have acknowledged that they are dangerous, and have agreed to a voluntary ban on them ... and because they would have devastating results for a vehicle's EuroNCAP pedestrian impact tests.
As far as the physics involved, yes I do understand them. The front of a Land Rover has a lot of hard aluminium and steel, before the bullbars are even fitted.
Those hard surfaces are bad news when a pedestrian is hit, but the situation is not improved by replacing a relatively flat surface with a frame which will ensure a series of bone-breaking point impacts.
But a major thrust of regulations governing the design of the front of vehicles is to require them to be softer and more deformable. Rigid bull bars are designed to be hard and unyielding -- they are a step in the opposite direction.
Regarding the likelihood of pedestrians being trapped underneath the vehicle, the DoT study you've linked to provides no indication of the shape and type of vehicles the subject bullbars were fitted to. I have seen plenty of car derived pickups and vans with them recently. If the car has a low bonnet then the fitting of bull bars is going to change those characteristics and pedestrians who would otherwise fall onto the bonnet may get trapped under the vehicle instead. On a high bonneted vehicle that risk is there before the bars are fitted.
You're quite right that there is an inherent design problem in the 4X4/SUV type of vehicle, in that the combination of a bluff front and high ground clearance increases that risk. It could be that on some vehicles which already incorporate that design flaw, bull bars won't make that situation much worse.
Yes I consider that bullbars may in some circumstances increase the risk to pedestrians, but they can also reduce the risk to pedestrians and other road users, as in the case posted here where a girl who came off her bike managed to grab/get caught in the bars preventing her from being dragged underneath the car.
I think that's really clutching at straws, Hugo. For starters, it's a situation involving an already-flawed design feature - the solution to that is to stop producing so many vehicles with that dangerous frontal shape.
But that situation could only apply to very low-speed impacts. At more than a trivial speed, the pedestrian who is hit will not be in a position to grab onto anything, and their chances will be further reduced by having their bones broken through impact with the bars.
I do consider that the fitting of bullbars should be done for functional reasons, not simply to accessorise a vehicle.
I agree -- so what exactly is the functional purpose of fitting to a vehicle on British roads a device designed for use in the Australian outback, and designed to ensure that the brnt of an impact is borne by the object hit rather than the vehicle? The function of these things is to injure the animal (in this case a human animal) rather than the car.
However I really don't believe there is hard evidence out there to condemn them out of hand. Unless NW you can find a report that is much more conclusive than the DoT one you've found me so far.......
That DoT report is only available online as a summary. The full version is available if you want to read it, which you ought to do before dismissing it. There is also plenty of other evidence, though little of the original research seems to be available online -- e.g. the crucial European Safety Council report or the 1996 EEVC tests.
But in any case, you are getting the burden of proof back-to-front. If drivers want to fit to their vehicles a device designed to to alter its impact characteristics away from the norms set down by carefully-researched safety regulations, they should be able to produce some fairly conclusive research which shows that these devices won't make things worse.
Since rigid bully bars are specifically designed to protect the vehicle at the expense of a object they hit, it's hard to see why they should be permitted unless there is some very conclusive evidence that they don't work as intended.
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bedfordr1: some good points, well made
The Land Rover driver may also have the benefit of better sight lines and therefore avoid the accidents.
I was only taking bullbars and mascots as exmaples. If a testing authority shows an accessory as safe then I have no wish to penalise owners.
I just wished to make the point that crash safety for other road users should also be a consideration - not just oneself / family.
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bedfordr1: some good points, well made The Land Rover driver may also have the benefit of better sight lines and therefore avoid the accidents.
Talking of sight lines, does anybody else think that modern cars, with their massive pillars each side of the windscreen, actually increase the risk to pedestrians by creating two large blind spots?
This was brought home to me some years back when I had the pleasure of using a Rover P6 3500 as a daily car. Not only was this an amazingly good car to drive but I particularly appreciated the amount of forward visibility you get with no need to move your head from side to side.
My current Chrysler Pacifica is a good car but leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to actually being able to see out!
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Yes ,Vauxhall Combi Van.
The front pillars are huge and most drivers at work complain about them.
Why do they not put side mirrors back on the wing ,they extend the pillar into a huge block which makes things worse.
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'Avoid anything with bullbars, mascots etc.'
Mascots,like Jag.have to snap off.Bullbars should be banned,they are usually at just the right height to hit a child's head.
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>>Surely anyone should be worried that in a spate of deaths NOT CAUSED BY SPEEDING, speed cameras are being installed, because this will NOT solve the problem.>>
But at 20mph you've got more chance to see the hazard, braking, your stopping distance will be shorter and the severity of injury will be less.
Is that not correct?
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...whereas at 40 the hazard is already some yards behind you when it becomes a hazard... :-)
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I recall reading some months ago of a driver who was prosecuted for dangerous (it might have been careless) driving when he passed a school at 30mph at chucking out time. The police considerd that to be an excessive speed under the prevailing circumstances. I think they were right. Some drivers don't seem to think.
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In reply to above, yes you are correct, 20mph is safer,and guess what,10mph is safer still, but what has that got to do with speed cameras, specially if the're set for 45mph in a 40 limit?
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>>Surely anyone should be worried that in a spate of deaths NOT CAUSED BY SPEEDING, speed cameras are being installed, because this will NOT solve the problem.>> >> But at 20mph you've got more chance to see the hazard, braking, your stopping distance will be shorter and the severity of injury will be less. Is that not correct?
I think you've missed the point.
If someone hits a child at 30mph, in a 30mph zone, and the response is to install a speed camera, then how exactly will that help prevent it happening again? If the car wasn't breaking the speed limit to start with then a speed camera is not likely to have much effect.
A child was killed recently near my house by a car travelling well below the speed limit for the road, unfortunately the child ran out of a field directly in front of the car. The response of the local authority has been to stick in a speed sign that flashes if you break the speed limit, that's pretty pointless to begin with seeing as the car was below the speed limit, and it becomes ridiculous when you realise that they have actually sited it three quaters of a mile down the road where you get out of the national speed limit and down into a 30mph zone that has footpaths etc. They say that this will help prevent similar accidents happening again, I'd love to know how...
Blue
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