Why did the chicken cross the road?
In Sheffield, 12-year-old schoolboy Luke O'Hara was knocked down by a car on the dual carriageway and killed. Well, he wasn't really a schoolboy because as one neighbour says "He was completely out of control and ran wild in the area. He hardly ever went to school and was always causing trouble".
The car was travelling below the posted speed limit, and the police have said that the driver had no chance to avoid the collision. This was because Luke was high on ecstasy, had been smoking cannabis and was playing "chicken" with the traffic.
This hasn't stopped the boy's mother speaking to the local newspaper and calling for the road to be "made safer".
Look, Madam, we're all very sorry for your tragic loss, but if you're really serious about making the road safer, try nailing your other children's feet to the floor.
Well done, civil servants! How clever are you?
Our heartfelt congratulations to the Department for Transport, whose road safety campaign "Think!" has just won an award for "its success in reducing road casualties over the last 20 years". They must be really pleased.
Especially pleased, because in fact the road casualty figures have decreased remarkably little in the last twenty years, and most of that improvement was in the first five years of the twenty.
And even more pleased because although the campaign is called "Think!", virtually every road safety measure introduced in the last twenty years has been specifically designed to prevent drivers from doing anything of the sort.
Speed cameras, speed bumps, speed limits, traffic calming, cycle lanes, rules about mobile phones and smoking and eating and scratching your nose while driving - they're all designed to discourage drivers from thinking or taking responsibility for their own decisions, to corral them and coerce them into thoughtless obedience, in some cases even to distract them from the proper job in hand, which is not staring at your speedometer but concentrating on the road ahead, planning manoeuvres and anticipating snags.
Speed kills (1)
Quite a lot of publicity about one Mrs.Cole, who has been in court for driving down the motorway, in the dark, at 10 miles per hour. She was charged under Section 3 of the 1988 Road Traffic Act, "driving without reasonable consideration".
Mrs.Cole is said to suffer from "a clinical fear of driving". The magistrate, banning her for a mere seven days which seems rather lenient to us, said that there was no point making her have another test because the test wouldn't cover motorways or driving at night. Fair enough.
But road safety pressure group "Brake" are outraged. A spokesperson said "This case sends out a very strange message to drivers. Mrs.Cole was not breaking the speed limit or endangering anyone with her actions, yet she received a seven day ban, when we commonly see drivers caught travelling at 80 or 90 mph get away with a fine and three points. While it is not common to encounter someone travelling at 10mph on a motorway, a competent driver should always be looking well ahead and predicting when they need to overtake a slower vehicle".
Pretty rich, really, to be told that (a) the police were wrong, (b) the law is wrong, (c) the court was wrong, and (d) we're all wrong. Especially by an organisation of which, as another spokesperson admitted in a recent Radio 5Live interview, few of the officers ever drive themselves.
Speed kills (2)
The head of roads policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, Meredydd Hughes, has had to stand down because he was caught driving at 90mph in a 60mph limit.
He's still alive though, so evidently speed doesn't completely kill. I expect Mr.Hughes knew that exceeding the speed limit (as opposed to inappropriate speed for the conditions) is a factor in only 5% of fatal or serious injury accidents.
Parking …
Islington could be the first borough in the country to introduce a blanket 20mph speed limit on every one of its streets. It has to get the idea past Transport for London first, though.
And speaking of TfL, they now employ no less than 33 officials to do nothing but deal with the media. Since Ken Livingstone was re-elected three and a half years ago, their budget has gone from £858,990 to £2,491,226. That's an increase of almost 300%.
Now here's a coincidence. In 2000 parking wardens up and down the country issued 800,000 parking tickets. In 2005 it was a staggering 3,402,860 - that's … well, stone the crows, it's an increase of 300%!
Since there hasn't, so far as we know, been a 300% increase in the number of drivers or cars on the road, or a 300% decrease in the amount of space on our roads, there can be only one reason for this. And I think we can all work out what that is?
It's going to get worse, too. The government is introducing new rules for traffic wardens. In future they'll be able to issue tickets without attaching them to the vehicle. Instead, they'll be issued by post solely on the assertion by a warden that they observed the offence being committed.
Never mind, you might think, one can always appeal.
Well, no. Not any longer. So many drivers have successfully appealed against their parking fines that the government have decided to do away with the independent appeals procedure. Instead, each local authority will run its own appeals system.
And I think we know whose side they'll be on …
crossing …
Speaking of rip-offs, the second Severn Bridge cost £300m to build in 1996.
Since then, tolls have netted £684m.
So what are they going to do about it? Yes, you've guessed it … put the tolls up!
quivering …
To ensure that our motoring misery is absolutely complete, the Department for Transport have decided that lorries weighing 60 tons and measuring 80 feet long could soon appear on our roads. A study found that the lorries, two trailers joined together, can transport 60% more and don't compromise road safety (provided the drivers don't forget themselves so far as to start thinking, that is).
… and wondering …
And finally, a news item that we probably do have an opinion about - but we can't quite decide what it is, yet.
Philip Willey blacked out at the wheel and mounted the pavement, killing two pedestrians. He has been jailed for four and a half years for causing death by dangerous driving.
Mr.Willey is a diabetic, and was found to have a blood-sugar reading of 1.9, when a normal level would be between 4 and 7. An ambulance crew at the scene had to give him a glucose solution.
Bit of a poser, this. On the one hand, he doesn't seem to have managed his condition very well, if at all. But on the other hand at the time of the accident he was only doing 40mph, so he probably wasn't driving badly before the blackout. On the third hand (look, I borrowed someone else's hand, all right? Who's telling this, you or me?) two innocent people are dead.
But … four and half years in prison for making a mistake, however serious the consequences?
He'd have been better off if he'd just got out of his car and battered the old dears to death with a baseball bat.
The GOS says: We pinched all these news items from "On The Road", the journal of the Association of British Drivers. The ABD is an excellent, articulate and very serious organisation and, now that the AA and the RAC have turned themselves into little more than money-making machines, virtually the only effective voice left to speak up for the beleaguered motorist in the UK.
We've joined. So should you.
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Copyright © 2008 The GOS
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