PR185: Road Safety Bill fails, good riddance says Safe Speed
News: For immediate release
The widely discussed Road Safety Bill has run out of time and failed according to the epolitix parliamentary web site.
The main features of the failed bill included:
* Enabled roadside evidential breath testing
* Introduced graduated fixed penalties for speed limit offences
* Banned speed enforcement detection devices
* Added three licence points to mobile phone offences
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign (www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Like many things in road safety, the 'obvious' view often proves to be wrong, and much of this bill was actually likely to make road safety worse. Good riddance!"
"The road safety bill represented the culmination and extension of a decade's flawed and oversimplified thinking at the highest levels in UK road safety. National road safety policy over the last decade has been a disaster propped up only with millions of pounds spent on spin and twisted statistics. Any decent policy would have driven road deaths down, but instead we've had the £700 million pound speed camera programme which has actually made the roads more dangerous. Deaths are UP."
"Let's make sure we see the end of the team and their oversimplified thinking with the forthcoming general election. We have to get back to the policies that gave us the safest roads in the world in the first place. So far only the Conservatives are offering intelligent forward thinking policies. I expect motorists will know how to vote."
<ends>
Epolitix on the Bill's failure:
https://www.epolitix.com/EN/Legislation/200411/f0074bff-ee2e-409e-a870-f16d027adc\
a4.htm
Example detailed analysis on graduated speeding penalties:
(Safe Speed's consultation response)
https://www.safespeed.org.uk/consultation.html
Or as a Word document:
https://www.safespeed.org.uk/consultation.doc
You may quote from our consultation response.
About Safe Speed
================
The Safe Speed road safety campaign is primarily the work of engineer-turned road safety analyst Paul Smith.
Since setting up Safe Speed in 2001, Paul Smith, 49, an advanced motorist and road safety enthusiast, and a professional engineer of 25 years UK experience, has carried out over 8,000 hours of research into the overall effects of speed camera policy on UK road safety. We believe that this is more work in more detail than anything carried out by any other organisation. Paul's surprising conclusion is that overall speed cameras make our roads more dangerous. Paul has identified and reported a number of major flaws and false assumptions in the claims made for speed cameras, and the whole "speed kills" system of road safety.
The inescapable conclusion is that we should urgently return to the excellent road safety policies that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the World in the first place.
Safe Speed does not campaign against speed limits or appropriate enforcement of motoring laws, but argues vigorously that automated speed enforcement is neither safe nor appropriate.
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