This paper was made available to delegates to the Reform UK Wales Conference in Newport in 2024 and can be used as a handout at conferences or branch meetings
BRITAIN’s SPEED CAMERA POLICY NEEDS REFORM
Great Britain once had the safest roads in the world, then speed cameras took hold. Now we find ourselves in a race to the bottom of the league table.
The “Speed Kills” orthodoxy promoted by government is not supported by their own statistics. Most crashes occur below the speed limit and always involve other factors.
Speed limit setting is arbitrary anyway meaning drivers are criminalised for technical breaches of ‘absolute’ offences, given no discretion or any effective right of appeal
Government propaganda focuses on speed alone claiming that speed cameras save lives, ignoring the fact that cameras often make the roads more dangerous, not less.
Technocracy is said to be “The Trojan Horse of the New World Order”. Globalist Prime Minister Tony Blair made ‘control by technocratic tyranny’ the ‘new normal’.
The Blair zeitgeist enabled governments to create an industry funded by driving fines whilst removing proven road safety practices that taxes were supposed to pay for.
This is cynical ‘policing by coercion’. Drivers and crash victims pay the heaviest price for this scam; more people killed or injured on our roads than would be otherwise be
A return to proper road traffic policing pre Blair is needed. Replace the spurious “Speed Kills” mantra with a positive aspirational maxim: “Better Driving Saves Lives”.
All road users have a role to play in creating a national culture of safer roads. Instead of gas-lighting drivers then, see them as part of the solution, not part of the problem!
Criminalising good people must stop. Instead we must restore consensual Road Traffic Policing and insist that the Drivier and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) raises its game.
A true ‘Brexit Britain’ can break the grip of Blair’s globalist influence and restore our position as the envy of the world in road safety matters by a return to first principles.
Bold leadership will be required which the legacy main parties may be incapable of because of groupthink, cognitive dissonance and their alignment with the status quo.
Only fresh thinking, independent-minded MPs can to take this mission forward, backed by like-minded drivers, crash victims’ families and safety campaigners who support our ‘FIVE REFORMS FOR SAFER ROADS THROUGH BETTER DRIVING’
FIVE REFORMS FOR SAFER ROADS THROUGH BETTER DRIVING
1. Government To Endorse The Report of the Road Safety Commission 1947
This report set the tone that enabled Britain to have the safest roads in the world before technology took hold and drivers were made scapegoats for a failing system!
“Any system under which fear becomes the controlling factor in obtaining the required reaction among so large a section of the public who, as individuals, are generally law abiding, is not, we think, likely to produce the most effective results. The British public co-operates with the police because the relationship between them is generally one of friendly understanding rather than submission to obtrusive authority, and the more it is realised that the policeman is the friend of the motorist and cyclist who wishes to be a thoroughly safe driver or rider, though the deadly enemy of the deliberate offender, the greater will be the co-operation between the police and road users and the sooner will the standard of road behaviour be improved”
2. Driving Standards Agency to Rethink Driver Training and Licensing
A common language and understanding of how to minimise crash risk should be part of a lifelong-learning approach which drivers revisit at key points in their driving careers. The profoundly important book ‘Mind Driving – New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’ satisfies this need through its ‘Speed-Surprise-Space’ Risk Model. Unlike ‘speed kills’, this actually defines safety but has so far been ignored by the DSA. A form of Progressive Licensing Scheme, (e.g. Preliminary, Provisional and Full licences), should be considered in which every driver must be able to explain the Risk Model and demonstrate applying it in practice before they can progress to the next level of competence. Retaining that level can then become a badge of honour.
3. Police Forces To Reinstate Locally-Based Road Traffic Patrols
There is no substitute for police traffic officers with local knowledge patrolling every community, known and trusted because they work in accordance with the 1947 Road Safety Commission philosophy. This will facilitate intelligence-led traffic policing with officers using professional discretion as to how best to deal with errant drivers. This will overcome the impersonal technocratic approach which only breeds resentment.
4. Restore Sensible Speed Limit Setting Using The 85th Percentile Rule
This scientific approach to speed limit setting optimises safe traffic flow and allows meaningful thresholds to be set for advice, enforcement and prosecution to facilitate mainly voluntary lifelong learning and re-training in the spirit of ‘Policing by Consent’
5. Involve Local Communities In This Enlightened Approach To Road Safety
By supporting Mind Driving courses within local community education provision and acquainting people with crash maps and causation data healthy local interest can be generated leading to a national culture of safer driving in partnership with the police.
A version of the above paper can be downloaded here….