1. RESTORE DISCRETION IN TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT
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 technocracy took hold, making drivers scapegoats for a failing system. It said:

“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” =

Replace ‘Policing by Coercion’ with Sirv Robert Peel’s ‘Policing By Consent’

• This policy from 1947 was our default position for many years and embodies wisdom that resonates with drivers and road traffic officers to this day; people who see it as nothing more than a return to reasonableness and common sense.
  
   
• It is a doctrine of discretion consistent with the cherished principle of ‘Policing by Consent’ which served Britain so well for many years but which we have allowed  to be trashed by ‘over-the-top’ intrusive enforcement practices as policing has become more impersonal and technocratic. We urgently need a restoration.
  
  
• Drivers today are subjected to a comprehensive ‘war of attrition’ which this reform will rectify so far as the speed enforcement aspect is concerned. It advocates discernment between those drivers who warrant police attention whilst getting off the backs of those who don’t. This is what adopting the reform would achieve
  
  
• It is not as if the harsh, impersonal enforcement practices have had any tangible road safety benefit because they haven’t. They have only succeeded in breeding resentment amongst the very people we need on our side; decent safe drivers who would not otherwise come into contact with the police or fall foul of the law.  
  
  
• Government has a mandate to govern and if Secretaries of State for Transport believe this reform makes sense then, as our elected representative they should feel able to direct civil servants to see to it that this reform is implemented.
  
  
• If resistance is encountered by quangos or unelected road safety establishment, people, the onus should be on dissenters to convince the electorate of the merit of their system, and that trashing ‘Policing by Consent’ is a price worth paying!