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Speeding without financial cost
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Finally one insurance company has now conceded that having points on your license for speeding doesn't make you anymore of a risk than drivers with no penalty points. And will no longer be charging increased premiums for drivers with upto 9 penalty points :yippe:
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Personally I think this is good news, there are far to many speed cameras in pointless places. The majority just seem to be a money making machine.
It also happens that this insurance company will get a flurry of new customers from all the free publicity. Far from me to suggest this is just a public relations stunt
What do you think? Does this mean drivers are going to be getting away without punishment or is the fine punishment enough? Or is this a better way to look at things. Are there already far too many speed cameras and people are getting points, and its time speeding was put into context ?
Thoughts ?
EDIT: Oh and for the record; I have 3 points for speeding.
:thumb:
Full Story
Personally I think this is good news, there are far to many speed cameras in pointless places. The majority just seem to be a money making machine.
It also happens that this insurance company will get a flurry of new customers from all the free publicity. Far from me to suggest this is just a public relations stunt
What do you think? Does this mean drivers are going to be getting away without punishment or is the fine punishment enough? Or is this a better way to look at things. Are there already far too many speed cameras and people are getting points, and its time speeding was put into context ?
Thoughts ?
EDIT: Oh and for the record; I have 3 points for speeding.
:thumb:
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Comments
Ah thanks my first reply. :hyper:
I agree though, doing 80/90 mph on the motorway isn't a big offense in my book, however driving 50/60 through a housing estate full of children is.
A think it's exactly what they claim. If you can get 3 points for going through a speed camera at 32, then it's not really an accurate reflection of who the dangerous drivers are anymore. Previously, if you got 3 points after being pulled over by the police, you knew your were driving dangerously and were more of a risk.
What about people who recieve points for using a mobile or for driving without due care? Will they now be let off?
Sets a dangerous precedent.
No, what sets a dangerous precident is that someone going through a speed camera at 32 gets 3 points, and boy racers are free to speed at 100mph where they know there are no cameras, because of a lack of police patrols. The insurance company is simply reacting to the fact that penalty points no longer represent a true risk to them.
Incidentally it has been shown that casualties track speed limit changes (Rock, 1995) and those observed to drive faster have more accidents (Wasielewski, 1984). F. McKenna has developed a digital video test in which they can show that those who choose the top 10 percent of speeds are about twice as likely to have a crash.
As I understand it, government guidelines suggest that there should have been at least 4 serious or fatal accidents per Km in the last 3 years at a site in order for a safety camera to be installed. Although I don't agree with where the revenue goes from speed cameras, I do think they are legitimately placed in high risk areas.
I think this sort of move does undermine the law, implying that speeding offences are somehow less important than other offences, like driving while using a mobile phone. Research like Parker (1995) has shown that accident liability was predicted by self-report tendency to commit violations like speeding, and that those who reported driving at high speeds also had a tendency to commit other high risk driving behaviours like close following etc.
I guess it is up to the insurance company though and they will analyse the data and I suppose are entitled to change their minds should it come about that those with points for speeding on their license are in a higher risk category, it would be interesting to know.
Well of course, those who regularly speed are more likely to have a crash, because it gives you less time to react. But again, a speed camera can't tell whether you regularly speed, or you just happened to be speeding at that particular moment in time. I guarantee you anyone who regularly speeds knows exactly where all of the cameras are, which is why cameras reduce accidents in the area they are placed, yet fail to reduce overall accidents on the roads. Because they almost always catch the people making a mistake, rather than the people deliberately driving fast. Police patrols don't do this.
You're right of course, speed cameras can't tell whether you regularly speed or not, however what they do is catch people going at speeds inappropriate for the road who would not otherwise have been caught, whether those people make a regular habit of speeding or not. Research has also shown that driving at night is a particular risk especially for younger drivers, so even when the roads are quiet increasing speed can be completely inappropriate, especially when you can come across unexpected hazards or other drivers partaking in dangerous driving because they've been lulled into a false sense of security from the fact that the roads are quieter.
Those that do speed regularly are of course more of a risk in general but the fact is speeding at all increases the chances of fatality in an accident for every mile per hour you increase your speed by, as well as increasing reaction times etc. Whats more, being caught by a speed camera is a voluntary offence, you know there are speed cameras in the area as signs are posted everywhere, you know what the consequences of being caught speeding will be, effectively the signs are telling you "if you choose to drive over the speed limit in this area you will be caught and have to pay a £60 fine and have 3 points on your license", you know the camera has been placed in an area where there have been serious crashes in the last few years, I think if you then *still* get caught speeding then you're either committing an intentional violation or you've experienced a total lapse of attention, both actions are equally dangerous and the consequences would be the same if you were to come across an unexpected hazard.
The fact is, people just don't see the risk as applying personally to them, for whatever reason we don't feel vulernable when we are driving. McKenna (1993) did a survey of 20000 drivers, and only 4% of those rated themselves as less skillful than the average driver. While I do think there is a valid argument for driving to the conditions, I also think that speed limits are there for a reason and that speeding is no less dangerous than other risky driving behaviours that the insurance company isn't letting people off the hook for committing.
Perhaps a tiered system would be more accurate, so that 30-35mph gets you one point (a £60 fine is still a pretty strong deterrent, plus a shade more on your next insurance quote), 35-40mph gets you two points, and 40mph or more gets you three. I don't see why it's always in multiples of 3.
Yeah I do agree with that to some extent and think it is much easier to accidentally do a few miles over the speed limit every now and then and that this shouldn't be treated in the same way as those that intentionally do 50 mph in a 30 area or similar. However there is also the difficulty again of conditions, as driving at 35mph in a very busy road with lots of hazards may be more dangerous than driving at similar speeds on less busy roads. I think it would be very difficult to implement a system whereby the road conditions could be assessed and the driver's choice of speed punished according to those road conditions. It wouldn't be practical to have traffic officers at every safety camera site, so the next best thing is to penalise everyone who speeds along that dangerous stretch of road. Personally I would rather that those doing 35mph and those doing 50mph were both penalised for speeding than neither of them.
Although speed may not be the main cause of accidents I certainly think it is going to be a contributing factor to all accidents; an accident caused by fatigue or the inexperience of a new driver would be worse if excessive speeds were involved at some point, although speed itself may not be identified as the cause of the accident.
I just think that actions such as these do undermine the law and send out the message that speeding is an acceptable driving behaviour. Even if speed was only the cause of 1% of crashes, if that can be changed in some way then I would want it to be, because other causes of accidents like fatigue or inexperience are more difficult to alter.
Depends. Speeding shouldn't be illegal.
So it would be perfectly legal to drive at 60mph around a busy housing estate ?
Try telling that to anyone who has ever been in an accident where a driver (not them) has been speeding.
There is a reason for speed limits.
I was thinking this as well.:chin:
:no: He would have found more hairs to split
1. Ever thought about preventing injuries?
2. Then again, why would we? The parts which are damaged could be replaced from the stock of poor people looking to sell something so that they can feed their kids.
3. Do you have any idea of the damage caused to a child by a car travelling at 60 mph?
All roads should be privately owned. So it depends on the road owner whether they want speed limits or not.
I should care because...??
0/10. Piss poor marks for subtlety. Must try harder.
Roads are funded by taxation, which is taken by force.
OK.
Hey, soon they won't have to be privately owned for that to be the case.
Why not? Toll roads is just one solution the marketplace could offer.
Are you for real ?
And how many would be priced out of the road?
And there was me thinking you libertarians/freemarket fundamentalists were all about having to pay as little and amassing as much wealth as possible... Funny way to go about it