Tis just wot i thinks OK
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Ok, so this is my view on speed traps and speeding. I accept that there is a problem with speed in some areas, and i also accept that there is a connection between speed and road deaths. But i don't agree with the amount of emphasis being put on the link between road accidents/deaths and speed, i have witnessed some well dodgy driving over the years, is this to do with speed?

Well some times dodgy driving may involve speed, but we have all heard the classic line " Sorry Mate i did not see you", is that because they were driving too fast ? Could be, but more likely it is because the majority of car drivers today are in another world when they drive, cars are quieter, stereos are louder and people think less of others and more of where they need to be, every one is in a hurry to get there.

Also most vehicles are more much more responsive these days so people's driving style has changed, more risks are taken, actions are taken later and later as people get more and more confident. It is my opinion, unfortunately, that a large majority of people on the road do not have the road awareness to be deemed as competent drivers, and this i feel is a much larger contributor to road accidents/deaths than that of speed.

So what is the answer ? Well apparently it is to sneak about with radar speed traps, erect Gatso's and fine the motorists of Britain to hell and back add more and more points and have the gaul to claim that it is for our safety not financial gain.

The fact that the insurance companies are also cashing in on this just adds further insult to injury, rumor has it that the insurance companies are to consider 3 points to be good reson to load your premium.

Perhaps more emphasis should be put on driver awareness, how, i don't know, but there are people employed to do that job, so maybe they should look into it more.

For the biker i would suggest that perhaps they could be cut a little slack on the loud exhaust issue, a louder bike is better to hear than a standard one, many standard bikes are quieter than a modern day car and stand less chance of being heard in the traffic.

Maybe the cost of processing all of the fines and court costs of the bikers that get caught for having a non standard number plate and exhaust system could be better spent on improving driver awareness and consideration on the road. Are these offending items really so terrible that they warrant all the police time and funding that goes into it?

Any one read Max power lately? any one seen all the boy racers with thier 10' exhuasts (Verry often louder than my bike) , 1000 wat stereo and neon washer jets. I have no problem with this, but why do we get so much grief for doin the same with our bikes.

And do motorcycle police have to under take grumpy training or does it come naturally, not all, but a good many motorcycle cops that i have encountered over the years have given me a really hard time... !

Is it little wonder that bikers have a bad attitude towards the police and the government,

So that is it, rant over. If you have read this all the way through then i thank you, and commend your endurance. However i don't think i am to far off the mark... am i ?

Ace.

I have to agree with TC on this. Nothing much really to add other than my experience of bike cops has been somewhat different. Those I have come across have been chatty and genuine though I've never actually fallen foul of them. I can however appreciate that times have changed since TC's day and they don't all get to exercise the same level of discretion that TC described. The orders come down from on high and they have to be seen to follow them even though they may not agree. It can be a little wearing having to pull people for these offences when you know in truth it won't actually make a blind bit of difference and will only turn people against you when a friendly word in their shell like and treating them like human beings instead of just statistics may just work. Its no surprise then that sometimes their sense of humour may seem to be lacking from time to time having pulled 20 people for the same piece of stupidity that day.

Having said that there are always the jobsworths in any profession who will choose not to use any discretion and will pull you for any reason. You may have been unfortunate enough to come across a few of those.

Which reminds me, today I noticed two police pans parked in George St in Edinburgh in a rather unusual position, then I saw two officers helping a young lady climb into her Range Rover via the sun roof as she'd locked the keys inside. They certainly had smiles on their faces as did everyone walking past. They could have said not our problem call a garage/AA/RAC but no they stopped to help.

Nice reply T.C, it is important to get both sides of the coin, and i agree with you mostly.

It is true that there are far to many riders who do little to promote the biker in a favourable light. I think that this topic was covered in another thread in this forum somewhere, the general consensus was that there are too many plonkers who think that they are budding Dave Cotes or Sonny ferguson's, but on the public highway.

It is easy to see how the bobby would get shirty with such tombfoolery, as far as bad attitudes are concerned, i make that comment not as a blanket critisisum but there have been reports from our area that some Motorcycle police seem to be against the biker rather than just policeing them, i hasten to say that luckily i have no first hand expirence. Having said that we have several large charity runs around the Bristol area which are given a police escort and they work in conjunction with marshalls from the group and it has always been very friendly.

As regards to the exhaust and number plate issue, i dont moan about the police pulling bikers for such things, i am well aware that they have laws to enforce and rightly so, any thing less would be a failing on their behalf.

My gripe is with the governing bodies that implement such laws, is an after market exhaust so bad? Ok some may poopoo that coment, but when i sit in my front room and i can hear next doors telly most evenings, the bloke over the back mowing his lawn at 8 am on a sunday, the local boys pumping drum & base as they pass the house is my exhaust realy so bad (not that my motad is loud, but you get my drift).
I will actualy endorse the "Loud pipes save lives" theory, as a car driver as well i regulary hear bikes coming up behind me in traffic when it has an after market zorst, but i am some times suprised when a bike filters past me in standard form with little more than a wizzy purr, and i look out for bikes ( so i should).

Ok it might not save lives, but at least it gives the biker more of a chance of letting the car driver know they are along side them before they decide to swing across the lane without so much as an amber flash.

Number plates, ok, so this may be petty, but if i were to have a standard size number plate on my bike, it would be ripped off on the first big bump in the road. I am not saying that i agree with the ridiculously small plates, but mine is a slightly under sized oblong plate with one size down from legal letters, this was good enough to be caught on a gatso and be perfectly visible, i have the pic. For those of us who like to build and modify bikes, a standard size plate often just wont fit where it is ment or looks daft, yes other countries do have bigger plates, but most also have thier tax verification included as well.

So there.... :tounge:

It is all food for thought and i dare say that it will be discussed for years to come.

Good topic Ace, balanced replies from both sides of the coin if you like.
i have to agree with T.C.
in my position as a NAM representative, it has to be said that bikers as a whole dont help themselves, as is often the case its the "one bad apple" that spoils the fun for most of us.
i hear what you're saying about modifying bikes, i'm all for bikes being anything but boring-who wants to ride a bike that looks like 100's of similar rides? (well most of my punters if they are anything to go by, but thats another issue)

i've seen the police attitude change over the years, we used to get moved on for no other reason that we were seen as a threat to the residents of Tynemouth & Whitley Bay-on our fizzies we must have looked an evil/frightening lot
when i had my gs1000 i was told by the local bike cop that he'd have my license within a month(unfortunately for him, it was the day b4 i went to the states touring for 6 weeks )
we had a high ranking traffic div officer who thought he could win us over by sending out an unmarked 'blade with camera onboard at weekends & goading peeps into racing"operation fireblade" was not a success. we now have "operation weekender" whereby you get a talking to, a yellow card or a red card depending on the severity of the deed.red cards have to take council run re-training at their own expense, but if you do it you dont get prosecuted or suffer the hike in ins because of it.yellow cards are for incidents where no other vehicle was involved & you are STRONGLY advised to attend a police masterclass with the opportunity to have an assesed ride from the likes of myself, & of course the chance to join NAM & go for the Advanced test.
all in all i think we are getting there(at least up here) & the police riders are only human(probably) if you ride like a tit & give them verbal, then what should you expect?.
i often exceed the speed limit on nationals, but only where i consider it safe, my bike (the zzr) is not what you would call inconspiciuos, but i've never been stopped on it.theres a time & place for everything & i like to blow the cobwebs out once in a while, just like the next biker.the difference is perhaps with my training & awareness of how vunerable we all are as bikers(i've seen the police photos of bike incidents in Northumbria )together with my supposed maturity,the fact that my loved ones will suffer, have tempered my riding habits over the years.
i agree about gatsos, put them in places of high accident rates & outside schools etc, but not on a 70 that goes to a 50 within half a mile(in order to catch 1000+ "offenders" at 60 quid a pop.
i'm attending a meeting with the officer responsible for operation weekender on monday morning-i'll let you know how it goes if anyones interested.

right need a lie down now
rant over

I need to think about this one, i'll be back.

I think speed cameras are in general a good idea but.... what really gets my goat is when drivers speed BETWEEN the cameras and then SLAM the breaks on just in time for the next one. This happens a lot near where we live, its a 60 mph ring-road and cameras are in place all over it. One of the cameras, near a bend, has been damaged, removed and not replaced but because the lines on the road are still in place drivers think its still there. Surely it is more dangerous to speed between cameras and try to get the anchors on in time for the next one. I've seen cars in convoys tailgating at speed and you can fair feel the fear of the back marker as the front ones slam on!!

DICKHEADS in my opinion.

i have a theory,
if we all set off 10 mins earlier then we wouldnt be needing to do excess speed.
if only it were that simple............
if you actually weighed up the time saved in racing twixt cameras-minus the cost of brake pads & extra petrol used in doing so, would you still come out on top?
its unfortunate, but its a way of life, rushing from place to place.
our local 3 lane carriageway has been altered & now consists of 2 lanes & the vast majority of what was lane 1 now chevroned off-result some dickhead in the fast lane doing 50mph-everyone sits behind them-lane 2? empty-what happened to road lane discipline?
its alright for me to say this, but the test standard is falling, i've seen peeps pass the bike test who really shouldnt, but the system is the best weve got.
too many peeps in too much of a hurry, thinking only of themselves, most i like to think actually are aware of what they're doing-just have the "it wont happen to me" syndrome-its the ones who havent got a clue about the consequences of their actions that scare me

gosh this is deep stuff innit?
got to take another nap......

I agree with all the points brought forward here, Gatsos are over all a good idea, but as pointed out some are not placed in appropriate locations for accident prevention.

I agree also about the setting off earlier to allow more time for travel, but it is not always a matter of trying to get some where on time, i am no angel, having brought this topic up i am also guilty of riding too fast at times, it is an enjoyment thing more so for me. But i am aware of my mortality and the effects that it could have on others should some thing go wrong and i have to constantly re-asess my riding.

This is helped my recent experiences of other riders coming unstuck infront of me, verry scary and unpleasant, i still get flash backs when i am out rideing and constantly remind my self that "It could be me".

The key i believe is to personal rider awareness, i ride with the constant thought that some one or some thing unexpected will happen at any moment and i am constantly looking forward and rearward to see what other road users are doing, where they are looking, how they position their vehicle is a good indication as to what their next move will be, call it predictive riding if you like, not infalable but has saved my bacon on many occasion.

I really get annoyed when I read about speed cameras just being revenue gatherers. I think they're a good idea, not everybody has the same level of skill so what may be an appropriate speed for one person won't be for another.
I work for a charity for children with special needs, one of the kids I used to look after was a normal healthy child until he was hit by a driver doing 40 in a 30 mph road. The boy had ran out in front of the car without warning but the driver or their insurance company was successfully sued because if they had been driving down the road at 30 mph they wouldn't have been in the same place as the boy at the same time, he was awarded a million pounds compensation. The boy suffered serious head injury and brain damage, he wasn't expected to live and if he did they thought he would be in a vegetative state but he surprised everybody and made remarkable progress. That said he has little use of the left side of his body and he's now epileptic.
I'm no saint I speed but I'll only do it on roads I know well, in short blasts when there's not much traffic.
If my four year old son was killed or badly injured by a driver/biker with a small numberplate and they used the excuse that speed isn't an important factor in accidents they'd never breathe another word again.
Increase cameras outside every school, decrease them on dual carriageways and the like but don't whinge if you break the law and are caught.

I don't think there are any people who would complain about the use of cameras to slow people down in built up areas or accident blackspots. Is there use in places that do not fall into those criteria which annoys me.

We're supposed to getting some locally soon. They're aren't going to be situated in any real blackspots. To me, they'll be more about revenue than stopping accidents. One of the roads which will get a camera is more high risk because its the mean route in and out of town. There's too many people on it driving too close to each other and people taking risks pullng out of junctions because they been waiting too long. The last time I can remember a fatal accident there was about 9 years ago, although the has been a good few shunts.