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Godfrey BloomGodfrey Bloom says speeding "has nothing to do with accidents", considers standing for Westminster
Colourful European Parliament member Godfrey Bloom says speed has nothing to do with accidents, and Britain’s 30 million drivers are “the most oppressed group of people” in the country. He’s considering running for election to the UK Parliament as an MP for fringe pressure group the Drivers’ Union.
The former UKIP MEP now sits in Brussels as an independent. He left UKIP earlier this year after saying that a group of female party members who did not clean behind their fridges were “sluts”.
Now he is taking aim at the police and road safety charities for their emphasis on the role of speeding in road crashes.
He said: “Speed is not the offence. In law the offence is driving without due care and attention or reckless driving.
“Speeding on its own is meaningless. It has nothing to do with accidents.”
According to Department for Transport statistics, exceeding the speed limit was a factor in 194 fatal crashes in 2012, and a further 1,295 that resulted in serious injuries. A driver travelling too fast for the conditions was cited as a contributory factor in 183 fatal collisions.
Mr Bloom claims to have evidence that speed cameras are placed to raise revenue.
He said: “The police can set a trap for you and then they can intimidate you into taking one of their profit-making driving courses. I don’t know of anything else in the British constitution where the police can suspend prosecutions in exchange for money.”
And he doesn’t like the way road safety charities “make their points using the grieving mothers of road accident victims.
“You get these emotional women talking about how their child has been killed. But those people are killed because the driver wasn’t driving with due care and attention.”
As executive patron of the Drivers’ Union, Bloom has associated himself with an organisation whose founder, Keith Peat has claimed that road design “induces” drivers to speed, and who argues against 20 mph speed limits by claiming that “every 1 mph we slow road transport is about 2-3 billion a year from the economy.”
Unsurprisingly, then, Bloom also opposes 20mph speed limits, which he claims have made the streets less safe.
He said: “The extension of 20mph zones is actually causing more accidents.
“Pedestrians aren’t paying the same level of attention and, for drivers, it’s difficult to maintain a speed under 20mph. You have people looking at the dashboard, making sure the needle’s at 19mph, rather than the road.”
However, he said he had not yet decided to run for Parliament he was “just getting my feet under table” at the Drivers’ Union, but added: “I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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89 comments
Oh I see now. A 'troll is someone with a valid point of view that you cannot fault but simply don't like? Thank God for democracy and free speech I say.
FFS
If you put as much effort into web design as you do the monumental outpouring of crap you spout, then your website wouldn't be a 90's looking monstrosity.
I've got some photos of European cities with bicycles in. Some of them are road bikes. Does that disprove his photos? I'm I myth busting his myth busting?
I'm a particular fan of the photo of Liege, the one with the silver Ford Galaxy, which shows that Liege isn't a cycling city...............
The photo was taken on the autoroute. (Top tip Keith, airbrush the blue signs next time, they're a dead giveaway)
Speed is a 'factor' in all accidents including walking into a telegraph pole.
'Speeding' is not a factor even if present. It's the act of too fast at any speed will be a factor. Don't mix 'speed' with 'speeding'. That's what the Speeding Industry want you to do. I have gone to a great deal of trouble to explain this in detail here. http://bit.ly/QlE23D
KP
Good job Godfrey! Finally someone said it. I'm sick of cyclists who think they are better than car drivers or just cyclists who don't know how to behave on roads. Which is a vast majority, at least where I live.
And here we can observe the common internet troll in its natural habitat... *sigh*
So, other than the road situation, what is La La Land like?
Speed is involved in every road traffic accident, but only 'inappropriate speed' causes accidents.
Allowing a driver to drive at the 'optimum' speed for the road enhances concentration, anticipation and awareness. Draconian enforcement of speed limits in areas where marginal encroachments over the limit have been accepted as normal safe driving, is doing nothing to enhance road safety.
Bloom is a buffoon, but this is not a straightforward topic. The relationship between speed limits and safety is complex, and requires intelligent enforcement to add value.
By definition any speed above the maximum allowed by law is an 'inappropriate speed'. It is a *maximum* btw, you are allowed to drive slower than the maximum.
How do you control and enforce 'appropriate speeds', in any given area, at any particular time and under varying conditions?
Are 100% of the driving public sufficiently skilled and experienced, even immediately after they've passed their test, to determine the correct 'appropriate speed' under all conditions?
Err but how do you know the limit is appropriate, who set it, and what was his expertise?
I survey many speed limit orders and most I survey are not for any other reason that some parochial councillor wants to get re-elected. Many where no accidents are happening at all indicating that the existing limit is fine.
Since 2006, the sensible formula by which limits had previously been set, the 85% tile rule, was abandoned for a totally arbitrary Hobson's choice method.
But you are supporting my other posts that it has nothing to do with the limit at all but driving within the conditions and circumstances and most drivers are doing that all the time. If not there'd be piles of wreckage at every corner.
Bet he loses his deposit if he stands. He's to the right of the average Daily Mail reader, and a good deal less rational. His record speaks for itself. Even UKIP didn't want him.
wonder how this numptard would feel after being hit by
a speeding motorist !!!!
perhaps a phone call or two to make ...
Godfrey bloom says it's Ok to drive faster in urban areas. Wow I'm impressed he's such an ex-spurt (sic). Isn't that contrary to all the other statistical experts.
We could save a a Euro billion by retiring this old outa touch nutter.
Oh, by the way, I like this story. Reminds me of how sane I am. Perhaps I will stand for Europe...
I'm sorry...? He branded a group of women who don't clean behind their fridges as 'sluts'! Bizarre.
Seriously though, more cycling news stories please.
I wonder which oil / car manufacturer company boards he sits on? Slime ball. You can tell he was slapped with wet fish by his head boy when at school!
None, apparently. Although he is an adviser to Cambridge University Women's Rugby, and a member "Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality", a significant proportion of which seems to be, er, female [1]. Let us not forget perhaps his finest moment about not sending aid to "bongo bongo land" [2].
UKIP withdrew the party whip from Mr Bloom over his recent "sluts" comments. When UKIP thinks someone's gone a bit far, you know something's gone wrong. It's like being thrown out of a graveyard by the residents for being a bit quiet.
Credit and kudos to Victoria Cohen for ripping the proverbial out of him on HIGNFY though.
[1] - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/28513/GODFREY_BLOOM_home.html (related links to committee and declaration of interests)
[2] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMym8bX4guE
The driving slut.
CLOWN.
As an MEP is elected by proportional representation, and no one personally voted for Godfrey, and he no longer represents a party, why is what he thinks relevant?
The only person with less credibility than this idiot is Christopher Monckton.
ROSPA statistics
http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/driving/speed/
Speeding is a contributory factor in 24% of road deaths.
Godfrey is an idiot.
Well, as much as he is generally an arse, it's not speed (in the sense of breaking the speed limit) per se that's the issue. It's inappropriate speed that's the problem.
In a lot of situations, driving 30 mph in a 30 zone is dangerously fast. On the other hand, it's quite often perfectly safe to go well above 70 mph (heck, people in Germany drive way faster than that with - AFAIK - not significantly more accidents on the motorway). On motorways, the key factor is speed appropriate distance - and checking mirrors. Similarly, quite frequently 70 mph is way too fast, as the recent incident on Shepney Bridge showed.
maybe some homepage preferences in the user settings:
I want to see stories about (tick those that apply):
[] Shiny Stuff
[] Swivel Eyed Loons
[] Serious Depressing Stuff
[] Helmets / Hi Viz / Rapha
[] Kittens
No, no, no, no!
Please don't give this idiot more coverage.
road.cc - I thought you were better than this.
Can we put up a pro-cycling candidate against him?
Just which constituency of inward looking dimwits voted for this misogynist swivel eyed loon?
Its because of the EU, and the pointless nature of the EU parliament, that buffoons like Bloom and Farage (and far worse, like Nick Griffen) get a high-profile (and well-remunerated) platform.
People treat EU elections as a chance for a protest vote, hence all sorts of ludicrous chancers get into the EU parliament. Which is why I wonder whether the likes of Bloom are really, deep-down, opposed to the EU. On the other hand, its one reason why I think quitting it might not be a bad thing.
Presumably, if he doesn't want somebody to be charged for doing 35mph in a 30mph limit as long as it is judged "safe", he would also want drivers to be charged for doing 25mph in a 30mph limit, if that was judged to be "unsafe"?
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