Godfrey Bloom says speeding "has nothing to do with accidents", considers standing for Westminster

Reading the comments, road.cc readers seem to be alibistic socialists. Oh well, what can you expect.

I live in the same area as Godfrey, East Yorkshire which is part of the Humberside Police area. In the past 6 months our Deputy Police Commissioner has been reported for using a mobile phone whilst driving, he was approaching the toll booths for the Humber Bridge at the time, and has been successfully prosecuted for doing 100mph on a motorway. The Police Commissioner has also been sent on a "safer driving course" after being caught doing 36 mph in a 30 limit, strangely enough Godfrey was not available to comment on these issues. He used to be a character now he's just an embarrassment who didn't even realise he was being mocked on HIGNFY last month.

How does ridicule address any issue? It seems that's the sum total of the cycle lobby. He hasn't attacked cyclists but clearly being pro driver is regarded as anti cyclist and here is the real source of the Two Tribes syndrome.

And yes he is absolutely correct. 'Speeding' that is the act of simply exceeding a number on a pole cannot cause a damn thing. Too fast does and that can be at any speed, often below the limits, hence most accidents including the worst are below the limits. The stats the you quote are wrong. I have been involved with creating them. All they show is that x% of non specialist reporting officers ticked a box that shouldn't be there. Worse than that there are options that should be on their stats form that are not there.

The same principle applies to cyclists but as they are more vulnerable and on two skinny wheels, too fast for a cyclist will be much lower than for motor vehicles.

If Road CC were really interested in road safety why not understand these things? And does it really support non experts, with no particular driving expertise, prosecution or accident reporting background, like BRAKE, commenting on such a life & death issue & prosecution of drivers too?

It's because of every Tom Dick & Harry having such a big say in road safety, we have policy based on profit & vested interest across the board. We have managed to link vested interested spokesmen and campaigners on our site http://bit.ly/163UkZO

Let's be more positive about our drivers. We all depend on them.

Joe in Poole wrote
"By definition any speed above the maximum allowed by law is an 'inappropriate speed'."

No it's not. It's simply a speed in excess of the limit. Many speeds below the legal limit are inappropriate too, but the system of camera speed enforcement fails to recognise this.

When you look a the stats up to 1994, UK had a dramatically improving road safety picture based on (generally) a good attitude to road safety by most drivers. Between 1994 and 2004, road safety improvement stalled dramatically, perhaps caused in part by the dramatic reduction of traffic cops and the increase in speed cameras. Only when Labour decided in 2004 to limit the growth of speed cameras, did road safety come back on track.

If you take time to think about how you drive, and what you concentrate on, it's not hard to see that to concentrate on legal rather than appropriate speed can have an impact on the quality, therefore safety of your driving.

Drivers need to be responsible about speed, and to respect the applicable limits, but not to feel overthreatened by them. When all our concentration is applied to hazard recognition, observation links, limits of observation, hazard anticipation etc, we drive at the speed appropriate to these observable and anticipated hazards, with an awareness of the applicable limit. However, as these hazards diminish, often on the exit from a town, the speed naturally and safely increases. This is where you'll find speed enforcement - in the places that drivers will marginally exceed the limit as a by-product of their safe driving.

If you examine closely (as I do) the causes of serious accidents, you would recognise that a responsible driver exceeding the speed limit where appropriate doesn't feature. They are indeed notable by their absence. Irresponsible speed (irrespective of limits) borne of a poor attitude is where the speed risk comes in, but the current method of enforcement offers them the chance to speed dangerously with impunity.

KP ALERT ! KP ALERT !
Please folks do not under any circumstances feed the troll.
Phrases like "vested interests" are just a dead give away that there will be no rational debate other than "mixing with essential machinery"

Joe in Poole wrote
"By definition any speed above the maximum allowed by law is an 'inappropriate speed'."

No it's not. It's simply a speed in excess of the limit. Many speeds below the legal limit are inappropriate too, but the system of camera speed enforcement fails to recognise this.

I'm a driver and a cyclist, like most people here. Inappropriate speed is definitely that which is too high for the conditions, not over or even just under the arbritrary number on the pole. Anyone whose 'road safety' policy is ONLY to keep knocking speed limits lower and lower is an idiot. Unfortunately, we've had a period where this seems to pretty much been the only game in town.

Weird. How do trolls find stories like this? Google alerts maybe? Losers.

What we need isn't more, or less, speed cameras.

We could really do with some red light cameras.

Keith Peat ego wank.

It's like falling:
Falling has nothing to do with accidents. It's hitting the ground that hurts.

If you analyse the causes of fatal road traffic collisions involving cyclists, it's abundantly clear that the type of driver being denigrated here hardly features in the stats. The driving errors and omissions that are killing cyclists are either failure to observe the cyclist, or misjudging the cyclists path or speed. Exceeding the speed limit is not the recognised primary cause in the vast majority of cases.

The risks that I've listed can be reduced through concentration, awareness and anticipation - vital road safety skills that are not helped by being asked to divert much of your attention away from your driving to ensure rigid speed limit adherence.

So, in our knee-jerk demands for stricter application and enforcement of speed limits, we may actually be making the urban road system much less safe for cyclists.

Drivers Union claim that they are 'the voice of reason' for 30 million drivers. Their twitter page show that they have 218 followers and have sent over 7,500 tweets. That's a hell of a lot of noise and not much light.

Given that their views are followed by less than 0.00001% of their possible 'constituency' on twitter I say let democracy take it's course. As it stands it seems like no-one's listening to what they have to say anyway

According to KP, I'm the anti-Christ.

I had to block his various personas on Twitter; life is too short.

Geoffrey Bloom's self appointment as a "Drivers' Champion" is brilliant news for cyclists. I can't wait for him to cast some of his special magic on the motoring lobby's campaigning!

I wonder if Keith Peat is anything like Keith Lard? We'll have to ask Keith Peats Dog

As an ex Black Rat (similar it seems to KP) all I can say is that this sentence of SC's is so fundamentally important that it bears repeating.

Misjudgements are less likely to have serious impacts when the speed of the vehicle is lower.

In my day (early '90s) being on an advanced course was effectively an opportunity to learn to get from A to B as fast as the prevailing circumstances allowed. 30s and 40s were sacrosanct, but anything above was fair game to treat as a minimum dependent upon road conditions. I won't tell you the max speed I achieved on the course, it scares me to this day. It was an amazing experience and I would like to think that my training meant that in subsequent years I was able to arrive 'on scene' more quickly and safely than the vast majority of other drivers on the road would have been able to do. It's a little like being God. And that is the problem. It appears that some advanced-trained drivers think they are incapable of misjudgement.

Recently, I've been going down to London for meetings quite often. When I get the opportunity I always walk through Admiralty Arch and go to the National Police Memorial. Written on the Roll of Honour there is the name of a friend of mine who died in a road traffic accident, which occurred as he was being driven by another of my friends to assist another of my friends, who had called for urgent assistance. I like to pass on my respects.

Speed + misjudgement = elevated risk of fatal consequences

It appears that some people think they can beat the roulette wheel...every time.

Utter ******g hubris

As any capable and honest driver/rider will tell you speed is not the problem but it can be a factor in accidents. Inappropriate speed is the problem no matter whether you are on a bike or in a car. The need for speed limits is only there because most people have no idea what 'appropriate speed' is so the law tries to guide us these days. The biggest problem is the muppets who fail to consider other road users.

This guys a bleedin' Nutter !

I think the average driver is just about competent. What worries me is that, by definition, half of all drivers are below even this derisory standard.

Hey Sedgepeat. I love your 'myth busting' page here:

http://kspeat.magix.net/website#/Cycling%20in%20Europe:%20Myths%20exposed

Amazing.

.

Ahem.. *Am* I?...

Oddly enough, the bit on the driver's union website about cycling says that when cyclists ride faster there is an increased risk of crashing.

Err, shurely shome mishtake?

The website design looks similar to the one my old company used back in the 1990s.

I'm unfortunate enough to have to share a county with Keith Peat and although I agree with the sentiment about denying him the oxygen of publicity I also think it's important that he's outed as the horrible, gloating, flat earther that he is.

He tried to present himself as reasonable on this site and as some kind of advocate for drivers. But that's just not the case. He was publically rebuked by the Lincolnshire Echo for leaving 'ghoulish' comments on their web-page reporting the death of a cyclist in Spalding. He advised drivers not to cooperate with the police in the immediate aftermath of an accident following another cycling incident in Horncastle. Presumably only if the other party was a cyclist - maybe you can answer that Keith? This isn't pro-driver, its simply anti-cyclist.

I do not understand why our local media in Lincolnshire continue to give him air time. He heads a group of three people, himself, a guy called Jan and now ol' Godders. But they do, and he frequently gets the opportunity to spout his bullshit on air, whenever he does we have to call 'bullshit' back on him.

I'm glad Bloom has joined them, it shows up the 'Drivers Union' for the irrelevance they actually are. Keith, I hope you put the deposit up for Godfrey's election yourself - I'll enjoy watching you lose it.