I just rediscovered, after perhaps more than a decade, the Alliance of British Drivers. I read a lot of their material about a decade ago – they had reams and reams of great information and unreported facts – but since then I’d more or less forgotten about them. For example, through them I learned that less than 1% of accidents have speed as the main cause, and less than 7% have speed as a contributory factor. And that speed cameras create accident blackspots. And that increasing speed limits to realistic levels causes average speed to drop. And on and on.
Those statistics may be out of date now, or more probably have been manipulated to reinforce public perception towards accepting fines and believing speed cameras actually make better drivers.
This all popped back into my head again after I received a NIP, my second ever, for doing 74mph on a completely clear motorway.
It appears the ABD has turned into something even more worthy of support than it used to be, with high level support and successful campaigns to defeat proposed legislation. If you want to join you can do so here.
One of the things on their new site I particularly enjoyed reading was vindication of my argument that there should be a positive points system introduced rather than just a negative one. That sort of incentivisation would I believe have an immediate effect as drivers would actively try to win positive points by driving better. I wrote about that in my article Speeding – positive reinforcement instead of punishment?.
The other thing I enjoyed reading was the passage by Godfrey Bloom, patron of the ABD, here – from which I quote:
“The speed awareness lecturers read from flawed scripts to bewildered middle England drivers who were ‘nicked’ for doing 34mph in a 30mph district, and blackmailed into handing over cash to avoid a potentially damaging licence endorsement.”
Exactly.
Meanwhile I believe WDOTL can complement the efforts of the ABD and others by getting people to say the obvious in publicly obvious (and either funny, sarcastic or abusive) ways, thus increasing overall visibility of the issues and frustrations almost every driver bears.
