Technically you did go through a red light, hence the examiner had to fail you. I know blooming stupid but you'll also fail if you break the speed limit, well you would have 27 years ago when I took my test. B-)
I'd argue it doesn't as the vechicle has "pulled over", it has only stopped and is obstructing the highway.
With two lanes of ordinary traffic if the left line pulls tight into the left side and the right line to the right there is normally an ample gap created for the emergency vehicle to get through. Mind you that relies on people knowing where the edges of their vechicle are, a goodly number appear not to know and using full steering lock.
That's the danger - an outburst of muppetry. Quiet professionalism is what we want. Most of the time there would be no need for lights. The one occasion when they might be useful is when trying to get to the front of a queue of traffic stuck on icy roads, but as someone has already said how many of the great unwashed would actually recognise them and let you through. Leave the flashing lights to the emergency services.
How true! I'll move for the fire and ambulance but the police can wait their turn - and if they want to pass they'll have do it as an ordinary manoeuvre without my active assistance.
But the fear has to be that the police will observe someone helping an ambulance or fire engine, and still nick you. Nothing would suprise me about the police anymore. Utterly useless.
Steve
What is your evidence for this. How many motorists have been nicked in these circumstances in say the last 12 months? I'm sure the daily Mail etc. would have mad it front page news.
I think what's being pointed at here is that the police seem to go overboard on "easy nicks" rather than on actual detection.
Cue the speed camera rant (revenue cameras), cue beat coppers walking up and down an industrial street looking for non-compliant vehicles to lay producers and prohibition notices on (detected crime, innit), Likewise for tax disc out of dates.
I suspect that as long as there are targets on increasing "detected crimes" or however they phrase it the motorist is going to take it in the shorts because there are lots and lots more ways to become a criminal in a car than there are in any other area.
Clip the kerb - driving without due care Doing 75 in a 70 - you 'orrible little speeder you Nudging past a red light to let an emergency vehicle through - you're a criminal Eating an apple/drinking a drink at the wheel - driving without due care
Lots of behaviour that while victimless is still considered to be criminal.
Says something that half of the county mounties I know intensely dislike their colleagues in the Traffic group due to their being ignorant bastards who'd book their own grannie for drinking a water while riding her invalid buggy.
P.
An innocent elderly couple near us walking along the pavement were squashed like flies by a truck which did little more than that. The driver got off scot free..
Speeding increases the impact of any accident whether at 70 or 30 mph
Like I said where's the evidence? Highway Code "Consider the route of the emergency vehicle and take appropriate action to let it pass" Sufficiently vague to challenge in court I would have thought, but IANAL
OK so they thought it was a mobile phone.
It's the potential to create victims that matters. Why should we wait until some poor innocent's life is ruined before taking action.
As a council tax payer who campaigns on behalf of pensioners for its abolition I am all in favour of a bit of revenue raising from cameras. Personally I think they should all be hidden as cunningly as possible. All the alternatives involve more expense which falls on the council tax payer rather than the offender. The innocent become the (financial) victims.
OK.
Let's take this to its extreme.
CCTV to enforce littering - £60 fine for every occurrence - can you honestly say you never litter, even unintentionally?
Oh yes - spitting is also illegal you know - £60 fine for every instance.
Using Profanity over fixed or wireless communications media is an offence - £60 fine for every instance you commit - can you say for sure you never use the world "Damn" or "Bugger" while talking on the phone?
There are lots and lots of easy to prosecute crimes that would just take a bit of technology to enforce. Your mindset appears to want them to be taken to their extreme.
I really, really hope you enjoy having the butt plug installed to monitor your methane emissions and surcharge you on them.
You, sir, appear to be the brand of f****it exemplified as "Major W.H. Moaner of Greater Whinging".
*PLONK*P.
Er, so, you want to charge motorists for pensioners rateable value?? On what possible grounds can you justify such a statement? Your positing the idea that there should be no connection between what you get, and what you pay for. If we were to expand this idea, we could be in a situation wher I'm doing 75 up the A1, at 3am in the morning, get stopped, and fined 60GBP.That 60 GBP then gets allocated to the local gay liberation fund (Labour gov't) or the old binmens memorial cleaning fund! (this is an extreme example). This is far worse than the present system. Admittedly it's not perfect, but making statements like yours is just displaying a complete lack of coherent thouoght on how to address the problems, and that's definately not it. You seem to be saying that you'd rather raise revenue by catching speeding motorists, than by people actually paying for the services they receive? I personally don't mind camera's, providaing they are actually in a place in which their use provides increased safety, rather than just gaining cash. Oh well, sorry about the rant, but badly thought out politics is why we've got a bloke that I wouldn't buy a car from, let alone allow to govern my fellow countrymen. I'm off to the beheading now.......
:0)
`Mark
in article 4282058c$0$536$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread.sanger.ac.uk, Mark at snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net wrote on 11/5/05 1:16 pm:
As an ex binman i wish too know more about this fund like will it by me that rather pretty Srs2 Ambulance that I have a longing for?
Maybe it was an accident. They do happen. People were run over and killed by horse and carts.
What's your point ? What are the chances of having an accident at 75mph Have they increased 10 fold from 70 mph ? If the road conditions allow,
75 is a perfectly acceptable speed,it doesn't increase the chances of having an accident.When the speed you drive is not appropriate - like the pillocks who tear down the straight road by my sons'school at 40mph - they're usually mums by the way, then sure, charge people.
...no,they knew it was an apple I believe.
EVERYthing has the potential to "create victims"- your driving a 4X4 potentially does so. Your argument is a classic argument for sitting on your arse while wrapped in cotton wool.
Why not work to getting the councils to cut themselves back to something we can all afford, then we can perhaps slip the pensioners a bung ?
Why not have a flat rate charge for anyone receiving council services ? Like the "flat tax " schemes working so well in Eastern Europe, a "flat council tax" scheme would work too.
Steve
Hello Rory, as it's a memorial fund I suspect you might have to die first before you can get access to any loot, do you really want that series 2 that much? ;-)
Here's a radical thought (the first thing I would do if "in power").
Positively outlaw giving discounts to pensioners, students, the disabled etc etc. If you get on a bus it costs x. If you watch TV, the licence costs y. The cost of transporting a pensioner 10 miles on a bus is exactly the same as transporting me 10 miles.
At the same time, calculate what people need to live on and pay it to them via the benefits system. Now people have what they need and can decide what to spend it on. We don't need heaps of bureaucracy to support exemptions from this, council tax rebates, winter fuel payments. Just give people a decent income and let them buy what they need or want at the true cost.
Tax can be equally straightforward. VAT on what you buy and income tax on a sliding scale related to earnings. Council tax at a flat rate, no exemptions, single-persons allowances etc.
I'd also like to see councils stripped right back to the bone - at present they are a breeding ground for people with no real idea of what they are doing but plenty of time on their hands to do it. A few regional bodies could simply award contracts to run whole towns, or large chunks of services such as waste or traffic, to professional enterprises with proper performance measures.
And why pray tell should income tax not be flat rate too? Just because I earn twice as much as you do shouldn't mean I have to pay 3 times the amount of tax - I'm getting nothing extra in return for handing over more money to the govt.
If you must
Just look at he disgusting state of any town High Street on a Saturday afternoon, or the, majority of lay-bys on our roads
Filthy habit' Always remember the No Spitting signs on buses when I was a kid and wondering who on earth would want to.
Always has been. Sign of a weak vocabulary, I was always told.
No I just oppose your rantings.
Good, so I'll be spared the brainless reply.
Then you can define anything as an accident.
Speed limits are inevitably a blunt instrument. The point I was trying to make is that he argument is not just does extra speed cause more accidents but rather that if an accident is to happen the consequences will be greater at higher speed.
Of course it has. It's a matter of degree. We can't create a risk free world/ It's a matter of looking at significant risks and trying to reduce them - e.g. the MOT was introduced because of the high level of risk from unsafe cars, and mobile phones are banned and radios are not because of the different degree of risk from the distraction to the driver that each causes.
I was specifically referring to the funding of the police and the conventional argument against cameras is that there should be more traffic police, which in turn would present a heavier burden on the council tax payers. With self funding cameras the offenders pay. Cameras also offer the technology to enforce the more flexible speed limits you argue for.
Pensioners shouldn't need a "Bung" as you call it. The National Insurance fund is several billions in surplus - a surplus which has been built up by the contributions of today's pensioners.
That was the principle of the Poll Tax, slightly modified under great pressure, but basically taking no account of ability to pay or demand on services.
The council tax and its impact on pensioners is a wider issue, but some pensioners I now pay a quarter of their monthly income straight back in council tax. Don't be fooled by all the headlines about rebates and benefits. The greater part of council tax is spent on education of the young. Most colleges which provide adult education have seen their funding progressively cut. Almost any scheme would be better than one based on the value of a fixed asset especially as the value can continue to rise whilst your income falls as you pass though middle age. Many people of course are paying absolutely nothing under the present system and surely you must agree that is wrong.
I'm not particularly fighting for my own vested interest here. I got involved because of the sense of injustice and outrage I felt at the way our pensioners are treated when I investigated one specific case.
In message , Tim Hobbs writes
Well that is basically what the pensioners are campaigning for. Means tested benefits are hopelessly inefficient. The current pensioners credit is failing to reach about 20% of the intended target. In some case about £4.00 is being spent to process a payment of about 50p
I would scrap council tax and pay the whole lot from central taxation (75% already is) - then you can judge your local council on how efficiently they use the money.
Radical, very radical :)
Common sense. Unless you are going to say that a bin man's working week is worth the same as a brain surgeon's and pay him the same then you have to accept a sliding scale of tax to go with it. Otherwise you will have low paid people paying more tax than they earn in order to keep the national tax receipts as they are today.
And before you ask, I pay more in tax each month than most people earn. I can't say that I do so happily given how much of it is wasted, but I don't have any problem with paying proportional to my ability to do so. Besides, if you add NI to income tax the real difference between basic rate and higher rate is really quite small.
Sorry Tim, we may have been talking at cross purposes there. What I meant by flat was a flat percentage - eg everyone pays 20% income tax, preferably with a threshold above which no further tax is paid. What I was objecting to was the concept that someone earning 10000 quid/annum pays at 10% and someone earning 20000 quid pays at 15% - the higher earner is already contributing more, why should they also be penalised further for being affluent?
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