mjr wrote:Psamathe wrote:mjr wrote:Ah, but why have they gone 2mph over the speed limit? Was it because they were futzing with their phone instead of concentrating on driving?.....
Or was it because they were focusing on the nearby cyclist and suspected (s)he might be making an unpredictable move and hadn't been glancing at their speedo as often as they might normally ...
They should have slowed down if they needed to focus on something else (cyclist or anything else) and no longer had sufficient attention remaining to regulate their speed.
Psamathe wrote:Lots of possibilities and I'm not saying breaking the law is acceptable, just that we should not e.g. be focusing on people dropping cigarette ends when we have fly-tippers dumping toxic waste ... (focus limited resource into addressing/stopping the greater dangers).
Oh I think a lot of speeders are probably committing other offences. I see it as a fair tactic, similar to catching Al Capone for tax offences rather the massacres.
I have neighbours who are in their late sixties, who are the sort who pick litter up off the street, and who, in the twenty years i have known them, have always driven cautiously and, to the eye, within the speed limit. Both have attended Speed Awareness courses, having been caught over a speed limit by a couple of mph. I'm not saying they weren't wrong, but I think we should treat minor offenders more leniently than those who more blatantly speed, or who pick up their phone whilst driving. Three points on the licence is, in my view, a bit strong for getting it wrong by such a small margin. If we are to punish those who get it wrong by 1mph we need a new lower penalty that fits that level of offending. I do know people who routinely speed by a significant margin, doing say 40 in a 30, but who do not get caught because unlike my neighbours they are very good at remembering where the cameras are likely to be.
I'd prefer to see the 10% margin for error kept, and instead have hidden cameras that are located less predictably. That would make all of us safer overnight because you would never know if there was one around the next corner.