Rozzers clamping down on the hot hatch brigade.

gon2seed

(and me! - Ed)
Staffs police seem to be trying to influence the young (or not so!) people who speed around in ludicrously pimped up little cars. Various intiatives aimed at the the petrol headed little oiks are being attempted. This includes visiting them at McDonalds (Bristol Street Island), and various car parks around the town.

A road traffic collision is the most likely cause of death for a male aged 18 - 25, and though they form about 11% of the population they are responsible for 44% of the serious accidents.

Bristol Street Island is sporting two posters aimed at influencing behaviour, one of which actually includes a photograph of an accident scene in which I feature! Though even my mum would not be able to tell which one is me.

Staffs Fire and Rescue, as always, is looking to keep its citizens safer, so if anyone has any good ideas of how we could get young men to behave more temperately in their vehicles, feel free to air your views.

We currently go into schools and talk to kids using a professionally designed education pack, and use opportunistic education to get our safe driving message across, but we are always on the look out for other ideas.

PS for newer forumites, I am a water squirter/ smoke eater/ fireman sam, feel free to add your own!
 

TENSHON

4000th post? Whatever, I'm nonchalant..
I think the government could do a lot more on this front to be honest. Start by raising the age limit from 17 to 18, restrict the type of car under 21s can drive and maybe launch a road safety programme for younger drivers who benefit from cheaper insurance premiums for completing the course. Also, force them to have stickers on the back saying 'is this car being driven safely? if not call 999'. Locally, trying to persuade 17-21 year olds who think they now everything, and generally don't give a toss, to drive safely isn't a task I'd relish. Perhaps, a neighbourhood watch style approach to monitor and inform police of offenders could be implemented. If there was a number to call to 'grass up' dangerous drivers I'd be calling it all the time.
 

MISS T

Forum user & abuser
In some parts of the country the police and other emergency services do a 'mock up' RTA. They use the pupils as victims, fixing them up to look the part in fake blood etc and the kids watch how this is dealt with. Sometimes the shock of reality hits home.

I'm with Tensh on new drivers, nothing more than a 1.1 is necessary, certainly for the first year. Problem is teenagers think they're invincible, I know I did, until I lost three friends in RTAs.
 

db

#chaplife
TENSHON said:
restrict the type of car under 21s can drive
this isn't a bad idea at all.. i definitely think it should be illegal for anyone under 21 to modify a car in any way (or to drive a modified car).. at the very least it would cut down on the number of day-glow plastic corsas and saxos on the road..
 

simon

Ex Bare Nastyman
I know when I was in air cadets as a youth to deter us from taking drugs we were shown a slide show on 'death by drugs' showing us people who had either died by taking drugs or people who had been killed by people taking drugs, this was pretty damn graphic and horrific if I'm honest and pretty much did the job, much better than the anti drug spiel you got at school at the time, I'm sure there'd be consent issues around this, but for me the 'fear factor' would do the trick.

Oh by the way, my first 2 cars were 900cc minis, (don’t think me folks trusted me with anything else) this also stopped the boy racing as they struggled to do 55 and reached 30 in about 4 days, but also began my love affair with a beautiful machine!
 

Moley

Well-Known Forumite
Back home in N.Ireland when passing your test you are forced to have an 'R' (restricted) plate on your car for 12 months - bold when considering it is part of the UK. This restricts you to a maximum of 45 mph anywhere, making it difficult to drive on dual carriageways and motorways. It forces new drivers to drive carefully as there are serious consequences if there are any infringements. In addition insurance is astronomical. In 1989 a Talbot Samba 954cc, 3rd party £1,700 no fire and theft for the first yearcost this much to insure. Least to say I couldn't afford it.

From a personal perspective it is time for this government to change the driving culture in this country - how, I dunno. One suggestion would be to ban all modifications to cars - I know it limits free choice etc. however the Government is doing a good job of imposing a George Orwell state at present why not just throw this measure in.
 

Jheych

Wasps - feel my wrath!
dirtybobby said:
TENSHON said:
restrict the type of car under 21s can drive
this isn't a bad idea at all.. i definitely think it should be illegal for anyone under 21 to modify a car in any way (or to drive a modified car).. at the very least it would cut down on the number of day-glow plastic corsas and saxos on the road..
Would agree with this totally

Theres obviously going to be the "boy" racer type who wants to do all theses "mods" etc to cars but they can be bloody dangerous out on the public road.

I think more of them ought to apply their skills to racing off-road e.g banger/stock car races which of course are dangerous but "controlled" in some way .


Another point is when you consider

buying the car
modding the car
Insuring the car

etc. You have to wonder where all the money comes from in lots of cases . Is this all through hard slog on a 17 yr olds wages? These mods can be pricey !. I can remember the only thing I could "do up" at 17 was an old pushbike or beat up mo-ped .

Course people are entitled to spend money on whatever they like to do up whatever they like cars/microwaves etc but one thing money can't buy is experience in actually learning how to drive properly and safely and thats something that must be "driven" home ( sorry!) to these guys/girls .

I suggest therefore that

1) The actual test itself becomes harder to cover all eventualities and to include skids and the like too many people are passing and heading straight out onto carmageddon M6 with bugger all experience really

2) A probationary period of 1 yr needs to be enforced with a sort of trainee status and suitable speed limit

3) A very sensible realistic but still quite high insurance on new drivers which is reduced after the 1 yr probation period to something a lot cheaper and reduced again after skidpan or hazard training has been completed .

4) Very tough sanctions for infringement of the above e.g 3 yr ban and having to retest type thing .

All this might keep us safer and stop these poor people killing themselves

just thoughts
 

Scuttlingb

Jacquie
I have so much to say on this subject, as some of you may know I trained as a driving instructor and have so many ideas on how to make a safer driver.

The main one is as Jheych says is to let them experience the speed and experience the crash but in a controlled way. Banger racing, go-carts etc.

The thing is you can't teach experience. By restricting what they can drive at certain ages won't help either. They'll take and pass a driving test and then not drive because they can't afford it. Then when they can afford it they still won't have the experience. A lot of insurance companies are doing a pay as you drive thing, where you can only drive during quiet times and certainly not at night until you clock up so many hours driving experience.

I feel this debate could go on and on and the worst thing is many more innocent people will be killed and poor Gontoseed and pals will be cleaning up afterwards. I take my hat off to him because I couldn't do it!
 

gon2seed

(and me! - Ed)
Well! I am so grateful of you all for these considered replies. This is obvously a subject that has caught your imagination, so thank you again. Please be sure that I will take the info' here and feed it in to the multi-agency focus group responsible for this area. This is great stuff, thank you all again!

Cracking idea Miss T, we have actually done this in Staffs in a couple of venues, and Cheadle have a beaten up car that has a removable roof that aids the demonstration. Difficult to evaluate the success of such events but we keep chipping away.

Please continue to give your ideas, and opinions on this issue.
 

My Name is URL

Well-Known Forumite
The thing that gets me is the boy racers with REALLY LOAD exhausts....if they want to park up on McDonalds and show each other their cars then i'm happy for them to do it, but when they are driving (what sounds like) 100mph past my house (on a 30mph housing estate) then it really gets on my thruppeney bits.
 

Sofa

I'm a Staffooooooordian
There is always this kind of very graphic educational tool -


"The Honda rider was traveling at such a “very high speedâ€, his reaction time was not sufficient enough to avoid this accident. Swedish Police estimate a speed of 250 KM/h (155mph) before the bike hit the slow moving car side-on at an intersection. At that speed, they predicted that the rider’s reaction time (once the vehicle came into view) wasn’t sufficient enough for him to even apply the brakes. The car had two passengers and the bike rider was found INSIDE the car with them. The Volkswagen actually flipped over from the force of impact and landed 10 feet from where the collision took place.

All three involved (two in car and rider) were killed instantly. This graphic demonstration was placed at the Stockholm Motorcycle Fair by the Swedish Police and Road Safety Department. The sign above the display also noted that the rider had only recently obtained his license.

At 250 KM (155 mph) the operator is traveling at 227 feet per second. With normal reaction time to SEE-DECIDE-REACT of 1.6 seconds the above operator would have traveled over 363 feet while making a decision on what actions to take. In this incident the Swedish police indicate that no actions were taken."

motorbike-inside-vw_sweden_2005_upplandsbrobil463.jpg


moto1.jpg


moto2.jpg


moto3.jpg


moto4.jpg
 

gon2seed

(and me! - Ed)
Amazing piccies Sofa, I've copied them on to the work pc and they will no doubt be used to attempt to scare people into driving sensibly.

If only it were that easy, unfortunately the evidence suggests that hard hitting campaigns only have a short term effect. The piccies made the bikers on my watch wince a bit!

Not suggesting in any way, that he was a boy racer, but it is so sad to keep driving past the flowers for the lad who died at Walton at the end of last month, another young life snuffed out on our roads.
 

big z

ANDY
We need to give the youth a bit more of a kick up the arse in every sense...they have way too much handed to em on a plate these days....DAMN i sound like my dad.


Good pics sofa...
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
Enforce GPS tracking on all drivers for the first 2 years after passing their tests. Let it monitor their speed, with automatic penalties issued when going over the limit. If caught without your tracker, lose your license for 2 years and lose your car.
 

dylanf

Fat Git
tek-monkey said:
Enforce GPS tracking on all drivers for the first 2 years after passing their tests. Let it monitor their speed, with automatic penalties issued when going over the limit. If caught without your tracker, lose your license for 2 years and lose your car.
Are you still feeling sour about getting arrested for drinking a can of beer on the street.xx
 

gon2seed

(and me! - Ed)
jchiltz said:
Give them too much rope and they'll hang themselves with it!
True, and they do it with monotonous regularity. Problem is they sometimes plough into other motorists/pedestrians!
 
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