Category - ADI

I commented previously on government plans to increase the motorway speed limit to 80mph – first of all in February this year, then in September, and most recently in October.

In my first article, I made it clear that it will not shorten journey times – the main argument from the government for doing it. All it will do is make people arrive at the next bottle-neck quicker, with the associated increased accident risk that will create. I stressed this in the second article. And the third was based on some extra evidence derived form the very people most at risk: young or new drivers.

Car freaks (many of whom are ADIs) and people who think they’re a whole lot better drivers than they actually are are drooling at the prospect. In that third article, I wrote:

One of my pupils asked me for my thoughts on it today. I told him that I don’t have any issues with an increase in speed limits from my own perspective – but I have a major concern when it comes to trusting other drivers to handle it properly.

You can maybe guess where this is heading. I doubt that many people in the UK are unaware of the events on the M5 Motorway over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, it has reopened (was it ever closed?) the debate over plans to increase speed limits.

Now, we don’t know what speed those cars and lorries involved were doing, but the severity of the outcome suggests they weren’t going at 30mph!

Let’s assume for a moment that at least some of them were breaking the current limit, and some were driving somewhat shy of that due to the alleged poor visibility. The outcome was total carnage.

Now imagine an upper limit of 80mph. What difference would there have been in the outcome? At best, absolutely none – it would have been identical. But at worst, some of those involved would have crashed at a higher speed than they are allowed to travel at legally at present.

Those going at the slowest speeds would have been doing so no matter what the upper limit was set at. So raising the limit would have added 10mph to the speed the crashes occurred at, and as I said in a previous article, the relative speeds of the cars involved in a collision are the seed for an accident, but the absolute speeds involved dictate the severity of the outcome once the vehicles are at rest (and the mass of the vehicles involved also comes into it, as well).

In other words, if two cars touch each other when one is going 5mph faster than another, the initial contact damage is slight. But if they are going at 70mph and 75mph respectively, loss of control is likely, and the outcome is unimaginably more dramatic than it would be if you merely clipped the wing mirror of a stationary car at 5mph – the same relative speed difference.

In spite of what some anorak advanced driving groups are claiming, speed DOES kill. Losing control at 80mph is definitely going to be worse than losing it at 70mph – and even 70mph is bad enough.

Of course, the M5 case is rather unique and spectacular, but the solution is still to enforce speed limits and prosecute offenders – not to raise the limit so they aren’t offending anymore.

I mentioned the 2011 Darwin Awards earlier this year. But we have a new contender in the form of Robert Mark Owens , a surprisingly 48-year old motorcyclist.

He filmed himself driving at up to 150mph on his Kawasaki 600cc bike. He was also filmed doing wheelies, riding on footpaths, and weaving through traffic – presumably at speed.

Owens’ place in the Darwin Awards 2011 nominations list was secured when he then uploaded the footage to YouTube.

Someone saw it and reported him anonymously to the police. The story doesn’t say precisely how they identified him, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he put his stupid face on the video in his quest for glory.

Owens was given 10 points, disqualified for 5 years, ordered to take an extended test, do 150 hours of unpaid work, had his bike (£3,000) and camera (£150) confiscated, and given a 51-week prison sentence (suspended for two years). In other words, he had the book thrown at him. So when I called him a “motorcyclist” earlier, I should perhaps have said “ex-motorcyclist”.

Serves the idiot right, anyway. The courts should be this harsh on anyone who breaks the law anything like this – and someone stupid enough to broadcast their stupidity shouldn’t be allowed to drive again. Ever.

The trouble is, the courts aren’t this harsh most of the time.

A reader sent me this link to a story which beggars belief. I suppose the fact that it’s a lovey-dovey, brains-turned-to-mush mummies website has a lot to do with it.

Emma French, 20, from Bathgate in Scotland, had her driving test booked. She’s been waiting for it “since August”. The article spouts:

…[she] had four contractions whilst taking her test…

She kept mum about her contractions to both the examiner and her instructor as she got behind the wheel – despite her partner… brother… mum… all urging her to cancel and go to hospital.

After she passed, the first thing she did was was drive to her grandparents to tell them, and only then went to hospital. She thinks it will be a great story to tell her child when she’s older.

The article concludes:

Brave lady!

I can only assume that that’s some sort of dialect for “stupid cow” or “unfit mother”, because absolutely the last thing she is is brave.

She endangered the life of her unborn child. She endangered her own life. And she endangered the life of her driving examiner. It’s quite likely she also endangered the life of her instructor if labour started during her pre-test lesson, and you can only guess at what a danger she would have been to everyone else on the road had she lost control!

And it would have taken legions of feminists and other politically-correct idiots to persuade the insurance company that her insurance was valid in the event of any accident, because getting behind the wheel in that state is sheer stupidity.

You often see these PC clowns arguing that pregnancy is “not an illness”. Let me just clarify a few things:

• in the later stages of pregnancy some women’s brains turn to mush and they simply cannot drive safely
• sometimes they physically cannot get behind the wheel in such a way as to be able to control the car
• some of them refuse to do the emergency stop on lessons

Those are absolute facts. I’ve taught such people (and those first two are THEIR words, not mine). When it gets like that, pregnancy is much worse than an illness, and it needs all the legal muscle of the equal rights activists to prevent common sense having any say in the matter.

I wonder if this “heroic woman” would do it again when she has her inevitable 2nd and 3rd children? I wonder if she’d do it with her other kids in the car then the time comes? We’ve already established that she probably would, since she has an arrogant (or is it just a clueless?) disregard for anyone else. Another version of the story makes it absolutely clear that she was in labour even before she met her instructor that morning, and that the baby was a month early. Absolutely selfish.

Talk about starting as you mean to carry on.