Think about road safety... Think!

Think! is the tag which has been used over the last few years by the British government for road safety advertising. The idea in itself is good and some of the campaigns have been well thought out, but still too much emphasis is being placed in the wrong areas and as a concequence British roads are getting less rather than more safe. Whenever I'm out on the road I see so much that is wrong with our roads which I believe causes safety issues. Here are just a few of those.

Safety Cameras
Ok, lets not beat about the bush here. These are going to be right on the top of anybody's list. I've also seen these signposted as Police Enforcement Cameras but at the end of the day they are speed cameras, nothing more. Those of you who still labour under the pretence that these devices have anything to do with safety need to stop and "think" for a moment. First of all, how many of you when approaching one of these things stops looking at the road and starts staring at your speedo? How many of you then start to curse because the car in front has suddenly slammed on their brakes or slowed down to 10 mph below the posted speed limit? For a start, the act of looking down at your speedo is not going to improve road safety - there are a number of speed cameras near me sited just before pedestrian crossings and it amazes me that nobody has been killed yet by a driver not watching the road. As to people slowing down - it is a little known fact that it is perfectly legal for new cars to have speedos which may be inaccurate by anything up to 10% - which means when your speedo reads 70 you might actually only be doing 63. And these things are never checked so just try and figure out how inaccurate they are after just a few years... you might actually be breaking the speed limit and not know it!

Humps
Sleeping Policemen as they used to be known... or you may have heard the more PC "speed cussion"? Well, in any case these inverted potholes do little to help road safety. Where these devices are stretched all the way across the road they hinder emergency vehicles as well as causing issues for people with back and neck injuries, wether they be drivers or passengers. Many of these things are built so that there are gaps in the road but this only has the effect of allowing vehicles with a wider wheelbase (such as White Van Man) to just fly through uneffected. Also, did you know that government rules prohibit the installation of speed bumps within 10 metres of bridges and tunnels? This is because vehicles crossing them cause ground vibration which then cause damage to those structures. If you're unfortunate enough to have one of these outside your house just think about what it's doing to your foundations. Also think about the damage it does to your car every time you drive over it (and councils have a legal obligation to pay for any damage caused!). And what about the extra pollution caused by vehicles slowing down and then accelerating? All this to slow down cars instead of learning to "Stop, Look and Listen"?

Speed Limit Reviews
You may have noticed how many roads suddenly have new speed limits. An accident happens and instead of looking at the real causes authorities often find it easier to just post a speed reduction and install speed cameras. This has two immediate effects... drivers get frustrated and the local police force suddenly get a surge in their income! I've seen a number of cases where a dual carriageway which has previously had a 70 mph speed limit has had it reduced to anything as low as 40 mph when this new limit is clearly inappropriate for the road. In some cases this is combined with a lot of white paint blocking off parts of the road. Many excuses are used to justify these changes but often accidents still occur on these roads while regular users just get more and more frustrated at being treated like children.

Narrowing of Motorway slip roads
Another crazy scheme being put into place over the last few years is that of narrowing motorway slip roads to 1 lane or perhaps putting no-overtaking markings between 2 lanes and perhaps even shortening the acceleration lane at the end. If you've ever followed a nervous driver down such a slip road and seen them stop to "give way" instead of accellerating to the speed of the traffic then you will now just how dangerous this is. These single-lane slip roads give no space to pass slow vehicles , cause queues back onto feeder roads and causes traffic to bunch up when joining motorways.

Junction re-design
Many motorway junctions have been redesigned over the last few years. A number of things are being done which, quite frankly, can be little more than crazy. The best example of this must be Junction 10 of the M40 in Oxfordshire. After spending countless millions of pounds upgrading the A43 to dual carriageway all the way from Northampton to the M40 some bozo decided to design a junction which forces traffic joining the M40 southbound to cross the traffic exiting it northbound! This results in daily traffic queues leaving the M40 northbound, entering southbound AND crossing the motorway even if not actually joining it!.

Not too far from J10... J9 in fact, is another example of what is going wrong. You're driving quite happily along a 3 lane motorway when suddenly, 1 mile before the junction, it turns into 2 lanes, goes under the junction, and turns back to 3 lanes again! I can see the logic behind this - that there were clearly problems with traffic queuing back on the M40 to the junction in busy periods, but there are still queues , you just have to wait longer to get through them!

Narrowing the road
This seems to be another new favourite. Have you noticed how many single-carriageway roads now have, instead of a single white-dashed line down the middle, two sets of lines with hatches between them? In some areas these are even painted red! Ok, so what the hell does this have to do with road safety? No idea! It makes the carriageways narrower and more dangerous for cyclists. Many drivers don't realise that as long as the lines are not unbroken and there are hatches in the middle (i.e. /////) and not chevrons (i.e. <<<<) then it is completely legal to cross them! Many drivers do get confused though... chevrons should really be accompanied by unbroken white lines which shows categorically that it's illegal to cross them, but some don't. Also, these "extended white lines" tend to become a magnet for debris and somebody crossing into these areas completly legally will sometimes kick up stones into other vehicles or even collect nails or glass in their tyres. Also, grease and oil builds up there too. The intention of such markings should be to indicate an immenent junction or obstruction (such as traffic island). They should NOT be used in the way that they are now!

I could go on a lot longer on this subject... but this is enough to keep anybody thinking. If anybody can tell me the road safety benefits of any of the crazy ideas above (without making me laugh!) then I'll happily publish them.

Drive safely!

2010 Metric Laws - Kill or cure?

I'll openly admit right here that where metrication is concerned, I'm a big fan and if the UK government announced tomorrow that the last vestiges of Imperial measurement were to be dropped in the UK I'd be one of the first to celebrate. Unfortunatly, the powers that be seem to be going about it all the wrong way.

Here is the problem. Over the last few years there has been a groundswell of opposition to anything pushed our way by the EU... helped along mainly by The Sun and The Daily Mail. It's an unfortunate side effect of this that people believe that our conversion to the metric system has been somehow forced upon us by Brussels when in fact we've been converting to metric for over 150 years and the last major push was made before we joined the EU - the only thing being asked of us by Brussels is to finish what we started, which in my opinion isn't too much to ask.

So to the title. As of January 1st 2010 it will be illegal under EU law to buy or sell anything across international or internal EU borders which is not marked exclusively in metric. Laws have already been drawn up and approved by parliament which, with a few notable exceptions, will actually outlaw the use of imperial measures in the UK. Here's what will happen:

• Any goods to be traded anywhere within the UK wether it be bread, sausages, fuel, TV's or carpets, will have to be labeled, priced and marketed in metric units. Current practice of selling milk in 0.568 litre cartons will be allowed, but printing "1 Pint" will become illegal.

Now this in itself will not be a problem. What, however, will confuse and annoy is the exceptions to the rules:

• Miles, yards, feet and inches will still be legal for road signage.
• Pints will still be legal for draught beer and cider.
• Pints will still be legal for milk provided it is supplied in returnable containers (i.e. bottles for doorstep deliveries).
• Acres will still be legal for land registration.
• Troy Ounces will still be legal for trading in precious metals.

The interesting thing here is that it will be impossible to compare prices of pints of beer and milk in the pubs and on the doorstep with the prices of the same goods in the supermarkets and off-licenses without a calculator and some mathematical knowledge. Similar problems are already occuring with road safety as motor manufacturers print car handbooks with vehicle sizes in metric with no imperial convertions yet height and widht limit road signs are only legally required to be in feet and inches!

Even more troubling is that the law has already changed to restrict the way some goods are sold and yet the law is being ignored and trading standards offices are not enforcing the laws. Market stalls and shops still give prominence to imperial weights on their shelves and displays. At least one American fast food chain still sells soft drinks in Fluid Ounces although this has actually been illegal since January 1st 2000!

I'm no lawyer and I could be wrong but my interpretation of the law is that on 1 January 2010 it will be illegal to sell carpet in yards. It will be illegal to sell houses with measurements in feet and inches. It will be illegal so sell a TV which shows a screen size in inches. It will even be illegal to show fuel consumption figures for new cars in Miles per gallon! Now personally I don't believe this to be a bad thing, but the public needs to be warned. Not in 2009 with just a few months to go, but now. Our schools should be concentrating on making sure children are ready. Broadcasters should be encouraged to use metric as much as possible and stop giving imperial conversions. Estate agents should be told to get their act together and market properties in square metres.

Unfortunatly, it would seem the weeks and months leading to the end of 2009 will be fairly quiet on this subject. January 1 2010 will come and there will be bad feeling from a public who will once again feel they've been stomped on by Brussels. It's also unfortunate that the already damaged reputation of the EU will also suffer further from this and all of it will happen to the pleasure of not only the anti-metric campaigners, but also the Europhobes.

So let me make a plea to the government:

1. Tell the public about the Units of Measurements regulations and point out that we're not metricating because of Europe.
   
2. Do something about our road signage.
   
3. Let pubs and milkmen sell in metric if they want to.
4. Start enforcing the existing laws!

Only when these things happen will we be able to bring the UK finally into the 20th century... then perhaps we can start to set our sights on the 21st!

References:
The Weights and Measures (Metrication Amendments) Regulations 2001
The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995
The Units of Measurement Regulations 1994

Nice day for a race(ist)?

Over recent weeks there have been many voices speaking out against the open display of religious affiliation in the workplace here in the UK, much of which has actually (and quite surprisingly!) been supported by people in government. In a move mirroring actions taken in France some years ago employers are now taking a stand against women insisting on wearing veils at work, the case which got so much publicity involved a teachers assistant who, it is claimed, that children had difficulty understanding. I can quite understand this and in a society where it is legally required that we cater for the disabled then I don't suppose it's unreasonable that somebody who may rely on lip-reading should have the benefit of being able to see the speakers lips! Ok, so this was only a school, but should this matter?

The wearing of certain religious garb has been protected by law in the UK for a while now and in the past it was certainly usual to see turban-clad motorcyclists without the required crash helmet but I can't say I've seen this spectacle for many years now! Things have, however, gone in the other direction. Customers at petrol stations will have no doubt seen the signs asking motorcyclists to remove their helmets and if you entered a bank wearing one you would no doubt be treated with a great deal of disrespect. This restriction has in the last few years been applied to people wearing "hoodies" too... a certain Essex shopping precinct completely banned the wearing of this particular item of clothing because they believed that the sort of people who wear them are likely to cause trouble, but didn't we get a similar impression over the last 30-40 years over people who wear denim and leather and both of these are now generally acceptable!

We as a nation seem to love pidgeon-holing people into specific categories... wether it be the Mods and Rockers of years past or perhaps Bikers and Hoodies. And now the veil joins the growing list of anti-social clothing... but thankfully wearing a visible crucifix at work has also been added to the list, which in what is often stated as a Christian country is quite refreshing. Perhaps people are finally realising that religious fundimentalism - and not just of the Muslim persuasion - is the real problem that we're currently facing.

Christian fundimentalism isn't a myth... it's real and has been for about 1800 years. Ever since a certain Roman emperour decided it woule be a good idea to use religion as a method of picking up his flagging popularity, this particular belief system (which had previously been little more than a Jewish cult) has probably been responsible for much more death and suffering than any middle-eastern madman could possibly imagine. The crusades and the inquisition (not just the Spanish one!) caused death and suffering on a massive scale. Witch hunts on both sides of the Atlantic were all spawned by the same fundamentalist beliefs and the rise of protestantism across Europe also caused much suffering as people who still wanted to be Christian but didn't think that the Roman ideal was right were forced from their homes and countries and in many cases put to death.

The 20th century was no different. In the first half of the century the Jews suffered at the hands of the Christian Germans, in the latter half we saw ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the problems in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile the major Christian powers continued to support the Jewish state of Israel in it's continuing "war" against anything non-Jewish on it's own doorstep.

I think that many of the world's current problems are happening because of Christian fundementalism and the pidgeon-holing of cultures:

• The problems in Israel seem to stem from the creation of the Jewish faith and allowing this new country to displace people who have lived on that land for many years - those who were displaced are clearly going to want to air their greviances!
• Splitting Persia into Iran and Iraq along religious lines and then installing "Western-Friendly" leaders was going to lead to strongly supported religious uprisings and dictatorships.
• The same mistake was made with India - most of which actually did quite well but why on earth did we not make a decision on Cashmere, promise to come back and fix it later and then step back and do nothing? Of course both India and Pakistan are going to claim it as their own!
• Ireland has a lot of history but the problems in Northern Ireland are clearly split down religious lines and splitting the country in two based on where there are more protestants and catholics was never going to be a good idea. It seems clear from the events of the last 80 years that the Irish Republic was in itself a good thing for the Irish... but perhaps the whole island should have been given independance!

Sucessive British governments have made the mistake of using religion as a reason to split people up and this has proven time and again to be a very bad move. Unfortunatly there have been examples recently that show where attempts at creating a secular state aren't always easy (recent events in France speak volumes!) but I do believe strongly that while we need a society where religious belief (and lack of it!) should be a legal right. That right should however never extend to imposing your beliefs on others and that should mean that while overt displays of religious belief such as the wearing of certain clothing or jewlery should not be a problem, a line should be drawn in the sand where it comes to interacting with others... particulary in public office.

In the same way as I, a white English male, should not feel uncomfortable or have any issues being addressed by teachers, lawyers, air-crew, bank tellers and shop assistants, nor should anybody else of any religion. I should not have to think twice about how to address somebody because I see a veil, a crucifix or a star of David. I make no apologies for saying that it should be unacceptable for people who deal with others for a living to wear something which might offend, confuse or in anyway state a particular belief.

I am an Athiest and a Republican (in the anti-Monarchy sense) but I would not feel it right to advertise those beliefs to my customers... nor would I expect to have it done to me!