Best news from the coalition government so far is the announcement that speed cameras are to be scrapped.
“Why is this good news?” road safety fans will ask, “does Boggart Blog approve of the carnage on our roads?”
Well, if there was carnage on our roads we wouldn’t but British roads are the safest in Europe. Speed kills, the road safety whiners will whine, doing what people who claim they are logical and scientific always do and resorting to emotive and sentimental hand wringing when someone points out their statistics are made up. The truth is bad driving kills. Keep handing out driving licences to semi literate morons and people will continue to die. But what is responsible for more deaths on the road than bad driving is stupidity.
Speed does not kill. I have only had two accidents in a forty year driving career. My car was standing still and the cars that hit me were travelling well below the speed limit in each. I only remember fatsally having one accident serious enough to warrant an insurance claim and her car was stationary at the time. Statistical proof then that the slower you are going the more danger you are in.
What wound me up about this is an article on The Guardian website today by environmentalist George Monbiot, one of those cyclists who pedals around wearing a stupid helmet that make him look like a penguin that got stuck in reverse. George does not like speed which is OK because he lives in rural Wales where there is nowhere to go and fuck all to do when you get there.
Now I usually like George even when I disagree with him. He’s a stylish writer and presents his arguments well. Except when he starts going on about how unsafe cars are. Because cars are not unsafe, it’s all the other shit they let on the roads that is not safe.
Cyclists are not safe, they put on their reverse penguin helmets oblivious to the fact these items are fitted with an electronic chip that overrides their brain signals, switches off their self preservation instinct and makes them think they can carve up Range Rovers, White Vans and everything else and be safe because when a pedestrian or cyclist gets hurt it is always the car driver’s fault.
WRONG! The car drier may get a fine or a ban or a community service order but that is not going to restore the life of some imbecile who thought his moral superiority and love of the planet immunised him against the effects of being hit by a ton and a half of metal travelling at twenty five miles an hour.
And pedestrians, they are a bigger hazard to other road users than any car, even a souped up hot hatch driven by an underage joy rider. Why? Because pedestrians are imbeciles, that’s why. They are too stupid to be allowed anywhere near roads. If they had even minimal intelligence they would be driving cars.
Skateboarders. Who let them out on roads with no brakes or steeting controls? They should be locked up in padded cells with their skateboarders rammed up their arses. There’s a park in Accrington where if the skateboarders set off from the top end just as traffic lights change a few hundred yards away on the main road a string of them will explode from the park gates and shoot across the road just before the first car gets there. Unless of course the first car is a souped up hot hatch driven by an underage joyrider.
Not long ago the excellent Anna Raccoon featured a video some New Zealand suicide skateboarders (video and article) had made of themselves skateboarding down the motorway, swooping in and out of streams of traffic and acting like arseholes skateboarders. It was going viral on the web at the time so you can bet its only a matter of time before our arrested adolescent knobhead army are having a go. And whose fault will it be when one of the silly little fuckers gets mashed. The car driver’s of course.
George Monbiot cites the safety of children in his hand wringing whine against people who have lives to get on with. They always bring children into it, these people who claim they are so logical, so rational, so scientific.
They want science. OK, Darwinian evolution. We used to teach our kids road safety, the Green Gross Code Man, Darth Vader before he went over to the dark side, would remind kids to look both ways and make sure the road was clear and it was safe to cross. Politically Correct Thinking put a stop to than. Teaching kids to cross roads safely imposed the repressive rules of bourgeois society on the little darlings preventing their ability to express their creativity from developing freely. And anyway the Green Cross Code man looked like a paedophile.
Let’s put light controlled crossings everywhere, said the handwringers, and get drivers well wound up because kids press the button and then run off and traffic has to stop at the red light even though there is nobody waiting to cross.
Where there is no light to help them cross safely of course kids just run out into the road because nobody taught them any diffrent. So to protect the little darlings from their own stupidity we get speed limits an old lady on a mobility scooter would be in danger of breaking, exhaust wrecking bumps everywhere and kids who think nothing can ever harm them. Suddenly survival of the fittest does not work any more because the handwringers are protecting all the little arseholes who we really do not want contributing to the gene pool
Still, in the eyes of the politically correct thought police the only thing children need to know about road safety is, “If you get mashed it is always the car driver’s fault.”
If we are serious about road safety here’s what we need to do. Raise speed limits because I have proved the slower you go the more at risk you are, ban cyclists, pedestrians and people who obey speed limits because anyone who cannot think for themself should not be driving, abolish children, kill all skateboarders; not because I hate them or they are evil or dangerous people but because it’s to only humane thing to do.
George Monbiot – Evidence Of The War Involving Motorists
Tne new Bluebird – take a Ferrari and stick a ton of batteries in to weigh it down.
The Original Boggart Blog 