Speed Camera Vans !!!

They are a bit like cars broken down in the overtaking lane really, you come over the brow of a hill, see one of the "safety" camera partnership vans.... don't expect to see them, check your speedometer, which immediately takes your eyes off the road, you find out you are 10mph over the speed limit, you stand on your brakes the driver behind you thinks somebody has thrown a metal bar in your wheel spokes, then he slams on his brakes and a cloud of blue burnt rubber floats into the air........ VERY safe.

It happened to me this morning, I was happily driving along at 80mph along a very straight road probably built by the Romans it was that straight, the limit is 70mph and I am in a convoy of traffic doing 80mph with safe distances between cars for the speed (well I was anyway can't vouch for the cars behind me), we are passing 3 lorries quite safely, when the lead car which is doing 80mph overtakes the first lorry in the line he spots the camera van sitting there in a layby, he slams on his brakes clouds of blue smoke pour from his tyres, I slam on (with the blue smoke), the guy who has even less time than me slams on, the 4th driver reaches for the toilet paper as his car nearly takes a shortcut under the third lorry to avoid hitting the back of the 3rd car....

How can it possibly be called a safety camera partnership when the VAN very nearly caused a bloody accident??? If the van hadn't been there, we would have sailed past the lorries and gone about our business SAFELY, I suppose the lead car got a speeding fine, but at what cost? What if the 4th driver HAD gone under the lorry he would have most definitely been killed, is it worth a drivers life policing that 10mph over the speed limit?. I wonder how the camera operator would have felt had the 4th driver ended up as a greasy stain on that road right in front of him ???? lunacy !!! It's all about money making, that's why the partnerships are companies and don't seem to be accountable to anybody including the law

You can drive safely at ANY speed, speed isn't the killer it's the stupidity of some drivers who use it irresponsibly or without thought, Germany has the right idea, you can go as fast as your car will let you on the Autobahns, they also happen to have one of the lowest death rates on their motorways, while law abiding Britain has one of the highest with a 70mph speed limit........go figure !!!!

And if you really want a laugh read through the highway code and especially the stopping distances, most modern cars can stop within 1/2 of the distance the highway code specifies, but then again the majority was written in the 50's and 60's..... the world is going mad I tell you !!