Backlash over new Bill

Road user campaign group the Association of British Drivers reckons the new Road Safety Bill just shows the Government is bereft of ideas.

“Road death numbers have failed to improve significantly in the last 10 years, despite record levels of investment in so-called safety measures, many more restrictions on drivers and unprecedented criminalisation of a majority group of responsible citizens.

“The Government is at a loss to understand why all this nonsense has failed to cut deaths like their advisors told them it would,” said the ABD’s Nigel Humphries.

“It’s small wonder they are bereft of ideas as to how to turn things around.”

The ABD says plans for variable speeding fines are “a vehicle of convenience” for the Government.

They ratchet up penalties for normal drivers without taking up court time, it says. But the reduced points for marginal speeding offences committed by the slowest group of drivers is just an attempt to shore up wavering support for camera policy, the ABD claims.

The ABD says it would support variable penalties if the speed limits really were set at the maximum safe speed for normal drivers in good conditions, like it says in the Highway Code.

“Mr Jamieson says that the six points at 45mph proposal penalises reckless drivers,” said ABD Safety Spokesman Mark McArthur-Christie.

“That may be true on residential roads, but we’d love to show him some of the 30mph limits created by over zealous councils and ask him to justify why 45mph is reckless there.”