Chillax, I feel your pain regarding these morons on unlicensed motor bikes. In a previous job I was involved in catching them. You might like to ask your local MP what happened to your police helicopter, which was the one type of vehicle they couldn’t often get away from.
In the name of progress and saving money, over half of the U.K. police helicopter fleet have gone. It’s a scandal that so far hasn’t had much publicity.
Haha, yes exactly! They make them out to be such angels. Or if you attempt to right their wrongs, their tribe then starts a war against you starting with threats/sneaky/cowardly damage to your property, then it all escalates until someone is really badly hurt/killed.
Yup Chris, certain technology (such as ABS brakes, seat belts, airbags, ice warning lights/buzzers are a welcome sight in cars, but the whole world seems fixated with blooming “smart” phones nowadays. Apparently life simply can’t exist unless everything is can be controlled/connected to your smartphone!..Your central heating (oh yes, you need to control that from your phone), Your TV controlled from your phone (is that not what the TV remote that comes with said TV is for?), Your Xbox controlled by your phone…you’re washing machine controlled by your phone…I mean for gods sake really? And of course, you car now has to have “connectivity”! My phone rings while i’m driving? It gets ignored until I’m somewhere I can pull over to have a look.
And the internet, theres another thing! lol People can’t seem to live without it for the duration of a 15 minute bus journey, so now the buses have WIFI…end result, the buses now interfere with my (and most of my neighbours) TV signals every time they go past!!
Ban using smartphones in cars for anything other than Bluetooth hands free calling/receiving!
I’d agree with most of that Saz, although the stats themselves and how they are collected nowadays can be a bit misleading. Most small accidents go unnoticed for a number of factors, the main one being that unless there has been an injury or an accident is causing an obstruction, the police will not/do not get involved now. Drivers involved in small accidents (such as the ones in heavy traffic where stop starting means some drivers start using their phones while being stuck in the traffic then end up bumping into other cars through not paying attention) end up going “bump for bump” to save hassle with going through insurance and then paying increased premiums for having claim.
A drop in figures from the fact we do indeed have better tyre compounds, better brakes (though not "automatic braking) etc I would agree with, along with better signage. However, I would deffo disagree that we now have better road markings, infact, I would say we have entirely the opposite. The white lines on the roads for one! The paint used now is just a basic paint, non reflective. The paint that used to be used for road markings was refelctive, so at night time and especially in the wet, the paint would “sparkle” when your headlights were on it. This made seeing upcoming corners, junctions and lanes much easier to see. An example of how this has affected accidents is a large 3 to 4 lane infamous roundabout near me called Sheriff Hall. It has a dual carriage way on two exists, along with another 5 exits onto normal “A roads”. It is controlled by RTS. When it is raining, and especially at night, you cannot see the white lines marking out the lanes. In the wet they are totally invisible, the whole road just shining. This has led to more and more bumps on the roundabout as non-locals are unfamiliar with which lane they need to be in, and then not actually being able to see the lanes. This became so bad that instead of repainting the lines with refelctive paint (apparently due to the ingredients of the paint and the cost it is no longer produced) they have fitted LED cats eyes which light up when the traffic lights change to green, illuminating the lanes on the section of the roundabout that are on green! This leads neatly onto my next point!
Cats Eyes! These were invented many moons ago, and I imagine we’re all familiar with the story behind them (google it, it saved a life!) Cats eyes used to be fitted to all A roads and motorways, and some b roads. They are now only fitted on motorways, and some motorways they are only fitted at on/off ramps. They no longer fit them to A/B roads when the roads get relayed. Again, this is all down to cost. With the white line markings now being non-reflective, the loss of these cats eyes makes our roads even more dangerous at night. So there are more chances of crashes at night due to the loss of these two simple safety features from our roads.
The new street lighting (well up here anyways, not sure what it’s like elsewhere) is shocking to say the least! Our roads dept have replaced almost all the lamp posts with the new “LED” type lighting. It doesn’t emit anywhere near the same light as the old regular bulbed lamp posts, ours struggle to even light the pavement directly below them, let alone spread the light further along the pavement/onto the road. So again, makes night time driving even more dangerous. These new lamp posts/lighting were introduced due to costs/environmental reasons.
Indeed mate, think that’s the problem countrywide now. Due to the cut backs in our emergency services, we are now left with not enough police officers to deal with the criminals, so we end up having to deal with it ourselves with mixed results!
Exactly mate! Again, due to cut backs we don’t have enough police officers to tackle the increase in crime,and they don’t have the resources (ie the helicopters etc) they had before to tackle the problems so criminals get away with it. We also due to cut backs do not have enough fire fighters to attend the fires and not enough NHS staff to deal with patients (leading to increased response times which they constantly get slated for). The government constantly forces cutbacks on the services we need…instead, how about cutting back on the amount of overpaid, underworked useless MP’s/MSP’s we have sitting sleeping in the benches in parliament!
Small bumps have always gone unreported. The point is that the official figures are a proxy for the actual trends. Cars were cheaper to repair (relatively) in 1979 that today; Thatcham published a study recently showing the cost of an average low speed tap is about £3000 (for cars costing £20-25k new). Far more bumps in 1979 were sorted by a shake of the hands, and cash being exchanged. Likely a lot more drivers back then didn’t even have insurance.
It was far worse in 1979, anyhow you are describing Scotland. I lived there for quite a while.
Cats Eyes; a few years ago, one came loose, and was propelled through a windscreen killing the driver instantly.
Older roads are not maintained to a standard. Where I am, new roads are built to an excellent spec. Signage is much improved, from both positioning and physical design (the old sort could cause fatalities and injury if a car hit it). Old signage on B-roads in 1979 would have looking more like what you see in the Republic of Ireland today on their minor roads, which is frankly appalling.
If you believe that more accidents now happen at night than 40 years ago, do you have data to show that. The DfT publish a lot of data on the nature of accidents.
As it stands, most of the statements in this thread are anecdotal, and not really based on any evidence.
Well, in Scotland you can always ask your government to raise taxes to pay for that stuff. They have that power.
The NHS issue is very complex. The NHS used to be the second largest employer in Europe…after the Red Army. That stat was true, but it also pointed towards the way the NHS was manned. Making Western Europe’s biggest workforce even bigger is not the answer. Even your way, I have spoken to medics from Glasgow Royal Infirmary. They relate that in A&E, if you need a certain type of X-ray, you need to go to a different part of a hospital. In walking distance, it is over a mile away. A nurse has to accompany the patient for that mile. And then walk a mile back, and repeat. Bad deployment of resources, driven in part by a workforce resistant to reform.
As for police helicopters; these machines cost millions, require expensive aircrew and groundcrew, and half the time are grounded due to the weather. Notably, after a bumpy start, as the tech evolved, more and more police forces are deploying various UAVs (RPAS in police speak) to provide round the clock surveillance. Getting to the costs is tricky, though one disclosure indicated that in 2017, 3 police UAVs cost £35,000, and £10,000 in operator training. Surrey and Sussex spent £300k on 5 dronesThe costs may rise a bit, as more capable machines are rolled out. FOI requests indicate the running cost of a police helicopter is £1600 per hour. North Wales Police reported their helicopter cost £1.7 million a year. The London Met spends £7m a year on 3 helicopters.
There is again, a work and practice resistance here. The NPAS doesn’t operate drones, the police forces do. Before NPAS, the police operated their own aviation, then it became centralised, as part of the centralising nature of the government of the day. The report that highlighted the reduction in the NPAS fleet from 30 to 19 aircraft was misreported:
It recommended against buying more aircraft, until the police could figure out what they needed them for. A previous government introduced the NPAS, which predictably has increased the bureaucracy and costs to operate the aircraft over the previous arrangements. That government is no longer around. In 2008, the police services operated 33 aircraft for £45m a year. In 2016, the NPAS, which was supposed to be more efficient, operated 19 aircraft for £40m. The report indicated whoever came up with the NPAS wheeze downplayed the projected costs. Forming a NPAS of course reduces the independence of the police forces, and that might have been the intention then.
The report discusses drones, and notes one of the reasons why police forces are adopting drones is because of growing dissatisfaction in the way the NPAS is run. As a result, adoption is a bit ad hoc. As the report notes, the response to a decline in police aviation support isn’t necessarily to buy more helicopters, but to have a better think about alternative technologies, that includes drones. Do army police units always need a helicopter? In traffic support, how are the helicopters actually used etc. In the report, it is astounding that the NPCC Strategic Drones Working Group had only received representations from the Met and PSNI. The NPAS, who is supposed to lead on innovation, had nothing to say about drones, leaving it to individual police forces to make their own procurement decisions. I wonder if that is because the NPAS sees technology as a threat to their jobs.
As the police are not there to witness the car crimes and bad driving on our roads perhaps they need to employ the general public who are making the complaints in the first place. If you have evidence of the crime it can be presented to the police who can then take action. If we all had quality dash cams we could directly upload the data to the police. The Welsh police have a scheme in place which has resulted in prosecutions. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40998946 Perhaps cars equiped with cameras driven by civilians could be deployed to catch the offenders.
I will defiantly be getting a dash cam soon after all the near miss incidents I have had, especially the one yesterday. He was going so fast he was just a blur in front of me, didn’t have time to even smash the horn or see his plates. But with a dash cam I could try handing the footage to the police and get his plates, I didn’t think the police did anything about it if you just handed footage in.
Make sure you the quality is good enough to read number plates on playback. If not, as it has a sound recorder, you will need to read out the numberplate. You will be surprised at how much you swear !
I have a dash cam, unfortunately when I needed it a couple of weeks ago it wasn’t attached to the windscreen, had problems with the mount.
Had a nutcase who brake checked me on a dual carriageway, no I wasn’t that close to his rear bumper, far from it he was actually behind me but wanted to get past me. When you are overtaking a pair of trucks and an idiot like this almost rams you from the rear to bully you out of the way it gets a bit frightening but what he did next was absolutely idiotic. He undertakes me between the two trucks then brake checks me.
At no time was I applying my brakes to antagonise him just doing a normal overtake. I do have his reg number, my missus took that on her phone, it’s pretty useless as it’s just a picture, no action but my dash cam mount is firmly affixed now and records every journey.
Saz9961, Drones can be used very effectively for some jobs, such as searching an area, or crowd surveillance (how I hated being required to attend football matches in case trouble kicked off as fans arrived and left) but in the case of illegal motorcycling or other vehicle pursuits, they aren’t much use. Their main disadvantage is the legal requirement for a ground operator to keep the drone in direct sight. This means that the drone has to be driven to the scene and if the job is a reactive one at the far end of the county it’s not much use. Another disadvantage is that they cannot carry out an arrest. A helicopter carries police staff who can.
Questions need to asked about the brand new police hangar (in fact now two years old) at Doncaster containing two brand new fixed wing aircraft which have never actually been tasked in the two years or so since they were bought specifically for the role. They were supposed to give an enhanced service for less money. So far they have proved to be a total white elephant. The aircraft type was poorly thought out in the first place and was not as advertised. It’s a fifty year old design. They have petrol engines rather than turbines and not all large airports have the facility to refuel them, they only supply jet fuel. At night the smaller airfields, which do stock AVGAS are closed, which reduces the operating range. These aircraft do not fly much faster than the helicopters they were supposed to replace and for obvious reasons they cannot hover or land in a small field whilst on task. The windows are smaller than those of helicopters, reducing the view of the occupants, which is counterproductive to the one vital requirement They cannot carry two observers in addition to the pilot because they are too heavy once fitted with all the police equipment.
NPAS overlooked the fact that these aircraft did not have the capability to fly in icing conditions (cold cloud) which goes completely against the requirement of a long transit to an incident. Stupidly, that was the reason they were purchased, so they could cover a wider area, existing police aviation units could be closed. The police has had to pay for the certification of aircraft modifications to improve the icing clearance. The modifications will have added weight, reducing the carrying capacity of the aircraft even further.
The weather requirements for a fixed wing are more restrictive than for a helicopter! For example, apart from the flight visibility minima compared to helicopters they have runway crosswind limits for takeoff and landing (helicopters don’t need runways).
It goes on…but that is what happens when policemen think they know more about operating aircraft than those who operate them for a living.
You can just upload the video. For the test event I was trying, it says:
Footage must cover two minutes before and two minutes after the event.
So don’t turn the ignition off if your dashcam won’t remain powered. I’m sure I’d forget.
The NHS is indeed very complex. But sorry, if Europe’s biggest workforce is causing unacceptable queues and waiting times then what would you suggest? Decreasing the number of staff?? Sure, they could make more efficient use of the staff, and that wouldn’t be difficult to do, but in the end if the number of patients outweighs the number of staff available by a ludicrous amount then they have to recruit more staff. It’s the logical answer. Another thing that might help is restructuring what the NHS actually deals with in the first place. Lots of procedures carried out are ones that the patient should be having done privately (IE: paying for it). Prime example is ■■■■ jobs! Lots of women get breast enlargements carried out through the NHS purely for cosmetic reasons. This costs the NHS hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and ties up valuable staff during the procedure. Things like that should only be done through the NHS if there is a proper medical reason for it. Not just because someone wants boobs like Jordan. There are loads more examples of things that should not be paid for by the NHS. Sort these out and you then start saving money and also free up staff to attend to more needy patients.
Very surprized to hear that in the Glasgow RI they had a nurse taking a patient to get an xray? In Edinburgh RI they have staff called porters who ferry the patients to xrays etc in the hospitals.I have never seen or had a nurse take me to any kind of xray, and neither has anyone I know. So that is something that NHS Scotland need to look at carefully in Glasgow. Totally agree that that right there is poor use of resources.
I also have friends and family who are nurses, and have to say that I find the comment “Bad deployment of resources, driven in part by a workforce resistant to reform” totally unfair. The hours these staff put in and the workloads they are under are unbelievable. To say the workforce is resistant to reform is totally wrong. What they are resistant to is having more tasks added to their already overstretched workload that were previously carried out by consultants and staff higher up the chain. Nursing staff etc had a pay increase of 3% same as most workforces (local authority/nhs etc) got. Teachers on the other hand demanded a 12% payrise, and for what?? Think they ended up with 5% which is still more than the NHS staff got, yet they don’t save lives, they don’t put in mega hours.
Anyhoo, this is starting to stray onto another topic altogether so I’ll leave that right there and get back on topic. lol Maybe we should have a section in the forum called “conversation street” just like they do on The Grand Tour where we can have discussions like this every week. Would make for some interesting debates! lol
So one cats eye came loose and went through the windscreen killing one driver? And that’s over how many years since they were first introduced in 1935? As stats go, I find that a really poor reason to decide to stop fitting this valuable safety device to our roads. In 70 odd years one driver killed but how many actually saved by this device? I know if I had a choice between driving down a twisty A or B road at night that had cats eyes in place or one that didn’t, I know which one I would be choosing every time. These are proven to be an effective safety device and prevent accidents, so constructing new roads without them is to me downgrading our roads, not upgrading them.
I do believe that more accidents happen at night on our roads now simply because the paint used for road markings now is ■■■■ and the lack of said cats eyes does not help in the slightest. So yes, take away things that in the past helped drivers see where a road was going, where their lane was etc will in effect cause more accidents. We haven’t suddenly all developed nightvision/xray vision. No I don’t have data to prove anything as I don’t spend hours trawlling for data on something that I can actually see with my own eyes, and that other drivers i know also see with their own eyes. I don’t need statistics to tell me that blindfolding a driver means that at some point they will crash. lol Same as I know that at some point through his idiotic driving, said ■■■■ on the dirt bike will have an accident/cause an accident.
You may have noticed the topic has been moved. Feel free to continue your banter. I have my views on the NHS. I won’t change those views, and I won’t go into the reasons why I hold those views, suffice to say, those reasons are as grounded as the reasons why you hold your views. I doubt your views will change on that. So there is no further point, from my perspective, is carrying out a discussion on the so-called “NHS” (its not a NHS when you have different versions in the home nations, and its not a single unitary organisation). Carry on without me on that.
Don’t forget, if Percy Shaw had witnessed the cat going the other way, he’d have invented the pencil sharpener!
Barrie
Totally agree that there is a really high level of poor / arrogant / don’t care driving everywhere nowadays.
I think some of it must be because people can just get away with it, and have no fear of any sanction from the police.
I’ve been in traffic and witnessed appalling acts of lawlessness recently when police vehicles have been next to me, and it’s been absolutely ignored.
Might sound like an old git - but when I was a young driver it was pretty much zero tolerance for any offence, even just driving a car full of
young blokes was enough to be pulled over for a friendly chat (or not, if anything was untoward).
Suppose the numbers of cars relative to police was a bit lower back then, but I still think things need a radical shake up.
Rant over
Dont get me wrong Saz, I too have very personal reasons for disliking the nhs to a point of hating it. Through misdiagnosis of my dad (twice) I lost him to cancer. Through neglagence of a consultant, I lost myfirst wife to cancer when she was only 45 years old. I have a huge distrust in it and always will.
I have to give praise recently on how they treated me during my heart attack. I do agree there is so much differences not only from one end of the country to the other but also from hospital to hospital. Some of the things that happened to my wife you wouldnt believe, to the extent i had to physically throw a so called nurse out of the room my wife was in then repot her. It can be a shocking experience indeed so can totaly understand if you have ylur own views/reasons mate.