Speed doesn’t kill. Inappropriate speed does.

We’ve all seen the headlines in the papers in the last few days about the guy doing 172mph in a ‘borrowed’ Porsche, and I’m sure the court had all the relevant information to conclude a sentence of 10 weeks and a 3 year ban was appropriate. But I have to say, there does seem to be an awful lot of self-righteous rubbish spewed out as comment in this case.

“Your driving was criminally self-indulgent and utterly thoughtless of the danger you might be creating for the innocent”
said Judge David Morton Jack.

“Through his own selfishness, in what appears to be a lust for speed, he has completely disregarded the safety of others on the road. It is fortunate the police were there to take action before he ended up killing himself or someone else.” said a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents spokesman.

All the comments on this case seem to be in the same vein, but is the comment right? In my opinion it is very wide of the mark. It is not speed per se that is dangerous, it is inappropriate speed.

When I was learning to drive I, along with everyone else, had to learn to drive in a specific way to pass my driving test. Those ‘rules’ change, as I discovered when my own children learnt to drive, but they are a frighteningly small part of really being able to drive, and many of the ’skills’ we master as learners have to be quickly undone when we get in the real world. My father was a police Inspector, and an Advanced Driver. He was very unhappy at the skill sets I learnt to pass the driving test, and ensured that I was able to drive to his standards before I was let within a mile of his car. And that has stood me in very good stead. One of the most important lessons he taught me was that speed itself is not dangerous, it is inappropriate speed that is dangerous. Inappropriate for the car; inappropriate for the weather; inappropriate for the volume of traffic. But speed is not a danger in itself.

I am not familiar with the A420 in Oxford where this speeding offence was committed, but after using the excellent Google Maps to have a look it does seem a daft place to do 170mph. It is an ‘A’ road, not a motorway, with all the additional inherent dangers of side roads, roundabouts and smaller junctions. So maybe the judge was right, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is always the same outcry with any big speeding offence, and the same claim that it is equivalent to at least rape and murder in its gravity! What utter nonsense. Is 170mph in a competent car on an open stretch of clear motorway in good weather dangerous? No, it’s not. Ask the Germans. They have the sense to allow appropriate speeds, but punish inappropriate speeds severely. And the authorities take in to account all the relevant factors I’ve already mentioned. So you could get done for 90mph one day on a stretch of the Autobahn, and have no problem at twice that the next day. It’s all about how appropriate the speed is. But we can’t do that in the UK, because high speeds seem to come with a collective raising of arms in horror. And of course 99% of our ’speeding offences’ are processed by a Gatso and not an intelligent human.

Inappropriate speeds have as much relevance at low speeds as they do at high ones. Most of our High Streets have a 30mph limit on them. How appropriate would it be to do 30mph down a busy Higfh Street on a Saturday afternoon? I would suggest it would be far more dangerous than 170mph on a clear motorway, but with our almost complete reliance on Gatsos since the Police Force were replaced by form-filling, invisible bobbies, it would go unpunished. We need perspective in our policing of the roads, which will never come with the reliance on machines and their inability to make anything other than black and white decisions. Put real traffic coppers back on the roads, and let them make the sensible decisions their experience allows. And stop pretending that automated law enforcement on our roads is anything other than revenue raising.

Speed doesn’t kill. Inappropriate speed does.