hedgehog

Chief Constable Paul Garvin is to retire. Despite considerable pressure he refuses to use speed cameras and has presided over a 24% drop in road fatalities last year alone, and that from a very low level already. For comparison North Wales, where Brunstrom has control of a massive camera empire, saw an 18% increase in fatalities.

http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/uk_ne...ar/4642737.stm

Durham Police's chief constable, Paul Garvin, has announced he will retire at the end of the year.

Mr Garvin, 56, who was appointed three years ago, unveiled the force's StreetSafe campaign, which Tony Blair described as a role model initiative.

He courted controversy by questioning the use of fixed speed cameras, and County Durham is one of the few counties not to use the devices.

Gateshead-born Mr Garvin joined the police on Teesside in the late 1960s.

He said: "This force has a hard-earned reputation for being one of the best run in the country and I want to make sure that success continues and we stay at the forefront of policing.

"The timing of my departure will be both right for the organisation and for me."

Earlier this year Durham, with a record number of front-line bobbies on the streets, was singled out as one of the safest places to live in England and Wales.

dmc1980

Unfortunately these statistics are the ones that the pencil pushing muppets dont look at.

^Qwerty^

So who's taking bets that a Scamera Partnership Friendly CC will be wheeled in?

Mind you, by then, they might all be dead in the water...in which case the government will claim that the "non-camera partnership" experiment in Durham has been a complete success, and it will now be rolled out UK wide.

Abdabz

Pencil pushing muppets dont look at stats like that because they're more manipulable than a yoga instructor

Just think how many lives would have been saved in Durham with all that wonderful policing AND speed cameras combined... Drivers would have become as good as immortal and Durham would be an even more pleasant place to visit...

hedgehog

The partnerships may merely be a ruse to get the infrastructure in place to implement road charging and ISA, paid for by us of course. So it seems likely that Durham will gain a "partnership" of some type though it may not be called a "safety camera partnership." As the mapping of the country for ISA is due to finish in September I guess they are getting into a position to start rolling out organisations and systems and enabling technology.

Paul Garvin has a policy of driver education rather than persecution and his fatalities were already significantly below the national average even before his 24% reduction last year. You must remember, however, that the various control technologies are not about safety and a county starting from a very low fatality level would not necessarily be a good thing in the time leading up to their implementation. It would look bad for ISA to result in a huge increase in fatalities. For all I know the new CC for Durham may be chosen for his "ability" to increase road fatalities in the lead up to the introduction of ISA! Brunstrom is doing this very well in North Wales for example and is held up as a model to which other police forces should aspire.

Politically the technology to monitor and control your use of and access to private transport is a tricky area but the one thing that seems fairly well established is that it is going to result in the deaths of motorists. The current "expert" in the area is a chap called Prof. Oliver Carsten who is based at Leeds University. He turns out lots of research into the benefits of monitoring and controlling the private motorist and, even, insists that it will increase road safety. He is well qualified to do this as his academic qualifications are in history. I presume this has taught him that historically any academic producing reports which state exactly what the government want them to state will do well, make lots of money and retire early to the easy life. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

^Qwerty^

In much the same light, what qualifications does Caroline Chisholm (BRAKE) have to tell me, or anyone else for that matter, how to drive a car safely?

I do actually wonder if she drives at all?

hedgehog

I agree with this as well. A lot of the adverts and discussion we see and hear runs along the lines of "what happens if a child suddenly runs out in front of you?"

Now for the good driver who observes some considerable distance ahead and who anticipates dangers and potential dangers things do not happen "suddenly" at all. For a bad driver, or someone who has never driven before then it might be reasonable to assert that things happen "suddenly" but the majority of drivers anticipate and plan based upon what they can see in front and behind so "suddenly" is not something they experience. This just highlights how far out of touch these "motoring policy makers" are with the people who actually drive on our roads.

There are actually some figures, if you ever believe any figures, which show that the average impact speed with a child is very, very low indeed. This highlights that in almost every such incident the motorist was aware of the danger, had slowed down and was ready to brake. The incident didn't happen suddenly for him/her even if it did happen suddenly for the child who ran out without paying attention.