Speed

"Speed Kills!" is a popular road safety slogan that we hear often. It's pretty simplistic and when I look around me on the highway I am convinced that drivers either don't believe it or live in a world of denial. Speed alone doesn't kill, but combine it with poor driving skills or a bad decision and it definitely makes a bad situation worse.

Dynamic speed display signs are popping up beside B.C.'s Highways. They display the speed of passing vehicles above a sign showing the posted speed limit. Are these signs useful in persuading drivers to keep to the limit and if so, how effective are they?

In this case Allen Lukas appeals his conviction for speeding based on the visual observation of his vehicle's speed made by Cst. Neid of the Kelowna R.C.M.P. Detachment.

This web site supports a campaign for 20 mph speed limits in residential areas of Britain. The idea behind the movement is to bring pedestrians and cyclists back onto the streets, reduce injury if a collision occurs and showing that the reduction in speed costs motorists very little time.

My mom recently received a traffic ticket for speeding in school zone.

The officer verbally told her that she was driving at 45 km/h in the 30 zone. Later, my mom heard from her friend who also got a ticket that the officer who stopped her actually showed the speed sensor to her for how fast she was going at the time.

My son was ticketed with driving too fast for conditions. The air and roads were dry. No 'conditions'. He was in an unfamiliar area at night and was in a roundabout which had a steep ditch on one side. As he was unfamiliar with the round about, he simply turned into the curb instead of following the curve of the road, and ended up over the curb and slightly down the embankment.

Stay in Mantrol is an anti-speed campaign from the New Zealand Transport Agency. The following quote from their web site summarizes the campaign:

I would have thought that being faced with a fine of either $368 or $483 and 3 penalty points would make any driver hesitate to exceed the speed limit by more than 40 or more than 60 km/h. Even so, more than 10,000 drivers were fined in this manner last year in BC. Worse still, I know that this is only the start of the problem as these were just the drivers that were caught and issued the appropriate fine by police.

Question: I am interested in speed measurement because I was recently issued a speeding ticket with a fine amount of $138. I was driving westward on the left lane behind a pickup truck. I was looking for a street sign, so I slowed down and changed lanes to the right so that vehicles behind me could pass.

Why are radar locations are allowed to be broadcast on the radio road reports? I have seen, so many times, people drive slow where they know radar is, only to start speeding once they get past them. Isn't the idea of radar to catch the speeders?