[BBC News] Anti-social Manx drivers stopped

[Chopsticks]

Probably not arrested, just fined heavily. It probably improved the smell of that old Carlton anyway.

 

I don't have it any more, it's gone to the big scrap yard in the sky.

 

I am an upmarket motorist now.

[grant]

I should have realised that, what with your camel-hair coat and trilby. What is it, an XJ6 or another scooby?

[Grumble]

No - the sooner you learn to keep your animals and children off the ROADS, the better.

 

Its not a road you fucking prick its a residential street

 

If you cant tell the difference then you should take the fucking bus you cunt

You may well have a point and I'm sure you and the family are upset. It is obvious that Grumble was attempting a piss poor wind up.

 

But all people will see is the vulgarity in your post and lose sympathy.

 

Not a wind-up at all - I'm not excusing dangerous or advocating anti-social driving anywhere, but residential streets are still a place for cars and not domestic animals or children. Cheeky Boy is so clearly capable of over-reacting that I now wonder how fast this allegedly lunatic driver was actually going. His (CB's) type always has to blame somebody else for their own mistakes. With a lot of swearing and aggressive behaviour to reinforce their lame point, usually.

[macmannin]

We,the inept manx drivers,need more signs.Some fine examples that keep me safe........

 

1.The flood sign/check your brakes on the Scollag road.The road is always flooding here

 

2.The electronic sign at the bottom of the Richmond hill telling me pearls of wisdom like good drivers think of others.

 

Thankyou once again D.O.T

[Grianane]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

 

Clamp down on minor driving issues such as loud pipes, seatbelts, mobile phones etc and you indicate to people that a certain standard of driving is required - fall outside those limits and you will be caught & fined .

 

Indicate to people that a certain standard of driving is required and you will find the accident rate falling. You can teach just about anything with negative re-enforcement. Perhaps you can't make people value their own lives but you can make them value the pound in their pocket.

 

Target the small problems and the larger ones should take care of themselves - if you can't get away with an 'faulty' (in other words too loud) exhaust , no seatbelt, talking on the phone, speeding around town etc etc then is it likely that the police are going to tolerate you driving like a cock outside the towns?

 

The current police thinking is IMHO a good idea.

 

One thing I would like to see is more enforcement of homezone speed limits. Whats the point in having them in they are not policed ? Wybourne drive is a classic example - a residential area where few drivers travel at less than 30 mph let alone the posted 20 mph.

 

This is such a sensible post it needs highlighting. If the Police placed adverts in the press and used local radio to inform all of us good citizens that they are going to clamp down on all aspects of anti-social behaviour, with no warnings or cautions then only anti-social people could complain.

So, with a zero tolerance attitude, along with fines flying everywhere, it wouldn't take very long before the message gets through, to the benefit of most residents.

Why stop at driving, vandalism, abuse, assault, drunkeness, etc. No cautions or warnings, fines followed by custodial sentences. It may involve a bit of overtime for the Police, but after a while, people would get the message.

Whilst it won't cure a 100% of anti-social behaviour, it'll stop most. It's worked elsewhere, can't see why it wouldn't here.

 

Totally and fully agree. I've batted on about this before - the police need to start prosecuting when laws are broken, there's no point in applying discretion, if the maximum R limit is 50mph then prosecution for exceeding it should always occur (accepting all the usual arguements about speedo accuracy etc). The police would gain a lot more respect from the law abiding populace by adopting such a policy, the current approach (demonstarted in other recent threads) of the occassional slap on the wrist in my mind only promotes a friendy policing approach towards lawbreakers - I couldn't give a toss what they think about the police, the police should be respected by the law abiders and feared by law breakers.

[Chopsticks]

In all fairness to the police approach of not prosecuting automatically, when I was on R plates (I passed my test just after they came in) I did drive like a bit of a cock, and on one occasion overtook a long line of traffic up from the Bungalow (going towards Douglas, as usual there was some twat at the head of the queue plodding along at 35mph in perfect conditions, and no one else would overtake).

 

There was a copper sat at the Bungalow who saw this manoeuvre, and took chase, although he only caught up with me on the drop down to Brandish (which tells you the extent to which I was "making progress" - getting a Mark II Golf GTi as my first car wasn't a wholly smart idea, not least 'cause it cost one hundred billion dollars to insure the bastard.....).

 

Anyway, he asked me to step out of the car, and proceeded to give me a right old bollocking at the side of the road, not only for speeding (although he had no proof I suppose, we both knew full well I'd been batting along like a loon), but also for not wearing my seatbelt (a very bad habit I picked up off my dad, who still refuses to wear one to this day).

 

He took my details and told me to produce my licence and insurance at a police station within the next seven days, and of course, all the while this was happening, all the cars I'd overtaken at high speed drove past me, with the drivers and passengers enjoying a wry smile (or an outright laugh) at the boy racer being given a verbal kick up the arse off plod by the side of the road.

 

The point being, it worked, I always wore my seatbelt from then on in, and the for the rest of my R plate tenure, watched my speed a lot more carefully. If he'd have thrown the book at me with a ticket or a prosecution or whatever, I'd have just got annoyed and resentful, and probably driven like even more of a cock, just to vent my frustration (as angry blokes in their twenties are not always the most logical creatures on the planet).

 

Overall, I think we have to trust the police with the right to use their discretion, I'm sure that in blatant cases of very dangerous or "anti-social" driving, they will look towards issuing a ticket or starting a procedure that could lead to prosecution, but in other cases, it may very well be that a proper telling off, but allowing the person to go about their business afterwards, is actually the better approach, and will produce a more positive result.

[Grianane]

It might have been a different story if you'd poulghed into the front of some other young gun doing similar speed coming the other way. I'd have taken the keys of you, made you walk home, and given you a date for court.

 

Are you seriously suggesting everyone should be give at least one chance - what you did was by your own admission foolhardy, dangerous, and irresponsible. Despite your protestation a ban and some points would have been deserved and had the same effect and sent a message to other R drivers that such behaviour is illegal.

[*daniel*]

It might have been a different story if you'd poulghed into the front of some other young gun doing similar speed coming the other way. I'd have taken the keys of you, made you walk home, and given you a date for court.

 

Are you seriously suggesting everyone should be give at least one chance - what you did was by your own admission foolhardy, dangerous, and irresponsible. Despite your protestation a ban and some points would have been deserved and had the same effect and sent a message to other R drivers that such behaviour is illegal.

 

It might of been a different story but it wasn't (neither of us was their so neither of us can fully decide on whether it was safe or not to overtake). I don't think he's saying at all that everyone should be given one chance, just that we should trust the police to use their discretion appropriately (they will obviously be able to make a judgement under the given circumstances).

[Lonan3]

Wybourne drive is a classic example - a residential area where few drivers travel at less than 30 mph let alone the posted 20 mph.

 

They should be easily identifiable by the fact that their exhausts have fallen off and their suspension is totally knackered, given the extremely variable size of the Hannay Humps up there!

[Albert Tatlock]

Totally and fully agree. I've batted on about this before - the police need to start prosecuting when laws are broken, there's no point in applying discretion, if the maximum R limit is 50mph then prosecution for exceeding it should always occur (accepting all the usual arguements about speedo accuracy etc). The police would gain a lot more respect from the law abiding populace by adopting such a policy, the current approach (demonstarted in other recent threads) of the occassional slap on the wrist in my mind only promotes a friendy policing approach towards lawbreakers - I couldn't give a toss what they think about the police, the police should be respected by the law abiders and feared by law breakers.

You have to have discretion: what about the guy rushing to see his son born? what about the guy who's just changed his bulb - and it's popped again the same day without him knowing? etc. etc. Friendly and respected policing is a far better approach - a zero telerance approach makes for unapproachable coppers. Some people make silly minor mistakes, and turning policing into a zero tolerance cash-cow for the government is a dangerous route.

[Grumble]

What Chopsticks and Albert said ^ (again)!

[Chopsticks]

It might have been a different story if you'd poulghed into the front of some other young gun doing similar speed coming the other way. I'd have taken the keys of you, made you walk home, and given you a date for court.

 

The manoeuvre I performed certainly involved exceeding 50mph, and the policeman involved had clearly seen that I wasn't wearing my seatbelt as well.

 

That said, it is possible to see all the way from the Bungalow up to the corner right at the top of the straight (Hailwood Heights?), so it wasn't as if I was overtaking blindly into what could have been oncoming traffic, I knew full well that I had plenty of room to get to the head of the queue of traffic and safely pull back in, without encountering anything coming the other way.

 

I knew that, and I guess the policeman knew that, as such I wasn't doing anything that was endangering lives or was massively reckless, but I was being naughty on my R plates with regard to speed, and I should have been wearing my seatbelt.

 

I'm not saying everyone deserves a second chance whatever they're caught doing, but I am saying (as seems to have happened with Operation Brownstone) that perhaps we should respect the ability of the police to make a judgement call as to whether or not the transgression warrants a good telling off and being sent on your way, or the issuing of a ticket/court summons/whatever.

[Gladys]

Yes, exercise discretion, but do police.

 

On the subject of educating, has anyone heard the ad calling for drivers to give time to lollipop people to walk to and from the middle of the road? It then ends by calling for more volunteers, as though we will be queuing up to play dodgems! Bizarre.

[Sparky]

Well, there is a good bit of ill - informed debate on here, so I'll try my best to level things up.

 

First of all, who said anything about tickings off? - the 150 that I referred to have all walked away at least forty quid lighter - and some are waiting to go to court. There were some who were warned, but they are in something of a minority.

 

...

 

Fantastic response. Yes the majority of us that abide by the various laws appreciate that the 100+ people stopped will now for a short while at least think twice about their actions. Your 3 E's again is spot on, however what I would like to see is a real crackdown in the 30 & 20mph zones, get this sorted and IMHO the rest will follow, slow people down where it matters, get them thinking of others by not using their mobile phones and concentrating on the road.

 

For the poster who doesn't think driving without a seatbelt is anti social, I had a friend who was seriously injured when a car hit him, his major injuries were not caused by the car hitting him, but by the passengers head coming through the windscreen and head butting him as he hit the bonnet, the passenger was not wearing a seat belt.

 

Living near a school I find that the worst offenders for not wearing a seatbelt and driving above the 30 limit whilst on their phones tend to be mum's dropping their offspring off at school whilst on the way to the next school to drop siblings off. Usually they are on the last minute and in a hurry.

[Port Erin]

Well, there is a good bit of ill - informed debate on here, so I'll try my best to level things up.

 

First of all, who said anything about tickings off? - the 150 that I referred to have all walked away at least forty quid lighter - and some are waiting to go to court. There were some who were warned, but they are in something of a minority.

 

Secondly - Brownstone (which is a randomly assigned name from an alphabetical list - we aren't allowed the fun of making them up any more) was something of an 'introductory offer' where people were give an sporting chance to conform. I don't think I could have been more overt, about covert, if I had tried.

 

Third - Anything that puts either the driver at risk (seatbelts) and therefore puts us through the trauma of picking bits of glass out of them, or other motorists at risk (mobile phones) is pretty anti social.

 

finally, there is a three sided approach to road safety, Education, Engineering and Enforcement. Get the first two right, and the third should just be a wash-up. Considering the general image of traffic cops as petrol-wasting right-wingers, I would have though that people would have been generally happy that we were trying to be a bit more creative and up front in our approach.

 

Believe me, the one thing that drives me is something Robert Peel said

 

"The measure of Police Success, is the absence of crime and disorder"

 

Para phrase that into something more trafficky, and when we are going to less bumps, then we know we are getting there.

 

PS The poster who states they were met head on by a police car on its way to a job. If you contact me at police headquarters, I will look into your complaint.

 

Regards

 

Derek

I have to agree with most of this apart from 'Engineering' - WTF is that all about?

 

In respect of speed traps, I suggest that the traffic cops get a bit more clued up about the legislation and the parameters that they are operating within.

 

I was stopped earlier this year (allegedly) speeding, and I successfully contested it on the basis that a traffic sign was hidden - contrary to Section 22 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1985.

 

Ironically, this paragraph was immediately below the one I was allegedly in breach of on my summons!

 

I did the community a favour by pointing this out and guess what...the sign is still obscured. How are you meant to know what speed limit is in force if the signs are hidden? I know it's the DOT's responsibility and Government Departments don't talk to each other.