Bad driving is the problem, not just speed

I READ Jayne Dowle’s column (Yorkshire Post, April 21) with interest and look forward to its sequel.

I passed my motor cycle test in 1957 and my car test in 1962 and drove without a blemish until last autumn when, returning from a visit to family in Aberdeen, I was caught by a mobile camera in the Scottish Borders on a quiet cross-country A-road on an equally quiet Monday afternon.

I was slowing from 60mph to 30 mph as I entered a village, but apparently had not slowed fast enough and was recorded at 40mph when I passed the well-concealed camera.

This was my first offence in well over 50 years of regular driving and, like Jayne, I take pride in being a safe driver, rather than one who constantly watches the speedo instead of the road. I respond to Drive Safely or Slow Down signs, rather than the aggressive Watch Your Speed signs that inevitably take drivers’ attention away from the road. The current focus on speed because it is easy to measure, rather than on how well or badly a vehicle is driven, because that is subjective, is an irritation.

I failed my first motorcycle test, taken without any instruction at all at the age of 17, but have never forgotten the examiner’s question. He asked me to give him the most common cause of accidents and although my reply included speed, he said: “Wrong, the principal cause of accidents is rank bad driving.”

Needless to say, I was well prepared for my successful motor cycle retest and went on to pass my car test at the first attempt, but it is a salutary thought that if that 1950s examiner was correct, the camera, since it does not detect bad driving, is not as effective in reducing accidents as its supporters would have us believe. I believe that there is a serious over-emphasis on mindless cameras as a cheap alternative to the much more effective police highway patrols and that this is detrimental.