Graduated speeding penalties

The Times today reports that Ministers will launch the second consultation into graduated speeding penalties 'before Christmas'.

This follows an earlier consultation in 2004 that indicated very real difficulties in coming up with an acceptable table.

Amazingly the table wasn't produced for MPs to consider when they signed up for graduated speeding penalties in 2006 with the Road Safety Act.

Paul Smith, founder of SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: "It's amazing that the government has not been able to propose a sensible and acceptable graduated penalty table in over 3 years - this is turning into a farce."

"Department for Transport has forgotten that the speed limit is nothing more than a weak proxy for the desired behaviour. We all know that it's important that no on should drive too fast, but the speed limit cannot tell us what too fast is. The graduated speeding penalties proposal adds weight to the proxy and removes weight from the desired behaviour. This is just one more dangerous mistake in a catalogue of dangerous mistakes."

"Department for Transport so-called 'speed management policies' are a complete and utter failure. It's high time they owned up, scrapped the failed policies and gave us real road safety policies that will save real lives."

"Driver will rightly be concerned that they will be faced with losing their licences for six months after two perfectly routine cases of driving safely. We all know that exceeding the speed limit isn't automatically dangerous and none more so than roads policing chief Med Hughes who is due to face North Wales Magistrates on 21st November accused of driving at 90mph in a 60mph zone.

"The pretending must stop. The lies must stop. Road safety efforts must be concentrated on real causes of road dangers. Road safety depends on drivers adjusting their speed to suit the conditions and this behaviour must be encouraged not denied."