Another belly laugh for you all!
For those who remember P**l Sm*th's risible 12mph Comedy Web Page, you might enjoy this:
safespeed.org.uk12mphcomment.htmlOpen ↗ - to save you gratifying the loony with another hit on
his webshite, here's the content with comments:
Quoted message said:A cyclist called Guy Chapman thought the previous page was worthy of ridicule and has set up the
following web page: (chapmancentral.demon.co.ukSafeSpeedOpen ↗)
Oops! He failed to mention the fact that I am a driver and train user as well as a cyclist. As were
many of the others who so comprehensively demolished his childish twaddle. In fact he misses any
mention of the Great Usenet Trouncing at all. I wonder why?
Quoted message said:Obviously Mr Chapman completely failed to understand the purpose or intention of the work. He also
made the following errors of fact or understanding:
Oops! He forgot the extensive debate in which he described the purpose and intention in detail, and
was roundly trounced. I can see why memory might draw a veil over such humiliation...
FWIW, we all understood perfectly well the purpose of the exercise: it was to "prove" that slower
speeds don't save lives using source material which proves the direct oposite.
Quoted message said:"vulnerable road users." No Guy. If the work had addressed vulnerable road users the headline
number would have been even lower than 12 mph.
Oops! The line he's partially quoted is: "Including only car drivers excludes one of the principal
groups affected by excessive speed - vulnerable road users. These are significantly more likely to
be killed, and speed plays a very large part in turning an injury into a fatality for these
vulnerable road users." We all know the relative pedestrian survival rates at different impact
speeds. We also know that if the cars were genuinely doing 12mph many of us wuld be able to outrun
or outride the cars. In other words, the premise is risible. Which is back where we started :-)
Quoted message said:"This assumes that the drivers will not brake" Yes Guy. Of course it does. That's the point.
Oops! That's not what he said in the Great Rambling Thread, and if it is his point then it's a
blatantly stupid one. After all, we /could/ re-introduce the Red Flag Act and still have the same
number of fatalities provided all pedestrians were nailed to the pavement and drivers ran them over
deliberately. It's just not very likely. Just as it's not very illuminating to suggest that fatality
levels would be unchanged at 12mph provided drivers no longer brake. Oh, and he doesn't address the
undoubted fact that one of his cherished motorists crashing at 12mph in a car which meets the euro
NCAP requirements will almost certainly walk away unscathed.
Quoted message said:"you're using the formula for V when it's clearly meant to be applied to delta V" But of course
we're entitled to assume that delta v is equal to v because it's driver response in most cases
which separate the two.
Oops! The selectively quoted text misses out the part where this is pointed out. And misses the part
where it's made clear that this argument was in any case advanced by someone else (Simon Proven).
And of course V only equals delta V when the driver fails to brake - how likely is that outside
SmithWorld(TM)?
Quoted message said:"you can't apply this formula to the average speed" We agree that this leads to an estimation
error, but the estimation error is always to overestimate the speed from the probability of death.
So the error, if corrected, would make the headline conclusion smaller. Perhaps 10 or 11 mph
instead of 12 mph.
Oops! Missed the point entirely. The point is that he's making things up, and the formulae he's
using to make things up are irrational, mis-applied, and in any case reliant on a complete failure
of the driver concerned to take any avoiding action.
Quoted message said:"The 70% don't speed all the time" with a ratio of 1,500:1, it hardly matters if the speeding
proportion is 30% or 70%. (and in the free travelling conditions where speed enforcement has its
greatest effects it's usually on the high side) It's still a massive ratio. 50% of 1,500:1 is
still 750:1.
Oops! As Smith's source says, "Vehicles exceeding the 90th percentile speed or traveling more than 7
km/h faster (4 mi/h) than the speed limit and median speed had above average injury crash
involvement rates." Sorry, Paul, you can't extrapolate from fragments of the research which support
your ludicrous agenda and at the same time ignore the bulk of that same research which directly
contradicts you.
Quoted message said:Never mind Guy. Better luck next time.
Never mind, Paul, if it's taken you over six months to come up with this negligible comeback perhaps
you should stick to the day job. Oh, you haven't got one.
"P**l Sm*th, Full-time road safety campaigner" - or is it "unemployed speedophile?"
--
Guy
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WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
chapmancentral.demon.co.ukchapmancentral.demon.co.ukOpen ↗