I so want to believe this report (left) in today's Daily Post that North Wales Police's new Chief Constable, Mark Polin, has pledged to change the Force's priorities away from its current over-emphasis on punishing speeding motorists.
As everyone will know, his predecessor, Richard Brunstrom, became a national joke for his solitary focus on speeding - so much so that he was dubbed the "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" by the Daily Telegraph.
Anyway, as I said, I really want to believe this story - but then I look at the dateline...
7 comments:
Hi Druid
Love the site.
I live in Penyffordd nr Mold where traffic hammers through everyday. Here's my piece which I did yesterday before reading yours.
http://penyffordd-district.blogspot.com/2010/04/fewer-road-accidents-in-future-on-roads.html
A Letter to The Daily Post, Flintshire Leader and BBC NE.
Dear Media
A letter for consideration
Chief Constable Mark Polin has announced that he is removing resources from traffic policing . In his statement he repeated the oft used canard that NWP were renowned for their hard line on traffic enforcement. The Chief Constable surely lives in cloud cuckoo land, he needs to forget what former Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom spouted and get out more. From now on until winter North Wales will sound like a noisy race track each weekend with bikers and tourists racing down to their caravans. Traffic policing has also been quietly removed from North Wales communities via the back door. The Police Authority has recently announced that anti social behaviour is high on the concern list of North Waleans, being a friend to noisy racing bikers with illegal exhausts and speeding motorists who pose a constant threat to the life of law abiding citizens is surely not the way to go.
Colin Hughes
Penyffordd
There have been three accidents on the A483 at Chirk in the last week. 1st accident two killed, 2nd accident a lorry and a car, 3rd accident 4 cars.
Is there a link between NWP having given up traffic policing and the carnage on the road? One of the above accidents happened on a section called "Suicide Alley".
Hi Colin - thanks for your comments. I don't think any of us have a problem with effective and preventative policing of accident hotspots. However what I think annoys most people is (a) the Police's overemphasis on speeding over other matters, and (b) their frequent picking of soft targets - for example regularly having their ArriveAlive camera van on the Llangefni industrial estate on Sundays. Its not a residential area, its not an accident hotspot, and its not even busy on a Sunday - so why is the camera van there?
I note the Druid’s comment on the siting of the Arrive Alive camera van on soft spots like the Llangefni Industrial Estate on a weekend. The van here is sited in away that catches out unsuspected motorist that doing a few miles over the legal speed limit. The only reason being that the person in charge of the van can justify his days work. This is purely a revenue trap. There are far more important places for this van to be, like residential areas and in accident blackspots as mentioned by Colin. I have written to the Chief Constable about this and will post any reply I receive here.
Un o Fôn
Hi Druid thanks for the comments. I point Flintshire County Councillors to your site when you have articles about Angelsey Council. The most recent one or two of note especially for Independents. Gosafe (formerly Arrive Alive) are an unaccountable Quango who serve their own purpose and not of the communities they are supposed to serve. Your Ieaun Wyn Jones is their boss I think. Qualification level for their vans by communities has a high bar and data they record of traffic speeds (not by the vans) is NOT freely available to communities.
Their interpretation of their traffic data is watered down and slanted in a way to show they are doing a good job. They used to show an average speed for our village of 28 mph. The fact we had 800 vehicles a day hammering through the village no where to be seen in their data shown. My efforts to FOIE data has resulted (I think) in a total redesign of their web site that excludes all mention of traffic data. In my opinion there are well over 750 communities in North Wales who want the Gosafe van in their communities. I hate speeding through our village because I live on the main rd. Decible levels rise considerably from 30 mph to 40 - 50 mph. I am campaigning for a 20 mph village centre with a platform and conversion to a single lane stage to stop vehicles hammering in and out of the village. No points but you need to slow down for the platform. We are a major route to school and we have a bypass. You may hate all the above but the speeders will not stop so in the end traffic calming is the only way. Fact NWP are not interested in traffic policing at all and Gosafe just paper over the cracks.
I am a pub manager and was stopped for speeding 20 yards out of the national speed limit coming out of mold into new brighton. 3 points £60 fine. Tonight I rang the police to say that 2 guys who had drank 4 bottles of wine, beer, whisky and brandy at the pub were leaving in their cars. I gave the police over 1 hours notice and they still didnt manage to stop them. North wales police are a joke.
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