Probably ANPR...... Whoops!... over on another thread there is a pause as heads are raised and swivelled in this direction. There is a brief pause in gnashing teeth, as the ripping and bone gnawing sounds cease.. They`re coming!!
(bye ;-)
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>>They`re coming!!>>
You are cruel, oily! :-)
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'So long as they're targetting ne'er-do-wells I'm not bothered.'
No, they are targeting motorists.
What a small proportion of the motoring public the ne'er do wells must be yet what a large amount of resources goes in to tackling them.
If all the rules, regulations and laws relating to the motorist and his vehicle where put in to a book and handed to each one when they passed their test, they'd be handed a volume about the size of a small towns telephone directory.
Any wonder that one of those rules, regs or laws might be unwillingly broken by any one of us at one time or another.
The result - disproportionate fines to punish and teach us a lesson.
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Conviction rates falling... never think it's because people are behaving better, think not being tough enough instead
tinyurl.com/ck543x
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As I have said before, will the "On the spot driving standards assesment" be by a qualified advanced driver or a panda / van driver.
Edited by Old Navy on 20/02/2009 at 09:49
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Sorry, MrX but thats a complete load of cobblers:
>>No, they are targeting motorists.
>>What a small proportion of the motoring public the ne'er do wells must be yet what a
>>large amount of resources goes in to tackling them.
If well over 1 million motorists are driving without insurance then they deserve everything they get... and thats hardly a small number!
>>If all the rules, regulations and laws relating to the motorist and his vehicle where
>>put in to a book and handed to each one when they passed their test, they'd be
>>handed a volume about the size of a small towns telephone directory.
It is (in fact its normally handed out when you start taking lessons)... and its not the size of a telephone directory... its called the Highway Code and if you stick with what it says you won't go far wrong...
Edited by b308 on 20/02/2009 at 09:50
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"What a small proportion of the motoring public the ne'er do wells must be..."
An unusually up-beat sentiment from you, Mr X.
However, how small is "small"? Assuming uninsured drivers are part of the ne'er-do-wells:
"In the UK there are around 1.2 million people (one in twenty drivers) driving regularly without insurance. These drivers are more likely to ignore speed limits and break other rules on the road and more likely to be involved in road crashes."
(from www.brake.org.uk/index.php?p=709)
Some would argue that devoting significant resources to this issue is money well spent.
(b308, you beat me to it!)
Edited by ChrisPeugeot on 20/02/2009 at 09:52
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I have to say that you worded it better, though!
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Going back to the OP, I don't think that the Police should be set targets... though I do think that they should make as much use of things such as ANPR as they can to rid the roads of those who choose to drive illegally...
The problem we have is that in todays society those in charge want to know exactly how worth while their money spent on the Force is so they can prove to us plebs that they are "doing" something to to protect us... so they set targets... targets may be useful in some circumstances but in Policing I see them as counter-productive...
Edited by b308 on 20/02/2009 at 10:09
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There is no way that any one can work out how many uninsured drivers are actually on our roads, not with out stopping every single car at once and carrying out an immediate check. It is exactly the sort of ' scare figure " that is rolled out to justify actions and is a device used in connection with other things such as terrorism .
By the way, I regard the ' Brake " organisation as little more than a political outfit dedicated to pursuing anti motorist propaganda. If they succeeded in the return of the man with the red flag to accompany all cars, they would be screaming that he was walking too fast with in a year.
Edited by Mr X on 20/02/2009 at 10:46
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I only wish that Govt. would devote enough significant resources to requiring insurance screen discs for cars instead of the faff we and Police have to go through now.
Having said that a thought is - does an insurance disc scheme have Police support? I honestly don't know what the strengths and weaknesses are. Can someone say?
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"In the UK it is estimated that one in twenty motorists drive without insurance."
(from www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/miud/uninsureddrivinginth...4)
Probably Mr X also regards the DFT "as little more than a political outfit dedicated to pursuing anti motorist propaganda".
"The Association of British Insures (ABI) has revealed that over the past year 100,000 vehicles not possessing any motor insurance have been seized, of which around 45,000 have been crushed."
(from www.articlesbase.com/insurance-articles/car-insura...a
mp-out-illegal-motorists-279743.html)
This certainly suggests the problem is not insignificant.
Again, I feel Mr X has overstated his case, though he does seem to enjoy a bit of a wallow in his misery - and it's quite entertaining. He seems to be saying that, because the only way to verify the figures for uninsured rivers is to stop every car, any other attempt to quantify them is irrelevant. Dare I say it - statistics from the use of ANPR might be of some value here - though I've no idea what they show.
It is illogical to say, "Don't use ANPR - it's a waste of resources because we can't really be sure how many uninsured drivers there are on the road." Given that there are some grounds at least for suspecting there are quite a few of them, you may as well use ANPR as long as it detects the drivers you need to detect.
The argument against using ANPR because the database may not always be correct is a red herring, though I'm not denying that there is room for improvement here.
Oh no - I'm drifting out of this thread into another...
Edited by ChrisPeugeot on 20/02/2009 at 12:18
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There is no way that any one can work out how many uninsured drivers are actually on our roads
Take the number of cars that are regsitered but not sorned and subtract the number of cars insured from the ABI figures... should give a fairly good inication... and I'm sure a little more detail from both sides could make it even more acurate... no, it'll never be an exact figure but with cars being registered and scrapped every day as well as changes of owner you'll never be exact!
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> What a small proportion of the motoring public the ne'er do wells must be
Just possibly (but other posters here disagree). But conversely, a high proportion of the ne'er-do-wells must be motorists, as (a) most of them have a car, (b) will nick one if they haven't, and (c) a car helps them to get somewhere else quickly.
You really must get those shoulder-chips attended to ...
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b308 - why are targets counter productive? By 'counter productive' presumably you mean less productive than not having targets? Are you suggesting that all officers will be more productive without a minimum standard set?
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"There is no way that any one can work out how many uninsured drivers are actually on our roads, not with out stopping every single car at once and carrying out an immediate check."
Yes there is/are. There are a range of well understood techniques, obviously not by you, that enable this to be estimated within defined standards of error. Fairly straightforward stuff in fact when it comes to population sampling and used very frequently by political pollsters for example. Bear in mind that even a census, that is to say a sample comprising the whole population, is subject to standard error, it is just that the variation is likley to be smaller.
MGs
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b308 - why are targets counter productive?
The way I'm looking at it is that if you set targets for crimes ABand C then the Police will ensure that they meet those targets to the detriment of crimes DE and F... If you target all of A to F what happens if they can't get the targets set on one particular crime but have met the rest... again they would be likely to go for that whilst ignoring any new crimes taking place in the other five...
I'd just rather the Police themselves decide what and who they should be targeting and the polititians stay out of it, after all the Police know their local area and are best able to target the crimes in that area that they need to without being told that they have to arrest x burglers, fine x motorists, and so on...
Hope that makes sense!
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Say the govt say you must fine 50 motorists a week for failing to Give Way at a give way junction. What happens if you keep only finding 37 each week. Answer, you move the goal posts until you have 50 and that way the target is reached. How does that benefit the community if 13 have been wrongly dealt with ?
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Targets are a useful management tool. But they are no more than a single tool and need to be combined with other tools and a good deal of skill and sense to acheive a quality product. If they're the only thing in the toolbox you end up in hammer in place of screwdriver territory.
Unfortunately, and as the banking crisis amply demonstrates it's not limited to government, the translation of ever tighter targets into KPI's and then the B all and end all on which your wage and career depend then meeting them eventually requires either magic or the use of increasing quantities of smoke and mirrors.
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Answer you move the goal posts until you have 50 and that way the target is reached. How does that benefit the community if 13 have been wrongly dealt with ?
Cobblers. All they do is devote more and more resources to waiting at Give Way junctions to find the miscreants until they hit their target. The problem is that this ends up being to the detriment of other crimes. Please provide evidence to back up your claim that the police deliberately prosecute innocent people to hit targets. (please don't use the tired old example of pulling someone as a result of a false ANPR hit as this does not actually end up in prosecution, therefore wouldn't hit a target and therefore isn't a valid example)
When Sunderland's ANPR system was activated (a proper one that encircles every route in and out of the city) it went ballistic with the amount of un-insured, taxed and MOTd cars being driven through it. I have it on good authority that the little warning sound it makes was simply muted as it was going off far too regularly to do anything about the errant vehicles even if all of Northumbria's traffic division were manning the roads of the city. This hardly suggests that the problem is insignificant. The main benefit of such a system covering the whole city centre is obviously that it can allow the police to track the movements of known criminals (and alert them when travelling crims are visiting) rather than dealing with insurance dodgers etc. for which mobile units are better suited.
You should try chilling out a little, you'll live longer :-)
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"You really must get those shoulder-chips attended to ..."
No, no and no. Things are much more entertaining as they are.
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b308 - yes, makes sense. Politicians represent the electorate so perhaps they are well placed to set Policing objectives. Countless people write to their MP's who purport to be in touch with local issues.... if only!
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Targets are very bad news.....
think about this 'target' in a motor vehicle workshop, the technicians are told they MUST find an average of 5 faults on every vehicle they work on......
would that be a good idea?
could it mean that 'faults' are 'found' where they dont really exist?
would you as a customer be happy? would you continue to take your vehicle there?
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