And this is because more people can afford to own and drive cars today than ever before.
I totally agree about using mobile phone whilst driving: but then I also believe changing CDs, radio station whatever whilst driving is also arrogant contempt for others.
By allowing the world and his wife to take to the road with the high power cars of today, with only a muppet driving test as a precursor and no incentive to treat driving as a developable skill is sadly typical of today's society: nothing must upset the status quo of the good ol' cash machine for government, oil companies, etc.
One of the worst single culprits, I believe, are insurers who refuse point blank to insure the driver; they insure the car. Personally, I strongly believe that a driver's record should be a permanent matter: not just retrospective for drink driving, e.g.
When I started driving more years ago than I care to admit
, if one wanted to go slightly more quickly, then one had to learn certain basic skills: there were few dual carriageways and no motorways and most overtaking was on the "Three Lane" basis, which mant rapidly developing the necessary judgement for distance and speed coordination: or you finished up pretty dead!
Cross-Ply tyres and fading drums brakes as well as and archaic suspension and steering created a learning curve of skill.
Crashing a car, heavily, normally meant serious injury or death as collapsing steering columns and driver-passenger safety cocoons had not been invented.
Engines and gearboxes came right back into the car crushing legs.
Today's basic cars are far too forgiving and tolerant of poor driving techniques: and thus lull drivers into a false sense of security.
Driving along with the windows up tight and AC on, deafened by multi-speakers blasting out insane noise divorces the driver from their environment: which is why (plus poor observation) so many fail to realise emergency vehicles are fast approaching until they have blocked their path.
The faster one drives the more focused one ought to become: I'm a very monotonous and anti-social person to other occupants when driving distances at speed!
All that said, blaming traffic accidents on speeding (which is all most police authorities bleat) and every government spokesman and woman since Barbara Castle is not only a crass mistatement of fact it is a con, as even a cursory analysis of the UK statistics proves.
Worse, it fails to address the core problems and fails to commence implementation of viable solutions.
Obviously, incorrect speed in any circumstance can be dangerous: even 30 MPH.
Still, in the South West and East of the UK in a few years more, since most major roads will be as gridlocked as most urban roads already are, the problem will self-solve!
Stationary traffic won't cause that many moving vehicle incidents!
