Government study says Top gear encourages teen speeding

Maybe the government should introduce driver training like in the TG ep where James raced in Finland? The young drivers there learn all about control and handling at speed.

You see, the DVLA should watch TG, they might learn something!
 
Being a teenager causes teen speeding. Before there were cars do drive too quickly, teenagers were recklessly piloting their horses.
 
Let me list the dangers I saw today while driving.

- An old lady doing 40 mph in a 55 mph zone forcing traffic to overtake on a two lane road.
- A soccer mom on her cell phone in her Trailblazer who drifted into my lane on the highway.
- Some idiot in another Trailblazer who jumped the left turn arrow forcing oncoming traffic to stop.
- Dummy in a Silverado tailgating some one doing 10 over the limit.

Rarely do I see dangerous speeders, usually it's on the highway. The far more dangerous person is the unaware, la-di-da, unconcerned driver.
 
Haha! Stupidest thing I have read all week.

If this were true then the "Die Hard" films encourage gun crime?!

Trust the bloody Daily Mail to be all over this!
 
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Judy, I know that you posted this to give information and to spark debate. That's great.

Here is my take: I think The Daily Mail trolls our board and throws these articles online to see if we take the bait. You click on the link, and the daily fail get money from it's advertisers. If you don't click on the link, they do not. I know; "well, DUH, Jay!" I think it is high time we all boycott The Daily Mail and never post or click on a link.
 
jayhawk said:
Judy, I know that you posted this to give information and to spark debate. That's great.

Here is my take: I think The Daily Mail trolls our board and throws these articles online to see if we take the bait. You click on the link, and the daily fail get money from it's advertisers. If you don't click on the link, they do not. I know; "well, DUH, Jay!" I think it is high time we all boycott The Daily Mail and never post or click on a link.
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The Daily Mail, as an entity, has two implications.

One is that its readers buy the paper just to rage at it, which is incredibly illogical (why buy something you hate in order to hate it?).

The second is that people genuinely believe what's written in there, which is a genuinely scary thought.
 
well, in my youth I was one of the first in my class to get a drivers licence and car. Yes it was a V8, yes I did some stupid stuff and yes, damn lucky to be alive. And that was a trend amongst my peers. And no, not everyone survived. Unfortunately since cars were usually packed with friends, it wasn't only the driver that died. Needless to say in years 11 and 12 we had a few funerals to go to.

Did Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear have one iota of influence on our behaviour? Not a jot. At 17 I'd never heard of him....

One of the things I have done in my job is arrange driver re-training for staff. A very interesting exercise (brought about the fact the insurance premiums were going through the roof and staff were being injured). Yes, a bit expensive, but in the 5 years afterwards we saved more than double the cost of the course, and have had no serious accidents. One aspect was putting participants through a practical drivers test (like the new-licencees have to do now). Amazing how many people who have been driving for considerable years don't know road rules. But the best bit was putting them on the skid pan and showing them how much trouble they can get into at 40kph. Scared the living crap out of a few of them.
 
In the day when the Daily Mail was a paper paper (if you see what I mean) I used to think "What a rag"! I have not changed my opinion. The best paper when I commuted so read papers regularly was the Independent which was really good and guess what - yes Independent.

They sadly cut costs and the last time I read it was news wire (e.g. Reuters) repeating fodder I am afraid.

I used to like the Evening Standard (Local Evening paper) too - but that was in 1992. ...

Any this story is total utter nanny state and "green" politics bilge. Which is odd for such a usually right wing paper.
 
No, not having race tracks to go to causes speeding.
 
Most of the time I'm speeding its because I'm trying to pay attention to the road conditions and other traffic. I find is actually MORE difficult to drive legally and stay safe which is one of the most aggravating things in the world.
 
God...what a load off bull.....

teenagers do stupid things, always have, always will......speeding in dangerous conditions is one of em.
 
jayhawk said:
Judy, I know that you posted this to give information and to spark debate. That's great.

Here is my take: I think The Daily Mail trolls our board and throws these articles online to see if we take the bait. You click on the link, and the daily fail get money from it's advertisers. If you don't click on the link, they do not. I know; "well, DUH, Jay!" I think it is high time we all boycott The Daily Mail and never post or click on a link.
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Pretty much agree on this, except you probably give them too much credit for even bothering to troll here ? but who knows! :mrgreen:

I think The Fail et al just bang out any old piece of tat which they like to think of as a story with a Top Gear tag to generate online hits or paper sales.

Boycott, say I & to the devil with them, mmmhaaawa! (Went a bit 19th century there for a minute.:lol:)
 
Viper007Bond said:
Well unless these teenage drivers are powersliding while yelling "POWWWWWWWWER!!!!!"...
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That's what I was thinking. If teens powersliding while talking to windshield-mounted cameras was on the rise, then TG could be a bad influence.

But what about all of us James May fans who prefer to cruise along in our luxury barges?
 
Censport said:
That's what I was thinking. If teens powersliding while talking to windshield-mounted cameras was on the rise, then TG could be a bad influence.

But what about all of us James May fans who prefer to cruise along in our luxury barges?
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Totally off topic - does the rig in your sig come complete with tame chimpanzee?

Oh yeah, and I agree with pretty much all of the sentiments above. I wouls also like to add that most of the teenagers I see screaming around in their hotted up Peueot 106's and Citroen Saxos with ?10k worth of ICE in the boots and their caps on backwards aren't part of TG's demographic anyway. They don't look as if they have the intelligence to appreciate its subtleties and are far more likely to be doing handbrake turns in empty supermarket car parks at 8pm on a Sunday evening with some slap-caked bimbo in the passenger seat than paying attention to Top Gear.

Speed doesn't kill - it's inappropriate speed that kills. My route to work involves mainly 60mph trunk roads plus some 30mph sections through villages and I get so hacked off with the elderly drivers who travel at 40pmh on the faster bits then continue at that same speed through built up areas, particularly in the morning when there are young children walking to school. Oh, and when you do find a suitable and safe opportunity to overtake they speed up to try to stop you then blind you with their high beams in your mirror once you've passed them.

Never mind the few idiot teenagers (and I mean the real dickheads - after all if they wrap themselves around a tree it's not as if we're gonna lose a cancer cure now is it?) if the Government really wants to make a proper contribution to easing congestion and getting the unsafe drivers off the road then it's high time they introduced compulsory retests every 5 years from age 50, or even better for all drivers, plus raising the standard of the test to those of the IAM and make the test a full 60 or 90 minutes driving rather than the 20 or so you get now. That would sort the wheat from the chaff and get those who shouldn't be driving out of their cars and onto public transport where they belong, leaving the roads free for those of us who can and do drive in a responsible manner and actually take some pleasure in the process.

Rant over, I'm going to do some gardening.
 
Mineworksfine said:
Totally off topic - does the rig in your sig come complete with tame chimpanzee?
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No, the smell of the chimp-poo was a deal-breaker. :D

Never mind the few idiot teenagers (and I mean the real dickheads - after all if they wrap themselves around a tree it's not as if we're gonna lose a cancer cure now is it?) if the Government really wants to make a proper contribution to easing congestion and getting the unsafe drivers off the road then it's high time they introduced compulsory retests every 5 years from age 50, or even better for all drivers, plus raising the standard of the test to those of the IAM and make the test a full 60 or 90 minutes driving rather than the 20 or so you get now. That would sort the wheat from the chaff and get those who shouldn't be driving out of their cars and onto public transport where they belong, leaving the roads free for those of us who can and do drive in a responsible manner and actually take some pleasure in the process.
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Couldn't agree more. In fact, one of my long-time rants is that here in the U.S. a group called the AARP lobbies to prevent re-testing of elderly drivers, leaving the roads more dangerous for everyone else.
 
In another study it says that anyone in Politics fiddles their Expenses and encourages criminal behaviour - They are so F******* owned - FTW!!!
 
I drive slower and coast like hell thanks to The A8 London to Edinburgh piece...

Speeding in the city is overrated anyway. If you live in Adelaide where intersections are rarely in sync, you just end up at the next set of lights faster...
 
Dsemaj said:
I drive slower and coast like hell thanks to The A8 London to Edinburgh piece...

Speeding in the city is overrated anyway. If you live in Adelaide where intersections are rarely in sync, you just end up at the next set of lights faster...
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Check this out:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v...dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

See "Main Street" and "King Street" in the middle? Those are major throughfares through my home city.. Main Street is a one-way going east, and King is a one-way going west. All of the traffic lights on both streets are synchronized so that if you maintain a speed of 50km/h, you will never hit a red light. The great thing about this is that it encourages consistent driving... if you want to barrel off from a traffic light at 80km/h while yelling POWWWEEERRRR at a windshield-mounted camera, you're going to keep hitting red lights all the way through. If you're going 35km/h, you're going to keep hitting red lights all the way through.

50km/h may not be very fast, but boy is it ever a good feeling go through right through the middle of a city without ever stopping.
 
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