Speed limit enforcement as perceived by offenders: Implications for roads policing

Copyright@ 2010 The Authors. This is the post-print version of the article. The final published version may be accessed at the link below.Getting caught for speeding is an emotive issue. This paper analyzes an unexpected source of data captured by unprompted comments left at the end of a questionnaire by a sample of British drivers who all had penalty points on their licences, many for speeding.The paper’s relevance to roads policing is that perceived fairness of police procedures is crucial in shaping public support, and comments made by this sample of offending drivers indicated that speed limit enforcement through the operation of the speed camera system was often seen as unfair. Since roads policing is closely linked with this and with many drivers having penalty points on their licences, the views of such drivers could be instructive, given the continuing reliance on camera technology and the need for police to offer public reassurance. Finally, the implications for roads policing are considered.The data used in this paper are derived from a study funded by the Department for Transport (DfT)

The experiences affecting sub-Saharan African patients' engagement in antiretroviral clinical trials: an exploratory participative action research study

Gertrude Othieno discussed community participation from an African perspective. She presented an overview of an ongoing study, (undertaken with Kevin Corbett at St. George’s Hospital, South London), investigating the experiences of Africans involved in anti-retroviral trials. The study sought to enhance the enrolment of Africans and to increase user consultation. Using an action research methodology the researchers employed several cycles of activities. The research process involved cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, embedded in the overall process of the different communities engaging in the study. The researchers put together a Research Advisory Group (RAG) comprised of patients, academic researchers, doctors, nurses and other health practitioner to assist in achieving study aims and objectives. The advisory group slowly developed into a reference group. The RAG will eventually become a user forum which will continue after 18 month research study has finished. The study strived to be as democratic as possible with no one individual having absolute power. However, it was not a classic “bottom up” model, having greatly facilitated by researchers and clinicians. The researchers came across many challenges, from misconceptions about the role of the RAG to clinicians who did not fully embrace the exploratory research approach. About Gertude Othieno Gertrude Othieno is Director of African Culture Promotions (ACP) a voluntary organisation that provides specialist community-based HIV prevention services to African communities. She is also Research Assistant currently undertaking research into the service involvement of patients/users at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust. Gertrude is a representative of South West London African HIV Forum on the African HIV Policy Network (AHPN). She is Editor of African Cultural and Social Structures, a handbook that provides useful information to the health, social care and voluntary sectors. About Kevin Corbett Dr Kevin Corbett is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences at St. George's Hospital Medical School where he teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Kevin has a PhD in medical sociology and is undertaking research into the service involvement of patients/users

Globular Cluster Formation in the Virgo Cluster

Metal poor globular clusters (MPGCs) are a unique probe of the early universe, in particular the reionization era. Systems of globular clusters in galaxy clusters are particularly interesting as it is in the progenitors of galaxy clusters that the earliest reionizing sources first formed. Although the exact physical origin of globular clusters is still debated, it is generally admitted that globular clusters form in early, rare dark matter peaks (Moore et al. 2006; Boley et al. 2009). We provide a fully numerical analysis of the Virgo cluster globular cluster system by identifying the present day globular cluster system with exactly such early, rare dark matter peaks. A popular hypothesis is that that the observed truncation of blue metal poor globular cluster formation is due to reionization (Spitler et al. 2012; Boley et al. 2009; Brodie & Strader 2006); adopting this view, constraining the formation epoch of MPGCs provides a complementary constraint on the epoch of reionization. By analyzing both the line of sight velocity dispersion and the surface density distribution of the present day distribution we are able to constrain the redshift and mass of the dark matter peaks. We find and quantify a dependence on the chosen line of sight of these quantities, whose strength varies with redshift, and coupled with star formation efficiency arguments find a best fitting formation mass and redshift of $\simeq 5 \times 10^8 \rm{M}_\odot$ and $z\simeq 9$. We predict $\simeq 300$ intracluster MPGCs in the Virgo cluster. Our results confirm the techniques pioneered by Moore et al. (2006) when applied to the the Virgo cluster and extend and refine the analytic results of Spitler et al. (2012) numerically.Comment: 13 Pages, 13 Figures, submitted to MNRA

Does the threat of disqualification deter drivers from speeding?

Road Safety Research Report, number 96, is available from the National Archives: Department for Transport, and can be accessed from the link below.It has long been recognised that driving speeds that are excessive and inappropriate to the conditions are a major contributory factor in road accidents, and a major issue for road safety. Restraining driving speeds has proved to be a difficult task, given the improvements over the years in both vehicle performance and road design. Within the traditional ‘three Es’ countermeasures of engineering, education and enforcement, recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of engineering measures designed to bring about speed reduction, but these tend to be restricted to specific parts of the road network. New technologies such as Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) offer considerable promise, but mainly in the medium or longer term. Similarly, educative efforts to induce attitude and behaviour change in this context are bearing fruit, yet this is a long-term rather than short-term project. For the foreseeable future, enforcement will remain the principal means of influencing speed, by setting speed limits and imposing sanctions on drivers who are caught exceeding them. The number of licence endorsements has increased enormously in recent years. However, over the same period the number of disqualifications resulting from ‘totting-up’ points has decreased. This would seem to indicate that many drivers who accumulate up to 11 penalty points are either acting as if deterred by the threat of disqualification, or are avoiding disqualification in some other way. The extent to which penalty points act as a deterrent for the benefit of road safety in general is therefore an important issue, and this report describes work that has been carried out to study this issue by TRL and Brunel University, under contract to the Department for Transport

Politeness as a feature: so important and so rare

Politeness has a major place in many languages, and is remarkably pervasive in some. Yet we rarely find respect as a morphosyntactic feature, alongside gender, person, number and case. I document this imbalance, and then ask why this is what we find

Universal Access to a Quality Education: Research and Recommendations for the Elimination of Curricular Stratification

This policy brief makes the case for schools across the country to put an end to policies that cast off students into unchallenging, low-track classrooms. The authors recommend a clear process for the phasing out of curricular stratification in grades K-10, beginning with the lowest track and granting meaningful access to AP and IB courses to all students. The brief includes model statutory language to implement its recommendations

The Morphology/Syntax Interface: Evidence from Possessive Adjectives in Slavonic

P[ossessive] A[djective]s in Slavonic, formed from nouns via suffixation, show unusual syntactic behavior. In Upper Sorbian, the form of attributive modifiers, relative pronouns, and personal pronouns can be controlled by the syntactic features of the noun underlying the PA. Control of attributive modifiers gives rise to phrases in which word structure and phrase structure do not match. The fact that the underlying noun is available for syntactic purposes suggests that PA formation is an inflectional process, while other factors (such as change of word-class membership) point just as clearly to a derivational process. It thus appears that any sharp differentiation between inflectional and derivational morphology must be abandoned. Data presented from all thirteen Slavonic languages, based on extensive work with native speakers, show that the control possibilities of the PA vary considerably. However, control of the attributive modifier is possible only if control of the relative pronoun is also possible, and that in turn only if control of the personal pronoun is possible. This result is subsumed under the constraints of the Agreement Hierarchy.</p

Development of high energy density primary batteries Fourth quarterly report, 22 Mar. - 21 Jun. 1966

High energy density primary batteries for space flight applications - electrolyte systems, cell systems, and positive electrode constructio

Exploring the challenges and responsibilities of mutual engagement within participatory action research

This paper draws on a London-based exploratory action research study into the factors affecting the engagement in UK National Health Service (NHS) clinical trials of African patients and the wider African communities. The paper argues for the use of participatory qualitative methodologies in relation to centralizing the voices of those who are mostly easily marginalized by mainstream UK health and social care policies. The paper describes how the co-researchers in this study (professional/lay members from within the affected communities and academic researchers) shaped the study methodology. The challenges and responsibilities of the co-researchers within this process of mutual engagement are further described in relation to identifying the perspectives of all co-researchers within a methodology that strives to mutually engage diverse communities of NHS clinicians, academic researchers and service users. Drawing on the findings from the data analysis, the paper will discuss emergent issues that are of particular relevance for New Labour’s policies on social exclusion, cultural competence and NHS service user involvement