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Daily Mail



I'm sorry to hear about this girls tragic death and, my condolences to her family.

I don't want to speculate as I don’t know too much about the road and circumstances surrounding this accident but, I have to say if she hadn't been using an IPod when crossing the road she may well have heard the car approaching and the accident may have been avoided.



This sounds a bit suspect to me, how much under 40 is slightly lower? and, how did he come to this conclusion regarding his speed.

Again it sounds as thought they where just looking to put the emphisis on speed as the main cause of the accident.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Why not the new craze "causing death by careless driving"?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

There is a good account in the EADT

http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=News&itemid=IPED03%20Dec%202008%2023%3A29%3A47%3A533



This is a tragic case where both people made mistakes and either of them could have avoided the crash. Yet again it shows the folly of trying to improve road safety by blaming everything on speeding car drivers. When will the powers that be understand that road safety is a shared responsibility?

That understanding went out of the window years ago when Common Sense passed away.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers though:

I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I'm A Victim

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Reading the report of this sad case just goes along with what I have been observing for quite a while now. Schoolchildren seem to think that they have a "right" just to step out in front of cars whether they have seen them or not and I blame it on the culture which seems to teach them not to respect the road and use crossing skills such as the green cross code etc but they seem to think that they have an "automatic right of way".

I also question the abundance of road obstacles such as useless little islands in the road, often in places where it is impossible to cross the road. We have many by us but the other side of the road has armco barrier or trees which makes it impossible or un neccessary to cross the road. I queried these with our local council and they said that they were not for crossing but to "make the road more hazardous to discourage a higher speed limit". So where is the sense in making a road more dangerous just to justify lowering the speed limit from 60MPH to 40MPH? Obviously this case goes to show that when there is too much "road junk" it is just another thing to hit or in this case it may have prevented the driver from swerving further into the opposite carriageway to avoid her?
The roads in this country are becoming MORE dangerous and being made so by the attitudes of the people who preach "road safety" but in reality have no idea whatsoever of what safety or safe driving is.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The point about the traffic island is a good one, from the above quote it sounds like the driver bounced off the island, perhaps if the island wasn't there he would have been able to go around the pedestrian.

Oh and it's not just schoolchildren and chavs who think they have a right to cross wherever they feel like, adults are just as bad. I had one the other day travelling into Bath, I'm on the really steep downhill coming from Lansdown(?) and there is one particularly narrow point where the road is little more than 4 car widths wide, with vehicles parked down both sides. I'm doing less than 20mph, in a low gear and occasionally riding the brakes to keep the speed down when a women dressed in business attire (gabbing on a mobile, predictably) steps out without looking from between two transit vans that are parked back to back when I'm less then 2 metres away. Narrowly avoided hitting the car coming the other way (couple of inches in it) going around her because there was no way I was stopping in that distance.

Now I dont know about you, but she didn't look that much younger than me and I was always taught that crossing from between parked cars was bad for a child because drivers can't see you. Does it really take that much to make the connection that crossing from between two Transit vans will be bad for an adult for the same reason

On an individual basis, one would think not. But in a statistical sense, it is clear that
the connection will not always be made. These incidents will continue to happen.

On a related note, there is a strong case for fitting noise-makers on electric cars to
forewarn people. One of the good things about normal cars is that they make plenty of
sound.

Didn't help in this situation. I'm driving around in an old Volvo 940 with a clogged up oil separator that makes a lovely popping sound every time a cylinder fires and the viscous coupling on the fan is jammed so even at low speed it's making a wooshing noise. This morning though when I blipped the throttle during a downshift it scared the crap out of one mobile phone wielding pedestrian who was starting to cross from the other side of the road, has been a while since I've seen someone jump back so quickly.

I don't think I'll bother fixing those two faults

Let's face it if a pedestrian decides to walk out in front of you without looking or listening, two things are apparent.
(a) they must be suicidal or insane
(b) no matter what speed you are travelling at, if they are under your wheels when they step out, speed or lack of it isn't going to stop them being seriously injured or killed. If you run over someone at 5mph there is little chance of survival so speed is irrelevant, why can't pedestrians and so called safety experts see this obvious fact?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

So your local council have admitted to making the roads more dangerous? So they are... trying to kill us? Something should be done about that!


I remember being taught that, but I know at first I didn't understand it, because nobody had explained the reason for it. It was just "do not cross between parked cars" without the "why".

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Andrew.

Perhaps because it is far from obvious.

If you are using the O of COAST you should have seen the pedestrian and deduced from her demeanour, and the fact that she was walking towards the kerb, that she was likely to step into the road. If you react quickly and are travelling slowly enough you have a chance of stoppinp or swerving. At high speed, no matter how good your reactions, you will hit them. Also a slower speed gives the pedestrian more time to have second thoughts and step back.

And your second point is a straw man. Yes, if a pedestrian ends up under your wheels then even a low speed will kill. But modern car design is such that in a pedestrian/vehicle collision the pedestrian is more likely to be thrown up onto the bonnet of the car. And it isn't just road safety propaganda that says that a pedestrian is much more likely to survive such a collision at 20mph than at 40mph. TRRL tests have established that.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

What you say makes sense only if she was walking in a line at 90 degrees to the curb but if she was walking along the kerb and suddenly stepped off at an angle there would be no way that the driver could have anticipated that move. If drivers have to slow to 15-20 MPH every time they see pedestrians walking along a pavement parrallel to the road just on the off chance that they might suddenly step into the road then the world would be going mad.

The other point is he did swerve but hit the obstacle in the road that may or may not have been put there to aid crossing or maybe just to be a "nuisance" as in my previous post.

It seems obvious to me, that if I was to close my eyes and wear ear defenders and then try to cross any road, that I would need to be given a very large amount of money or have suicidal tendencies to even think about it. Maybe some people don't think logically though!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Ziltro, Telford and Wrekin council have reduced 80% of our NSL roads to 40MPH in the last few years , often against the advice of independant traffic engineers and the only way they could justify making these roads 40MPH is by altering the roads to "downgrade "them, i.e. make them more dangerous by putting silly pointless islands every 50 yards to prevent overtaking and "give the appearence of making the road narrower"...their words not mine. These roads are now costing us £17,000 annually MORE to maintain than if they wee left at 60MPH or even reduced to 50MPH...how do they justify this?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I'm actually surprised that no-one has called for a knee-jerk 20mph limit on the road concerned.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

So this has been investigated by a "speed specialist".
Can anyone tell me, what exactly is a "speed specialist"?
What sort of qualification does one need to become a "speed specialist"?

The reason I ask is that many years ago, a drunk ran out from in front of a parked van into the path of my car, resulting in him getting a months holiday on life support at Pinderfields.

Witnesses in following cars were able to state that I was within the limit, although his drunk mates claimed I was doing at least double the limit. As he ran out with no warning and within my "thinking distance" for the speed I was doing, there was no way of avoiding him.

I during the course of the resulting legal shenanigans, I asked the Police accident investigator if there was any way that my speed could be estimated from damage to my vehicle and the drunks injuries.

I was told quite clearly that there was no way whatsoever that this could be done.

So, to repeat the original question, what exactly is a "speed specialist"?

Probably someone who takes a lot of drugs.

It sounds like the answers they'd come out with would be equally useful.

You're probably right Lum. Obviously taken in vast enough quantities to believe that "speed kills" except in powdered form.

OK then, if no one here is sure exactly what a "speed specialist" is in relation to vehicle accident investigation, how about this for a follow up question.

How much does a "speed specialist" cost US to employ? Because I strongly suspect that we as taxpayers are the ones paying for this kind of "service".

At a guess, someone employed to focus on the "speed" aspect & extrapolate to show how it caused the accident.

Wonder who he's employed by.

</state the obvious mode>

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

While in the States recently I was walking along the sidewalk and was shocked to see a large Toyota truck reversing into a roadside parking spot in absolute silence! A quick look revealed the "hybrid" badge on the wing. I wasn't going to step out, but if I had been I could well have been clipped. It surprised me how such a large vehicle could evade one's sphere of conciousness through its silence.

Stop, Look and LISTEN used to be the message, how can you do that whilst wearing an iPod? Tragic.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

Having seen the electric and hydrogen powered cars on tonights Top Gear, it sounds like the LISTEN part of that message is going to become less and less useful over the next 10 years or so.

I guess we're back to good old observation then? Something you can do just as well with or without an iPod, either that or they'll have to fit that Tesla with a big speaker that plays V8 noises when you rev it, kind of like how chavs fit a speaker that plays fake dump valve noises to their Corsas. (Warning: Link is to an article about chav car parts and thus includes pictures of semi-naked women that might be NSFW)