Safe Speed Forums

We seem to be heading down a specious tack here; it is moot whether the camera or the drivers are at fault, because we're not interested in blaming people, we're interested in reducing road deaths! If treatments have been applied to a stretch of road and subsequently accidents go up then, barring strong evidence pointing to another cause, the first step should be to remove those treatments! Its pointless bleating about what people should be doing, we have to concern ourselves with what they are doing if we want to make a difference!

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

SO how did you run into the back of the car in front. Sorry .. I have to ask here. You have to keep enough distance to stop. If he slammed the anchors on for no reason and shaved off 10 mph from normal legal speed just for a camera - then he was to blame for the incident with the cam being a contributory factor in this instance .. purely because of the "Pavlovian effect" they have


My wife concluded back in 2003 that all the cams did was create a bevaviour pattern which seemed to be training drivers to look out only for a camera of any colour and brake hard on sight. Looking at the overall behaviour out there - she's not wrong in this opinion.

People can fail a driving test for driving below the speed limit. They can still pass if they blip just marginally above.

They have to show they can cope safely with the traffic. The rest of their expertise develops as they mature and continue to cope with the traffic




At 70 mph .. you cover about 35 yards per second. At 60 mph .. you cover about 30 yards per second. Shave off that 10 mph in that situation and you use up much of the two-three second safety margin

Thus .. if the camera is causing legal speed drivers to hit brakes like that .. you can argue that they are not aware of speed... or you can assume that all feel the speed to be correct but worry if 5 mph over in case in pings the scam. SO they hit the brakes hard to "be on the safe side.. ///"just in case". That's the reality of life and if this is so.. then the cam could be held to be a prime cause in the shunts.






Only we do not know the actual speeds .. but excess speed did not feature in many of the ones as reported in Cambs local news.


We keep saying training. I even mooted the idea of assessed drive every 5 years .. but then folk point out the cost and admin of this. One way around it might be to include a free driving lesson with each new car .. packaged as "Get To Knowthe New Arrival Day"

We try though by banging on about COAST... as it's obvious that too few know about it or even drive addressing each of these acquired skills .. even though they claim they do. The skills should be taught so as to become "second nature" to all.

Especially if we can all be jailed for two years (and the old lady's case had nothing to do with the number.. she would have received 2 years if only one person had died when she performed a U Turn and struck a biker ) - training these properly would have helped all parties in that case.




You were too close and if he was speeding at the time .. and you were less than a 2 seconds behind him and closing - then you were also .. er .. perhaps speeding at ping level :ascratchchin:




You cannot say that on the basis that you have not provided a link to these stories .. so how do I know whether or not they were "speeding"..or whether they car "hit a pothole". "skidded on diesel spill/black ice" - all of which can cause an accident at a low speed as well as a high one.

I also do not know what speed .. whether or not 40 mph-NSL from your post which could indicate that the cars were not necessarily "speeding" in a legal sense .. but may have failed to COAST properly and been then at an unsafe speed for the condition - which is a different cause of the accident than "speed per se"

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scotti ... -21106048/

An interesting story for those amongst us, who don't believe that speed cameras cause "bad driving" amongst certain drivers when they spot a speed camera. Some people have queried my statement that I regularly see drivers brake excessively when approaching a speed camera, even if they are actually below the speed limit anyway.

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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.

<quote>Last but not least: did you show your motorway driving skill during your driving test?<end quote>


Aaaw, you disappoint me using that one Steve.

Anyway, I'd just like to pick up this point with you....

Yes, no doubting the drivers were slowing down but, they were all driving too fast and too close
to the vehicle in front to allow themselves braking time without causing a collision.

Had the drivers adhered to what they had learned in preparation of their driving test, the accidents
would have been avoided.... not Could have = Would have, been avoided.

"The £1m-a-year motorway speed camera that is causing accidents" fund, would then be non-existent.



Keep warm in this cold weather. Brrrrr

Cheers,
Skyliner.

I suspect you thought that was a personal dig at you; I assure you it isn't. My comment was a reflection of our rather lacking road safety policy, specifically in answer to your statement of what people demonstrated during their driving test. Is that how you interpreted it?


Actually no. The "too fast" doesn't necessarily figure (and might well be within the speed limit), neither does the "too close". The accidents may be as a result of the reduced driver arousal resulting from the reduced limit and the enforcement of it. Like I said, Sleep Related Crashes on motorways already account for a larger portion of the accident pie than going too fast (let alone exceeding the speed limit).


Like I said, the preparation for motorway driving that learners can do is woefully inadequate, wouldn’t you agree.

Anyway, I'd just like to pick up these points with you....

Did you read http://www.safespeed.org.uk/sideeffects.pdf ?

Why did this device (and the limit) that slowed down motorists result with more accidents instead of reducing them? (remember, they were going slower). Does that not directly contradict the 'speed vs collision' argument?

Did you read the RTTM link I gave you? You need to understand it to be able to understand the flip side of your 'speed vs collision' argument.

Do you now disagree with the statement “Speed is the biggest single contributory factor in road crashes”?

How do you counter the arguments we’ve made?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I would say that In Gear has hit the nail on the head, re-engineering is the remedy, having used this stretch of road frequently over the years I've been seeing the same behaviour, the section of road has several key changes over a very short section of road:

Change in limit from 70 to 50

Merging from 2 lanes to 3 (also the lane merge used to be L1 to L2 but is now L3 into L2 - ECC have put many of these in across Essex including on the A12 and from my own observations on the A12 section these seem to have had a greater incident of accidents and near misses than the previous layout).

The speed cam, whilst painted yellow has no refelective tape and doesn't show up at night 'till the last minute' increasing the potential for panic breaking. An issue I took up with what was Essex Camera Partnership was why cameras on unlit or poorly lit roads didn't have reflective backings as these would show up more clearly in headlights than plain non reflective yellow paint.

Putting all these different demands on a driver at one time, could possibly being overloading thier ability to deal with all the 'hazards' appropriately.

Yes it could be argued that a competent driver should be able to deal with these, however, until we up the standard of driver training and testing we have to deal with the (poor) standards that currently exist.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

No no no, I thought you were using that statement by way of backing up of your theory.
But I fully accept otherwise.

Actually, I forgot a golden rule of mine.....
"The reader of the written word is unable to determine the attitude adopted by the writer of the written word."
So in other words I was wrong.


Anway, there's a lot quotes from you and the other good guys that I'd like to refer to, but not for now
this is going to have to suffice.


Different issue all together Steve.


Either way, they were not able to stop in time to avoid a collision.

Again, it is not the Speed Camera at fault, the drivers are at fault.


There's a main route into the city where I live, an extremely busy 60mph dual carraigeway which suddenly drops
to a 30mph limit.
When a driver suddenly puts the anchors on when the 30mph Speed Limit sign is noticed, there inevitably follows
a series of shunts.
Is the sudden appearance of the 30mph sign at fault for the shunts?
No of course not, the drivers are a fault; Same applies to the Speed Cameras.

........................

Now, I would like thank you for your help during the week, you responded very quickly, I'm impressed.
All is okay dokey now.

btw, I did look at your reference pages, thank you.

If SafeSpeedv2 reads this....thank you for explaining = [quotes]

Have a great and safe week-end.

Skyliner.

Here you've managed to encapsulate the essence of what is wrong with the current road safety policy. I appreciate that you have done so with the best of intentions, and likewise I give the policy-makers the benefit of the doubt that they have done the same. The fact of the matter remains, however, that we must deal in what people actually do, not what they should do. Of course the driver travelling at or below the limit should not drop his anchors at the sight of a speed camera, and of course the driver behind him should not be so close as to be unable to stop without rear-ending him when he does so; but when they do so we end up with two car-fuls of people potentially gravely injured. Pointing out that they should not have behaved in the way they have does not mend their injuries.

We cannot deal in abstracts, we have to engineer road-safety policy to the actual behaviours encountered on the roads. One might advocate increased training on how to react to these situations, but one might suggest that this training could be better targeted, on the principles of COAST for example.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

There is two reasons for this behaviour and it is probably something that you wouldn't have observed ten or twenty years ago.

Back then people would have slowed gradually on reaching the 30MPH limit (which would have been a few hundred yards before the need to drop your speed to 30MPH anyway) but theses days people are so scared of cameras "lurking" just past the limit sign that they brake too drastically.
Secondly if the authorities had any sense they would buffer the speed reduction by bringing the speed down gradually to maybe 40MPH then 30MPH but unfortunately the local authorities don't seem to know much about drivers behaviour patterns or road safety these days and just put up signs without much thought.

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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.

It does seem ironic that in the safety industry that safety 'controls' have to take into account the world (and people) as it is rather than what we would like or the ideal we would expect, hence the reason behavioural safety has become such a powerful (and very effective) tool in occupational safety and when used correctly gets such good results.

However, when it comes to road safety we have a whole raft of people who have no qualifications or knowledge of safety trying to advocate 'safety' measures based on a very blinkered veiw of what drivers SHOULD be doing almost as though they expect us to be a nation of drivers of In Gear's standard.

In reality the standard of driving is well below that and even if we upped training and testing standards tomorrow it will take a generation for the changes to fully filter through.

So instead of dealing with the roads and driver behaviour as it should be, why are the 'experts' not dealing with it as it is and where a behavioural change will take to long to get results use other controls such as engineering as a 'stop gap' measure until we can improve standards / change behaviour?

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

You are right in the fact that these (so called) safety experts have no qualifications but more importantly they seem to have no experience. Maybe if they got out onto the roads more often and covered some mileage , instead of being office bound, they would appreciate what makes a "safe" road and what doesn't.

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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.

graball, it is even worse than that, I was involved in a contract that covered refurbishment of 160 junctions across London, part of the design actually caused congestion deliberately to get people out of cars and onto public transport, it did also create several very serious hazards, but it was only after I pointed out that the designers were in breach of CDM and they could end up being prosecuted were the designs altered.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

I found a report, on the internet, that was our local councils transport plan for 2006. It too stated that it's plan was to discourage car usage and get people on public transport. In the last five years or so they have reduced most of our NSL roads to 40MPH, reduced a perfectly good Dual Carriageway to 50MPH and destroyed another , making it less safe and the incident rate has gone UP because of their meddling. It seems that a nationwide plan to "upset " the motorist is being rolled out.

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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.

Oh and that's not mentioning all the perfectly good roundabouts that now have traffic lights on to slow us down even more.

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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.

Could you give the link?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Going out tonight so won't have much time but will try and find it tomorrow night. It was several hundred pages long, I tried to print it out but ran out of paper.... and patience....

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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 incident rate is largely unimportant to the people in power (who are NOT your *elected* representatives)
Control is.
It is not "upset", it is "control".
Either by inconvenience or legislation.
Your ability to go where you like, when you like and how you like is a serious problem to "those in power" (see above)
Hence control.
If you think it is going to get better, have a look at the proposed ways to lower CO2 (not in itself a problem). It is obvious that CO2 is being used to lower economic activity, social activity will follow.


http://www.konsult.leeds.ac.uk/private/level2/instruments/instrument006/l2_006b.htm

And just in case you thought that cheap public transport is the answer:
http://www.racfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=590&Itemid=35
apparently not.
So, more traffic lights, more speed humps and more inconvenience.
You WILL get the message !!!!!

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

As I said Mad Moggie, when I had minor bump, I was the one at falt,
I was driving too fast and too close to the driver in front.
[lower than the speed limit and no speed cameras involved btw]

There's an interesting side line to that story incidentally.
When I got out of my car the driver completely lost the plot with me.
There was abosolutely no damage to his car, but he completely lost control.
If it had been a She instead of a He, I would have said it was that time of the month.

The onslaught lasted for about 15 min's, he then apologised, shook my hand, drove off, leaving me
standing by the side of the road scratching my head in disbelief, but that was the end of the matter.





I'm not interested in apportioning blame Robin Xe. I'm anxious to lower the accident and death rate on our roads.
But this particular subject is blaming the Speed Camera for generating such a generous amount to the
"The £1m-a-year motorway speed camera that is causing accidents" Fund. and in doing so arises the subject of>>>>>



What I'm saying is...It is not the Speed Camera that's building this fund and causing accidents. It's the drivers.
There is a fault and that fault lies heavily on the drivers, and I include myself here as I think I stated before.

No one, but no one is, 1OO% the perfect driver and that includes you and me.

I'm going to say it again....the Speed Camera is not at fault, the drivers' are at fault.




And what people are actually doing is driving too fast and too close to the vehicle in front.
I'm not pointing out what they should have done...that's like closing the door once the horse has bolted.

Incidentally, you have a really good sig. "Regulation without education merely creates more criminals."
I agree 1OO%
We have driving regulations, and drivers who speed and cause fatal accidents are placed in the criminal class,
and they need to be re-educated.

The driving regulations/ laws/skills need to be promoted in a serious and highly visible manner.

That "£1m-a-year motorway " fund would go a long way in promoting and advertising driving regulations,
but that would never happen.

Instead of a campaign to get rid of the Speed Camera, what is really needed is a campaign to make the
government put aside £1m, equivalent to a grain of sand dropped into your local park pond for the government,
and have an all out, round the year, advertising campaign, addressing the issue of road deaths and speeding
issues and driving skills full on.
Forget the Speed Camera, a minor issue in regards to terribly sad and horrific road accidents/fatalities caused
by speeding and overall poor driving skills.

We need campaigns on television promoting driving rules, regulations and skills in newspapers, magazines.
Posters in Driving School premises, Driving School cars, Driving Test Centres. Posters on buses, taxis, in hotels,
hospitals, doctors surgery waiting rooms, dentists waiting rooms, train stations, bus stations, pubs, restaurants,
cafes, shops, prisons, remand centres.

In schools... teach the next generation when they are young... That's grasping the horse before it bolts out the door.


As a footnote, I'm not surprised drivers are driving far too fast if, what my son was advised to do by his driving
instructor is nation wide. He was told to drive as if he was late for an appointment but with a police car driving
behind him.
Do you think young, or older, drivers of today are going to remember the Police bit?
NO, all they will remember is drive as if you are late for an appointment.


Edit

Blimey.



Skyliner

I'm going to say it again...fault is irrelevant; once the speed camera was erected accidents increased. In the absence of overwhelming evidence that this was due to another cause, the first course of action should be to remove the camera in the hope that accidents return to their previous, or lower, level within a reasonable time-scale. We're talking about people's lives and well-being here.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

It's not the sudden appearance of the limits signs, nor is it the sudden appearance of the camera. The problem here is one of an unnecessarily low speed limit, locally compounded by the presence of a camera. A speed camera used on a road with an appropriate limit will pose little or no problem to any considerate driver. Remember, we're talking about what people can be expected to do, not what rules they must absolutely follow. No-one can be faulted for ignoring a rule, or the application of, that doesn't make sense.


Not necessarily so. The drivers are exceeding the reduced limit, but are not necessarily going too fast. The proximity to the vehicle in front is a redundant factor. So in this case: how can they be going more "too fast" when they're going slower?


The false claims of camera effectiveness has wrongly skewed the safety policy towards unnecessary speed reduction and enforcement; unsurprisingly, in this case these have caused more accidents. Worse yet, this silly automated enforcement has allowed the most dangerous driver groups (joyriders and the nutters who don’t properly register their vehicle) to flourish and drive around with impunity. So no, we can't forget the speed camera!


Good. So do you realise how understanding cause and effect undoes the simplistic argument of speed vs collisions? (speed cameras do slow drivers, but are also installed in areas where there will invariably be fewer accidents in future even without the camera).


No probs. Thanks for the warning you gave.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign