Safe Speed Forums

Our Secretary of State was asked if he will commission research into the cost of removing all road humps in England, his reply was No.

He also says that research does show road humps can achieve significant reduction in vehicle speeds, and that a 1 mph reduction in average speed can reduce accident risk by 5%.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Which of course is complete and utter piffle. Faster roads are safer is an excellent general rule.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Would that be a significant reduction...


...on average along the entire stretch of the afflicted road?

...on the sections of road between the humps?

...only at the humps themselves?


I'm sure research could show a significant drop in speeds. I'm sure it could show a marked increase in speeds. I'm sure it could also show little or no change in speeds. So Mr Council Representative, just what result would you like the report to show? Reduction in speeds, certainly sir, and would now be a good time to talk about our fee?


Is there any research to show how much humps are costing us environmentally (extra noise and exhaust pollution as vehicles constantly brake and accelerate) and mechanically (damage to vehicle components either as one-off events e.g. exhaust hitting a hump that is too tall, or as cumulative events e.g. accelerated wear to supension/steering components)? If every hump that was installed came with a requirement for the relevant authority to pay an annual fee, the size of which was calculated such that the annual total of all fees was sufficient to completely subsidise all hump-induced vehicle repairs and pay environmental compensation to residents along the affected roads, I wonder how long it would take for them all to be ripped out and replaced with mirror-smooth tarmac...

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Chris

Thank you, Twister, excellent post well deserving of a .

Road humps IMO:
- improve actual road safety VERY RARELY
- improve percieved quality of life of residents MOST OF THE TIME
- improve actual quality of life of residents in a minor way SOME OF THE TIME, but at great expense to the local driving public, who are also mainly local residents. So in balance a net inconvenience, per local household

Unfortunately due to the over-simplistic and PC brainwashing of the masses, the (accepted-sheep-like) perceptions enable "hump initiatives" to be rolled out as a positive thing .

I had a chat with an 8 year old girl about the planned installation of road humps in our local area. She said it was a good thing because it would stop people driving too fast. I have lived in the area for many years and very very rarely see anyone driving at anything approaching "fast". All in the limit too, of couse (my perception admittedly). No accidents in the area for more than 10 years.
Kids perception reinforced by parents PC brainwashing IMO. Bah.

I would urge anyone who thinks they support humps to not make their minds up until they have seen what I saw yesterday: that is, an OAP in a motorised mobility cart trying desperately to get the thing over an average sized speed hump without tipping over.

Even if a 1 mph reduction in average speed can reduce accident risk by 5% (which I seriously doubt), that would only apply for the same circumstances. Insert a speed hump into the equation and you don't have the same circumstances. Instead of a calm, relaxed and alert driver, you have a possibly irate one gritting his or her teeth. Instead of the driver's scope of awareness extending outward to increase hazard perception, you have that scope shortening dramatically at each speed hump as the driver tries to gauge and adjust speed to suit; that speed bump itself becomes the major hazard, which takes the driver's attention away from what should be more important things. Last but not least, if you suffer from spinal problems, speed humps are downright dangerous.

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Will

Here, here to everything Willcove wrote, plus don't forget about emergency vehicle response times being increased, thus contributing towards time critical non-road related deaths such as heart attacks cases or house fires. But those are different statistics so who cares about them?

So drop speed limits to 9mph in towns and we'll reduce accidents by 105% Is that last 5% representing unbelievably safe occurrances??

What's really sad is that 60 million people in the UK are too retarded to spot this mathematical cock-up.

And since when did a democratic government tell the public what it was and wasn't going to consider?

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No, no, no. It's an exponential scale - So, consider the accident probability at 30 mph to be x, then (according to the piffle) reducing speed by 1 mph would reduce the accident risk to 0.95*x; reducing by another 1 mph would reduce the accident risk to 0.95*0.95*x, and so on to give a an accident risk at 9 mph of 34% of the probability at 30 mph.

However, that utter piffle completely ignores other factors (even some speed-related ones) that increase accident risk and can more than cancel out any "benefit" from reduction of speed. For example, there is more chance that you'll get rear-ended if you are driving inappropriately slowly for the conditions because the numpty on auto (who believes he has to be safe because he's travelling at the speed limit ) has less time to react.

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Will

Ok, fine with that - is there any reason why the same quote is often misquoted as "1mph reduction in speed relates to a 5% reduction in accidents", or is this simply yet another example of people failing to understand the mathematics, yet merilly preaching cobblers as fact??

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It's endemic in the political system. Otherwise how would the Chancellor have the gaul to state during his budget speech that "inflation is running at 2%"?

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev