Safe Speed Forums

There are some really interesting aspects coming out of this thread and I am sorry that I haven't been contributing as much lately ...

I have also put much thought into this ice on road question yesterday when leaving to go to the doctor I had to select appropriate well judged car control to get out of my now ice sheet over snow and ice driveway.
I have 2" of solid ice on concrete and then about 4" of snow and with rain on Thur night just adding to the ice by Fr a.m. it was sheet flat ice.
So how do I drive safely -even on my driveway, I have to drive to get out but am in no fit state to pick axe the whole driveway. (My later thought was I might have considered the flame thrower to melt it !)
So first ont he flat section I drove slow but got some low speed to keep momentum, I had slight slip from the rear wheels eased off the throttle a tiny bit, but kept the momentum up, as I know I have to have momentum to get up the fairly gentle but ice covered hill to the road.
I did my (left) turn to go up the tiny hill and got near to the gate but the car slipped and I stopped making progress. I allowed the car to side back and steered the car to the right side of the drive where the icy snow was (to enable some grip), I then tried again and made good progress but still slipped where the compressed iced snow was so now steered the car back to the left side, and go going again but a little faster to help the momentum, and this time got to the top of the little hill and onto the slightly flatter drive entrance and then went sidewards onto the single track road and moved forward a little to locate a tarmac icy bit but less of the 3" ice sections.
I walked and shut the gate which is also a useful way to check the tarmac bits for ice too. There was some 'black ice' and some tarmac but with so much of the road still covered in thick ice packs you are predominantly going to be driving in ice. (I will add that the area is open post and wire fenced so vision to get onto the road is excellent).
So now I have mostly ice covered road - starts with a straight, a left corner (easy through vision), then a down hill and then a straight of about half a mile before the T junction onto the more major 2 lane road. There is only one track/driveway on the right a little way after the downhill section.
So what is the safe speed for this road ? I need some momentum to move forward and negotiate the left corner ... Now I didn't watch my speedo to get this I judge 1) by the car's feedback of grip that I can maintain 2) the placement of the car on the 'best' grip road sections (part snow/ice than pure iced compressed snow/ice) 3) ANY other traffic (none) NOT by what they are and are not doing but as I will need to (that must only ever be used as an indicator never as a gauge of safe!) 4) as I control the throttle that feed back through the rear wheels and steering. I am on ice even though I try to find the best of what is left of the snow which is also icy but most is just flat ice and clear to see. A glance to my speedo indicates 12mph and as I drive along the straight I test the limited grip but really gently increasing the throttle input. I can get to 20mph comfortably but this is a short straight so I back off as I need to loose momentum long before the T junction. I estimate I was doing about 10-15mph but as I get to within 200ft of the junction I was dropping to about 8mph however I can see the junction road section is tarmac but I have to allow for ice so I am checking the road for any sign of any vehicles.
I am on the tarmac and the car has good grip (tiny steering movement tells me) and I go left and the road is tarmac and clear so I climb to 50mph keeping a constant eye on the tarmac on both sides of the 2 lane road for any hint of any changes. Some brown scattering tells me the road has recently been gritted so my confidence and judgment tells me it is safe.

Now these types of judgments and feedback might have told me that only 5mph or so were appropriate. About a week ago when I made the same route to town to get fuel I had to dig the drive to get anywhere and when I got to the local town I failed to get up the hill having had to stop on it and decided not to go that route as I perceived it to not be worth the risk for the purpose (another gas station existed - although shut). And this is it IF the journey is 'worth the risk' has to be decided before you travel to start with, although conditions can change once you have left home, but regular weather updates can help keep you appraised of likely expected conditions.
Now I have some luxury that I have little traffic up here - although that is a disadvantage after grit is spread as it needs traffic flow to help it work. The icy road, (I travelled) had grit in it, frozen within the ice as so little traffic flowed after the gritting lorry, (days before), was wasted in essence.
I can wait for traffic gaps or often 'go' as nothing else is about, which helps with space and car feedback info and if I slip a bit it is less of an incident as there is nothing much to slide into. This can help me make my decision for the safest progress to retain car control on whatever road grip I have. That can vary within feet, on certain roads and certain sections and the potentially 'less grip surfaces' are likely to be observed first and confirmed by feel second, that is crucial feedback to my safest travel decision to choose the speed to travel at, but speed never decides the safety, it is conditions that dictate what progress can be made.
Your local knowledge of your local roads will help - I recall way back in the thread saying that where you see puddles after rainfall may be ice areas especially in winter. Where you see any road or landscape hill or road dip, shade areas, will be potentially icy or slippery areas too. As we learn this when conditions are severe we naturally look for these clues when we are in white out conditions on any road. In white out conditions after a hedge or protect road section, the wind may 'hit' you and a snow drift can be expected along with ice too.
Sometimes the best decision, is to not go out at all, and recently I have felt 'stranded' due to the sever conditions, when nothing would have seen me go out onto the road unless I had a 4x4 or a tractor etc. When the ice was more exposed even walking was out of the question. I still saw others driving very slowly and very carefully but it got more rare as the days went on.
There is NO specific mph that makes an icy road safe, it is totally down to conditions and your car control and grip available. When we walk on ice we tend to lean forward and take smaller steps to keep the gravity as vertical as possible and the lean forward helps us fall forwards than backwards should we start to fall, it also helps us 'catch' ourselves to. In a car we have to apply similar safe limits.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Now I feel relieved that I'm sharing my original opinion .......that there is no safe speed when ice is forecast and, if you have no time to make the type of detailed judgement that SafeSpeedv2 recounts (such as for isolated sections of black-ice encountered at reasonable speed), then the skid'll do some damage. In my Daughter's case, 50-60 mph on the dry, clear section = paraplegia.

I think that I wrote something in this forum, last year, about checking that my Council is doing what it says it will do in it's winter-service plan. That roads are being salted in the way that the Plan says they should salted.

Just to give a taster of the sort of thing that I was afraid of, I invite you to listen to what the gritter-driver says about reliability here http://www.itv.com/westcountry-east/gritters-work-all-night29021/ and then reflect upon the method of confirming that salting had/had not been done in accordance with plan.

Remember, known salt-spreadrates and spreadpatterns are fundamental to the success of ice-control.

This ITV footage is very recent and not recorded in my County..........but will be shared with my MP as part of my continuing campaign

When you say no 'safe speed' I have to disagree. What I have said is that there is no specific speed that can make it safe, means that one section maybe 4 mph, another is 20 all on ice but depends entirely on you, your car, and your skills, ability and knowledge, your judgement and management of risk will vary greatly from each driver/rider.
I DO understand what you think, but I think you are not giving enough emphasis to conditions. I am afraid that you want total gritting, everywhere and whilst to a degree an 'ideal' it fails to enable drivers to deal and learn to deal with ice. If we make every road perfectly gritted (and please bare in mind you need traffic to make grit work!) Some of our grit was frozen in the ice due to lack of traffic!
So one day a road isn't gritted or it looks gritted but there is a patch if ice. That driver who has never allowed or thought of what is really and possibly 'going on' but hasn't even thought about it just spins on the ice all out of control with no plan or thought.
I think this is what happened with your daughter, no experience, no forethought, no planning and so just ended up on ice.
What I would like to see in great amounts are public info films, leaflets, regular reminders, that we must think and anticipate when we drive.
It maybe that the best decision is to not drive /ride that day. These accidents can be reduced, by helping people to think and drive for as much of the time as possible.
I think if these simple information and reminders had been about your daughter may have considered more and driven differently. I do think there can be improvements to gritting but it is and cannot be the whole answer. See was it a reasonable 'speed', and the answer is tragically no. I do get the impression that even though she scraped her windscreen it never occurred to her that as she got out of town it maybe icy and with black ice.
It is why I care so much that people are not being told the right - self responsible - safety messages that I have taken to carry in this Campaign. This must change or many, many more lives will be tragically maimed or lost. I wholeheartedly admire your resolve to help improve matters and am so happy to see you still enthused and determined. I will do what I can, but we must not forget road use responsibility has to be on each person, not replaced by Councils or Governments. we have to trust users but the authorities job is to help promote safety messages, something that they are failing in in spades.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

2 people were recently killed when their car skidded on ice on the same, short stretch of road, at the same time of year, almost exactly a year after my Daughter's accident. I charted meteorological-conditions prior to both RTAs, and they were very similar and controllable by salting (if you consult the SIRWEC manual). The Council's press statements said that gritters were out salting the road before each RTA.

Yes you mentioned before.

But whether gritted or not if road users are aware of potential ice locations then that can be really helpful about the choices they make about how they approach each road 'section'.
Has that section been fairly recently replaced - the most common tarmac needs a certain level of traffic to make it's skid resistance 'active' ?

When I attended the IHT Transport Conference there is a new method of making & laying tarmac called TarmacDry by Tarmac Ltd., that appears to enable less ice to form as it allows not only the surface water to filter through the layers but because of this less water is on the surface and so on tests so far to date, they have yet to see it freeze. The air holes enable the Earth's natural warmer air to move up to the surface. Tests are still underway. These roads would not be gritted as this willl prevent the system from working.
The normal grit that builds up on the road can be vacuumed away. It is sadly a very expensive system but perhaps int eh most vulnerable areas it maybe considered.
This maybe something you will want to demand of the local Council ?

Their website is : http://www.tarmacdry.co.uk/ you can request the CD. For roads and pavements.
This has many advantages from removing water from the surface so less glare and less flooding too, reduced traffic noise, less spray, and so on ...
Less thick so quicker to apply - less material so less cost, water filters through can be used a grey water, no need to sweep the road - as it needs to be vacuumed (using existing regularly used equipment).

It does sound very interesting - I wonder how the recent cold weather fared?

I meant to tell you about this earlier.

There is also a new system to filter rain at the roadsides too using a moderately similar system in principal.

The other company was Klaruw Systems found at http://www.briser.co.uk and http://www.klaruw.co.uk

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I learnt that one a while ago

I was once happily driving along a gritted road only to find that as I went over the brow of the hill they had stopped gritting the road. Dented bumper, wrecked wheel and bent suspension arm, I had only had the car for two weeks. Even if all roads are supposed to be gritted there are always going to be some missed patches and if drivers assume there is grit everywhere...

The same could be said for spilt diesel or mud from a field, no amount of cleaning will get it all.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

My road where I live, although not a main road is well used (30MPH) and usually well gritted. For a few days last winter, our local council ran out of salt. So one morning, I'm driving along my road to find it covered in sheet ice, totally unexpected but did i see lots of pile ups...no...people have to expect the unexpected...just because your usual route is well gritted one day, don't expect it to be the same EVERY day.

_________________
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.