Safe Speed Forums

I have an idea to encourage better driving.

It’s based on the eBay feedback model.

There are some technological issues to resolve, but in theory it could be organised.

Any other vehicle that you come across on the road with whom you interact (hopefully not physically!) can receive a +ve, or -ve feedback.

Obviously the vast majority of cars passed on a road would not receive anything, they’re not having a direct impact on you. If someone let you out of a junction or held you up by sitting in the right lane of a dual carriageway then you could reward them accordingly with a +ve and –ve feedback respectively.

Clearly if you get –ve from someone else you can just return the favour, but it could be made so that a –ve given counts for ½ a –ve received to encourage people to avoid confrontation. Also, a large number of –ve feedbacks given would imply someone being aggressive rather than courteous.

I guess one’s ‘feedback account’ balance could be a useful indicator of the positive or negative effect upon other road users in general. The eBay model allows feedback from other drivers only to affect one feedback level, eg one other driver can only have a one –ve feedback impact although this can be reversed in later feedbacks. Perhaps the bilateral feedback account (and indeed the whole account) could be reset every year.

Technically, I guess it requires transponders and an automated system which offers vehicle description and location for feedback.

I think it would be a way to encourage people to think of the impact of their road behaviour on others.

Just blueskying – whaddaya think?

One of the problems is that I would not wish to be judged by underskilled drivers.

A trained driver (for example) might take a safe opportunity to overtake around the outside of a long shallow left hand bend. (I have a local bend in mind) This is a perfectly safe move, because if you move to the right you have ample vision.

There's a relative of the idea described on:
http://www.roadsupervisors.net

If there was some threshold definition of 'how bad it had to be' (emergency braking, swerving, near misses, crashes?) it might have a chance.

Another concern is that I can't see many awarding positive points. Most good driving doesn't stand out; it is unobtrusive by nature.

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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

Not entirely with you there. How can I give someone a neg but they only receive half a neg? And how does it help? If I have -40 we'll all know that I've really had 80 people neg my driving. That's not supposed to tell you anything about my driving btw.

I think a lot of people would want concrete reassurance that the system could not be used for other purposes. Personally I wouldn't trust the current government with it. Or the last one come to think of it. Or the one before that.

Well, it might promote a bit more courtesy on the road, and we could certainly do with that. I don't know if it would make things a lot safer though. One thing that I woder about is tha actual operation. Presumably a driver having just been let out and who feels like giving a pos to the other driver is going to have to do something in the car to achieve that. In busy traffic how would the system know to send it to the right car? Does the sender have to put in a registration number? Rather they spent their time driving properly than trying to read someone's plate and type it in to a box on the dash. Worse still when someone's just been carved up and the adrenalin is making them go "right, you *******, neg coming your way".

How about a slight change in the idea?

Let's say all cars have a few small digital cameras put on, phone cam size ones. They'd be constantly recording and dumping the video so that they always have the last 30 seconds or so in the memory. If someone cuts you up or tailgates or whatever, rather hitting the horn and preparing a mouthful of abuse you hit a different button and the last 30 seconds from all the cameras is saved. When you get home you can take out the card, transfer the video and e-mail it to the local plod for that area. There'll be a good chance that they'll have a registration on there and depending on what was actually done can send out the appropriate sort of letter - or ignore it entirely if the first driver had over reacted.

What makes it interesting is that if someone is driving particularly courteously you could do the same thing. If the plod get this insurance database they could pass on any video of "nice" drivers to the appropriate insurance company, who could then do something about rewarding such behaviour. I was thinking about a discount to start with, but ha-ha-ha some hope . Perhaps Clubcard style points that drivers could use for a variety of things. Even a pat on the back letter would be something.

Like your original idea it still depends on a driver making some input, but no more so than is currently needed to wave a thank-you or hit the horn. It also won't cause any civil liberties worries about transponders because there won't be any. People will have an incentive to drive courteously and a disincentive to drive agressively, providing that the driving culture takes it on board and is willing to go through the process to acknowledge good driving. Without that we revert back to all stick and no carrot.

One big drawback that will probably prevent it ever happening, and so I'll point it out before anyone else does. As a society we're becoming increasingly concerned about being filmed and we're especially suspicious of any filming of children, even when it's entirely incidental. I remember seeing a letter in a photography magazine where some guy thought he was going to get a kicking from a concerned dad who thought the bloke was taking pictures of his kids. The guy had to show the angry dad the scene through the viewfinder so he could see that the kids only appeared as specks in the distance. I suspect the same sort of worries would apply to cameras on cars being misused, even when their potential misuse really ain't that big.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Well yes and no. In my view, driving is at its best when adapted to all circumstances, including the fears of other road users and your own passengers. For instance, I might consider the left hand sweeper overtake, but my wife would have white knuckles by the end of it - even if it is safe to do it, I wouldn't bother while there was the risk of upsetting her, or probably even other road users. Also, accoring to this (admittedly half-baked idea) there is a disincentive to just neg everybody out there - you get 1/2 a neg each time yourself (or some other appropriate poportion of one).



Well at the end of the day we're all wanting drivers to exercise their judgement, be they newbie or geriatric. If someone finds a large amount of (partly) self inflicted negs on their account then it's probably telling them something about their own driving behaviour and would encourage reflection, I would hope - something many of us don't do enough of in our road behaviour.

You're right, not many positives to be gained under everyday circumstances, but every now and then someone makes just that little bit of extra effort to show they care about others and they could be rewarded with even more than a friendly wave.

Sorry, not been clear enough, but the idea is that you get a half a neg yourself if you award one to someone else.Yep fair enough, it would have to be voluntary, maybe with insurance incentives. Of course, the transponders would only have a local range.Clearly the system has to be highly automated. A steering wheel button to confirm a system suggestion would be fairly untaxing.

As a bmw driver i would get negative feedback before i pulled off the drive way

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Steve

Its bad enough being penalised and criminalised by unthinking hardware; the idea of folk with a twisted view of road safety being able to affect my standing as a driver doesn't bear thinking about.

Bear in mind that a large portion of the motoring public are not only poor drivers, they do not recognise that they are poor drivers, they have no idea what poor driving is (nor good driving), and have no idea that they are poor drivers or why. If they are incapable of making judgements on their own driving why should they be able to make judgements on others?

This is something best left to those trained to make reasonable judgements. Something trafpol generally are pretty good at.