Safe Speed Forums

If all diesel had to be given a very strong dye, preferably a 'glow in the dark' type one, such that it would be visible even when spread very thinly, this would stop a huge amount of difficult-to-avoid accidents, especially where bikers were concerned.

The questions are:

a) Is this possible?
b) Is it cost effective?

That's a very interesting idea, but I have serious doubts that it's possible. The typical 'thin smears' of diesel that cause motorbike crashes would be unlikely to carry enough pigment.

I especially think that 'luminous' (i.e. glow in the dark) dyes will be impossible, but it's just possible that a fluorescent (dayglow) dye could be found. Fluorescein? Would that be soluable in diesel? It is very fluorescent in aqueous solution...

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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

Glow in the dark would show up the offending car or lorry quite well too.

also needs thought
Would the dye burn properly?
Would the chemicals be expensive or harmfull.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Perhaps we need to think even more laterally?

Giving the first to find it a means to mark it might be almost as good (I'm thinking that the average spill might put 10 or 20 bikers at risk). Some sort of confetti?

Or the means to neutralise it? Is there a non-slippery chemical that could be 'water bombed' onto a spill to make it non slippery/less slippery/soluable? A detergent? An emulsifier?

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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

How about a device in the filler neck of diesel vehicles that detects immersion and kills the engine? (I don't like the idea of adding hardware to 100% of diesel vehicles when only a few per cent offend, but this is brainstorming.)

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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 a solution this - but, as you say, brainstorming. How about altering the formulation of tamac so that something in it reacted with diesel to change colour?

Worst offenders i've seen are buses - and the spills are usually on junctions - tank too full spilling onto road - if so how about a sealed filler cap.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Sealed filler with a long breather seems like a good idea though I'm pretty certain car tanks already have sealed filler caps.

I've never really understood the problem with diesel spills, surely if you put the cap on then it can't spill? Surely there aren't that many people who forget to put the cap on? How about a sensor to detect wether the cap is fitted properly? Or are there damaged fuel tanks?
Who would want their fuel to spill? That's just wasting money!

Here's another thought, how about pressurising the tank to check for leaks?

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Andrew.

I don't know if truck tanks are different but I have seen it sloshing out of an apparently secured filler cap.

I also remember how diesel cars always had a huge smear below the filler cap where diesel had sloshed. But in those days car filler caps had a breather hole to let air in as the fuel was used, I'm certain they no longer have this setup.

[quote="Ziltro"]
Who would want their fuel to spill? That's just wasting money!

quote]

As i said - most spills i've seen have been down to buses - usually where the filler is on the rear quarter. Having said that - one roundabout in Coventry ( for those living there -first one from J2 toward town ) --have found steering getting light and rear end twitching on occasions when road moist -reason? - several HGV user firms on nearby estate ?.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

If they are the same as industrial applications some filler caps have in-built breathers. If they are over-filled it may be possible you can get thermal expansion in the tank that forces fuel out of the breather.


found this in the regs for truck fuel tanks...

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Speed camera policy Kills

I used to work in a truck dealers and we did a roaring trade in fuel caps, probably one of our biggest selling items.

So from this mini-discussion we can see two thing:

* It would be nice if drivers could mark hazards in some way. Sadly, we currently have warning triangles and they don't seem to be used so this is not that useful

* We need to stop diesel spills. Any reason we can't get rid of the air vents?

If it's true that the majority of spills are from trucks, then surely even europe wide legislation isn't going to solve the problem as there's nothing to stop a truck from, say, Russia driving here.

The illuminous diesel, if technically possible, could be a good one and help the UK haulage industry if it were made a legal requirement for all trucks on the road and sold it al all garages in the UK. The foreign lorrries would have to get rid of their diesel (or store it safely) and buy diesel at inflated UK prices.

The biggest benefit will be that every time someone on the 200sx forums crashes their car they will have to admit to driving like an idiot rather than blaming it on diesel all the time.

Oh yes. When the fuel is pumped to the engine we have to relieve the vacuum created in the tank.

Less obvious but still important are pressure effects due to temperature changes. Without a breather, going from low night temperatures to hot day temperatures might create enough pressure to cause leaks.

But a well designed vent will never spill. A cheapo hole-in-the-filler-cap vent could cause spills obviously.

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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

Could this not be an indicator of what the main problem is?

How about doing some kind of survey, stand by a filling station and watch what (particulaly HGV?) drivers do when leaving?

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Andrew.

It's just pure inattention. I imagine given how long it must take to fill up a HGV (although I did used to love filling up a certain diesel company car from the HGV pumps as they were much faster) it's easy to forget afterwards.

Saw a very illustrative example of this at Tesco, not a HGV just someone in an old red hatchback. The process went something like:

Finish filling, insert credit card into pump (this is what they were doing when I arrived)
Take card back, get into car
put seatbelt on
adjust child in front passenger seat
sit there looking puzzled
remove seatbelt, get out of car
retrieve keys from roof of car
get back in, put seatbelt on
take seatbelt off, get out of car
detach fuel filler cap from keys
attach fuel filler cap to car and forget to lock it
get back in, start car
drive off without putting seatbelt on

I am so glad that person left in a different direction from the one I was going to use after filling up

In my car the fuel cap has a lock in the middle. This is what holds it on, it doesn't screw on, a 90º turn of the key is the diffrence between closed and open. As it is the same key as used to start the car you can't forget to remove the key from it. You can't remove the key without the lock being in the locked position so it's unlikely anyone would do this with it detatched. The cap has a hook which hooks onto the bottom of the fuel filler 'door' so you can't close it without unhooking the cap.
So it's actually quite hard to forget to put the cap back on.

I wonder how HGV ones work?

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Andrew.

You can if your passenger fills up and uses their key.