Safe Speed Forums

See the following Pistonheads thread: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topi ... 0&f=10&h=0 (requires registration).

Based on the 159mph cop case, there's a lot of discussion about what constitues 'dangerous driving' in law.

I'd like to propose replacing dangerous driving with 'attitude likely to endanger'. (Wide open to better definitions, but 'displaying a bad attitude' is the key proposal)

And replacing careless driving with 'displaying insufficient skill'.

When I look at root causes of road crashes, I just find two root causes: a skills shortfall or an attitude shortfall. (And obviously a tiny proportion of mechanical failure, acts of god, that sort of thing.)

Shouldn't the law focus on the root causes of road danger?

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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 do you go about defining attitude?

That's a good question and I don't have the answer. But examples of bad attitude are easy:

- Motor racing on the highway (no regard for public safety)
- Drunk driving (Oh, wait, I'm spotting a pattern as I think about it...)

Bad attitude = disregarding public safety, or possibly willful disregard of public safety.

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

..and how do you go about proving it?

"he knew it would be dangerous, but did it anyway" might be good as a definition [as is willful disregard of public safety] but how can we know (and prove) that he knew?

- Motor racing on a public highway can be done with both drivers giving full regard to public safety.
- Drunk driving might be more tricky as the skill of recognition of application of danger is itself compromised.

I think DD is a good catchall: either the behaviour displayed was dangerous or it wasn't. Be it through lack of skill or attitude, either way that driver shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel. Ideally, the driver should only be allowed back behind the wheel when they can convince a court what the shortfall actually was and that it has been eliminated. Unfortunately, there's (currently) no way of proving that either

Now for the brainstorming bit: how to make sure the dangerous driver isn't telling porkies - polygraph tests?

Why not have an objective test, so that you don't need to know the state of mind of the driver?

Which is why the former offence of "reckless driving" was replaced with "dangerous driving", so there was no need to demonstrate that the manner of the driving was wilful, merely that it fell well below the standard expected of a competent driver.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Three reasons...

Firstly, 'dangerous' is most truly a state of mind.
Secondly, it gives no clear communications route to the public about the characteristics expected
Thirdly, I'm concerned that we cannot distinguish between the safely- assessed actions of a skilled driver and the same action by a novice trusting to luck.

(and don't forget this is 'brainstorming')

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

I have issues with the definition of the word "dangerous", to me it's a combination of 3 main things.

1) The manouvre being performed (including location, traffic levels, pedestrians etc)
2) The competence of the driver involved (and to a lesser extent their attitude)
3) The capabilities of the car being driven.

So a competent driver in a competent car (say, Colin McRae in his rally spec Impreza) can get away with, say, a 90mph around a tight corner on a narrow road, wheras an incompetent driver in the same car (ie. Petter Solberg) would be dangerous performing that exact same manouvre, and if doesn't matter who was driving, if you replaced that Impreza with a Morris Minor and a Nitrous kit (to actually get it to 90) it would be dangerous regardless.

So you need a policeman, and a judge to decide that a particular manouvre was dangerous because the driver has insufficient skill, something which is hard to determine unless you've been following them for a while.
And if it's not the skill factor then you have to decide that pulling that stunt in that car is pretty dangerous, and hope that the car you're pulling isn't a heavily upgraded "sleeper" that was in fact perfectly capable to handle it.

To me a bad attidude just increases the driver's likelihood of attempting something dangerous. You can't really prosecute someone for being pissed off, they have to actually do something dangerous.


So how do we define dangerous, or reckless, how do we determine if a particular manouvre endangered others without knowing the full specification of the car and the skill level of the driver?