Safe Speed Forums

Not a near miss as such, but a potentially lethal incident which turned out ok:

A week or so back, at about 7pm one evening I was driving up a dual carriageway north out of Derby to meet some friends. The road was very quiet and I was doing "a fair lick"...

I noticed that an entry slip road ahead had two cars on it which would be joining at about the time I reached it. I therefore lifted and moved into the outside lane. Both cars were going fairly slowly (WELL below the NSL) and the front car was going faster than the one behind...

As I approached the rear car (both had now joined and were driving normally in the inside lane) and started to pass it "something" rang a warning bell and I started braking quite hard - THEN the front car (which was pulling away from the rear car but still doing at most 50mph and not accelerating) just pulled out in the lane I was in with no signal and without changing speed).

I had scrubbed enough speed by then not to get within several car lengths of its rear. I flashed my lights and the car (a small fiat within two young ladies in it) just pulled in again (this time with signals) and I speeded up and passed it.

The thing that gets me is that if I hadn't had the warning bell I would have been closing on the back of the car at "a fair rate" and would at best have had to carry out emergency braking - great - BUT I have no idea what tipped me off, so I have nothing from the incident which will help me in the future. Any ideas?

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I won't slave for beggar's pay,
likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way
to sink your ship of fools

I have no idea what it is, but I know exactly what you mean. My mother said (she sat with me a lot as a learner) you should anticipate what the other drivers around you are going to do. It doesn't matter how good you are if you fail to spot someone who isn't (as good as you).

As learner I could barely comprehend this bit of advice but it has come true, and I think that is what you experienced. It may not be as simple as just anticipation, you could call it all sorts of things (intuition?) but it is recognising that something is not what it should be, slightly out of the ordinary and liable to change at any time. I suspect it's similar to police who "know" someone is acting suspiciously when to the untrained eye all seems okay.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

I've been out on my bike and had the same sort of experience. You just know that the other driver is going to do something bad.

One case where I was able to discern the sign was when I was in L3 of the M8 heading out of Glasgow. I was overtaking a car and had just drawn level with the rear door when I got 'that feeling' and reached for the brakes. The driver moved out into L3 with no warning/signal and no real reason to do so as the car in front of them was still a good way off. I was able to get out of their way without too much drama, but I wasn't very happy!

The sign I saw? The driver moved their right hand from 3 o'clock to 2 o'clock on the steering wheel - that's as much as I remember seeing, but the way they did it obviously made me sit up and take note. Before that happened I was never consciously aware that I was observing the drivers I passed in that much detail.

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Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Thing is - if it is that subconscious, how does one develop it (and continue to develop it)?

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I won't slave for beggar's pay,
likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way
to sink your ship of fools

I'm not sure how you consciously develop such a skill, but I do think, for those that are interested, that it develops naturally.

We all like to be right, so by second guessing other road users and being proven right (when they do the stupid thing you predicted they would do) gives enough self satisfaction to warrant trying a bit harder again the next time.

I think the advice my mother gave me can summed up as "you are as only as good as your ability to judge what every other road user is going to do"

And as such I gave other road users a lot more interest than perhaps I would have done otherwise, maybe that's a good road safety message, "look out for each other", I quite like that.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

instinct!

i get that. there are no signs but you somehow know that something is going to happen so you react as a precaution and then it happens.

i did that in salisbury several years ago. heading towards salisbury from amesbury i knew about a badly designed junction in a triangle fashion with someones house in the middle. its was NSL back then (redeveloped a few years ago and dropped to a 40 limit, and something told me that a car was going to appear from the road and shoot out without looking. there was nothing coming the other way so i did not adjust my speed but sure enough, a car shot out and i calmly steered around him. no problem. had i not had the mental warning, i could not speculate on the outcome (we are talking 7 or 8 years ago)

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

You might call it pre-meditation, but I'll lay odds you were unconsciously monitoring thigs way before you go to the junction and saw that car and your unconscious brain computed the time of its prospective appearance.....

Stupid people have lots of excess space in their heads. This amplifies their thoughts and effectively broadcasts them to anyone able to recognise stupidity. What also helps is the stupid thoughts are usually single-track as opposed to the multi-layered thought process in a normal person, which makes them easy to understand- this is proven because the worst kind of stupid is the one who doesn't know what he's going to do... you know stupid's going to do something, but you wait in apprehension waiting for it to decide then sure enough off he shoots...

or, perhaps, I think observant people pick up small subconscious cues from the driving style of cars, clues that can 1) predicatable pre-empt their maneveurs or 2) alert us to the fact they are unsure what they're going to do.

Because I know exactly what you're saying, you react to something that happens completely in swing then you wonder how it was you reacted. Perhaps you pick up subtle signs you process subconsciously and don't ever consciously register, therefore wonder how you knew?

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

Some sort of lizardbrain background processing of indications - like a program running in the background, ready to take over if certain conditions are met ??

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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

I tend to go with


As said above, the moving of hand from quarter past to ten past on the wheel,
Perhaps more subtle body langauge is read subconciously, the driver tensing shoulders, taking a deeper breath, or shifting in the seat.

I generally wear sunglasses when driving, making eye contact difficult, however when I have a bike behind me looking for an overtake, I will slightly exaggerate my mirror checks, so he/she knows, I know he/she is there.


fatboytim

The other advantage of sunglasses, is I can ignore (pretend not to see) people 'flashing me out' and into a crash.

I have no idea what it is, but I don't think its necessarily to do with being able to observe the body language of the driver him / herself.

I know I've told this tale before but it sums this up perfectly, and the car in error was FAR to far away when I observed him and 'got the feeling' for it to have been anything to do with driver body language...

I was driving along the A419 towards Swindon one night - it was about 11pm I guess and it was around new years so it was VERY dark. There were 3 of us in the car travelling home from a party in Derby. There's one particular stretch of the road that has a couple of very minor side roads joining it with no slip roads - just T-junctions. I was doing a 'fair lick' in L1 and I guess I was about 1/2mile away from one of these side roads when I noticed headlights approaching along it. The timing was such that I would have got to the side road just before the approaching car. I can't recall noticing anything unusual - high speed, anything else consciousl, but for some reason I checked L2 to see if I had room to move over, which I did - the road was clear for at least 1/2 mile behind with nothing travelling that fast. The car approaching actually stopped I think and then decided to pull out with I'd guess about 200 yards to spare and the fact that I aleady knew L2 was clear saved all 3 of us.

Its wierd - I wonder if we don't take potential evasive action all the time, but its only when it actually does avoid a near miss or accident that we recall it? I'm not a believer in supernatural things, but some times it really does feel like there is some kind of precignition going on...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I think this sums it up, Sixy.

I'm confident that, for the case you remember, there are literally thousands of other cases where you've checked for escape lanes (consciously or otherwise).

I'm equally sure that I pre-empt in situations like the one you mentioned - get out to L2 regardless, on the grounds that it can do no harm.

while i agree with your logic, it doesnt apply in this case. it was impossible to see the road in question over the hedgerows. you didnt know a vehicle was there until it stopped (or not in this case) at the junction. there was no visual or audible warning prior to the car shooting out of the sideroad. ironically, had i been going slower, i would have had a bigger problem. i was travelling considerably faster than the offending vehicle which enabled me to simply steer around it

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

Visual cues can be so subtle that your CONSCIOUS brain is unaware of them. It may be as far-fetched as a bit of dancing light on leaves of a bush that can only be created by a moving vehicle. It may be subtle movement of vegetation created on an otherwise stillday by vehicle movement. It may be a pedestrian on the opposite side of the road throwing an old-fashioned glance towards a road instead of a pavement up a side-road. It may be a small flock of birds taking off.... This list is the tip of a huge iceberg - and I'm sure if I kept writing all day I'd barely scratch the surface of such clues. With the exception of those that have, for whatever reason, become conscious clues (usually in specific areas - subtle reflections off fixed street furniture etc), the discerning brain builds up pattern scenarios in its unconscious, which in turn provides thast sixth sdense for the driver who cares.

A trafpol once told me they looked out for drivers who 'lacked a certain smoothness', particularly on DC/Mways. When pressed he couldn't be more specific, but I know exactly what he meant.

Definitely.

I was extremely fortunate during my formative driving years often to be driven by one or more ex Class-1 Hendon-trained police drivers. They had left the force and formed a company that involved a lot of travelling/commuting , and I was in their employ.

Every so often, Bob would say something along the lines of "See that XYZ? the driver's pissed". I (then) couldn't make it out to be any different in driver performance than the cars surrounding it. However, I've no doubt that he knew what he was talking about, and I've no doubt that, more often than not, he was right. I like to think I can do the same now, perhaps not so reliably as Bob (RIP) but...

But is it not possible that the other driver had realised that you had moved into L2 to make it safe for him to enter L1?

Are we decting therm lift off the gas? Imagine when every car id governed to exactly the speed limit. woll all those subleties be lost? will people try to maintain the speeed limit around the bends, over the crests of hills and dips. (or over train crossings!)

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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

I think Sixy means that she had checked that L2 was clear in case the joiner pulled out.

But I don't see that as strange in any way - it's just anticipation and covering the bases. With a fraction more 'pre-thought' it may have been better to move into L2 earlier, which would:

a) give space for the joiner to pull out
b) give a greater 'lateral' margin if the joiner did anything unpredictable (assuming it wasn't a crossroads).

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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

Paul's right. The reason I didn't move over is because there was plenty of space behind me for him to pull out.

On observing his driving once he'd joined the carriageway (he soon flew past me) I think he was drunk...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.