Safe Speed Forums

This topic relates to Safe Speed Page: "Steve Thomas"

You can view the page here:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/stevethomas.html

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

This guy should be sacked - what are we coming to? - a guy in his position, doing 34 miles over the speed limit - a legal limit - no way he should stay in post

Why? I'd be interested in an exact answer.

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

I'd much prefer to have traffic coppers like Steve Thomas who is actually prepared to admit that exceeding a speed limit - even by a substantial margin - may not be particularly dangerous, rather than a swivel-eyed zealot like Br*nstrom who genuinely believes that doing 35 in a 30 is rather like stabbing someone.

_________________
"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

don't you mean 31 in a 30, 41 in a 40, 51 in a 50, 61 in a 60 and 71 in a 70?

Steve Thomas was probably being overtaken, if there was any traffic anyway. speeds of 100 are not that much more than the average (well around then anyway, since the roadworks on the M6 then traffic has increased and speeds have dropped), and he was probably in the 90% area on a graph.

Simon

Delighted. The following is a brief statement of much else I could say, lest I bore people:

1. I quote (non-selectively) from the publication 'Police Roadcraft: The Police Driver's Handbook,' which has been adopted by the IAM. My edition is dated 1994.

"1. Page 6

Attitudes to speed

The speed at which you drive is one of the most important factors in determining your risk of having an accident. The faster you go, the less chance you have of taking avoiding action, and the greater your risk of having an accident. Speed is largely a matter of choice - Good driving requires you to drive at a speed that is safe for the conditions.

2. Page 67

The safe stopping distance rule

Never drive so fast you cannot stop comfortably on your side of the road within the distance you can see to be clear.

3. Page 68

Overall safe stopping distance...

Thinking distance + Braking distance = Stopping distance

...96m (is) the ...shortest stopping distance at...70mph.

4. Speed and Safety

Page 163

...International evidence clearly shows that lower speed limits result in fewer accidents...drivers who drive fast regardless of the circumstances have an accident risk 3 to 5 times greater than those who do not. At greater speeds the risks obviously increase - you approach hazards faster, you have less time to react, and the impact danger is greater.

...your speed, if it is inappropriate in the circumstances,...is dangerous. This concept is central to the system of car control...

Page 164

Always drive within your competence, at a speed which is appropriate to the circumstances...As you become more experienced your level of confidence may increase but this will not necessarily make you a safer driver. You will only be safe if you also develop appropriate attitudes

Speed Limits

Statutory speed limits set the maximum permissible speed, but that is not the same thing as a safe speed...(which) is determined by the conditions at the time...The onus is always on the driver to select a speed appropriate for the conditions

Page 165

How speed affects the driver

As you drive faster, the nearest point at which you can accurately focus moves away from you. Foreground details becomes blurred and observation more difficult because you have more information to process in less time...

Underestimating speed

It is easy to underestimate (this)...

...some common situations where speed perception can be distorted (include)...

When driving a vehicle that is smoother, quieter, or more powerful...it is easy to drive too fast...As well as sight and balance, you use other senses to assess speed: road noise, engine noise and vibration all play a part. When one or more of these is reduced, it can seem that you are going slower than you really are."

The IAM consists of people who take the trouble to try to drive better and more safely according to known and accepted standards in the Police Roadcraft Manual.

What all this tells me is that a driver driving at over 100 mph on a public road is driving dangerously - simple as that - all the arguments that are commonly put up about no-one being around, or there being no other traffic, etc., do not detract from the fact that driving faster increases the risk and thus the danger.

Quite apart from such a driver placing himself in danger, my main contention, and much more importantly, is that he increases the risk, not just for himself, but for other drivers who may be on the road, including me - and what right does this guy have to place me in danger!!

This is where Moral Relativism comes in

2 Moral Relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves.
You decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me.

Moral relativism has steadily been accepted as the primary moral philosophy of modern society - Morals and ethics can be altered from one situation, person, or circumstance to the next. This means that anything goes.

Maggie Thatcher spawned this philosphy, whereby because anything goes, there are no longer any public standards of behaviour. So, for example, the Roadcraft standards can be ditched because I believe in my own. In pure form, on the public highway, this ushers in a free for all, with anarchy and mayhem.

The fact that this guy is supposed, as a policeman, to uphold the law (what other conclusion can be reached?), and thus to uphold that standard, and the fact he has deliberately (and not just negligently) broken the law, and by a very wide margin, while all the time he is a very senior policeman indeed, means inescapably that he has brought the police service into disrepute, and he should be sacked on that ground - unless that happens, whither any chance of any driving standards on our public roads?

Just some comments..

Nothing to show this speed was not safe for the conditions - especially considering this is a brand new road with light traffic.

And to extrapolate the Highway Code formula for calculating braking distances, for 104mph this would be:-
104ft thinking distance+
540.8ft stopping distance=
644.8ft or 196.54m overall stopping distance.

There are white marker posts every 100m along the side of the motorway, therefore if you can see 2 of these in front of you then you know you will be able to stop within this distance from 104mph (based on HC calculations). Many modern cars will stop in a shorter distance.

Again nothing to show the speed is inappropriate, or that there was any problem with control of the car.

Exactly the point that is so hard to get across - that the safe speed is not the same as the speed limit, and that there are times when the safe speed can exceed the speed limit.

No evidence that he did underestimate the speed - he acknowledged the speed he was doing but still "considered that my manner of driving was safe".

So would you say that any driver driving at over 100mph on a public road is dangerous? What about if he was doing it in Germany, on an Autobahn with no speed limit?
Without knowing more about the situation it's impossible to say if it was dangerous or not - the speed alone does not tell you that.

I don't think you'll find many people on here that want "a free for all, with anarchy and mayhem" - I would suspect that most people want safer roads, and high reliance on speed as an indicator of safety will not give us that.

I agree that "Roadcraft" is absolutely fundamental to UK road safety. Unfortunately the 1994 edition (still the latest, although it has been reprinted with a different cover) has been somewhat sanitized and weakened by government interference.

Earlier versions made the point very clearly that "speed, in itself, is not dangerous". Nevertheless the passage you have quoted (and I requoted) above makes very clear that the driver has a responsibility for selecting a "safe speed" according to the conditions.

We have every reason to expect that Steve Thomas was doing exactly this on the occasion of his offence.

The number on the speedo tells us exactly nothing about the degree of danger without detailled reference to the immediate conditions. 20mph in a 30mph zone is FREQUENTLY a murderous and reckless speed for example.



At the time (i.e. last year) of Steve Thomas' offence traffic on the M6 toll was typically very light and well spaced. Road alignment makes visibility excellent. The surface is smooth and there are very few junctions. In good conditions (i.e. little of no traffic, good weather and good daylight I fully expect that Steve Thomas (with his training) could have safely driven that road at speeds up to at least 150mph. Indeed if it was in Germany, a good few percent of vehicles would be travelling routinely in excess of 140mph.

I don't know what the "85th percentile speed" of the M6 toll was (or is) but I wouldn't mind betting that it was at least 110mph. Please bear this in mind and examine these two pages:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedlimits.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/why.html

I do not believe that Steve Thomas was causing a danger to anyone.

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

There is mention here to the effect that there is no doubt this guy was driving at an appropriate speed. This is the crux of the argument. If he was not, we would all agree he was driving dangerously.

1. According to the Safe Speed website, he was in a convoy of 15 cars doing over 100 mph. At that speed, and unless he had ceramic brakes, his stopping distance from the car in front in the dry would have been in the region of 40 car lengths. It is reasonable to assume he was not traveling in this manner, else the convoy would have been well over a mile long: the word 'convoy' implies a closeness, does it not. So he was not in fact driving at an appropriate speed.

I would add that as part of a convoy, it is also reasonable to assume to he was driving deliberately at 100+, i.e. in concert with the speed of the other cars: that is what a convoy does: only has only to think of Daytona car racing. In so far as the magistrates court (not necessarily the law) takes deliberation into account (as I think this is the case in England, but not in Scotland), this aspect could also have weighed against him.

A further note is that drivers who drive fast regularly, as this guy might well do, often believe they do so safely (until they have an accident), and that it is not them, but external factors that cause them to do so, e.g. I'm late; everybody else is driving slowly; here's a convoy pressing on, let's joint it.

2. Other critics of his driving might say

a. It used to be the case that anything over 100 was classed as dangerous driving (interestingly, see below as to a proposed new set of laws here)

b. Even at 70 m.p.h maximum motorway speed the slightest mistake can be fatal to the driver concerned and maybe others caught up in the ton of metal careering out of control at over 102 feet per second.

c. At 104 m.p.h. that increases to over 150 feet per second. That's two and a half cricket pitch lengths in a second. The word Superman springs to mind. As a driver you have little chance in correcting even the slightest mistake (yours or another's) and the
expected trajectory of the car under evasive measures can only be guessed at best.

d. It is a PUBLIC road and therefore it is reasonable to expect others to be there, and furthermore to exercise a duty of care for these other users, whom we must assume are law abiding motorists.

In all of these, there is a very clear implication of dangerous driving.

3. The Government itself plans to impose tougher punishments for serious driving offences will be outlined by
the government on Tuesday next week. These include, blah, blah, a new punishment system for those who drive at more than 100mph, and more disqualifications for speeding. Need I say more? Case closed.

4. Statutory Instrument 2004 No. 645 The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2004, says:

Police behaviour, whether on or off duty, affects public confidence in the police service. Any conduct which brings or is likely to bring discredit to the police service may be the subject of sanction. Accordingly, any allegation of conduct which could, if proved, bring or be likely to bring discredit to the police service should be investigated in order to establish whether or not a breach of the Code has occurred and whether formal disciplinary action is appropriate.

This guy's conduct = his actions at his rank = discredit for the police force

I am very aware of the need while driving to make progress and to make good use of speed to do so, safely. It is this last bit that is at issue here, and it seems to me your correspondents more or less proceed from their assumption that this guy was driving at an appropriate speed. I profoundly disagree for the reasons I have given. Whether or not he was committing dangerous driving within the law is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the general principle of what is good driving, as espoused by Roadcraft, and shaped by the morality that it is not for the individual, outside the legal speed limits, to impose his interpretation of how fast he can go on the rest of us, who are thereby his
potential victims.

But the car in front can't stop instantaneously and the Highway Code recommends a 2 second "time to react" gap. 2 seconds at 104mph is 50 yards. And for most (if not all) of the M6 toll we can see much more than 500 yards ahead.




I don't think so! The Police routinely train drivers at speeds exceeding 130mph on A roads - let alone on one of the best bits of motorway in the country. Certainly there are people who assume that over 100mph must be dangerous, but it simply isn't true.





Do they indeed? That's very interesting. Where do you get you information from?



I tell you what I think discredits the Police force - and that's the blatent hypocrisy of enforcing technical regulations against responsible citizens behaving responsibly.

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

[/badmaths]

If you sit at 50yds or 1 second behind a car in the fast lane, and he moves into middle lane. You think he's letting you pass, but he's avoiding a wagon wheel parked in the outside lane. You, my son are bolloxed! God help any innocent who is close to your landing site!

This is how fatacs happen. Combine an abnormal set of circumstances with misplaced confidence.

Hmmm. Whilst researching into attitude and begaviour as part of my degree a couple of years ago I came across a fascinating piece by an Australian professor.
He believed that societies and civiliastions grow, nurture and develop until they actually become too clever for themselves - the people can make a convicing argument to support, well just about any sort of behaviour and opinion. From then on he says, it becomes a free for all - anything goes as you put it. Never heard it called Moral Relativism though.
In the context of this thread and indeed website, my belief is that we should all try to drive safely within the speed limit and hence the law.
I don't believe that fining people who are actually decent drivers but stray over the limit whilst attempting to keep within the spirit of the law is right either.

You're right about the distance - the calculation is 104mph * 1.46667(mph=> feet per second) * 2 (seconds) / 3 (feet to yards) ~= 100 yards. (I forgot to multiply by 2 seconds).

But you're TOTALLY wrong about the important stuff. Do you REALLY think I'd drive without proper observation of my entire baking distance? Hint: You can see beyond the vehicle in front.

The Safe Speed rule (never drive so fast that you cannot stop within the distance that you can see to be clear) does not conflict with the 2 second rule. A vehicle at similar speed 2 seconds ahead does not normally represent a violation of the safe speed rule.

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

SS Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:55 am Post subject:


Course not, you're the one in a thousand driver who drives a ton plus, 5 seconds behind the vehicle ahead on a straight stretch of road because you can't see in front to see if somethings on the road.
Forget it man, you drive on your keyboard!
You're closing on the vehicle in front because you anticipate his return to the middle lane, - every ton up driver I see does - Youve already compromised your 2 second rule, then you have nowhere to go. From then on you and your present company are your potential victims.
Do not advocate, do not even condone driving a ton plus. You can't cope!

2 second rule is a linear code, designed for a maxium speed of 70mph.
Stopping distance is exponential. 2 secs at 104mph is 102m, stopping distance at 104mph is 196mtres. Assuming you see the obstruction straight away(not likely!), you'll still hit it at 70mph.

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Drive in haste, repent at leisure.

You have no idea about my abilities.

100+mph is a modest and legal speed in some places.

I hope and pray that the authorities will end the obsession with numerical speed and give out messages about safe and appropriate speed, with a proper emphasis on the safe speed rule.



Actually the two second rule is based on time to react, not on braking distance. There is little need to increase the time separation between vehicles at higher speeds. (Some slight need arises due to differential braking performance, which becomes more significant at higher speeds.)

And by the way, it is generally far safer to drive around motorway debris rather than brake to a stop.

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

It is legal in Germany, however, and their motorways have a better safety record than in many countries with speed limits. So they seem to be able to cope.

Ton-plus speeds have also been commonplace on the M6Toll, and that hasn't been a scene of carnage either.

_________________
"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

Better than ours?? Don't think so. Worse x 2! Why?
Are their cars less safe?
They have two lane autobahns. Safer than our 3 laners.
What's the difference?
Speed!
Why do they have reduced speed limits on autobahns at conurbatiions?
Why is an insurance premium levied on higher speed driving?

No. our standard motorways are not scenes of carnage either. Encouraging drivers to drive beyond their limits by the propaganda that better drivers can drive faster is a recipe for disaster.

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Drive in haste, repent at leisure.

Nice theory. Shame it doesn't even remotely fit the facts. See International motorway fatality rates:



From page: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/international3.html (references given)

The UK motorways are the safest. Do they have the lowest speed limit? Nope.

The German Autobahns have no speed limit. Are they the most dangerous? No. Are they even in the upper half? No.

The Belgian and Austrian Motorways are around twice as dangerous as the German Autobahns. Are they driven at higher speeds? Nope.

The German Autobahns were the first motorway network, and as a consequence much of the Autobahn network is antiquated with short slip roads, narrow lanes, a greater proportion of two lane/four lane roads and tight bends. The age of the network is part of the reason that Autobahns are around twice as dangerous as UK Motorways.

Germany overall has good road safety - they're not far behind us. But we're not seeing any significant improvement, while Germany is amongst the fastest improving. See: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr113.html

If present trends continue Germany will overtake us in 2007 to have the safest roads in the World. (I haven't extrapolated every country of course, and it's quite possible that there are a couple of other horses in the race.)

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

I've "split" this thread because it was drifting way off the topic for the page in question.

See: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=905

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

I wonder, have there been any fatal crashes on the M6 Toll since its opening?

(PS, hello. Long time reader, first time poster )

Chris