This in today by email:
Peter R Callil wrote:
My name is Peter Callil, an experienced flying instructor and commercial pilot. I find that I’m in total agreement with your website and I would like to contribute my bit of knowledge to help with understanding “Why drivers speed”.
As a flying instructor during training we were introduced to two very important concepts that were not well understood back then, either by us as instructor students, or the instructors teaching us. They were Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the relationship between stress and performance as described by Weller by the inverted U-shaped curve. I should point out that aviation authorities in Australia have lately been following the same path that road safety has unsuccessfully pursued for decades now, proving the idiom, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, ….”
Weller’s inverted U-shaped curve described graphically the relationship between stress, or demand, and performance. The inverted bell curve showed an increase in efficiency as stress is increased, to a maximum level of performance at the optimum, followed by a steady decrease in performance as stress is increased past the optimum level. It is ESSENTIAL TO NOTE THAT WE DON’T ALL ENJOY THE SAME LEVELS OF RESISTANCE TO STRESS, and unhealthy individuals, whether physically or psychologically impaired, will have a smaller inverted bell curve than a robust and mentally sound individual. The inexperienced, the elderly, and the incompetent will also score poorly on this curve when it is related to the task of motor vehicle operation.
First of all, people speed simply to put themselves squarely in the centre of the inverted U-shaped curve or at least on the up side of the curve. To allow them to stay at too low a level of intellectual demand would undoubtedly result in increased drowsiness, poor mental alertness, and reduced visual acuity as the eyes tend to relax into a state termed empty field myopia. Too high on the curve and they might be very alert, but with modern policing the way it is, the level of threat is usually very uncomfortable, resulting in an unnecessary diversion of attention, or focus on the job at hand. By inference then, drivers do actually speed to become safer, more alert than is practicable at ridiculously low speeds. That should explain why more people are now dying from fatigue related crashes than they have in the past. I think it is now passing speed as the major factor! As we all know instinctively, LACK OF ALERTNESS OR SKILL KILLS, speed is only relevant when considered in context – something the anti-car lobby regularly ignore.
Young drivers often speed simply in an effort to improve their skills in a benign learning environment – something that is impossible to achieve with a real driving instructor or your average parent. They speed in an attempt to improve their skills because driver training is so woefully inadequate, in this country at least, that they quite correctly recognize their inadequacies and try to correct them. Responsible youngsters do this without endangering other people, while those who do endanger others’ lives or simply disturb their comfort levels are in need of some positive adult guidance. There are a few individuals who are blatantly irresponsible, however, these people would also respond better to positive corrective action than the fine system.
Second, the typical driver is a human being. This means that they are subject to Maslow’s celebrated hierarchy of needs. With impossibly slow traffic, unenlightened traffic management bureaucracies, and other low level stressors, drivers are often regressing to their lowest level of behaviour as their stress levels increase. In these conditions, it is folly to think that drivers are always going to react logically to threats, particularly those imposed by a government which seems totally oblivious to their needs. If you have kids, you will understand the effect of long term stress on your level of consciousness which is directly related to
your position on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Therefore, for punitive enforcement systems to work at improving road safety, they must assume that the target individual is comfortable, unstressed, and in a suitable mental state for punishment to work. As we all know, setting the punishment for stealing a loaf of bread at a one way ticket to Australia just doesn’t work if the individual is starving.
This basically implies that we need to seek to reduce regressive factors that tend to make drivers revert to lower levels of behaviour on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid if we are sincere about safety. Present government policy is a good example of how to use safety as a weapon against us. This implies a high level of contempt for us as their so-called “Masters”. They are supposedly our servants! Once this is understood and analysed, we find that their contempt for us stems directly from our contempt for them. It seems that the ball is really in our court, which is a much more positive and empowering way of looking at the issue than the alternative.
As distasteful as this may sound, it seems that we need to begin treating politicians and public servants with respect if we hope for them to reciprocate.
Regards,
Peter R Callil
I have replied as follows:
Hi Peter,
Thanks for an interesting and encouraging email. Clearly we're thinking along the same lines. Have you found this page: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/arousal.html ? It provides some linkage to your opinions and provides an earlier reference for the inverted U curve.
Since writing the 'Why drivers speed' page I have realised that an input to the risk balancing process is an individual's subconscious real-time risk assessment process. It's probably the risk assessment process that is most key to the whole thing. Routine speed adjustments take place to satisfy the level of stress needs via the agent of real time risk assessment. Since this risk assessment process is almost entirely subconscious, most of us have absolutely no idea why we speed.