Safe Speed Forums

I got round to playing with that diagram of factors that influence severity to take account of what was said after the last one.



As before, arrow show where one factor is modified by the one pointing to it. "State of driver" covers everything from being really alert and concentrating well to half cut and distracted by argumentative kids in the back. "Condition of car" includes not only things like how good the brakes are but also the design of the vehicle, so it probably should say "Condition and type of vehicle". "Characteristics of road" is one Paul brought up. Initial speed will be high on a wide straight NSL dual carriageway simply because it's wide straight NSL dual carriageway. I feel that this is in turn affected by driver experience. On a dodgy road that looks suitable for fast driving but has a hidden hazard an experienced driver may recognise the need to slow (or may be already aware of the danger from being there before), but an inexperienced driver might not - they could be caught out by the charcteristics of that particular road and lulled into driving faster. The opposite might also be true, that the road looks scarier than it is and drivers may tend to select a slower speed than necessary.

Any suggestions about anything in the wrong place? Or missing? Or how it could be made clearer? I still feel that this isn't a very good way of showing this, but my PS efforts turned into a real mess. There's still no relative importance and I'm struggling with that, perhaps because some things can be really important all the time and others very important or unimportant depending on individual circumstances. For example, does the importance of "Time when hazard seen" increase in importance if it's spotted late? Probably as it's likely that the impact speed will be higher as a direct consequence. How to show that is a bit of a head scratcher though.

One mistake that I've just noticed is that I've got road characteristics modifying driver experience, which is daft but the arrow can't point in the other direction either or we'd have experience modifying the road. What I was trying to show was that experience can determine how well a driver reads the road, which in turn will alter how they drive. It probably needs to be a line rather than an arrow, but given where it is that's not quite right either. I think.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

How about drivers experience linking to characteristics of the road therefore determining initial speed?

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!