Safe Speed Forums

If so, then it seems most drivers would disagree with you most of the time.
Would I be right in guessing that you're towards the far left side of the speed/risk 'U' curve?


Either I didn't understand you or you didn't understand the meaning of this. The 85% is the speed where the safest drivers (those least likely to be involved in accidents) are travelling at; we simply don't 'have the worst drivers in the world with the 85th percentile drivers and riders'.

What is "safe enough"?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Are you linking speed and risk there?

That's right, there is indeed a relationship, but perhaps not what you're assuming.
This curve basically says those who deviate from the normal flow speeds are those who suffer the greatest rates of collision; those who adopt the 85% are at the bottom of the risk curve (least crash risk).

Have you not been keeping up? It's not like this hasn't come up time and time again.
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedlimits.html

Would I be right in guessing that you're towards the far left side of the speed/risk 'U' curve?

What is "safe enough"?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

X

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Or put another way the 85%ile are those drivers that are found to be the safest.
A driver that is engaged with the driving task is paying attention, focused and acting and reacting to conditions. So the 85% of the drivers that are traveling at all those variable speeds along a specific road are found to be the least likely to have an accident. The one's going slower and faster increase int eh likelihood of possibly having an accident.

These figures helped us retain the World's safest roads because drivers were engaged, understood the task at hand and were 'fit for purpose'. By being engaged they enjoy the task, (from many perspective), by enjoying that task, they are interested and encourage each other and are encouraged to improve in this task. A win, win situation.

Speed of course is a factor in driving, hence why we must always try to ensure that we are always traveling at an appropriate speed, so that we can always stop in the distance that we can see to be clear in. (Clear being no potential hazards)
These drivers are often driving slower (and often much slower) and faster than our current 'average' driver because they are reacting to potential hazards, and hazards, and then going faster when conditions allow.
Now not everyone is as interested in driving at this average level and tend to go slower and make more mistake and drive with less ability and occasionally have accidents. Then there are those that have great skill and drive with every possible ability and skill, plus have amassed much knowledge and experience but, then there are the drivers that drive in a manner that is beyond their skill, knowledge and ability might ever allow. As they think they are safe, they continue and either learn for themselves the better way to drive or become worse, and eventually crash.
The task is to improve the end 'scales towards the best and safest sections of the scale so that less people crash and so less people die.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

The Brake article fails to understand why and how people crash. Stopping distances is fact and can be located in all Highway Codes, and tells us what we need to do, it does not tell us how we decide what is safe.

By understanding how to recognise any given road environment that helps us to choose an appropriate speed to enable a safe drive through the area at a safe speed.

A bit like be heard but not seen !

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

The graph in that link does not conclusively demonstrate demonstrate that travelling well below the 85th %ile is more dangerous. It could well be, probably is, that less competent drivers drive at a lower speed. If they increased their speed to that 85th there is no reason to expect their accident rate would fall. More likely the opposite.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

The text below it also seems to assert that crashes that involve a slow driver are automatically the fault of the driver who's going slow. That's quite a common thread on this site.

Doddery old fool at 30 mph on a UK "A" road suitable for 60 mph. Of course he has an elevated crash risk. He does not know what he is doing. That's why he's doing 30 mph with a queue of increasingly frustrated traffic behind.

A single vehicle in lane 3 of a busy motorway. It's obvious that as the speed is reduced below 55 mph the crash risk will increase.

And therein lies the answer....it isn't speed that kills but incompetent drivers, driving at speeds that they can't handle, whether that speed is 30 MPH or 80MPH.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

All this proves is that whether you are travelling at 30MPH or 36MPH or 70MPH to make sure that if there is an "incident" that you are going to stop within your stopping distance before the "incident". What if you ARE travelling at 30MPH and the "incident" occurs 50 feet in front of you? You are still going to be travelling at a speed when you hit the 50 feet point. Facts and figures mean nothing if you can't translate them into actual safe driving skills.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Only most of those pinged are "blippers" or "slight drifters" who get pinged at 35 mph on a downhill where they pick up speed without noticing und they think they are at 30 mph .. which ist why these are so angry und resentful of the camera which ist placed at the only spot where it can catch the error which ist probably corrected by the majority. You hear this so often around Kodak County

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Most people I observe when I'm in my car travel consistantly at about 5 to 10 mph above the limit (except for the people behind me of course!), they're no blippers.

And at night it appears to be 10 to 30 mph above the limit.

The faster you go the further out in front of you the event horizon reaches where if something occurs within it you're going to have trouble not hitting it.

If cars projected a little line on the road that showed you where this even horizon was this would indicate the real size of your car, and the faster you go the further away it gets.

Introduce random hazards and you have a situation where higher speeds means more collisions simply because a hazard has more chance of presenting itself within your event horizon.

On Motorway Cops .. (I keep intending to write up the gems from Tuesday's telly") thet copped a driver whose car flagged up driver possibly had a provisional licence from ANPR. He was on M6 .. no supervision. They pull him when they leave the motorway.

I quote what :cop: say






They had his car towed away ... I bet he was "in highest orbiting around sun bother" with parents when he get home


But it was the "higher" ... und the other comment that they not deal with speed per se on the show... as dangerous drivers .. illegals..via licence/insurance/defective/careless cause the most danger to all others.

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Quatsch! This ist where C O A A S T really kick into gear. You are looking into horizon.. the limit point und at all time .. should be able to stop safety in distance seen to be clear on own side of road.. without a skid or a slide. You are looking at the limit point at a bend.


We all know that the officers at Over Kellett make this serious error und the other one in Newcastle likewise in a red mist moment to be understanding ... but they failed to read the road und what it was telling them by lay-out und conditions. Sadly we found serving polods on another board blindly defended without even wanting to know what the road was really like .. even though those local PH-ers to these roads uploaded photos/maps und even a video of the road. Misguided Plod on that discussion tried to make out that his video did not record the same way as a police video We were pointing out that even police drivers must drive to COAST und have same duties of care to others as the rest of us even when on plod business.. but ...





They already have the Aha Faktor in German training.

I have already posted up the formula for calculating how far you travel at any one speed per second. You travel 33 metre per second at 70 mph for example (Convert to k/ph .. remove 0 und multiply by 3...) This helps consolidate COAST values und helps us understand speed und improve anticipations... limit points.. interpret the roads better. Germany introduce Aha =-Faktor initially for naughty-ish drivers. They now include in normal training. They think early figures show improvements..

But weepy ,. the horizon move with you. It ist the constant ahead und you have to develop to COAST to really look into it. I admit to being trained by the "master" who ist most geared up in this.

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

It sounds like the limits are being set VERY unrealistically low round by you then. In my experience MOST people travel below the limit (which is shown up when speed surveys are taken) the only areas that I notice a few people exceeding the limits are the new 40MPH ones where it was previously NSL.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Yep, it's called experience!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Do people really travel up to 90MPH in the dark round by you? You are beginning to sound like Greenshed now!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

That's not the main point, neither is it relevant to this thread.
The real issue is the safest drivers and their risk of needless prosecution for exceeding a needlessly low limit. Remember, we're talking about the setting of speed limits, which is what that web page is all about:
"Introduction: But how should speed limits be set?"

I don't advocate forcing slow drivers to go faster, but I would seriously consider adding another tier to the driving licence which would exclude them from the faster roads.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Cherry picking will not help any discussion as points being made are then not only taken out of context (deliberately) but the point of the meanings purpose is lost.
Safe driving and concentrating on improving those that are not 'up to par' may often be a subtle point that is missed.
One has to understand where the safest drivers are to start to comprehend what is best practice.
NO ONE has ever said that if someone is comfortable at proceeding at a slow speed that they are comfortable with that this in itself is always wrong. In some circumstances it can be of course. Police do book people for both excessive and slow speed when they are considered to be dangerous.
Understanding the purpose of safe areas of driving (road users), is fundamental to understanding safe driving (road user) practices. Once you understand where the safest areas exist you can make various conclusions. Once you have a collection of conclusions patterns and trend emerge. Those best practices help indicate who are the safest.
So when the discussion becomes one of a few individuals bad practices or one or two incidents the overall benefit of understanding road safety is lost nto a narrow discussion.
Nothing wrong in discussing a few individual driving behaviours but it is a different disucussion, pin pointing a driver behaviour/s and whether or why (etc.) that is right or wrong. Then depending upon the topic running in the thread, will then depend on if you chaps are trying to introduce a specific example is then either on or off topic.
In this case this topic is about the overall trend and system so to introduce individual examples discussed is likely off topic.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.