Safe Speed Forums

Oooo! That smarts.

I'm simply exercising my braincells here. Last weekend I was being 'examined' by a Class 1 Police Rider down wet twisty lanes. At the speed I was expected to ride, it occured to me "Do I really believe I could stop safely in an emergency?" I probably could - but I'd never tried it. That's all.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

Mine are - in the nicest possible way.



The fact remains that the interests of big business are NOT the same as those of the business's customers. The possibility of a business doing something that is strongly not in the customers' interest remains.

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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

Does it? Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.



Me too. Excellent questions - and ones that I have asked myself many times in the past.

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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

Hang on, can't let you get away with that! If I get Paul-1966's drift he's refering to a danger, not just something which is not simply in the customers' interest and therein lies a big difference.

Got the link ta Handy.

Well, there may have been pressure to implement seat belts but the bottom line is car manufacturer's, regardless of public opinion or perception, wouldn't invest so much effort and money into white elephant IMHO.

Phew. I wonder how long I can keep this up before someone looking over my shoulder says get on with some work

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Car manufacturers fit seat belts because they are legeally obliged to! You can't type approve a car without belts these days - it's as simple as that!

But if we're talking about the origins then before they were made a legal requirement some considerable research must have been done to justify them, unlike speed cameras.

Just like air bags have been designed, tested, proved and approved to be a benefit and doubless one day they too will be made a legal requirement.

Gotta go home now...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

We're all wasting our time citing individual events. My wife's into breastfeeding in a big way and goes on various mums' fora. It is generally accepted in the scientific community that breastfed babies are less likely to have eczema than bottle fed babies. IMMEDIATELY, there are individuals popping up on the boards saying that THEY were bottle-fed and they haven't got eczema!

Similarly, you can always find a smoker that lived to 90 and didn't die of cancer.

I think there are multiple reasons auto manufacturers start fitting certain things, either as options or as standard (often starting as the former and gradually becoming the latter).

Go way, way back in motoring history. Why did manufacturers start fitting vacuum ignition advance and electric starters? Probably because they saw that these options would be popular with a lot of people, which they were.

Why did they start providing electric turn signals as an optional extra? Because it was sold to people as being far mroe convenient that winding down the window to give a hand signal, and of course it then became mandatory for signals to be fitted in later years, but even if that had not been the case, I think they'd have probably become standard fitments automatically because people would come to rely upon them and would not want to be without them, any more than anyone today would want to go back to hand cranking and making manual adjustments to the ignition timing.

But we don't have to look very far to see plenty of instances, especially in more recent years, of things which have really only become standard fitments because of legislation.

Rear fog lights anyone? Sure, they were around as options before U.K. law mandated them on new cars, but for something which was simply not that popular an option, would they have become standard features due to popular demand in the way that electric starters and turn signals had? I very much doubt it. They're only fitted on new cars here today because EU regulations demanded it.

And relating this somewhat to seat belts, the same could be said for the seat belt buzzer/warning light on all new U.S. vehicles. Fitted by popular demand? No -- Fitted only because they're now required by Federal law. People who wanted to use belts would buckle up anyway and those like me who don't will soon disable the annoying warning devices.

So I think there's quite a division between things which have become the norm due to public demand and those which have become the norm because of legislation or other business influences.

Absolutely. Volvo are widely credited with the introduction of the automotive safety belt but even before cars, the aircraft industry were on to it. Colonel Stapp did a lot of reasearch (on himself) but I don't think it ever occurred to him to try it without the belt just to see if it was any safer! You can see how (intuitively) being restrained in a moving object such that when it comes to an abrupt stop you don't mince yourself all over the inside of it seems like a good idea. Certainly in motorsport you don't find many people who think seat belts are a bad idea!

Anyway, getting back to the history, Volvo started fitting them (as did other manufacturers) and the resulting improvements in safety were such that the legislators decided to make their fitment mandatory.

I was amused a minute ago when I had to look at the EC Directive on belts for something else I'm working on. It starts off:

"Having regard to the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee (1),
Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty (2),
Whereas:
(1) Research has shown that the use of safety belts and restraint systems can contribute to a substantial reduction in the number of fatalities and the severity of injury in the event of an accident, even due to rollover. Their fitting in all categories of vehicles will certainly constitute an important step forward in bringing about an increase in road safety and a consequent saving of lives.
(2) A substantial benefit to society can be attained if all vehicles are provided with safety belts.
(3) In its Resolution of 18 February 1986 on common measures to reduce road accidents, as part of the Community's programme for road safety (3), the European Parliament stressed the need for making the wearing of safety belts compulsory for all passengers, including children, except in public service vehicles. Therefore, a distinction has to be made between public service buses and other vehicles as regards the compulsory installation of safety belts and/or restraint systems..."

and so on.

Unfortunately, however, there is also plenty of "research" that suggests speed cameras are beneficial too!

The reasons for having belts on an airplane are so different from those on a car that there's no valid comparison between the two.

As for motorsport, although closer, even that is rather different from everyday driving on a public highway. It is much more controlled, driving conditions are totally different, there are emergency crews standing by who can be at a crash scene within seconds, etc.

And their reasons for claiming a difference in public service vehicles are.....?

The point is, even if mandating the use of belts does result in an overall reduction of fatalities and serious injuries, does the government have the right to force anything on people in the full knowledge that in some cases that thing will be harmful?

Arguments such as "society as a whole benefits" completely ignore the rights of the individual to choose how he protects himself. It's communism, plain and simple, in which the right of the individual is sacrificed "for the greater good" of society. But of course, the EU is a communist organization anyway, so that's to be expected.

following on from Big Tone's mail, the car industry did not do anything to improve security (in the US - Volvo are a different kettle of dried fish) until forced to by a combination of political and public pressure.

I would suggest to anyone interested in automotive safety that they read the book "Unsafe At Any Speed", or read up on the GM Chevrolet Corsair swing-axle and crucially GM's attempts to silence, then discredit him, then being forced to publicly apologise.

It's long out of print now, I bought my copy from the US on eBay (I first read it in a college library, I probably should have been studying thermodynamics or something).

Around the same time there were some allegations of "bean counters" involved in car safety - they would estimate the number of potential accidents / deaths from known defects, multiply by a reasonable settlement amount, and if that was lower than the cost of a recall / fix, then they would not do the recall. In the age of poor communication and prior to mass tort lawsuits, they got away with it.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

That happened with the Ford Pinto in the early 1970s. They had a nasty habit of going up in flames when rear-ended because the gas tank wasn't very well protected. Those bean-counters worked out that amount it would be likely to cost them in lawsuits would be less than the cost of redesigning and/or recalling.

What's your view on immunisation then? Have you heard of herd immunity? The right of the individual is sacrificed to the safety of the masses - do you disagree with that?

The EU is a communist organisation is it? Your proof would be?

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

I would be as totally opposed to it being forced on people by law as I am to mandatory seat belts.



Just about every piece of legislation it produces which seeks to create a highly regulated system in which the state takes centralized control at the expense of individual rights, whether the rights of a person or a member state: The CAP, CFP, common import tariffs, etc.

1. Do you even understand what Herd immunity is? Can you understand that YOU not being immunised can hurt or kill ME?

2. ah, right, so it's another opinion rather than a fact. Perhaps you could predicate all of your statements with "IMO".

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Given my recent encounter with the Cops and the fact that they can confiscate a tape as evidence, no fear of me trying that one.

I wasn't exceeding the speed limit, not an inexperienced young driver, not drunk, and the car is legit, and I didn't interact with any other vehicles. So having run out of ideas he threatened me with a Due Care ticket instead. And it turns out if, in his opinion, I wasn't driving with due care and attention then I wasn't - end of story - unless you can afford Mr Loophole.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

I would think that everyone accepts that ciggies are definitely not the best thing for you, yet tobacco companies still make a lot of money from it (otherwise they couldn’t remain in business).


To be fair, those are a result of a (relatively) small scale manufacturing defects or design flaws, as opposed to a global specification error.



I’m probably about to repeat someone, anyway…

The problem is that when seat belts were first widely used (became legally mandatory in 1982, then 1991 for rear seated adults) there was nothing else for occupant restraint/protection, like: crumple zones, multiple airbags, deforming components, impact protection. I would guess that everyone at that time would have accepted that the benefits of belting up seriously outweighed the associated problems. Now many cars have these other safety features, hence it’s reasonable to re-evaluate their effectiveness when used within a modern car.

Um, what?

This is another comment I feel you're going to have to justify.

Why do you think there are belts on aircraft then?

Many of the modern safety features will only work properly if you are held if the right place by the seat belt. If you don't wear a seat belt you will not be in the right place for the air bags. Your limbs will collide with things other than the soft parts of the dash etc. that the designers intend to protect you. Your head will smash into the laminated screen that is designed not to give way. A serious head injury that does not kill you could well leave you in a vegetative state and then you will be a severe burden to your friends and family.

Remember the huge forces involved in a crash.