Safe Speed Forums

Well you'll just have to take it from me my friend that it takes me nowhere near that length of time to perfrom the necessary cursory scan. It has just become a part of the driving routine I suppose. TBH I don't scan to extract a readout of my exact speed, just 'in the zone' is good enough to meet my requirements.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

How long does it take you?
TBH, when I'm near an enforcement area, being 'in the zone' isn't nearly enough for me.

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

I changed two words then repeated it back to you. On reflection I was a bit strong for which I apologise, I should have used a different two words.

Regardless my argument still stands (you ain't getting out of it that easy). The fact is you have made a wild claim without understanding the complications involved even though I have explained them to you.

But would you really be allowing a child so small out alone anyway? Each parent has to judge at what point they feel comfortable enough that their child's au fait enough with the Highway Code or sufficiently "Traffic Aware" to go out unsupervised.

I'd say from reading all the arguments pro- the school run/against letting child walk or cycle seems to indicate most parents prefer to supervise their kids out there.

I think we have already commented on the best "THINK!" advert seen to date. It shows a Mum teaching her child as they walk along the pavement: you know the sort of thing, counting the steps, pointing out the different colours of the cars, flowers, brollies. A lovely tender scene and I think every parent on the planet has played this with their children whilst out shopping. But in the last second, the 5-6 year old does what toddllers and small children are too darned good at: he sees something of "interest" across the road and catches the parent unaware and he slips her hand hold. You are left in no doubt what happened from the sheer look on the mother's face in this advert. It closes with the lines which take me back to old adverts from my own childhood:




THINK! Do not forget to teach your child about the Green Cross Code

I think this one of the best seen for a long time, along with the teenager and the mobile phone one.

But this advert appears to be aimed at the pedestrian. Well - yes. But it also serves another purpose because it alerts and reminds drivers/bikers/cyclists that children do do this. I'd love them to take it further by showing the other side of the coin and use it to get across the need to C O A S T. COAST means you are looking ahead. It also means you see the lollies and it also means that a driver being fully observant of the potential hazards can risk assess and choose his speed wisely. For example - you see a line of parked cars: a fleeting glance beneath them can reveal a foot or a ball. You would also be passing this line of parked cars perhaps below the speed limit anyway as numpties will set off without even looking.




You would be scanning ahead for all hazard potential within any given "limit point" which would change as a constant.


As Riggers says - you can judge the speed to some extent by gear/engine sound and appearance of things you pass as well as how quickly you appear to be "closing in" on the car ahead of you and your "limit point" will be "tighter" as well


Most of us in towns would be travelling according to the crawling speed of the traffic around us anyway.





I find I can feel my speed and judge how fast I am travelling. But then I've made a career out of judging how fast someone was travelling and - er - doing summat about it anyway I do glance down at my dash though on fairly regular occasions in much the same way as I would mirrot check. A quick glance down. However, if visiting pals/family in cam-infest zones - I do find I glance down at speedo when I see the cams and am aware I probably check the dash more frequently to be sure when passing a cluster of them in some areas. By the way - usually hold a constant of 27-30 mph in urban areas. Usually stay at such speeds in free-flow urban and find I am indeed at that speed when I do glance down. (It's a relief to me to "drive to normal speeds " anyway At work - I have been known to drive "illegally but legally" if you knows what I mean but a guy's gotta eat )

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

It is literally, momentary. Certainly not a second, certainly not long enough for me to lose the mental image I have of the road ahead or even need to refocus (that I can discern anyway).

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Apology accepted.
I too have two words in mind although I'm too much of a gentleman to type them and wouldn't want to offend you by doing so.

What you don't seem to appreciate is that you cannot hope to win any argument on what I am or am not capable of...for the plain and quite simple reason...you are not me.

You can quote trees and fingers optical values until the cows come home it doesn't alter the fact (and remember its my eyes doing the looking here... not yours) I can see my speedo with enough clarity to be able to tell the speed I am doing WITHOUT shifting my gaze from the road. I thought it was normal...perhaps I was mistaken?
But if you get to KNOW your vehicle like I believe I know mine, you get to know almost exactly what speed you are doing from the most cursory of indicators. Be it a glance or just being aware by reason of peripheral vision of where on the dial that indicator needle is pointing at any given moment.

As Rigpig has already mentioned there are other indicators auditory as well as visual I can take into account as well as that peripheral glance to aid me in determining my speed...engine noise levels, road noise from the tyres etc.
Another ability I have is that I can hold my left ...(SORRY that should be RIGHT FOOT...just throwing the pedants a bone... )foot steady on the accelerator pedal and maintain any given speed I need to without having to check by looking at the speedo every second or so..yes and that includes up and downhill gradients too!
It's called BEING IN CONTROL of your vehicle.

Try the experiment on http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedo.html

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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

Hmmm, I just tried something a little more scientific. Try holding a page with clear text (short words) where a typical speedo would usually be relative to your eyes. Read one word, then look at something distant, like a tree, ensuring you have the leaves in good focus, then go back and read the next word on the sheet. How long does it take you to read in 10 words? I struggle to do it in less than 10 seconds.

edit: or do Paul's thang

Eland - You sound like a COAST style driver to me. But on a mild gradient? Towards the bottom - would you have noticed? We once set up an audit on one such road and we found the cars had picked up enough to be at our "cut off threshold". It was an audit. We'd hammer OTT behaviour at that point - but it was enough to warrant a "Kill Your Speed" sign on the lamp posts at this sight to try to get the blippers to check. Did it work? Well - the signs and making sure we were visiblly "sniffing around" seemed to impact.

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

You are right john, what i am saying is generally driving around town, not just past danger areas.
The unexpected can happen anytime, and speed can creep up to around 5 mph above the recommended limit sometimes.
Now if the worst happened, how would anyone feel if it could have been avoided by driving 7 mph slower, ie 28 mph.

Maybe there are some who know by instinct exactly how fast they are going all the time but i aint one of them despite the experience i have.
All i initially said was checking your speed often should be something you do as the norm and should not, therefore, be considered a hazard.
And i notice the OP has done a runner

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

I think there is a difference to the cursory glance to ensure your speed is "in the ball park" and one to determine legal compliance, and I think this is harder at lower speeds than at higher ones.

A cursory glance will tell you the needle is in the right direction, and should really be enough to tell a driver that they are certainly driving within the spirit of the law, I think the distraction is made worse when "absolute compliance" is required and poorly informed drivers attempt it.

By poorly informed I mean that we know there are a lot of drivers out there that no nothing of the 10% + 2mph guideline, they are being told that breaking speed limits cause death and destruction and so I think when they see a camera they have to try to apply absolute compliance.

This would explain the panic braking we see so often at camera sites, especially when he driver is unsure of the local limit (which to be fair is usually their own fault)

To my mind this is the distraction that speed cameras cause, not so much the glance at the speedo whilst driving normally.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

Thanks you for accepting my apology and returning to the lion's den


I already understand that, that’s why I worded my question to eliminate your and my own abilities. I repeat:

OK, so it boils down to this:
Do you honestly believe that most of the driving population has the ability to accurately determine the speedo reading to within 10%+2, reliably (with confidence of reliability), for all driving speeds, with the image of the dial falling well away from the fovea, even though they will be scanning subjects at far field (much further away) inevitably resulting with a lack of focus and double vision of nearby subjects?



It’s my estimation that many of the people who drive the most drive multiple vehicles. You simply cannot rely upon the learnt feelings for each vehicle in all conditions, especially given the subjective nature of it.



That’s fairly irrelevant considering the number of speed changes you have to perform during a typical drive.

....it would really depend on just how mild the gradient was and the effect it had on my forward momentum...but Yes, I believe I would, especially if it was in a 30mph zone, due to the change in pitch of engine noise (I use third gear in such areas...more control that 4th) but ...anyway I had it drummed into me many moons ago that 'creep' was bad ...

Welcome to both newcomers - and apologies for coming late to this thread.

STGO's take - looking around everywhere, including the speedo - is something I do when I am confident there are/will be no other hazards develop that I will not be able to deal with in the period before looking forward again. Rather than front/side/mirror/speedo/front/side/mirror/speedo (or whatever it was proposed), I leave out the speedo, and usually (but not always, intersperse front with all other options. Front/left/front/mirror/front/right/...

My principal reason for leaving out the speedo - and other dash instruments - on a routine scan basis, apart from the lack of need to do so to maintain safe progress, is that dashboard attention cannot be done with a glance - it needs a complete refocus, taking one's attention from the road away for at least a second in the average adult.

I do look at the dashboard - but only when I KNOW attention can be spared to do so. Typically this is NOT the case in low speed limit zones.

Sorry guys but I don't need to try any experiments or read up on the technical jargon about what our eyes do to focus, to know that my periodic speedo checks do not occur as if they were an event that is 'time-sliced' from the other driving tasks.
Perhaps if people have got used to a 'point the car and press the accelerator until it feels right' style of driving then they might need the comfort and re-assurance of longer and more frequent 'stare' at the speedo. But if its such a problem then surely we'd be experiencing more 'camera staring' crashes at camera sites?

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I think you do, because I know that the physiological constraints make what you're suggesting impossible, and because I know that subjectively it does not seem so. Why not give it a go and prove us wrong if you are so sure?



I think the problem is that the coincidence of developing incident and extra speed check is quite rare.

But there is this:



I wouldn't put speedo distraction anywhere near the top of the list of speed camera side effects, but it is on the list for sure. If it results in three deaths per year, then that's 12% of the claimed benefit for speed cameras (after RTTM) gone to one minor side effect.

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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

Reading a speedo is not at all (to me anyway) like reading words from a paper or looking out of the window sitting at ones desk. Its a momentary event to confirm that the needle is pointing in the expected direction, thats all. So I'm not trying out some pointless mickey mouse 'experiment' which in no way represents how the event actually occurs whilst driving.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Who says there aren't?

In my estimate I expect a lot more than the 40% drop of KSIs at camera sites after considering the post camera accident rate against the long term average, as well as other improvements at these sites.

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

Where this accident occurred is near one of the few fixed cameras in N Wales but the Arrive Alive camera vans also monitor this road. Knowledge of precise speed is essential here.

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

You can't determine your speed from the direction of the needle, at least not with any reliable accuracy.
You have to read the number on the dial close to the needle (then perhaps figure out what graticule mark applies), then compare that against the position of the needle. I reckon the 'reading' test is quite representative.

Perhaps what's needed is a mock-up of a speedo, of which the position of the needle can be changed while the experimenter is looking away, say at a monitor flashing different words or photos which the experimenter must read out to prove they focussed on it.