Safe Speed Forums

As I posted some time ago - I learned German as an adult - or rather I added to long forgotten 'O' Level knowledge. For benefit of newcomers - shall just briefly say - learned the German language out of necessity because I was smitten by a Wild Swiss person - who speaks German to our kids and I have to know what she is up to as all who post to PH khow her - er wilder qualities And probably recognise she is very strong minded - and a damned good motorist! Those from the C+ site had "met" her sister and now her husband... saying nuffink 'ere ... have read what they've been posting recently

Anyway - like basingmate - learned German at the Goethe Institut and we did "Neuro Linguistics" and I felt a complete prat at the time - hopping on one leg and reciting German verbs, doing a little dance with respect to "verb to enders" and so on. Dunno if basingwerk's experience was the same - but I did the course at the Manchester branch which was nearest and now they closed it - which is a shame.

Did it work? Er./.. well can make myself understood in the lingo and can gist read.

Is it automatic? NO! I have to think and concentrate - whereas my wife aka Wildy Cat (apart from her little problem with "is" "and" and "with") can flit from German to English to French to Italian to Romansch- to Schwyz without thinking and the same applies to all those Swiss and am aware people have "met" them on other fora. I also know Hanbo has conversed with the Swiss family "boss" and all his siblings before on another site. He knows him as Old Saddo who is a Quite Good Driver Honestly!! We are open about the relationships because we are trying to get COAST /OAP into the "lizard brain" if you like!

Neil's post does explain what happens in learned behaviour. I can relate to my own medical knowledge and my own sister andWildy;scousin who are both teachers. There is the Pavlov dog and Gestalt schools of thought in learning psychology. These are topics in their own right!

You get used to concepts. A certain computer programm and its function keys becomes automatic. And you struggle with a new programm - initially. Once you have become conversant and cease to use the old one - your skills become redundant and you "forget" them.

To some extent - we remember road we are fmiliar with and "switch off". Our subconscious or survival instinct kicks in at a perceived danger and a change in layout can cause serious confusion as it "disturbs" the learned behaviour! lizard brian may even make some people oblivious oto any change as too many will work to a pre-learned experience.

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Again this is a problem with the individual and not the road. If a driver is unable to respond quickly and approriately to sudden changes in the road environment, then there is a real problem.

Why are the bollards there?
What do they denote?
What is my response?

Surely all these should be asked (conciously or subconciously) at each set. Logically on a busy road, there should be a consideration that pedestrians will use these as a central refuge ora safer place to cross due to the narowing and the child scenario should therefore be expected and dealt with.


If this is not possible,then I must question the ability of the iindividual to respond to any emergency in a safe and controlled manner!

To quote one source:

Tell a road that its father was a footpath, it's mother a cyclepath and it is illegitimate - if you get filled in it is a dabgerous road. Otherwisw it is your problem - deal with it by driving approriately!

Not at all.

Tell that to someone who has fallen asleep at the wheel because of extended monotonous journeys resulting from inappropriately low limits.

If the road has a particular effect on the driver that is the road's fault.


Incidentally, do you apply your logic to pedestrians?


If pedestrians followed their rules in the Highway Code it would make all pedestrian accidents, apart from those caused by maniac drivers chasing them along the pavement, impossible.



They are there to make the driver pay so much attention to them that they have to slow right down to negotiate them.


That there is barely enough room to get past them and you have to divert your attention from the road ahead to the gap between them.


Errrmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

That would be to divert your attention from the road ahead to the gap between them, surely?

That is what they are designed to do, so why do you think that they will have some other effect?

Unfortunately, as with all improperly thought out road "safety" designs they have overlooked the fact that whilst concentrating on the gap, the driver won't clock the kid about to kill himself.


"Logically", if you lie in bed at night unable to get to sleep and start counting sheep you will never get to sleep as you have an infinite number of sheep to count. But this is the real world.


Again, do you apply your logic to pedestrians (and "planners"):





Unfortunately for the writer and his ilk:

The descendants of footpaths are footpaths.

The descendants of car-riageways are car-riageways.

Curbs are there to curb pedestrians from wandering into the road.

Cycles are only allowed on the car-riageway due to an act giving them honorary car-riage status.

Pedestrians only have a right on the highway if they do not obstruct its use as a highway.

If they try to commit suicide that's their problem:

Deal with it.

Any responsibility a driver has for a pedestrian's safety does not reduce a pedestrian's responsibility for their own safety (or their carers if they aren't capable of shouldering that responsibility.

If this is not possible, then I must question the ability of the individual to respond to any emergency in a safe and controlled manner, and therefore it's "right" to be anywhere near the roads!

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I think at this point We wil have to agree to differ....

I feel that in this scenario the driver of a vehicle - any vehicle has a responsibility as an adult and responsible member of society to the child in this scenario.

Your opinion is that if the accident occurred it cannot posibly be your fault, but that of the road, designers, pedestrians and anyone else you can think of.

I can see no point in continuing therfore as this will not be resolved by reasoned discussion. So I shall take my ilks of to a more reasonable discusiion.

I think a lot of this thread focuses on the things I lft unsaid in my"Observation.Driver Attitude" Hendon series on the "driver improvement forum.

Many drivers fail to assess rapidly enough the continuously movingout on the road ahead where their view of it unfolds. As result - they are best with making last minute desisions as Cunobelin points out here.





This matters a lot as you approach any hazard such as bollards, traffic lights, bends, hills, crests and hidden dips. You must not only be aware of what is immediately in front of you - but also what stretches out in front of you in the distance. An early look gives you time - and assessing a situation accurately depends on practice and experience (where the lizard brain kicks in - perhaps )- but skill develops more quickly if you are better prepared.

There is other traffic you can see and traffic -which you cannot see - Mad Doc's and FF's sports car are low and may be concealed by hedgegrows at a tricky junction - and Peyote's bicycle may also be hidden from view - for example. We humans are very unpredictable animals at the best of times - thus you anticipate what he may do next. The lizard brain may be aware from a practised eye But then - the other guy's lizard brain may have said "GO" when his human mind said "WAIT!" Make an incorrect assumption and you are in bother!

Pedestrians change direction quicker than vehicles - so again you may take in the pedestrian as part of you relaxeed concentration/obervation and the experienced COAST aware driver's lizard brain will feather the brake automatically.

As in




As for road signs and markings .. few drivers, bikers and cyclists consider these sufficiently at all. This is partly because each and every road is litteredwith a huge excess of signs - most of them boringly repetitive. (I was hinting at this in another post I made earlier today - it's my day off and I'm being self-indulgent!)

Anyway this compromises the beneficial effect of sins and perhaps explains why so many miss scamera signs, speed limit lollies and so on!

Basically - teaching the informed - but for the benefit of novice drivers and those who really need advice:

A change from lane divider lines (short - - - -) to longer hazard ones (__ __ __) tells you that something along the road ahead is going to require your attention. Too many out there do not know the difference. You read a road as you would a book - every line on the road is informing and is a bit like (. , ! ' " " - __?) if you like!

So you take note of the signs and the markings as they are trying to tell you what to expect ahead of you! For the experienced driver - his subconcious lizard brain, or his relaxed concentration pick out these things - and novices and less qualified need help in learning such advanced skills.

Hence - some simple adverts may help and have suggested bringing back the golden oldies in any case!

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Sorry, but, as Cunobelin did: you're missing the point.

We're not talking about driving the open road, watching it unfold ahead of you, seeing and responding to "real" hazards.

We're talking about councils deliberately constructing obstacle courses and expecting people to continue reading the road for "real" hazards while carefully threading themselves through the endless series of obstacles and artificial ones.

It just won't happen.

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

That would be a more reasoned "discussion" where people don't show you the courtesy of considering and dealing with all the issues you raise?

Or where you think you can get away with counter attacking one part of a response, and ignoring the rest?

Or are you just saying you were never trying to have a reasoned discussion in the first place?


Think of the children!

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

Ah! Do you mean chicanes and humps - cos speaking from personal experience on a bike - think I prefer going up and down steps in terms of actual safety!

And they ain't that great if you are in one of our cars at speed either. Most vehicles end up in the garages here with suspension repairs after dealing with humps! And they do not increase property values either!

_________________
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.

I'm quite sure that the lizard brain (or whatever we should really be calling it) directs our attention when we're scanning the scene and looking ahead. As we gain experience a number of things happen:

* we learn where it's important to look
* we look further ahead
* we learn never to stop scanning the scene
* we run some sort of sophisticated scene scanning sequence with appropriate priorities

In the speed camera era our scene scanning skills are being distorted and undermined by adding cameras, the speedo and speed limit information to the scanning list - even when events ahead are far more important.

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Paul Smith
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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety