Safe Speed Forums

The aviation industry in which I'm employed has begun to recognise and account for a phenomen known as Human Factors. HF are, as the name suggests, those aspects of accidents or mistakes that are caused by human falibility and human nature. There exists a reporting system by which workers can report their own failings and errors and hopefully pass on lessons to others - not really workeable in this sphere with millions of motorists making errors every day, or is it?

Speed (however you articulate the term, please don't get hung up on this minute) is just one part of the 'death on the roads' equation. But if the deployment of a battalion of Cameras throughout the land was meant to invoke a mass attitude and behaviour change amongst motorists (i.e. making them drive slower by hook or crook), then by and large it's failed - abysmally. It's made criminals out of ordinary Joes and turned them against the authorities they should be supporting.

So, what of the other factors invoved, these more nebulous Human Factors? How do we address the problems of:
Inattention due to thinking about that business meeting or tonights footie?
Or distraction due to fiddling with the radio or other in-car gadgets.
Or plain bad attitudes?
Or...whatever.

Or are we stuck with the grim fact that, as we dish out driving licences to 20 odd milion people, you are going to get mistakes, failings and just..well appalling attitudes.

And don't ANYBODY try and tell me that latter don't exist because they do, in droves.

Much the same way as they do in the aviation industry, I reckon.
Firstly, pilots are made well aware of what hazards can occur, and how to spot them, or even predict them. Armed with this knowledge, pilots can then judge when to give their absolute and undivided attention - while taking off and landing, for example - and when they can afford to relax and 'fiddle with the radio', or think about that pretty air hostess - when they're at altitude, all systems check OK and there's not another plane within many miles.

Just my humble opinion...

Regards
Peter

I think this is absolutely the key to road safety. I think it's closely related to how we achieved the safest roads in the World in the first place, and I think it signposts the way forward.

I'd love to see a system of near miss reporting, but maybe that isn't too practical this year or next. As a reasonable substitute we could try:

A TV advertising campaign called "learn from your mistakes" that encourages driver's who've had a scare to take training and assessment to ensure that the mistake isn't repeated. It could be backed by a telephone helpline to driving experts.

A system of reporting and analysis of damage only accidents. Accident causers are offered training to ensure that they have a fair chance of not repeating the same mistake.

A system of targetted and individual remedial training for those found careless or dangerous in the courts (where possible and appropriate).

But even more than these points, we need to set up road safety systems specifically to "feed the safety culture", because it is our safety culture that gave us the safest roads in the world in the first place.

Our safety culture and our average driver are both about a million miles from the ideal, and this proves to me that we have oodles of room for improvement.

One of the problems presently is that "speed kills" road safety undermines our previously positive road safety culture and is making our average driver worse. It does this by distorting priorities and putting numerical speed and the risk of enforcement far too high on the average driver's priority list.

[where I say "average driver" I am referring to the arithmetic mean of all our drivers' accident avoidance abilities.]

The following Safe Speed pages refer:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/roadsafety.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/tiger.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/art.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

This shouldn't be too difficult to set up. Insurance companies cauld be made to report anyone having more than x number of accidents in y months in the same way the financial services sector have to report suspicious transactions to combat money laundering.

The question will be where the money comes from.

The causer pays. It's a sensible part of the responsibility of using the roads, and only a small cost in the context of a year's motoring.

I don't really agree with the "blame culture", but we've got it and I don't see it getting changed any time soon.

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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