Safe Speed Forums

Exerpt from page at: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/timetoreact.html


speed

If you have chosen the right speed to negotiate a hazard safely, speed does not contribute to time to react. This follows from forward planning. If the speed is too high to allow time to react then some other part of the safety system has failed. If such a failure has taken place, then travelling faster - it would have to be too fast for the conditions - would reduce the available time to react.

Speed does contribute to time to react. Despite the mixed message you have got it right at the end.
The hazard that is not forward planned is the unexpected, something like a child running out from between parked cars, or from the school gates.
Now just slowing down to the limits or below in these areas would surely help. Would it not?

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It's Champion Man

Yes. At higher speeds, you'll probably react in a shorter time, because you will be more alert. You may travel a greater distance in this time, but that isn't what you said.



Yes. As safe as drivers slowing down to a sensible speed when passing these areas, as most already do. What would not make them safer is a slower speed limit enforced by a speed camera, or *shudder* traffic calming measures.

Also, by implication you are saying that there are areas where there are unlikely to be unplanned hazards. Does this mean that you have no objection to a higher speed limit in those areas?

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Er, how exactly does speed contribute to the time you have to react?
For example, if a child runs out from between parked cars when you're one car length away, you have a third of a second to react if you're doing 30, or a half a second if you're doing 20. Either way, that's not nearly enough time. However, had you arrived at that point 2 seconds later you would have had two and a third, or two and a half seconds respectively to react. In any case, had you been doing 30mph as opposed to 20, you would not have been at the same place at that point in time, so it's academic.
My point is, it has everything to do with the time you arrive at a particular point and little, if anything, to do with what speed you happen to be doing.
Wrong place at the wrong time.

Indeed, in many locations, and at many times, the maximum safe speed is at or below the posted limit. But it doesn't follow that it always is.

Regards,

Peter

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

What helps is to increase drivers' preparedness for hazards. This will reduce the number of "safety system failures". Unfortunately present road safety policy is tending to reduce drivers' preparedness for hazards and that's why fatal accidents are not reducing.

We can easily prove that exceeding a speed limit is insignificant as a cause of pedestrian death:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/proof.html

If we wish to improve road safety (and I do) then we have to address parameters that matter not parameters that don't. Even more than that - we have to be very sure indeed that side effects of a policy or a strategy don't swamp the potential benefits.

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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