Safe Speed Forums

I've been thinking about 'repeating patterns of error' resulting in road crashes - and it strikes me that there's nothing new under the sun. Every time someone stuffs up, thousands have done the same before. Obviously there are wild freak crashes, but I bet that 95% of all crashes fall into clear groups of less than 50 crash scenarios.

This could be really important - if we can document all the common crash scenarios, can't we all be better placed to a) know where trouble might be coming from and b) know better how to avoid it?

In fact I bet 60% of crashes are well covered by just five descriptions...

- Classic junction SMIDSY - a right of way violation following observation or judgement error by emerging driver.

- Pedestrian crosses road into path of vehicle.

- Loss of control on a bend.

- Failing to check the blind spot when changing lanes.

- Failing to observe an obstruction ahead and crashing into it.

Does anyone think I might be onto something here?

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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

i wonder if they are too specific.

my thinking would be that the scenarios could be quite general, with a handful of typical causes behind each.

- Failing to check the blind spot when changing lanes.

does this cover slip roads & other merges ?
failing to check the blind spot is a cause, collision whilst changing lanes is the scenario.

- Pedestrian crosses road into path of vehicle.

crossing into the path of is the cause? collision with pedestrian is the scenario?

don't forget:

- Loss of control on a straight road

this happened right in front of us on an emtpy dual carraigeway last year, loss of conectration or distraction followed by over-reacting sent the chap (& family) sinning down the road.

(sorry that should be spinning, but i quite like the typo )

I'm thinking that lane changes and merges would be two, but that we'll still end up under 50.

And I'm also thinking of 'whole scenario' descriptions; specific error + environment = outcome. I also think we exclude the possible avoidance actions of others from the basic description - we stick to the 'basic error'. Of course we'd go on to describe 'how to avoid others making the mistake', as well as describing how not to make the mistake in the first place.

As I'm thinking about it more, I'm gaining confidence that we can do something amazing.

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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

Rear End Shunts!!

I can see exactly what's being said here, but I can't get my mind past the possible root cause of all these 'types' of accidents.

Wthout thinking too deeply, I can list these as:

Lack of mental skills (inability to anticipate)
Lack of physical skills (poor use of vehicle controls)
Lack of concentration (distraction, tiredness etc.)
The totally random (blow-out, suicidal animal etc.)

Probably not an exhaustive list, but I suspect any one (or a combination of) those factors could be applied to any accident scenario.

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

In my mind it's: skills; attitudes; responsibilities.

I'd call lack of concentration a skills shortfall.

Attitudes is really important at the high severity end of the scale (think: drunks, stolen cars etc.)

Responsibilities underpin skills and attitudes, but also foster skills and attitudes.

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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

I'm not so sure. Someone who has all the mental and physical skills could still suffer from lack of concentration. eg tiredness can creep up on us.

We're only human, so a moments distraction does not necessarily indicate a lack of skill.

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

We develop a sort of 'concentration alarm' as part of the skill set. If I haven't seen the road ahead for 1.5 seconds while driving I feel anxious - after 2.5 seconds it's a feeling approaching panic. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I feel fairly well justified in claiming that concentration failures are a lack of skill at managing concentration.

Making wise judgements about fitness to drive is a skill and an attitude issue too. We either lack the skill to spot the risk or we lack the attitude to care about the risk.

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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

Three types:

- classic motorway shunt - not noticing that the car in front is stopping.
- classic roundabout approach shunt - assuming that the car in front is going to go.
- classic close following shunt - not allowing time to react.

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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 is making me think of the fields in a 'common crashes' database...

How about:

Class (e.g. shunts)
Scenario (e.g. classic motorway shunt)
Basic error (e.g not noticing that traffic ahead has slowed)

Would this give definition and classification in a usable way?

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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

Failing to judge how slippery a section of road is. I found out the hard way when I went over a short section that was in shade past a hedge

I saw a van get into a muddle when he turned off a well gritted road onto the ungritted road that I was on. Luckily I realised he was in trouble an was able to leave him space as he came towards me at 45degrees before he recovered it.

OK, Grumpy concedes ...........except, maybe : -

On another thread, haven't we all agreed that, despite us all being ultra skilled drivers, we can suffer the distraction of looking at speedos when approaching a camera? It goes against our in-built skill, but we do it just the same.

I suffer with the overwhelming desire to look at pretty women in the summer - I know I shouldn't............

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

I do make a distinction between concentration and attention. We might for example be well concentrated and highly attentive to the wrong thing. This wouldn't be a concentration failure, but would be 'inattention' i.e. failing to give attention where it was needed.

The speedo distraction thing has a couple of other elements. Firstly it's a conscious override - our attention is usually 'spread around' quite nicely by a subconscious process. Secondly it shouldn't normally be a problem. We really need to try and have a second or two in hand at all times - but obviously it becomes a serious problem if it coincides with some other failure and makes it worse - possibly far worse. The problem here is that <some other failure> is quite a frequent state on the roads. We have 3 million damage only crashes or so each year, and very likely some 30 million near misses. Add a speedo check into a near miss scenerio and we have a problem.

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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

I follow your logic and find myself agreeing.

But, let's just suppose we drove in a utopian world where everyone possessed the very best skills, attitudes and responsibilities. Would there still be accidents?
I suspect there would, although greatly reduced. I suspect the causes would then be, random, unpredictable incidents and momentry lack of concentration/attention.

We are remarkably good at maintaining high levels of concentration but, like all skills, it has to be learnt to the point of being within the subconscious. Any new and previously unexperienced distraction can cause a degree of attention failure.

An example: I can drive perfectly well with a radio in the car. Two years ago, I wired up my bike and helmet and plugged in a radio so I could listen whilst I commuted. The initial distraction was of such a scale that there was no way I could consider the delights of Terry Wogan to be worth the risk.
A couple of rides later and I had learnt to add the radio to my skills package and now it presents zero risk.

If, in pre-radio days, I had been riding through a high hazard area and Terry had suddenly started up in my ears, I'm sure I would have been distracted.

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

Yeah, and some misjudgements too. We're still 'only human' whatever the standards of training. But I bet we'd be more than an order of magnitude (x 10) safer overall, and possibly two (x 100) - and I bet we'd have road death reductions running at better than 5% per annum.

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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

I'm no big fan of the word accident. There are such things but 99.9% of incidents are not accidents. I did a nice half spin a couple of weeks ago on a roundabout that had diesel all over it. Luckily I had two lanes to play with and it was quiet, so no harm done. Would that be classed as an accident? Years back the neighbours car got crushed on a Devon lane when a cow having a scratch fell through the hedge and dropped 10 feet onto her bonnet. That's an accident.
And talking of radios a mates grandfather had the radio taken out of his car as it was distracting but would happily load and light his pipe while driving. Takes all sorts.

Barkstar

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

I think you need a few no fault categories such as:

Vehicle component failure (Brakes, Tyres, Steering, Headlights etc.)
Act of God (Tree falling, Black ice etc)
Medical condition (Heart attack, stroke etc)
Morons (rocks, or other objects, thrown from bridges or side of road)
Road surface issues (Diesel spills, nasty hard to see potholes etc)

edited to add
Animals running across your path (per last post)

A mate of mine had a kangaroo jump in front of him while driving through a cutting. Down from the ledge on the left directly into the centre of his lane around 5 yards ahead. 60mph = write off!

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Failure to judge the speed and path of another vehicle and emerging into its path?

I think we'd need to judge those on a case by case basis; there's a big difference between unexpected failure and poor maintainance.

Good comprehensive list though, and so any other scenario there is fault at least in part and so its not an accident.

Barkstar

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