Safe Speed Forums

Since passing the IAM test, I've found that I look less at the speedo and more at the road conditions, traffic, weather etc...
I used to do a 90 mile round trip to work covering a large chunk of the M25. In morning rush hour 55-60 was apropriate due to the sheer weight of traffic, attaining the legal limit couldn't be done except by taking ludicrous risks and cutting other drivers up.
Going home at 20-21:00 was a different matter, I can generally tootle along at 85, it's a nice clear run with little traffic and I have plenty of space to react.

Same road, different speeds - because I am driving to the conditions, not to an arbitrary limit. Again harping back to Essex there are a lot of roads that have had the limits dropped under the guise of safety and traffic calming. Why ?? These roads don't feature as accident blackspots, and some of the new measures are actually frustrating drivers who then take silly risks - far more dangerous IMO.

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I've got a Playstation II and a copy of Colin McRae Rally 4. I've played it until my eyes hurt and (I think) become pretty expert at it. But I don't think it improves my driving one little bit, because (in no particular order):

1. Even an incredibly detailed simulation like this is still only a fraction of the whole story, so you are getting all your input from a range of perceptions far more limited than in real life. Thus you become "too focussed",

2. Because the simulation is simplified, when you master it you might wrongly believe you know all there is to know. Eg the physics of the car handling are only a very approximate subset of the real thing,

3. Your sole sensory input is a forward facing screen, so you don't learn to pick up other cues, the "seat of the pants" feel of what the car's doing, tactile feedback through the steering and brake pedals etc. Also it discourages you from looking around,

4. The thing is too predictable. Play it enough times and you know what's going to happen next, thus you learn to drive by rote instead of reacting to the unexpected and crucially anticipating the unexpected.

5. The fact that even the biggest "offs" never hurt or cause any real damage must have a bad psychological effect. In real life it doesn't say "Game Over" when you get it badly wrong.

If you learned to drive first, and have honed your skills over years and years then I think they are a harmless diversion and a lot of fun. But I don't think they represent "good training" in any way for people who don't yet drive.

Oh, and of course you can't "train" your reactions to improve them. Jeremy Clarkson interviewed Michael Schumacher a couple of years ago and demonstrated that their physical reaction times were about the same. What sets the world beating driver apart is NOT his reaction speeds which are in-built and can't be changed, but his level of anticipation and ability to make the correct reactions, not the quickest ones.

Ah, OK. I didn't realise an individual's reaction times were so set in stone.

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

Looking at Mike[F]'s point from the other direction, I crash all the time playing computer games but apart from kerbing my alloys (ouch!) my real car hasn't had even a scratch. Not sure why this is, but I can think of a few possibilities.
1 - games don't model real world driving very well, in which case you have to learn to react appropriately for each game (very likely since real world driving is not competitive and all my games are)
2 - games can't simulate the 'feel' of driving, for example you can feel when you're losing traction in real life but in a game you can only see it once a skid has begun (quite likely, but then I haven't got one of those fancy steering wheels with the doodabs on)
3 - I'm a closet psycho who periodically needs to get rid of an urge to have car crashes in a safe way (bloody hope not )
4 - I'm just crap at computer games and should stick to Scrabble (most likely of the lot)
In any event how you do in computer games seems to have little relevance to driving safely on the road. A proper simulator might be very close to real world driving, but the competitive nature of computer games means that you have to drive in a way you'd never even consider on the road.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The question of dispensing with speedometers was discussed some time ago on the IAM forum, and the general consensus was that it would, on balance, tend to result in drivers travelling somewhat more slowly, as they would not be comparing their rate of progress with a number on a dial.

Perhaps to get the full effect we should dispense with the rev counter as well - remember that until about 10 or 15 years ago, few "ordinary" cars had rev counters.

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

I've done without a tachometer since I passed my test - my instructor's car had one, mine doesn't. It took about... five minutes to get used to driving without one, then I forgot that I'd ever used one, to be honest. It's very easy to know how hard the engine's working from listening to it. I think most people change gear on instinct rather than (for example) when their tacho gets to 3500 rpm exactly. I do see your point though - it's another way of numerically limiting yourself to a completely arbitrary figure, when you'd be much better off determining a safe speed by watching the road ahead.

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

A tacho is probably more useful in a turbodiesel with its relatively narrow power band.

In a petrol car it's normally a case of the more you push the pedal, the quicker it goes, but the tacho perhaps gives you more confidence about venturing into the upper third of the rev range (which the average Joe never does anyway).

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

How about the average Joe in an underpowered car? However, it's just occurred to me that I do actually use the speedo as an indicator of the maximum I should go in a particular gear - 30 in 2nd, 55 in 3rd, 70/75 in 4th. The note of the engine would be indication enough, but it's nice to have the re-assurance of the speedo (it's done this speed in this gear before, so it'll do it again!)

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

I'm sure you're not an average Joe

I'd be surprised if your car did less than 12 mph/1000 rpm in third, so assuming a 6000 rpm red line you can probably safely take it to 70 mph in third on occasions. It would probably be loudly protesting, though...

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

Ohh. I'll bear that in mind next time I need that extra acceleration.

Btw, surely in all engines these days the rev limiter will cut in before you're actually damaging the engine?

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

Generally yes. There may be some designs around that "self limit" in some way rather than actually have a specific rev limiter. One example that's still in common use is old Minis. Most versions self-limited RPM when the "valves bounced".

But no rev limiter will save you if you manage to put it in too low a gear at too high a road speed. When the wheels drive the engine past its maximum design speed something will probably break, and it will probably be expensive.

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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

Ah, gotcha. Don't downchange from 5th to 2nd instead of 5th to 4th, then.

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

I common mistake I used to hear about in an email list for track driving was trying to snatch from 4th to 5th at max rpm and ending up in 3rd by mistake. If the clutch come up in third then it's a very expensive bang. At least 6 members of the list had made that exact mistake at about 10,000 pounds per go. (BMW M engine)

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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

Ouch! Easy to see how you could do it though, I was forever going from 4th to 3rd until my dad pointed out that it was easiest to go into neutral, then across the gate, then up into 5th, in 3 separate moves - makes for a slowish change, but ensures I get the right gear every time!

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

Those activities do not. But JT and Gatsobait both explained the point in fuller detail. Games and TV can be rote learned. We proved that with the HC test and the hazrd perception game. Play it enough times and you get the feel of the computer screen, game and mouse click.

Each car has a different feel. Mad Doc has first edition Stag. The nerd has last edition Stag. Same car - but last model has modifications and completely different feel and even handling. Own Volvo and drive same model as cop car sometimes. Both cars identical - but again slightly different feel from the engine and steering - which I simply cannot explain.



Oh -- the motorway speed limit should be raised to at least 80mph to bring into line with EU mainland. The mad cats have convinced me that if average Kermit can mange 80mph without too many Bifs and Bofs - then average Brit can!

Very many speed limits are plain daft. I am no advocate of lower limits for sake of current dogmatic flawed beliefs. Speed limits should be set appropriately and make sense to all road users.

As you know - belong to huge family and they live all over the place. The worst place I have driven through is Lancs, close second - Cambs, with Northants and all of Wales tying for third!

But - apply COAST and you should keep safe and legal - most of the time!

Yea, and don't do it on a motorbike either Bike has insufficient mass to keep driving the back wheel - instead it locks up solid, usually depositing the rider (me) in the kitty litter by the side of the track

It is interesting to note which speed limits are adhered to more than others. In some recent stats the 40 mph and 60 mph areas were the ones where there was least amount of infringement. I am not sure how the speed limit adherance and accident rate correlate but it would be interesting to find out.

I came home tonight in a Citroën Xantia taxi where the illumination on the speedo (which on this model is lit all the time) had failed. It was certainly totally unreadable in darkness.

There are numerous Gatsos in the area and, like most taxi drivers, he seemed to have little regard for speed limits. It wasn't really the time or place to quiz him about the implications of this, but it would be interesting to see how and whether he remained conviction free.

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

1mph above what is now considered legal...(70mph +10%+2mph=....)Hardly worth the effort...but must admit 80+10%+2mph sounds fun!

79 mph is not "considered legal". It is the APCO guidance for the enforcement threshold.

Even 71 mph is illegal