Safe Speed Forums

so you're telling me that you can safely negotiate a single track NSL road without relying on your speedo but for some reason can't manage to drive safely past a school unless you've checked that you're doing precisely 29.9mph? Bizarre.

Yes, quite. And as we know that's because the rules for camera placement are completely the wrong way round, i.e. to ensure adequate revenue, a certain percentage of drivers have to be speeding, including the 85th percentile. This is usually spun as there being a "speeding problem" at the location, thereby completely missing the point as usual.

It's one of the things that's ruined cameras' reputation. If they had been very carefully administered from the beginning, by not having extremely poor rules like the above, and (as another example) ensuring that cash was never an incentive, they could IMHO have found their level and been of very limited use.

As it is I have never seen a camera on a crowded shopping street. How absurd. What halfway intelligent person is going to fall for the scam?

Didnt say that or that or that, and who mentioned 29.9 mph??
The point i am trying to make here before you ran off with it was the fact that a good driver does not concentrate soley on the road in front. Scared to look at his speedo? worried about glancing in his mirrors? piffle and you know it.
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Whereas i have actually travelled all roads in all conditions in all different languages for over a million miles without one accident and you have the audacity to argue with what i know to be a correct statement.

Unbelievable.

(edited by me, sorry)

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

that wasn't the question and you know it. The question was WHY do you need to look at your speedo in order to be safe as opposed to legal. A question you still haven't answered although we've at least established that you can manage to judge a safe speed on some roads without having to take a peak.


ahh, the my X is bigger than your X argument. I guess you MUST be right then. E incrivil que voce sabe como dirigir em outros linguas!

Yes well done on the latin front, ad nauseum.

To answer your question, it is necessary for me to monitor my speed to make sure that i am travelling at the optimum safe speed for the conditions of the road, i couldnt really care less about the legal side of things, but if i am travelling a little too fast now and again it does me well to remind myself to check my speed.

After all said and done, i would hate to have not checked my speed and i was going a little too fast, but not noticably so, and couldnt stop in time in an emergency. it literally only takes a few miles an hour to make a real difference. Believe me.

Just because i have driven over a million miles, doesnt automatically make me an authority.
But my experience is surely more reputable than most, and you question my judgement??

Good luck to you john.

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

Oops someone breached rules 2 &11 ...

Although I agree, the personal attack wasn't warranted, the message stgo attempted to put across is I feel quite valid and shouldn't be glossed over using a breach of the forum rules to negate its message.
The point he was trying to make as far as I see it ....(apart from others attempting to twist the conversation around to suit their own agendas)..was...

We only seem hear how "dangerous" it is to glance at a speedo when on approach to a speed camera. Yet everyone at some point in their journey looks at their speedo.
Using ones mirrors isn't considered dangerous, so why should glancing at the speedo be deemed so?
Is checking how much fuel you have dangerous? Is checking if you are using dipped or full beam dangerous? What about checking the engine temperature or scanning for other warning signs on the instrument cluster?...Dangerous?
No of course not, and unless inflicted with a severe case of tunnel vision we all check our driving instruments many times during a journey...its considered part and parcel of driving and being a good driver.
Those who argue that a speed camera makes them divert attention from the road to check their speedo are (IMHO) not as safe a driver as they like to think they are.

Edit to fix typo to keep pedants at bay!

Yes, i am sorry John, i should not have sunk to name calling.

Now to re-cap.

The OP was trying to make out that cameras were actually more dangerous because of the need to check your speed.

I didnt agree with this and stated my reasoning, then i got questioned about my reasoning and why i feel the need to keep tabs on my speed often.

Now i hope that everyone has read all my postings on this topic and understands what i am saying instead of arguing for the sake of it.

I wont be answering anymore in this thread. look out elsewhere though

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

Looking at mirrors does not require refocusing, while glancing at the speedo does – twice.
As for the other dials: I usually only check them at really convenient points, like when I’m stationary (unless I suspect something is wrong). There’s usually no need to regularly check the dials anyway thanks to the plethora of dashboard warning lights.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Although I think that the distraction issue of looking at the speedo is only a minor effect of cameras it remains true that all the other instances given (mirrors, fuel etc. ) are viewed at a time of the driver's choice whereas a camera is where it is and the natural instinct is to look at the dial to the exclusion of other things.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

With respect smeggy, unless your vision is so impaired and your peripheral vision shot to hell and back, you don't NEED to refocus.

We are all familiar with the instrumentation layout (or should be) in our vehicles, we all know where important places on each dial/gauge are..we don't have to physically focus on any particular instrument to know when it is not showing what it should be.
Those that need to physically divert attention to stare at the speedo to check their speed really should be consulting a good optician, not complaining that a speed camera diverts their attention away from the road towards their speedos. IMHO of course!

Of course you do. Look out of a window towards some trees, then hold up a finger between them. Switch your view between the trees and your finger. You’ll notice two things:
1) your eyes need to cross for you to view the finger and uncross to view the trees (unless you have the gift of being able to decode double vision).
2) you can feel your eyes straining as your pupils alters their focal length to suit (you can actually see the other subject become blurry).
Those more experienced won't be able to manage these as easily as young pups.


The week before last I drove 4 different vehicles (3 of which I had never driven before), all different makes too.

We are not talking about fingers and trees though are we?
We are talking about being able to determine what your speedometer reads without actually staring at it....The speedo is normally situated about two feet from the end of your nose..in the instrument cluster of your car not hanging from a tree in the distance.
Like I said if you cannot determine your speed by using peripheral vision and need to constantly shift your gaze to check the instrumentation, I would suggest you visit an optician.
I have no problems determining my speed without staring intently at the speedo ...Do I have extra special super dooper vision?...No I don't ...but my glasses correct it to near 20/20 and my peripheral vision is good.

At this time, I am watching the monitor of my computer and without taking my attention from the screen I am aware that there are two screwdrivers on my desk one of them at a quarter to three inclination and the other 5 past seven and my focus never once wavered from the screen!

You must be joking!

I can’t do that (and I expect the majority of others can’t too), not with all the different speed limits and many graduations marks on the speedo. And to get that reliably accurate within 10%+2 for all speeds


Aha, but the cross point of each eye and the focal length of your lenses are correct for both subjects and need not alter; these are the critical differences I had mentioned before hence your analogy couldn’t be more invalid.

No, I'm being quite serious actually.


Can I recommend an optician then?


I don't expect or guess what others can or cannot do...I can...my bad for assuming others were as capable as I.



According to you perhaps...according to me it is perfectly valid...They are my eyes after all that were used to demonstrate my ability...how can you say it was invalid?...Do you somehow have access to what I can see now?


Like I said earlier...my bad for assuming others had vision similarly capable to mine own.

Mummy I'm special at last...just like you said I was!

could you explain that? Let's say you're driving past the school that everyone loves to drive past in these examples. There's kids about. Do you really do as in your quoted post and look at your speedo and think hmm, should be doing 21mph here not 23mph or in reality do you just slow down to a safe speed based on your observations?

I guess I'd better go and get some glasses as well because I too can't read my speedo without actually looking.

my bad for assuming your intelligence is similarly capable to mine own.


OK, so it boils down to this:
Do you honestly believe that most of the driving population has the ability to accurately determine the speedo reading to within 10%+2, reliably (with confidence of reliability), for all driving speeds, with the image of the dial falling well away from the fovea, even though they will be scanning subjects at far field (much further away) inevitably resulting with a lack of focus and double vision of nearby subjects?

<boggle>

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

As a rough estimate then, just how long do you reckon you are looking away from the road in order to ascertain or verify your speed with the degree of accuracy you feel is necessary?

Because, unless I'm seriously mis-identifying or mis-interpreting what I'm doing, a momentary flick of the eyes is all I need to ascertain with a sufficient degree of accuracy how fast I'm going. But, then again, verification is all it needs to be because I know from the gear I'm in, the engine and road noise and the appearance of objects passing me by just how fast I'm going. And I can do this in any one of the 4 cars our family owns, the speedo scan just confirms my feelings and I'm normally right within enough of a margin as to make no difference to a watching camera.
Maybe I just have more car empathy than others, I don't know. I suppose if one is used to driving in a different manner, but not necessarily any more or less safely, using different cues and so forth then perhaps the speedo galnce does have to become a 'stare'.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

...and that is where you lost the argument AFAIC....You already know that personal attacks are against the forum rules so why resort to them yourself?
Over and out.

After deciding to check the speedo, these are the actions that must be done:
- Look at area on dash
- Cross eyes
- Focus
- home in on exact area
- Find position of needle relative to the graticule that applies to speed limit, this requires some mental computation.
- Look ahead
- Uncross eyes
- re-establish hyperfocus

I did a quick and unscientific test: all in I reckon it takes me about 1 second (and I can easily read a plate from 20m and the value printed on a 0805 resistor [if you don’t already know then you won’t want to] - both without optical aids). To be more realistic, there might be additional time due to age, alertness or unfamiliarity of layout.

However, it’s worse than that. I’ve watch others driving when approaching speed cameras; I see them look at the speedo typically 3 times when they get close (granted the subsequent checks might be quicker).