Safe Speed Forums

Given that we don't approve of most speed cameras (or some of us any), and don't approve of speed humps, what safety measures should be taken instead?

I have some ideas of my own, including

- The erection of more safety barriers. These could be put both on kerbside and sometimes in the middle of the road thus ensuring that if a car does lose control, that it remains on the road. Could also be used to cordon off cycle lanes.

- Replacement of zebra crossings with signalled pelican crossings. I think drivers can see the red light far more clearly than a person crossing, and I don't think the belisha-beacons are good enough for the purpose.

- Better off-street parking facilities. I think on-street parking is generally going to cause more accidents, both because of cars pulling out and because of parked cars obstructing the view between the vehicles that are driving and pedestrians attempting to cross.

Any others?

(By the way, the moderators might move this to a different forum if they feel it is more appropriate there, but the reason I chose this one is that we need to have in our campaign alternative methods to improve road safety that we think they should use to spend their money rather than putting up cameras or humps).

The big area is information, encouragement, training and especially culture.

These are the factors that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the world in the first place. There is so much room for improvement in our drivers, but they don't even know it. There's NOTHING in place to encourage them to get extra training. There's NOTHING in place to tell them they don't already know everything. There's NOTHING in place to tell them that they can learn not to repeat the same mistakes.

But we can't just go about handing out SKILLS - people just use up the skills and set their risk level back to normal. What we really have to hand out are techniques for risk recognition and better attitudes. Both of these can lead to genuine larger margins.

I'm working on a large scale proposals document that goes into these things in some details, but it's a difficult document and I've been working on it on and off since January. I don't think I've touched it for a month or so to my shame. There just are not enough hours in the week!

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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

While I fully agree with Paul that we need to aspire to a culture where the improvement of skills and attitude are actively encouraged, I also believe that a lot of danger on the roads can be engineered out.

One example of this which I have seen in Denmark is the provision of kerbed central refuges for right-turners (left turners in Denmark, obviously). Turning right onto a busy main road is one of the most potentially dangerous situations encountered in driving.

Also we could look at using alternating 2+1 lane configurations on single-carriageway rural primary roads, which often have a bad safety record due to poorly-judged overtaking manoeuvres.

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 don't know the figures, but my guess would be that a large number of accidents occur through:

- A dangerous overtaking manoeuvre. I've seen a lot of them on the road, particularly by motorbikes, and so often the driver just gets away with it, but there must be a number of occasions when they don't.

- Failure to yield at a junction, i.e. someone pulls out without giving way.

Possibly a combination of the two. If someone crosses into the right hand lane to overtake, then there may be no oncoming traffic at that point, but someone could turn out of a side road without expecting traffic coming from the "wrong" side.

Of course another problem is how the drivers react when they finally see the hazard - a lot of the time it will result in sharp braking and swerving, and this is where a driver may lose control of a vehicle. Here some safety barriers would obviously help.

I always find three lane roads a bit worrying, because traffic in neither direction really has a claim to the middle lane, and yet people seem to pull out into it as though they have the right to expect nothing to be coming the other way. Having said that, there's only one place round here I can think of that's three lanes, and it's all of 300 yards long...

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

I think the point was that if the road is too narrow to be able to widen to 2 lanes each way, it should at least have 2 lanes in one direction, and these should alternate.

That means that you are never stuck behind slow traffic for long but will have a chance to overtake. Of course if one slow vehicle holds up a long line, it may be the case that not all of them would be able to overtake in one go.

If traffic in both directions can use the middle lane with equal prority that'd be a bit scary. Better for traffic in one direction to have two lanes but no overtaking in (for them) the extreme right hand lane, and in the other direction there'd be the one lane but overtaking is allowed, i.e. the traffic would be seperated by a half solid half dashed white line. Works okay on long straight gradients where the uphill traffic has free use of two lanes and downhill traffic is permitted to overtake when they can see the middle lane is clear. Be a bit iffy anywhere else though.
Alternatively they could use variable road signs on gantries to indicate who can use the centre lane(s). They do this in Birmingham, I think it's on the A38. It's about 7-8 lanes across, so it's not quite the same situation, but there is no physical central barrier. Instead gantries have a red cross or a green arrow over each lane to show you which ones you can use. Not been there often, but I guess that they open more lanes into the city for morning rush hour and reverse it for the evening. Maybe a bit excessive on smaller roads, but might solve problems in certain areas.
For sure there should be more barriers to keep pedestrians and traffic seperate. There's lost of places where it's just not a good idea to cross the road, but in the absence of a barrier plenty of idiots will try it. We've let a whole generation grow up thinking that roads are some sort of benign pedestrian environment spolied by mad child killers, rather than an area desgined to be used by cars and lorries. Until we can re-educate them to understand that pavements are for pedestrians and roads are for traffic, barriers would be a good way of keeping the two seperate. In an ideal world I'd like to see the barriers about 8 foot high and electrified to prevent the terminally stupid hopping over them like they do now.
Where possible all bus stops in single lanes should be in lay-bys to prevent congestion and/or unwise overtaking. I'm told there are places in London where the lay-bys have been filled in as part of traffic calming works. This should be reversed, and those responsible medicated and led away by kind people in white coats.

Indeed in Caledonian Road, which is an A-road close to central London (but outside the congestion charging zone) instead of the bus stops being in a lay-by, the pavement is actually widened at that point so when a bus stops, all the traffic behind it must wait. Therefore there is no chance to overtake a bus at a bus-stop, so of course some impatient traffic will either cross into the oncoming lane anyway, or will try to overtake the bus at any other opportunity when it is moving.

I can understand it is frustrating for a bus-driver if nobody will let them out, but perhaps they should have stop-signs that pop-out at the back like some of the US school buses have, and when they are ready to pull out they should put this stop-sign out which means no vehicles may "start" to overtake them. But they must still wait for any who had already started to overtake (which a lot of them don't). They must also give cars a couple of seconds to respond. (Starting to overtake is something that occurs before reaching the bus). I guess this might apply to outside of London too.

In fact when a US school bus is picking up or setting down, all traffic around is stopped because of children crossing the road. Either there is a patrol who gets on and off the bus or there is one around the stop itself.

I don't know if this is practical here, but certainly I guess a lot of accidents must occur as people, especially children, run across the road when they see their bus at the stop, or when they cross after getting off the bus, probably while the bus is still at the stop, and in front of the bus, therefore being totally invisible to any car who is overtaking the bus.

It's a big undertaking but I think we should start to move toward five yearly retests.

Obviously can't be done in one big bang.

First we need more examiners. Perhaps retest examiners wouldn't need to have the same skills as 1st test examiners as they will be sitting with experienced drivers.

Then start to call in those who have held their licences the longest, keep calling in more and more aiming to retest everyone who has held a licence for (say) 10 years (this target will have to be adjusted depending on how quickly the first round of retests is completed). All the time recruiting more examiners.

Then start to work the recall rate down toward the 5 year target.

The whole thing, apart from initial setup costs, to be funded from retest fees.

Give people the option to surrender their licence instead of taking a retest. Might actually reduce the number of 'Sunday drivers'.

With people having to continually keep reasonably up to date, laws could be changed more smoothly with less people clinging to the old ways (look at how many people think you can drive on sidelights in a steetlit area). Questions in a theory section could be tailored to reflect changes in the previous 5 years.

The trouble is it will be a very long process. The results will not be seen until whatever government with the foresight to set the ball rolling has long gone and (probably) forgotten.

I agree with that point - it will remove a lot of the elderly drivers from the road, and according to a programme last Monday on TV (Real Story) a lot of accidents are caused by the elderly.

However the worst drivers are often beginners, and they are the closest to having just taken their tests.

The precedent for all previous changes in the law relating to driving tests has been that they should only apply to new entrants to the driving population, so I suspect any move to regular retesting would be the same.

Personally I feel that universal retesting would be an unnecessary expense that would yield little benefit. Most drivers fall into the category of "adequate" rather than "poor". What we really need to do is to get to the 10 or 15% least competent/most accident prone drivers, perhaps through much increased use of retesting for those convicted of careless driving offences and similar. Making everyone do retests would simply be another way of making motoring less affordable.

I am also concerned that many people are far too ready to decry the abilities of older drivers. Yes, nobody would deny that people's driving ability declines after the age of 60 or so, but there are plenty of very alert and competent drivers well over 70, and to tar everyone with the same brush smacks of prejudice. When you are 70 you won't be happy if the government makes it very difficult for you to keep your driving licence. (I'm 44, by the way)

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

Which would be sad really as those holding their licences longest are most likely not to be up to date with current legislation.


It shouldn't be that expensive compared to running a car for five years. And if it makes the roads safer we should all be better off due to reduced insurance premiums.


Unless you do something to differentiate you have to 'tar everyone with the same brush'. Either you say they are all competent and let the dangerous ones keep on driving or you assume the worst far all.


True, and I will be just as entitled to be wrong then as I am now.

Think I am with my cousins' views on the subject of driver training. They suggested on numerous forums that there should be a periodic assessment every 5 years or so. However, I think I am with Mad and his wife (who posted similar on PH) - assessment is easier to "sell" than a re-test. And the "examiner" problem could be addressed by training ADIs to carry out this work . Mad also suggested reduced insurance premium upon production of satisfactory assessement (which could even be graded to give incentives for improvement ) could be a carrot.
We would also include a medical as well in our assessment - but that is subjective bias because of WildyCat's bad experience!

As for Homer's comment about the older driver:

"Either you say they are all competent and let the dangerous ones keep on driving or you assume the worst for all"

That comment applies to all drivers anyway - regardless of age

But admit - find it strange that there is no compulsory medical or eye test for these people upon reaching more senior years.

But even so -there are a lot of complacent numpties out there who think they are better than they really are - which is why we should have some kind of ongoing training!

And about the comment "Look at people who think they can drive on side lights in a street lit area":

Um?

Highway Code (Most recent edition) - Rule 93:

You MUST

- use headlights at night, except on restricted roads (those with street lights not more than 185 metres apart and which are generally subject to a speed limit of 30mph) (Interpreted by majority as meaning: sidelights!)

- use headlights when visibility is greatly reduced (as per rule 201)

- ensure all sidelights and rear registration plate lights are lit at night.

Admittedly headlights ensures you are seen - but those people are not necessarily in the wrong according to this Only pulled people with no lights or blown bulbs in past

We have had numerous discussions on other forums about the clarity of the Highway Code and the way people interpret it!

That had me scurrying for the Highway Code on line because I understood that sidelights are acceptable in lit, 30mph areas. Paragraph 93 of the HC states:

You MUST
• use headlights at night, except on restricted roads (those with street lights not more than 185 metres (600 feet) apart and which are generally subject to a speed limit of 30 mph)
• use headlights when visibility is seriously reduced (see Rule 201).
• ensure all sidelights and rear registration plate lights are lit at night.
  Laws RVLR regs 24 & 25 & RV(R&L)R reg 19

So, sidelights only are still allowed in lit streets (even though many think dipped headlights should be mandatory).

Personally, I think that we should be going the same way for drivers as the National Private Pilot's License (http://www.nppl.uk.com/):

• Required medical self-certification, countersigned by your GP, with renewal period that reduces with age.
• Requirement to keep current and mandatory check test if currency elapses.
• Different ratings, with different privileges for each rating.

A driver would need to maintain currency in each rating and take a check test to regain any rating lost. Example rating ideas: night driving, towing, motorway driving. For some of these it may be that not having a rating would mean a restriction rather than an outright ban. For example, not having a motorway rating may mean that you're limited to 60 mph on motorways while you can do 80 mph (or more?) if you have that rating.

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Will

Hmm......

No need to scurry anywhere for the higway code. It's online.

It seems I may have misinterpreted rule 95, which says.

Hmm......

No need to scurry anywhere for the higway code. It's online.

It seems I may have misinterpreted rule 95, which says.

When I first started driving in London in the early 1970s, no one used dipped headlights where street lighting was good. All in all this was considerably better -

* Headlight warnings were highly visible

* With good street lighting and no glare we could all see rather more.

* When driving alone in quiet or residential streets many people including me used to pull on mainbeams using the flasher and gain far more visibility than simply driving along with constant dips (as is the modern habit). Even flashing from dip to main is far less obvious than flashing from sidelights to mainbeams.

It must have been about 1975 that people started to use dipped headlights in London. Once 10% or so of vehicles were using dips the rest of us had to give in and put on dipped headlights to fill in the "shadows" created by the glare of oncoming headlights.

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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

True! We all started to use dipped on main urban roads because everyone else did.


With regard to rule 95 - we are back to those "good old modal verbs" as my wife calls them! And the subtle difference between must and should!

Must is law and obligatory and should is "good idea to do" - good practice, general common sense and advisory!

(Or so the wife tells me - and she speaks more than one language! )

Aye and in them days sidelights were proper sidelights that you could see (eee lad). Many modern cars seem to use something intended for Xmas decorations hidden deep within the main headlamp unit.