Safe Speed Forums

Had an interesting argument with a friend last night...

He told me about how he'd seen a Peugeot of some description embedded in a drystone wall with bits of wall scattered onto the opposite side of the road. This wall is part of a bridge over a stream and is located just after a sharp left hand bend.

His next statement was "well obviously he was speeding which is why he crashed".

To which I responded "no, he probably crashed because he was going too fast, which isn't the same thing as speeding". (Obviously we don't know all the facts, did he for example have a blow-out as he went round the bend before the bridge?)

He then spent the next 20 minutes ranting about how "speeding" and "driving too fast" are one and the same.



Comments anyone?

As you say, the two are indeed separate and independent.

The DFT contributory factors report (4MB) clearly differentiates between the two behaviours.

It's usually only camera partnership staff who like to consider the two as one!

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

Sadly that's a common misconception along with 'speed kill' etc. I bet your friend also believes that cameras saves lives whilst completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of crashes occur well within the speed limit.

Did you read my mind?

He's forever ranting about how whenever he has to use the outside lane of a motorway (usually when overtaking an elephant race) "some a-hole in a big German car is crawling up my exhaust" etc etc.

Oh... and 9 times out of 10 when he starts telling me a story about how someone did something silly on a motorway it starts with the words "Well I was in the middle lane and..."

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

Speeding is driving too fast but driving too fast is not necessarily speeding?

Nah, surely not. Haven't we learned that the speed limit is far too arbitrary for such an idea to be useful?

Driving 'too fast' is far too important an idea to be entrusted to an ass of a law.

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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

Perhaps, 'Speeding' is driving too fast but 'driving too fast' is not necessarily speeding?

As an aside, the word "speeding" has come to mean "exceeding the speed limit" but originally simply meant "travelling at speed".

Superman was/is "faster than a speeding bullet" but that bullet wasn't exceeding any limit.

Likewise you will sometime come across early descriptions of arterial roads and motorways as "full of speeding cars" which doesn't mean they were breaking any law.

An example of how language changes.

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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

Nah, surely not. Haven't we learned that the speed limit is far too arbitrary for such an idea to be useful?

Driving 'too fast' is far too important an idea to be entrusted to an ass of a law.

Deja Vu?

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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 was thinking more of how to explain it to Squirrel's friend rather than the law (be it an ass or not).

My personal take (simplified version) is-

Speed limit (SL) - a number that tells you what speed is safe for your license

Too fast (TF) - a speed at which you are likely to be unable to safely manage an unexpected event

Idiot Speed (IS) - a speed at which you are unlikely to even remain on the road never mind handling the unexpected

Safe speed (SS) - a speed at which you are successfully managing risks

SL is the only one that is fixed for the section of road
SL may be higher or lower than any of the others

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

you forgot:

Legal Safe Speed (LSS) - a speed at which you are succesfully managing risks and are within the legal speed limit?

I believe the "safe speed" is actually a range of speeds - some of which are both safe and legal, others are safe and illegal. Hence the Legal Safe Speed is a subset of the set of safe speeds. The Illegal Safe Speed is the speed which is safe but is illegal.

Maximum Safe Speed is often used on this site - which sort of supports my theory that Safe Speed actually covers a range rather than a single value.

I have problems with the concept of a minimum safe speed that is also illegal ... if that does exist (not just "soporific effects on drivers" which are more to do with the driver than the speed imvho) then it is an obvious case for speed limit being challenged.

[/rambling]

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

He covered legal safe speed with 'speed limit' - your problem being the limit isn't always safe and therefore shouldn't have the word 'safe' included in it.

In summary - "Legal Safe Speed" does not exist. Speed Limit covered what you were vying for

only if you don't think the "safe speed" covers a range of values for a set scenario?

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

An example?

Long curve on a motorway, I seem to recall there was one with a 50mph limit, where 70mph is the LEGAL limit.

If you are travelling on that curve at 12pm on a summer's night at 80mph you are SPEEDING, but you are at a SAFE speed.

If you are travelling on that same curve at 60mph in the middle of winter in rush hour with snow on the road you are within the LEGAL limit but you are not at a SAFE speed.

Feel free to correct any glaringly obvious errors

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Prepare to be Judged

Slightly less simple version

Driver
Vehicle
Environment

Gives you a point in a 3D space, generally environment is going to be the most dynamic on a journey but the drivers mental/physical state can come into play, the vehicle is going to be fairly constant unless there is some kind of mechanical incident.

Expand this point into a fourth dimension to represent a range of available speeds, expand to dimension five to assign a safety value to these speeds.

All a speed limit does is pick a nominal value with the other variables fixed - except safety which will vary with the actual driver, vehicle, environment situation.

If a low speed limit causes bunching of traffic then it could be argued that the speed limit becomes an unsafe speed, whereas in free flowing traffic that particular speed may indeed be in the range of safe speeds.

This is just the way I see it of course, I literally (bad pun) do not internalise this as words but 'see' it as a mental construct.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

You might like: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/sss.html

That does it for me.

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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

A famous racing driver when asked "what speed do you consider excessive?"

Replied "21Mph in a 20Mph corner!"

This sums up the speeding /driving to fast argument for me !

Try telling a Jumbo pilot that the landing speed of a 747 is 'too fast' for safety

Yes, I liked 'surprise' in Mind Driving, I now use it as a primary source of feedback on my driving. If something occurs which I did not predict as a possibility what, if anything, did I have to do handle it. I run a video camera in the car much of the time and find it is sometimes useful to review the difference between what occurred and what I thought occurred.

When taking some driver training recently I was asked how 'stressed' I felt at a few points on a motorway drive. Being asked the question made me realise that I use how hard I am working, to manage risk, as a way of determining what speed I should be doing. For me this is what leads to having a personal range of safe speeds, the speed I pick within that range is determined by how hard I want to work.

Does that make sense?

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May