Safe Speed Forums

i certainly recall seeing studies that imply having ABS makes people more likely to brake later/harder and ESP means they drive closer to the limit.

Yes, and seat belts and split-diff and everything else too. I was told the Skyline used to be the ultimate car with so much stuff that even a fool could get into and back out of trouble.

So to borrow something I remember someone once said on SS yonks ago - people would drive safer if they had a spike sticking out of the steering wheel instead of an air bag. So it puts into question this whole ethos of making things safer IMHO.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

ah well i was thinking the opposite really..... i wouldn't eschew the benefits of these systems in an emergency just because people compensate for them in normal driving.

And while it may happen that some people take advantage of these systems to drive closer to the margin, across the entire driving population I'm sure the vast majority of safety gains are not frittered away in increased risk-taking. Improved primary and secondary safety of vehicles is one of the major factors contributing to the reduction in casualties over the past thirty years. Indeed most drivers wouldn't have a clue where the margin was anyway. How can you take advantage of ABS if you're not even aware your car has it, let alone how it works?

And, re the "spike" argument, while it makes a good debating point, it doesn't really apply in real life. Most accidents result from failures of observation rather than conscious or unconscious risk-taking, and the presence of a spike would not affect those in the slightest.

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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 think this phenomenon has a proper term "risk homeostatis"? Has anyone come across that before or did I just make it up?!

It's the theory (I think) that all people have a level of risk which they (personally) are comfortable with. Too little and they go off and do dangerous things until they're satisfied. Too much and they take extra precautions. In the days when we used to live in caves and stood a pretty good chance of being eaten by wolves, we didn't feel the need to "create" artificial danger for ourselves!

The spike in the steering wheel theory has been bandied about many times (on this forum too, I think) and I'm sure there is something in it. Some years ago, my boss bought a 1930s Alvis and as a relatively junior engineer, I got the job of designing a replacement pedal box so that the brake was in the middle and the accelerator on the right. (It had it's pedals the wrong way round when originally built and was a complete deathtrap to drive)! Having done that, I got to take it for a good long run....

Now, this was a car weighing the best part of 2 tons and with a 3 litre straight 6 engine. It had tyres that were (a) incredibly hard and (b) very narrow. It had cable-actuated drum brakes and they were the worst I've ever driven. Naturally, there were no seat belts and a steering column which was itself, effectively, a "spike".

I have to say that I did drive VERY carefully and felt VERY vulnerable! It would happily do 80 (and felt like there was more there) but even with the lousy tyres that it had, it wouldn't lock it's wheels on a dry road at anything over about 20 MPH!

The point is, I wouldn't mind betting that I'd get used to it after a while, and a while after that, I might even get careless! In much the same way, hardly anyone ever has an accident the FIRST time they use a chainsaw...

We SSers have long maintained that the general downward trend in KSIs has been (in no small part!) due to advances in vehicle safety. Well, we can't have it both ways! We can't now start saying that all these safety advances just make us take bigger risks!

I reckon that idea is dangerously wrong. The problem is that normal driving is so much more common that 'emergencies'.

A 1% risk increase in normal driving might (for example) be far larger than a 50% reduction in risk during emergencies.

We really have to find ways of evaluating the 'whole system' effects.

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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 sure I agree with that.

Surely, observation is only relevant when used in the process of assessing risk. An accident resulting from a failure in observation MUST be the result of risk-taking.

Also, the greater the consequences, the greater the risk. If we stand to embed a spike in our chest, the risk is increased.

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

I don't think I can agree with you there for a simple reason: My friend's Subaru, for example, could enter and go around an average sized island at some 60+ mph. I was in it at the time. This is only possible because of advances in tyres, suspension and goodness knows what else they've designed into them. It was like being on a fairground ride. There's no way that he could have done the same in a Ford XR2 or Porsche of 20 years ago but this thing felt like it was on rails.

One of my big gripes in recent years is that I find it increasingly difficult to pull into an island because people are entering and going around them at an inappropriate speed so I can't get onto it without looking like I've cut them up. People didn't/couldn’t do this years ago in their Marina or Allegro.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Despite my reply to ed_m a few seconds ago, I agree with that point.

But I also think that the contribution and the possibility of risk compensation effects should always be considered.

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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

on an individual basis.... i would like these systems on my car because should i ever end up in such a situation i know they would (with a hgh degree of confidence) be of benefit.

(ok on a leisure or weekend driving car i would NOT necessarily want them)

'Normal' driving is a not a constant, but is driven by vehicle performance. Vehicle handling is so advanced now that we all push the concept of being able to stop within the distance we can see to be clear.

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

If you think that the issue can be brought down to such a simple choice, then I'm sorry, but you obviously have not understood the points I've been trying to make.



Now that's an astute observation and a point I'd like to take up. I agree entirely that a great many people do seem to consider the benefits of seat belts to be "obvious," and to such an extent that I can actually understand your feelings about being tainted with an "anti-safety" label if you question the law. I think some of the comments in this thead illustrate this point quite effectively.

I've had worse in discussions before though. I've been told that refusing to use a seat belt makes me "a reckless driver by definition." In a police forum a couple of years ago more than one cop automatically assumed that because I oppose mandatory seat belts that I was the kind of person who went around speeding dangerously, running stop lights, etc. and saw nothing wrong with that.

So why do a lot of people make such ludicrous assumptions, and why do they feel that the benefits of the law are so obvious?

I believe that it's in no small part due to the way that the pro-belt side has been pushed at every opportunity over the years, and any anti sentiment has grdually been quashed to the extent that anyone who expresses concern can be dismissed as a crank.

In the U.K., we can go right back to Shaw Taylor and Jimmy Savile instilling messages such as "reduce the chance of being killed or seriously injured by half." But at least into the 1980s there was still room for question. Remember several M.P.s at the time the new law was being debated were not in favor, on personal-choice grounds if not the effectiveness of belts.

Over the years though, it's had snowball effect as each new wave of pro-belt promotion has used the previous to enforce the message. The media has become very selective in the way things are reported. Think about stories where it's reported that somebody was killed or badly injured, and the story ends with "He was not wearing a seat belt." How many times does a similar report note that a person was buckled up and was killed or injured anyway?

In recent years this has extended to seat-belt association. I've seen at least two campaigns in the last few months in which the argument goes something like "Xxxxx police will be targeting dangerous behavior on the county's roads, such as speeding, drunken driving, and failing to wear a seat belt." Not wearing a seat belt is on a par with drunken driving? I've even seen a campaign which listed not wearing a belt as being a major cause of fatal accidents, again along with drunken driving, dangerous speed, etc.

I'm convinced that this drip, drip, drip of pro-belt reporting and now the association of non-belt-use with dangerous things like DWI has had a large influence on the way that some people now perceive the "obvious" benefits of belts.

I can still remember that 20 years ago there were a lot more people who were ready to see the possible detrimental effects, and certainly a lot more people than today who would say things like "Well, I suppose belts are good idea, but it's not for the government to force them on people."

why don't you take your belt off, the chances of you being caught are minimal as there are no police about anyway.

If, as or when you have your crash and survive because you weren't wearing a belt you can come back and tell us all about it.

If you don't survive? Well, you were wrong.

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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.

Does that mean that if he crashes without a seatbelt and survives, he was right?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

In my experience, it's those who have run out of logical argument, yet still accept the programmed dogma, who resort to using such ad hominem.

I do see your overall point and it could well be valid. There can be no argument where there is an overall consensus of benefit based on scientifically derived evidence (factoring in the side effects and other subtleties). I'm no longer sure this is the case with seatbelts; however, I'll continue to belt up anyway simply because it intuitively feels safer for me. I have gained something good from this thread, I’m gonna buy a seatbelt cutter to help prevent myself (or others) from being dangerously trapped by them.


You (we) might be better off petitioning for a rigorous scientific study of the effects of belting up instead of petitioning for the abolition of their mandatory use.

We can't have a road safety policy based on theories, especially when so many people are dying.

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

no, all it means is that he crashed without a seatbelt and survived.

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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.

Haven't heard Shaw Taylor's name for about 30 years or more. You must have a good memory if your name suggests your birth date Paul.

Paul doesn't need to try anything, the exception doesn't prove the rule anyway. They did exhaustive tests on dummies and, hopefully, the right ruling was made for all the right reasons.

What no-one has said yet is that even if you are the most cynical person on earth, leading car manufacturers with the best record for safety employ seat belts across the board, so I give them credit for knowing more about the virtues of wearing a seat belt than I do. Do you imagine Volvo did it because of political or public pressure?

Free choice sometimes has to be removed from us because common sense isn't very common in the human race. The difficulty is getting the balance right between free choice and what is in our best interest.

Tone_1958

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

All over the papers this week:

Diana Crash

4 Occupants in car
3 not wearing belts = dead
1 wearing belt = alive

Not conclusive but indicative.

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

Nooooooo! If that were the case, TPTB would ban everything that had an element of risk in it. Motorcycling, driving, mountaineering, picking your nose, et al...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Absolutely. Speed, surprise and space are constantly changing.



I can't find enough crashes or incidents in the system for that to be true. I believe we base our safe speed plans on far less braking than emergency braking thereby maintaining a margin for error.

But I worried about that too, and a few years ago I drove like stink along a twisty A road with a video camera running and me calling the speed from the speedo onto the soundtrack.

I analysed the video later measuring distance to unseeable places from time (frame count) and speed (called onto the soundtrack) and found I was pretty exact in matching speed to vision, allowing for braking always below 0.7 (trying to remember exactly, but not very certain)g. I was pretty amazed by the results actually. The degree of precision was far higher than expected.

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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