Safe Speed Forums

I might add that a hoon is a hoon in any car you give them. and an allegro driver is an allegro driver for ever and a day, they just move on to Ital's, golfs and fiestas.

It is just like the dangerous dogs act. if you ban pit bulls, they move to Alsatians, ban Alsatians they move to dobermans.

It is the attitude and the fashion, not the acceleration or the car

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Indeed. Owners won't appreciate having to pay the overhead for a mandatory control system which they themselves will never use, for what affects a small portion of the population, when there are already (as you rightly point out) a reasonable control mechanism in place anyway. Besides, the method is ineffectual: it won’t prevent risky behaviour, in fact it can create it. Acceleration limiting a car to anything to anything one can consider to be of benefit in some cases will result with it being dangerous when it's necessary to accelerate the most. Then there are those who would tend not to brake as appropriate at a hazard because it would take too long to build up a reasonable speed again.

There’s no reason to act unless there is an over-representation of higher accelerating cars in the crash stats. It’s straight forward enough to determine. Given the anti-performance car prejudice that many people have, such a trend, if genuinely existent, would have been highlighted already.

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

That is simply not true. Yes, when you past your test you tend to drive like a bit of a prat (I don't know if i drove faster than I would now or if now I'm just a better driver) and had a few moderately close calls (by that I mean I may have clipped a curb or not been concentrating and had to slam on at a red light) but it didn't take an accident to stop me driving like this (or indeed I may still drive similarly, just with better risk management.) Also as mentioned before, I know someone who still drives idiotically crash after crash.

As for only being capable of driving at test speed and at too high a speed I find quite ludicrous. Most of the time on the road it is difficult to drive 'fast and foolishly' and even dangerous young drivers will have to drive with the flow of traffic most of the time. Driving at very high speed should help gain risk management experience anyway for driving at moderate speed, altough this is not to be recommended for obvious reasons (tree-smashy-oww).

Besides, you quickly develop your own style and the driving style required to pass the test is quickly forgotten.

And by the way speed is all about physics, even safe speeds

I was going to put this on a thread in its own right as it's a letter, written by Allan Ramsey of Roadpeace which appeared in the Bolton News last night and which my sisters have passed on to me.

Somehow on a thread about young drivers - it seems appropriate to put this bloke's point of view across - bizarre as it reads as usual




Hmmmm


My wife more or less grew up at the race track - watching her own father, uncles and older cousins "strut their stuff" She says this made her "aware of speed - its sheer force ..velocity.. impact". She also has one relative who did make the grade in Alpine sports. Such sport does have an element of "risk" and these guys can certainly "feel speed" apparently.

I also grew up if you like with an inherited passion for fast cars. My own dad drove an E-type Jag In his motoring days - there was no NSL or 70 mph speed limit and I vaguely recall being driven at some brisk no-nonsense pace down the M1 once when I was about 5 or 6. (These were the days of the first service stations and I seem to recall me and my brothers/sisters had some fascination over the restaurant in the bridge over the motorway. I also recall being very disappointed in the standard of the fish/chips and beans at the time. (We pestered Dad to take us so that we could watch the cars on the motorway He did take us and I seem to recall that was the only occasion he let us leave food uneaten on the plate! Thingss have not changed there ) But I do remember that the real FUN was just enjoying my Dad's driving in that car.

I think he educated me well. He was very encouraging to all of us (I am one of 8 brothers/sisters) as far as our ambitions for University were concerned . Driving? He paid for lessons but only if he considered we were mature enough at age 17 years. He made one of my brothers wait till he was almost 18. I think I learned from him when dealing with my own brood as I have also from my in-laws too. I still ask them for advice when I encounter some "indiscipline" in the kids which neither me nor Wildy can handle "properly"

But nothing wrong with a youngster enjoying motor sports.. admiring the style of a sports car either. It does not make a child "take risks" either. Lewis had the the luck of a caring and encouraging parent and also - perhaps in his brother, (disabled and needing care) , who idolises him and whom young Lewis deeply cares for - an understanding of how frail human beings can be too.

My own brood?

As said.. we've been careful to constantly steer towards a decent and moral code of behaviour .. with an ethic of responsibility/accountability for one's actions. I think, despite the odd headache with my second son (who did once smoke illegally and we had the severe disciplinary talk through at the time .. I think I won as I have never smelled smoke on him since ), we have managed to nurture and introduce to the world at large - at least three fairly decent young adults. I do not yet know how our younger children will turn out. I can only hope they keep to a decently moral and ethical lifestyle too.

We foster as well. We've had our headaches in this. We had one serious challlenge once. We almost got done for his truanting too. It got to the stage whereby Wildy would escort him into registration and I would be stationed at the other exit to the school to nab him on his escape

I have to admit my own twins (the terrible twosome (not really) tamed him in reality by introducing him to their own circle of pals. I guess peer pressure does work. Sadly we have pockets of chav peer pressures whereby the bully/ ne'er do well type is "looked up to because he is cheeky and amusing and funny and 'ard"

"Charmers". My sister who teaches in a Boys' School says that she can, if naive enough teacher, easily still fall for the charming blokey bloke excuse for failing to do homeworks set .. even though she knows he's talking b:censored:x as his excuses.

It's still to do with teaching basic manners/discipline and manners from the start.

Perhaps the chavs out there should listen to Lewis who admitted to feeling nervous on his driving test and admitted that he had to have a driving instructor who drilled him only in how to pass this driving test

That speaks volumes in any case to me and shows me that Lewis is one shrewd cool young dude. A young man to be proud of too. This kid's astute enough to recognise that simply teaching to please an examiner does not make someone safe on the road .. and in this remark .. young Lewis may save many young lives as a result.

Enjoying Top Gear . reading "Autocar" and so on - does not make one a speed freak any more than reading C+/CW and the like make one a "lycra lout"

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This is interesting and I would like to add a couple of points.
Lewis Hamilton has not become to be in his position purely as a benefacter the support you have listed. in no small way he has had the backroom support of Ron Dennis for many years. Ron Dennis has been instrumental in controlling Lewis Hamilton's exposure to the racing scene and the obstacles he has needed to negotiate to get where he is. I am saying that he has become sucha good driver because he has had a lot more help than anyone can ever really know.

Also, we are seeing an apparent increase int he numebr of deaths of young drivers on the roads. For some reason this group's baseline opinion is that speed has nothing to do with it, and then generally a lot of anecdotal evidence from peoples memories of times they were learning to drive, like myself, from many years ago. Yet looking at the sort of vehicles which are available today, and even the way the insurance market loads premiums it is hrdly the same world as it was even twenty years ago.

Last year I put my project mini back on the road following a rebuild. It had all adjustable suspension, rally engine, all the usual garb, and when it came to insuring it I got a very resonable quote.

There came a point where I needed to take it off the road for a month or two for some more work and so I bought another car to drive while I did that. I changed to a Peugeot 106 1500cc diesel, non-turbo. Hardly a vehicle in the same league as the Mini, I'm sure anyone could agree with that. Yet when I told the insurance about the vehicle change I had to pay 25% more for the Peugeot !

When I queried why it costs more to insure a car whichbasically would benefit from having pedals fitted than it does for what ammounted to a fast furious track day car, the simple answer was that the Mini is group 1 and the Peugeot is group 2. This is with all modifications declared, naturally.

A new driver could therefore build a Mini like mine, insure it as group one, and outperform cars with insurance groups higher than group 3, or fuel injected 1400 cc cars which seems plainly wrong to me. However, I shouldn't smack a gifthorse in the mouth, apparently.

And therein is the main issue. Young drivers can buy 1400cc cars with lareg power outputs, the can build a low insurance group car into something faster than it originally was, and in both cases they get at their disposal very high levels of performance straight on the back of passing their test.

I am all for personal responsibility. I hate the nanny state. I am also in favour of education if education is the suitable solution, but when you look at the level of education which young and all new drivers have these days it is far higher than it ever was in my day, they then get access to safer, higher performing and cheaper cars, and still they die in acidents more than they did in my day.


Are roads the problem. really ? Are roads that much different to my learning days ? I don't think so.

That leaves the car and the driver.

The car is only as useful, as dangerous, as well balanced, as respected, as the driver can allow, so this leaves the driver.

I can see this path being the logic one to take, but then we come to the wall that is education and the argument always falls over doesn't it ? Better education now than ever before, producing more deaths than ever before. That simply doesn't look right, does it ?

Let's consider the driver/car combination as a whole instead. Lets look at what happens when some variables are changed within the relationship between the two of them.

I believe that a car is to the driver as tools are to craftsmen. Just as there are knives for different kitchen jobs, saws for different carpentry jobs and hammers for different smithying jobs, within that structure there are also jobs suitable for beginners, and jobs suitable for the experienced, and each of those jobs usually require different tools. In terms of driving there are right tools for new drivers, and wrong ones, assuming the dirvers are even trying to learn a craft in the first place.

Chris

I should coco. Safe speed is all about human judgement.

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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

Very well,
But when over 75% of accidents are caused by human error, how good do most drivers appear to be at using judgement even when presumably they have demonstrated it already on their driving test ?

1) They are worse than they used to be on average before modern stupid policies.

2) British drivers were good enough to give us the safest roads in the world.

3) There's ample room for improvement, but we don't have policies that foster or encourage improvement. We should.

4) There's only 1 British roads fatailty per 100 million miles driven. That's pretty amazing given the potential for danger.

5) The figure at 4) is heavily biased by the worst drivers, the drunks, the stolen cars, the thrill seekers and so on. The median crash risk driver has about 1 fatal per 500 million miles driven. And half of us do better than that.

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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

Nice long-winded description but why didn't you answer my question?

You have so far failed to convince me of any benefit for having an acceleration limiter whereas the others have provided specific examples where it would be dangerous.

I also know what the benefits of high acceleration are. I ride a high performance bike.

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Prepare to be Judged

So many accidents are indeed caused by human error (in whatever form); we need to focus on this, not on imposing blanket technical limitations such as acceleration limiters. Such impositions do not compensate for or redress a lack of judgement.

Nice long-winded description but why didn't you answer my question?

You have so far failed to convince me of any benefit for having an acceleration limiter whereas the others have provided specific examples where it would be dangerous.

I also know what the benefits of high acceleration are. I ride a high performance bike.


Keep your pyjamas on.

WHat's a dangerous speed ?
You don't say, so it's down to me to define the boundary conditions of your argument only to allow you to change them through disagreement later.So lazy, so very lazy.

However. Let's see, what could be a dangerous speed ? That depends on the situation doesn't it ? you want me to fill that gap in for you too do you..... I suppose you do...akay I'll try. while you go fill up your hot water bottle I'll see what I can do.

Dangerous situation :
Any situation which does not have within it protection against all probable sources of danger, where danger is defined as something having the potential to be harmful to a person, either driving the car or as a passenger, or outside of the vehicle, and not being a part of it.

Well that's not a small list all of a sudden.
Let's see. outside a school, which has a temporary 20mph limit due to it being the time of day for pupils to attend school. Leaving a side road 40 yards down the road from the school, the inexperienced and late for work driver takes it upon himself to decide that his need to prevent himself from getting a final written warning for lateness exceeds the need to abide by the 20mph limit. There are no children visible, only a couple of parked cars before the zigzag area opposite the school.

he has a 1600cc Nova, 16valve with an induction kit which he just coincidentally hasn't quite got around to telling the insurance company about yet, and he floors the throttle as he aims his car in the general direction of the school.

As he passes the first parked car, now travelling at 25mph a child appears from behind it and heads out in front of him. no this time the child survives, but lets just say that for now this qualifies as dangerous speed.

Now take the same car, same.....same....you know....tosser, and one acceleration limiter. He aims his car towards the school as before and floors the throttle. He is thinking of his excuse for being late as he sets off. As he accelerates smoothly with the much needed asssistance of the limiter he notices a child walking out from behind the parked car in front, only now he hasn't got close enough for this to be an issue and the only evasive action he needs to take is to cover the brake with his right foot as he glances in his rear view mirror.

As the child clears the road to the pavement he gently acelerates away, gathering an appreciative wave from the crossing attendant who just arrives in time to see what happened, and the new driver feelsthat sort of warm feeling which follows moments of practiced responsibility, whilst still living with freedom of choice and having the ability to still use his car to tow his new speedboat up the hill this weekend, and still able to reach a safe cruising speed on the motorway unhindered by the limiter.



The aim of an acceleration limiter is not to limit speed. It is a device which merely controls the rate at which the speed is acquired

Well, once again, another brilliant idea gets lost in a lack of information.

So many accidents are caused by human error and we need to focuys on this.

So ....go on then.....what are you focussing on tonight that you think we should all focus on too ?

Human error is a bad thing. End of essay.

or are you actually going to share what you think ?
See this as trolling if you wish, it certainly isn't an attempt to be a troll, but ask your dentists about pulling teeth and they will tell you that it is hard work.
Human error.
Right, I'll have a go.

Lack of attention. Is there a cure ? Even Wires into the brain delivering electroshocks might not do much about that in some people.

Boring road layouts causing inattention. Have humans ever shown the ability to keep boredom at bay succesfully ? I don't think so, but maybe you think otherwise and that could be something to be discussed surely ?
How does one go about making the very act of driving entertaining, or even just stimulating enough to prevent inattention from boredom ? I've read a few books this past coulde of weeks about road layouts and there seems to have been very little, if any, research done to provide cerebral stimulation from the actual layouts of roads and the position of street furniture.

Poor judgement :
I reckon a cocky attitude or simple overconfidence in ones ability lies behind a lot of accidents caused by poor judgement. Do you agree or disagree ?


Chris

I think this is the statistical proof which accompanies what most sane people learn just from making even basic observations.
The actions of a few affecting the enforcement policies that everyone must abide by. And even at that those who cause most of the problems still act in the way which got them into trouble the first time around ,probably. We might have a problem with repeat enforcements here.

I wonder what can be done about that ?

Dear boy, are you in such a rush to humiliate yourself that you haven't noticed that the poster did not even mention speed, let alone dangerous speed, in his response once?!

The rest of your blah, which I won't re-quote in order to save the sanity of those reading, goes on to illustrate an example in which a coincidence of timing saves a child from being involved in an incident. This has nothing whatsoever to so with the general operation of an acceleration limiter, but goes to the general principal illustrated by the satirical video 'Speed Saves', in which a speeding driver avoids hitting an errant pedestrian by passing before he steps into the road. Given your demonstrable lack of reasoning skills, I would not expect you to be able to see this, so no doubt you will have a comeback!

My god, I cannot even begin to imagine what you think you know about human error, and how to eradicate it!

Let me give you a hint, I know an awful lot about human error, and a blameless reporting chain, in my day-to-day employment, and I dread to think what would happen if some indiscrete automaton was employed in some misguided effort to "eradicate human error".

Human error is a fact of...well...lets add some more pauses...for dramatic effect...like your previous melodramatic post...being human! We cannot eradicate human error as long as humans are at the controls, and believe me, again from my work, a human at the controls is a desirable thing! The only way to overcome human errors is to learn from them. This involves sharing the particulars of the problem with as many people, likely to find themselves in the same position, as possible, not forcibly applying blanket limitatons!

Excellent.

So then lets look the learning process we must use to learn from those errors. We should talk about the ones you know about for the sake of simplicity

Sharing the particulars of the problem:
How ? By telling people as they are in the process of undertaking instruction what things they should not do.
The COI in a previous incarnation would put adverts on television, but they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator and other people more advanced which is always difficult to do. As a result , any information filmecomes too unfocussed. The only succesful film would be one appealing to the lowest common denominator only. They try to do that, then they get complaints about it for sensationalising it, so they are in a tight spot too, put there by people who want to see changes byut want them to be in a manner which they prefer.

Perhaps it's true what Paul Bocuse once said, that critics are like Eunachs. They know how to do it but they can't actually do it themselves.

I mean, it would be great to see all high visibility motor programmes talkign about the things we need to do to change the things we need to change in order to eradicate the human nature derived errors, don't you think. But honestly I couldn't see Clarkson talking about the virues of setting off earlier, braking earlier, planning ahead so that you don't get unduly delayed. Can you ?

I am only using this as an aexample, because although you have highlighted something we can do, you haven't said how you think it should be done. You either know how it might be achieved or you don't. Have you got a way to improve things ?

Chris

You missed out a whole post, fixitsan!

I have also already said how it should be done, an open, honest, and blameless reporting chain, such that people can share details of their mistakes with others without fear of reproach, and everyone can learn from them.

And, indeed, Police Pursuits!

Whilst I am not saying that Police should not pursue villans, it is a bit naughty to include the occasional unfortunate consequences of these actions in the general "accident" statistics

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Safe Speed has a published road safety manifesto, written in 2004, three years ago.

It's probably due for revision. None of the policies or reommendations would change, but the justifications and explanations have been much improved by three years' work. I would add quite a bit about the driving test which is clearly - on newer figures - letting our new drivers down badly.

The main key point that should be added is experience learning is (almost) everything.

- Newly qualified drivers have around 20 times the national average crash rates.

- The learning curve that we all follow, and especially the national average learning curve, is highly vulnerable to bad culture and bad information. Equally it is capable of very considerable enhancement with good culture and good information.

- The road safety skills that we depend on most are self-taught, experience-acquired skills like visual search, hazard recognition, distraction management and good judgement.

- Crash risks are mainly the result of driver quality; Driver quality is mainly the result of experience learning; experience learning is mainly the result of culture and information. I gave a presentation on this recently at 'Road Safety Scotland (annual conference. The presentation is here: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/aviemore2007.ppt (I haven't really checked to see how well the presentation stands up without the speech.)

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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