Safe Speed Forums

A couple of months ago, I was driving home from work in the daytime. Conditions were dry and visibility was excellent. It was a Friday so they let me leave a little early, which meant all the school kids were on their way home at the time I was driving back, and the roads I had to take were heavily populated and well-occupied by kids at this point.

Because the visibility was virtually as good as it could get, I could see a group of 6 or 7 children (no older than 10) quite far away to my left on the pavement walking towards me. I was going 30mph for the first part of this road, but soon slowed down after seeing these kids to about 20mph simply because I know how unpredictable they can be and I wanted to give myself a bit more reaction time. I could see them pushing each other and playing around as kids do, and they sometimes stepped into the road apparently oblivious to where they were putting their feet. As I got closer to them, I didn't feel too confident at all so when I saw there were no cars on the other side of the road, I pulled out away from the pavement and drove in the middle of the road, giving plenty of room for any kids that accidentally stepped into the road.

Trouble is, one of these kids didn't just accidentally stumble into the road, he wanted to cross it. Without looking at all and with zero warning whatsoever, he darted across the road in front of me. I slammed my brakes on and came to a dead stop, his route across the road was literally a meter in front of my stationary car. The whole event terrified me and it completely shook me up, I had to pull over and give myself a few minutes before driving again. I couldn't stop thinking about all the things that could have been worse. If I didn't slow it down and pull out a bit, if the previous owner and I hadn't taken care of the ten-year-old car I was driving as much as we did, if the visibility was poor or the road was wet etc.

Why don't they look?!

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David

Hopefully this event put the wind up the little blighter as much as it did you!

The PTA will tell you that the answer is clearly for you to drive even slower, or not at all, as their little angels abuse the road system at their leisure.

Education is the only real answer, largely for the kids in this instance, but unfortunately the apparatchiks tend to think that the PTA point of view will win them more votes.

Because they are busy doing other things and not paying attention to the road which is (certainly was in this case) more important.

Was ever so.

Well done for being prepared and turning a real danger into nothing more than a scare. The sort of behaviour that you exhibited is right at the core of road safety in the real world.

I tell you what, though, if the exact same situation happened, but you had ten years of experience rather than one, I bet you wouldn't even have had to brake hard. A second or two's extra anticipation makes all the difference.

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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 like it.

And will ever be so.

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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

Yup, you're probably right. At least it gave us both a dose of reality without anybody dying anyway.

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David