Safe Speed Forums

A BBC documentary exploring our relationship with the car is hoping to include a driver who has killed someone, perhaps through a momentary lapse of concentration or at a relatively low speed.

We are not looking for drink-drivers, excessive speeders or joy-riders, but for someone whose driving resulted in a death in circumstances that many viewers could easily find themselves in.

This issue will only form a small part of the programme but is important and will be sensitively handled.

If you have been in that position and would be prepared to talk about it in a way that might alert other drivers to the dangers, please contact Jon McKnight at Denham Productions on 01752 345444 or e-mail him at jon.mcknight@denhams.tv

Thank you

Can't help with your request, but it'd be interesting if you told us more about the intended content of the program.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Amongst the many people who will be featured, we want to include a driver who has killed someone in a way that might make many readers think "There but for the grace of God", or "That could so easily have been me".

The programme will not glamourise or vilify the person we find. The point of including a driver who has killed is to highlight how easily a moment's inattention or a simple miscalculation can result in tragedy that ends lives and changes them irrevocably.

The fact that the mistakes or decisions made by the driver who killed would have been considered trivial in any other circumstances will bring home to viewers how important it is to take driving more seriously than many of us do.

The same message coming from a Road Safety Officer would not have the same impact as it would if it came from a driver who has killed, was devastated by having done so, and wants to prevent other drivers from making the same error or misjudgement.

Hope this helps.

There is always this chap.

I'm sure a lot of us have put sweets in our mouths while driving.

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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

If you have a crash while exceeding the speed limit, there will always be a nagging feeling that your stupidity may have caused it. If a child is killed, you will have to deal with that doubt for the rest of your life. If you at least try to stay legal, you have at least discharged a basic responsibility, although you have additional duties to stay safe within the limit.

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I stole this .sig

So if you kill a child when driving within the speed limit, you would feel less guilty than if you killed them when travelling over the limit?

That is the most astonishing piece of drivel you have ever written. Your only responsibility when on the road is safety, full stop. I would think if you ever kill a child on the road, you will always have (more than) a nagging feeling that your stupidity caused it, regardless of the number painted on a circular sign at the side of the road.

Rant over

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Apologies for the rant basingwerk, I'm not having a good day and I took it out on you (I've been outside for a fag now so I've cooled down!).

I would like you to qualify what you have said above though:



Are you saying that staying safe is of secondary importance to staying legal, that it is basically just an additional duty?

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

No sweat, Serge. Remember – it’s Friday afternoon!



I don't prioritise legality above safety. I think they are compatible. I am not diminishing additional duties.

I'm writing about one of the pitfalls of speeding that some may not realise. Regrets inevitably accumulate over the course of a life. Attitudes change. Staying within the limit may be a technicality before an incident, but it would be only human to reevaluate it's importance afterwards in the full light of day. It's better not to have to deal with that in the first place.

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I stole this .sig

Sounds very sensible, but it could do with extending a bit IMO. After an incident, near misses as well as actual collisions, it's worth evaluating anything and everything you can think of. In no particular order:
Was my speed appropriate?
Was my car control adequate?
Did I inadvertantly mislead another road user into thinking I'd do something different?
Was I fooled by another road user in the same way?
Was my observation of the area adequate?
Could I have made a better job at letting others know where I was?
Is it anything to do with my car?
Is it anything to do with my attitude?

And so on. Basically if I come home having had the s it scared out of me by some nutter who shouldn't be driving I ought to give some thought as to how I could have better coped with the nutter, or whether he's really that bad and I might have contributed to the situation.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I can understand what basingwerk is getting at, there will be an extra level of guilt whether real or simply perceived if you break a law that has been set by the society you live in.
You could say this extra level of guilt runs additional to but not more important than the fact that it ended in the death of a child. The fact is that the society you live in will automatically apportion blame if you have broken a law, whether it made a difference to the accident or not.

I'm probably having the same difficulty in explaining it as well.

The point is that a reasonable driver is not going to get into that situation in the first place. An attentive driver with an adequate level of hazard awareness will, in all probability, be well below the speed limit in any situation where there are children around. A bad driver who kills a child under such conditions has every reason to feel guilty - not because they were exceeding the limit, rather that they were anywhere near the limit.

Of course, sometimes the unthinkable does happen, but it's extremely unlikely.

That's one of the major flaws of 'road safety via speed limits' - the limit has been legally sanctioned as being a safe speed, thus removing from the driver the responsibility for setting a safe speed for conditions.
Or even the responsibility for watching the road - like the idiot of a driver who condemned my mother to a semi-vegetative state for what remained of her shortened life. Yes, OK, I do have an axe to grind.

Regards
Peter

Depends as well how the accident occurred... was the child playing out on a main road? As a parent I'd feel I'd failed in some way by not being vigilaant enough.

Then there are the well documented occurrences whereby a woman got intoher 4x4 in the driveway and swtiched on the engine. She did not check the gear or the handbrake and her toddler was palying in the drive.... I hear she has never come to terms with this.

There are others - reversing out of the drive and the child ran in the way....

The three year old at his birthday party last year who ran out to greet his older brother and his Daddy - straight across a mian road....

These have all appeared in the daily tabloids. It may be worth Carnation's while to dig out these stories and see if the drivers concerned wish to tell their stories. Family persmission will have to be sought as well - and they may not wish the "intrusion" into their grief though.

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Whereas if you stick to the speed limit you can mow 'em down with impunity I suppose?

The point is that safety is the only fundamental responsibility.

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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

Carnation - when looking at the details of the accidents you wish to describe, will you be showing them from the view of all those involved?

Far too often the car driver is automatically assumed to be at fault. I hope you've done your research thoroughly and seen those reports that show that pedestrians are most often the cause of their own injury or demise when in accidents with cars, for example.

My point exactly. Very succinctly put.

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If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Everybody has off days. Everybody has days when they have had a kicking from the boss, or a tongue lashing from the wife. This all effects the way you drive. You may have something on your mind, and you may not be paying enough attention. That's when accidents happen, more often than not. And it is at these exceptional times, when you are tired, not thinking straight or stressed out, that it pays off to have a little extra margin, by training yourself to (at least!) be under the limit. That is why it is best to make the pledge. Come on, SafeSpeed, make the pledge to (more or less) obey the speed limit - you have lots of clout!

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I stole this .sig

This is not the case. The text from the highway code is - adapt your driving to the appropriate type and condition of road you are on. In particular do not treat speed limits as a target. It is often not appropriate or safe to drive at the maximum speed limit.

[my bold]

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I stole this .sig

It's not the case in the legal sense, but more and more drivers are seeing it that way. And who can blame them, when they get bombarded with ads which strongly imply that it's OK to hit a child at 30mph.
Even the powers-that-be are seeing it that way - you kill someone while driving at or below the speed limit, and you get off with a slap on the wrist - exceed a ridiculous 30mph limit a few times on a clear dual carriageway which had a 70mph limit a few weeks previously and you get sentenced to loss of licence and probably job as well.

Regards
Peter