Safe Speed Forums

Andymusic, your words from your petition:



If you know not to go faster than 30-35 why do you think the rest of us need a low speed limit to tell us what is a safe speed? I live on a road just as you describe and drive about 60 miles a day on other such roads and after 26 years of driving have never had a problem. The key is to make sure that you can stop in the distance you know to be clear and speed limits tell you nothing about that.

Ten signatures...

In all fairness to Andymusic though, I've not seen many of these petitions attract a decent number of signatures since the road pricing one. I think the public were briefly under the impressition that the government might have been interested in what they thought - so they signed it in their droves. Since then, it has become apparent that the government DON'T give a *^&% what the public think so they've not bothered signing the petitions in the numbers they used to.

The comment about the definition of a single track road was because I was wondering if the OP thought of one with no central markings as a single track road. If so, there are plenty around here that are wide enough for two cars or even two trucks!

Slightly off topic, but why is it that strange people feel the need to join with 2 different usernames, and then appear to argue with themselves in a thread?

It would be less obvious if the same grammatical and spelling errors were not repeated under both users posts!

Andy ,.,. in Switzerland - they have a 3 mph tolerance across the whole range of speed limits. It does not stop crashes .. and most of them are caused by the same immature and unlicenced fools who are behind most of the accidents in the UK

Swiss are fined according to income.. so the level of the speed or outcome has little to do with the actual outcome on that basis. There have been calls to bring this into the UK. So far .. common sense has prevailed on this. I

He crashed into your car because he simply was not looking at the road ahead of him. Thus he would be charged with careless driving or undue car attention. These carry more by way of fine/penalty in the UK as the law stands currently. Excess OTT speed is also covered by careless to dangerous on the charge sheet - as is too slow a speed for the actual road condition or type of road

If your petition called for better training or for the driving training or actual test to carry a compulsory drive on a rural to demonstrate competence - then fine. But speed is not the prime cause of any crash. Failure to observe the road and risk assess all potential hazards .. (i.e driver error) causes the collisions. He hit your car because he failed to do this .. and a choice of a safe speed is very much related to observation and anticipation in the decision-making planning process. (Hmmm.. not as simple to explain as the one word of COAST! to describe good safe driving practice...)

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Still, if he hadn't have been driving as fast as he was he wouldn't have wriiten off my Rover 75 and he may not have hit my car at all having lost control of his car at a high speed. Speed does play a factor in these events, whether the driver has a brain or not! Lower speed allows the driver more time to correct any errors he may make and avoid other road users and hazards surely! I understand that we don't like having a "nanny" state telling us what to do in every facet of our lives and I don't like that either. But this particular road and roads like it are not suited to 60mph!!!!!!!!!

Yes, but you clearly only need to tell that to an idiot, and why are you so confident that an idiot will obey a road sign?

i don't think we're getting through here.


seems happy to question our views on the matter but not his own.

That does seem to be one of the major flaws in the reasoning applied to road safety by speed limits. That it just cannot be considered let alone accepted by the proposers of lower limits never ceases to amaze me.

It would be far more useful to have a sign that pointed out that the safe speed on this road was highly variable.

The problem being that if you need the sign you should probably not be driving...

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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

Somewhere in this forum, we are implored to "attack the argument rather than the poster". We should also be implored to act as if we are separate from our arguments, so that we do not feel attacked or disdained when our arguments are attacked.

Andy, we are not questioning you per se, but we have already questioned ourselves and reality, and come to different conclusions.

Then again, I see conversation as carpentry, wherein debates build and dismantle arguments ...Another problem being, the tacit approval of borderline incompetency en masse.

It would also be far more useful if we educated and trained each other so that we didn't need to protect ourselves / each other from our collective borderline incompetency.

I'd rather educate and train people to make better choices for themselves and others. Perhaps some people are convinced that that is not plausible?

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Oh well!!!!!! This problem will never be solved with new "idiots" of the road passing their driving tests daily. Seems to me may be we'll have to wait until all cars are fitted with safety computers and radar etc so as to prevent "idiots" wrapping their cars around others cars and lamposts and other road "obstructions" and killing each other. Meanwhile we sit back and count the dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andymusic, it's not clear from your post but was your car parked on the road rather than in a layby? When your car was hit was it dark? If it was dark were there streetights? If there were no streetlights did you leave the sidelights on so that your car was easy to see?

The reason I ask these questions is that I go along an unlit country road to get to my house where someone often parks on a bend with no lights on the vehicle. If something is coming the other way it is very hard to see the parked car in a place where you would not expect one to be parked. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a crash and although it would be very easy to blame the driver for going too fast, not looking etc. it seems to me that the first mistake was made by the person who parked the car (I believe that nearly all crashes are the result of multiple mistakes, usually by more than one person).

Will not work. Our Jags do have .. err.. "black boxes". All modern cars - since R registers - have on board computers via which the mechanics can diagnose fualts. This same data can be used by police in the event of an accident as part of their "forensic investigation". I have this not only from IG .. but also from another Lancs officer with whom I have become acquainted on a track day.

Some cars already have sensors which aleert the driver if they pass too close to anything. I prefer to rely on my own skills just in case the "on board toys fail"

Why I suggest proper training.. which encourages a constant evaluation and desire to learn more ..

Me and my wife have three young drivers. We were very choosy about driving instructors .. and we hope we have instilled within them a life long realisation that each drive will be a "learning experience" - that we can never know it all .. and expertise and experience and training may well help us diffuse a "dangerous" to a "safe situation" - but that each incidence will be unique to its own set of circumstances.


In the meantime .. I join IG and John Franklin of Cycle Craft (per page 55 ) in advocating COAST as a safety guide and hope folk will pass on the message of COAST's inherent safety message to all others. We have to start somewhere and COAST sums up good practice in one easy acronym.

But KSI is reducing per the government and increasing per the NHS A&E stats (the latter are more credible in reality }

France currently holds poll position in KSI reduction. HOW? By doubling RPU out there .. and targetting drunks/seatbelt fails/all red light jumpers... whether on a bicycle or in a car ...

They do have speed cams. These seem to ..er .. ping Johnny Foreigner before any French man in a beret and striped T-shirt


By the way as I failed to greet you earlier. We may disagree on this and that - but that does not ever mean disrespect.

_________________
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.

I usually do leave a parking light on if visiting and on the road without decent lighting. I never park dangerously .. close to the junction.. at a pinch point approach.. near a bend in the road


Neither me nor my wife park "miles out from the kerb" etither. Matter of pride perhaps

I do know my own sister almost pranged a car when reversing out of her own driveway. Car was over 2 and a half feet from the kerb on a narrow residential. This was worse as the house had TWO driveways as it is situated on a nice corner. BOTH driveways were empty. Luckily .. Ju-Ju realised it was "further out than she expected" and manoeuvred the people carrier she needs for her children - including one who lost his legs as a toddler through meningitis. with some difficulty. I gather she had some polite words to explain her frustrations with her neighbour across the way .. and her pleasant manner shone through. The neighbour fully understood her point and has never parked so since

I am also aware of a case whereby a teacher got done for "dangerous parking". She parked on a bend .. away from the kerb. A car passed her. Swerved to avoid an on-coming car. Hit a pram. Baby died. He was convicted of "careless driving" as he was slightly over the speed limit by 5 mph. She got done for careless driving. The originally convicted won an appeal against his conviction .. per the Liverpool/St Helens press.

Sometimes things are not qiite as obvious asthey first appear .. and why I think police should be allowed to investigate properly and without pressures to meet targets or deadlines.

_________________
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.

Guys; flogging a dead horse. Andy wants you to sign his petition, he does not want to hear why his logic is flawed, hence he will not. The strongest message will come from the fact that no one capable of rational thought will sign a petition merely due to a bitter individual's need to introduce 'rules' that will do nothing to prevent incidents of a similar nature to the one he is bitter about. I suggest you save your time and keyboard wear.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

The car was parked up in daylight at 10.10am in the morning in wet conditions. I was parked outside my girlfriends house which the single track road temporarily moves to enough room for two cars to pass comfortably as her garden hedge retreats back creating enough room for both our cars to be parked safely!

I'm not banging away just for you to sign my petition, I am listening to what you have to say and understand that there may be other ways of solving problems like these. As it is I may have won a small battle with the council here anyway as due to the accident they have recently put up some new warning signs for this bit of road to caution drivers! Drivers do need informing via signs of what road types speeds etc especially if the road is totally new to a driver.

Click below for something a little more light hearted regarding this subject! I found this very funny myself! I suppose I could see me doing this to help my situation!!!!!!!!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fKA2xLRoYG4

Enjoy!!!!!!! Andy

Andymusic,

You really aren't getting the argument here are you?
Computers, satellites,safety devices,speed limiting devices, nanny limits, people breathing down your neck etc, etc aren't going to make better, safer drivers.

That's the problem with the uk drivers today, all the risk factors are being taken away from them so they DON'T have to think...when you stop thinking, you start having accidents.

I see people every day sticking to speed limits religiously but they don't look in mirrors, indicate, use the correct lane or road position, pull out too late or not when suitable, don't use lights when they should, the list is endless but they believe they are the safest drivers on the road because the speed limit sign says 30MPH or 40MPH and they are well inside that limit so they must be perfect drivers....WRONG

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

If we drive with our eyes open and brain in gear do we need signs? When we see a sign that says we must not travel faster than say forty, is that for my car or yours, my little bike or my brothers big one, my tractor or an artic? In the wet or the dry? At 3am or 3pm? Is the limit their to keep the NIMBYs happy or because there is a genuine need for 40 mph?

If there is a petition for increased signage, please can it be for better signs telling us where the road is going and not abandoning us

Signs are good. Well done - you - for getting these. VAS would be "icing on cake" in such a situation.

How dark was it. Sometimes a bad rain or storm can be as "twilight" even on a mid-summer/spring/autumn morning.


Was it icy? Black ice? If black ice .. you can lose at any legal speed if taken unawares. Cyclists in January 2006 in Bolton all collided with each other on black ice. Council failed to grit. The cycling club took legal action... I do not know if it was succesful as I have not come across the update so far. It may still be proceeding as such things can take time.

Andy .. I am hoping the sign is about warning of blind spot.. black ice .. sharp bend and perhaps an "advisory" rectangle to alert. A VAS may be a fair sign as plenty heed these per EU research (Heidelberg papers - yet to be "peer reviewed" )

PS andy .. your views are welcome. If I appear to disagree - no offence intended. and again

_________________
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.