Safe Speed Forums

The two second gap has (almost) nothing to do with braking distance - it's all about time to react. The vehicle in front cannot brake significantly faster than we can.

Some might argue that the vehicle in front could hit an immovable object and come to an instant stop - but the safe speed rule requires us to ensure that our braking distance is clear. The safe speed rule isn't compromised by a vehicle moving at similar speed and similar direction within our braking distance unless that vehicle obstructs our ability to observe our safe braking zone ahead.

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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 agree that reaction time is by far the most prevalent - and since that is linear, 2 sec is all that's needed if it is the ONLY factor. If you're right (2 sec) then there is no need to hold back further in, say, lousy weather. I think there are more factors than meet the eye. At the sorts of distances we're talking about we can not see sufficient detail of the car in fron to know what condition its tyres are in, whether it has sports supension, ABS etc. I think increasing tremporal space is safest at three-figure speeds - and shall continue to do so.

You're dead right. The non-obvious factor is braking performance differential. Doubling the distance in bad weather helps make up for differences resulting from factors such as tread depth for example.

Also the ultimate effect of braking performance differential increases with speed.

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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

The only shunt Ihave ever had was in a Sierra. I was following an Accord down a country lane. At least 2 seconds behind the car in front. There was a car overtaking a truck comming the other way on a blind bend. With the potential for a head on collision the car on front of me slammed the brakes on. It was wet and he had ABS. When we finaly came to a stop I nudged him at about 5 mph. Just enough to crack bumper plastic.

That was the first time I saw the difference in stopping distances between ABS and non ABS equipped cars...

The car that caused the accident just drove on without even knowing what he had done.

Of course it was my fault on the insurance claim.......

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Speed camera policy Kills

Incorrect, makes NO differance what speed the vehicles are traveling at, if the driver behind is not paying attention.

Speed is not a Factor, it hazard perception



Ah as a human being born of nature, and capable of creating a machine such as a car, it is in fact my right to drive



You are way off track, social issues are not a result of driving.



It is more a point that their are alot of BMW cars out their, and they are in fact a much better piece of machinery than your average saloon. It is not the driver or the BMW, just a fact that drivers get miffed, when they get left in the mirrors of BMW's.




The Government have not highlighted shunts at speed, they have merely only blamed speed incorrectley



Revenue collection device

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Steve

Very much your fault in reality

You did not have enough time to react, you were driving without due care and attention, simple as....

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Steve

I assume this has never happened to you. Do you think 2 seconds is enough time to avoid a collision with the car in front at 60 mph under any circumstances. Get real. If you used your logic the distance between moving cars should equate to the equivalant stopping distance....after all the car in front may come to a dead stop if it hits something. It is possible to be put in a situation where you do not have time to react but without it being "without due care". thats why we have accidents......simple as....

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Speed camera policy Kills

I watched a BMW driver leave his entire mirror in the shopping trolley drop-off shed thingy at my local Tesco the other evening. Wet car park, bit of exuberance, lots of oversteer -proceeded immediately to the scene of the accident backwards. Thankfully no occupied pushchairs around, but I was struck by the quality of the engineering and the impressive torque. Must buy one...

I have seen many vehicles in front of me be involved in accidents.

No, i never failed to stop in time.



The 2 second rule, is for dry conditions, you admit it was wet, therefore by only allowing a 2 second gap, you failed to allow enough stopping distance.



Yours is a classic case of a poor driving standard, you apply the same driving method in the wet, as you do for driving in dry conditions.

If road conditions change, then so does your driving

Had you of increased your stopping distance due to the weather conditions, you would of stopped in ample time.

2 seconds is for dry conditions

if it is wet, make it 4 seconds.

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Steve

Old bmw, fitted with boy racer, i assume

Thankfully, modern BMW's are fitted with superb traction control devices, which prevent this from happening.

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Steve

I had a proper response to my FoI request. They sent me the tables on paper and there's a vertical line between 'excessive and inappropriate speed' and 'shunts' and 'other'. We're supposed to believe that 'shunts' and 'other' are subcategories of excessive and inappropriate speed. I for one don't believe it at all. The idea of excessive speed causing shunts is little short of absurd.

Discounting shunts, we find that 'other, including too fast for road or weather conditions' totals 49 out of 1828 crashes or 2.7%. Clearly the 2.7% includes inappropriate speed within the speed limit and 'other'. So that's pretty close to zero caused or contributed by exceeding a speed limit then. Surprise.

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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 must admit Paul, that I’m slightly surprised , by the low percentage of speed related RTC you are suggesting.

Try as I might I cannot seem to shake off the fact that in our area two thirds of KSIs have excess speed (over the limit) as a causation or contributory factor.

I’m quite happy to accept that a low percentage of overall collisions are caused by excess speed, if you include car park shunts, manoeuvring bumps, non injury RTCs etc.

But I cannot concur with your suggestions given my own experiences.

The last 6 KSIs I have attended are all likely to have involved excess speed by the at fault car.

Somehow, somewhere the stats seem to differ dramatically from my own personal experiences.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Isn't the "Excessive speed" line 321 + 111 ?

That's the rub, IanH. You can't say for sure, plus your own experiences are merely a sample of the overall picture, meaning they could be a biased (not intentionally, just in terms of where your presence is required) sample.

It's why we need research based solutions for the problem rather than intuitive solutions that we think will work being put in place.

Nope.

Excessive and inappropriate speed: shunts is 321+111
Excessive and inappropriate speed: other is 12+37

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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

Yep. That bothers me greatly too. Your experience should not be wildly atypical, yet it fails to agree with virtually all the research. I REALLY want to know why. Perhaps we need to talk it over?

Or maybe it isn't so important IF the excessive speed crashes you attend are of such a nature that speed enforcement is unlikely to have prevented?

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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

Yep,

Like I said on this post, the vast majority of the speeders who cause fatalities would be very likely to speed anyway. They dont give a flying fig for speed cameras, but their momentum (speed) combined with their lack of concentration/observation for whatever reason provides us with our fatality stats.

I think speed is not registered as cause or contributory among many of these accidents because there are more obvious causes, ie drink, recklessness, tiredness, etc.


2 recent K @ SI examples.

• One male drove along a road in a public place which was governed to 10 miles an hour and collided with a tree at a speed...............
  
  IN EXCESS OF 62MPH!!!
  
  
  Cause of the accident.................????
  
  Speed???........................
  
  The coroner said he "could not possibly have survived" the massive impact,
  
  And......
  
  That drink and drugs were a "huge factor", "He was drunk, had just had a row and was possibly seething with anger."
  
  
  
• Recently on a dual carriageway a vehicle was being driven in lane one, minding it's own business, when an "airborne" vehicle attempted to pass in lane two, lost it, started to spin and collided with vehicle in lane one taking both off the road. Both drivers were seriously injured, the innocent party by far the more serious.
  
  Cause of the accident.................????
  
  Speed ???........................
  
  The driver was drunk, had a fall out with his girlfriend moments earlier who he was texting while driving.

These are indicative of the majority of our KSIs.

Speed is, as we know, only a part of it.

We have to work out what speeders can be influenced by cameras, and how can this influence benefit road safety. I believe these groups exist. Other methods of road safety work better for the remainder.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

The speeders that can - and are - influenced by cameras are those who are otherwise practicing safe speed techniques who slow down for no other reason than fine avoidance and licence preservation. This behaviour is practiced by "quality" drivers in all races, sexes creeds and walks of life, including police in marked cars. The message from this is if anything counter-influencial to road safety.

Dealt with countless incidents over the years. Each one has been unique in actual circumstance to a certain point - yet fall into clusters of similarities of which drink, drugs, fatigue, anger, worries, bereavements all contribute to greater extent than the speed element. In this state - these characters are oblivious to policemen in fast cars complete with the flashing lights and the whoo-whooos!



We have the types who are excited by the thrill of a police chase as well - takes good management skills to recognise this, pull back and try to work out tactic and strategy to end it safely - bearing in mind we can let them go and pick 'em up later on.

Dealt with an accident whilst off duty in a supermarket car park today - woman collided with a vehicle (which was really driving too fast - 25 mph in the car park ). She drove into its off-side at ca 15 mph. Reason? She was having one heck of a row with her partner... Result? Driver of one car - whiplash and a dislocated knee. His elderly passenger was in shock and suffered an angina attack. The woman and her partner - bruising, twisted ankle with the impact), shock and whiplash.... Not exaclty going very fast - but the accident was caused by neither driver paying much attention as both pre-ccupied with shopping on the one hand and quarrelling on the other. Speed cam would not have detected this had it been on the main road - but the injuries were serious enough to warrant a stay in hospital and just marginally possible - inclusion on the SI data as they were SI'd in a RTC I was heading out of the supermarket with our weekly shop at the time ... (Neither had been drinking - we did check! Was simple matter of not concentrating in the car park)


These and Ian's are classic examples which recur over and over:




I would say of the ones influenced by cameras - few are compliant as such - on the basis that they manipulate by slowing down for the 0.7 seconds or so of passing the vans and the fixed sites. This is why we find using a mix of marked and umarked cars, coupled with a series of posters along our danger stretches is probably more beneficial.

However, we are still working on the biker issue....

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

All this represents anecdotal support for the hypothesis I advanced some time ago - which Ian also arrived at independently - to explain why SI's are reducing but Ks are not: the presence/threat of speed cameras and speed enforcement is 'forcing' a significant number of the large group of reasonably competent but relatively inattentive drivers to raise their observation/concentration to avoid speeding tickets and this is having the side effect of reducing SI accidents. This group of drivers is not less accident involved because their speed is reduced but because their observation/attention level is raised. The K statistics are not reduced because these involve the small minority of truly reckless drivers who use excessive and inappropriate speed but are not influenced by speed enforcement.

It may be possible to test this hypothesis further by examining the distribution of seriousness of injuries within the SI figures. If my hypothesis is correct, I would expect that the greatest reduction in SI is at the lower end of the SI scale because: (i) the 'reasonably competent but relatively inattentive' will probably not be driving at recklessly high speeds so, where they are accident involved, the injuries will not be at the top end of the scale where impact speed does play a significant part in accident severity; and (ii) the truly reckless drivers continue to be involved in accidents which, because of high speeds, result in injury at the higher end of the SI scale.

The price being paid by the group of relatively advanced drivers (in which I include myself) who 'speed' frequently but not recklessly is that our driving standards are being dumbed down to the much lower level of the majority but with little or no safety benefit because this is the least accident involved group anyway.