Safe Speed Forums

That "tyre grip" sounds good. Does it stick to already damp tyres? We used to carry bits of old carpet in our boots as well as the obligitory shovel back in the seventies/ eighties but we don't seem to get the amount of snow these days to warrant that.

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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.

Yeah! Rush, do you have a link to whoever makes (or sells) it?

Wouldn't mind a closer look!

Found these, they do one for shoes too


http://www.improvementscatalog.com/home ... -grip.html


http://www.tyre-grip.com/

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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.

When you drive, you think of accidents, collisions, and mishaps as preventable and unlikely to happen to you. The 'state' sees those things as guaranteed to happen to someone.
In New York City and the surrounding boroughs, the variables of winter conditions are not that many, and are quite predictable.
I'm guessing that where you are, there are many more variables which make for much more unpredictability. To which I'd counter, the sooner you get started collecting data, the sooner the patterns begin to emerge.Since I am a driver, my personal viewpoint is that I should take as much responsibility as physically possible. This is what gives me ... ahem ... response-ability.

Were I a 'government', I'd not resemble either the U.K. or the U.S. I'd probably bear a greater resemblance to a cross between Germany and Finland. I'd try to provide as much info as reasonably possible plus a little more, reduce the number of vehicles on the road by increasing driver qualification standards, and even though I'd tend to see drivers as ultimately responsible, I'd not ignore what effects road design and environment play in the response-ability of the drivers, and strive to improve what I could, where I could - including the driver. (Put succinctly, improve cars, drivers, and their roads.)

Since no one can control the weather, I'd strive to improve both the state's and the driver's ability to predict and effectively respond to the weather, to mitigate its effect where and when possible.
(Then again, I haven't been seduced by money, despite handling more cash and electronic capital than I have ever earned in my lifetime ... yet.)

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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

The veracity of information is independent of its source.
Let me be clear:
First, I have no certifications regarding any expertise, be it as a
mechanic - even though I diagnose my problems with 90+% accuracy and then bring my mechanics the parts I wish them to remove and replace
driver - most of the experiential learning in my youth was surviving some very close calls and learning as much as possible from my mistakes, then later from others
psychology - everyone should have a minor in this before they graduate from high school
physical fitness/nutrition, to include first aid - what I said about psychology applies here
(the rest only applies indirectly and circumstantially; let me not bore you needlessly)

Since I was recently promoted away from the driver's seat - there are ups and downs as with almost anything else - my only involvement with air transport involves making sure that my driver and my client meet each other as quickly as reasonably possible. However, road safety has so much to learn from air safety, that I study it as an archetype for how I should behave as a road pilot, not to mention yet another something new to read when I'm not driving.

However, I still consider it my responsibility to speak eloquently and with only the most inconsequential of errors - to respond ably - on subjects which one would never expect me to have any knowledge of. The pleasure I get is largely from satisfying my duty to the survival and improvement of the human condition.

(When I was a U.S. Marine, it somehow occurred to me that, whenever anyone came to me with a question, there was a distinct possibility that either my inability to provide the right answer, or my providing the wrong answer, would lead me to be proximately responsible for someone's death. This was and is unacceptable.
For the former, I still strive to be able to point people towards those who could provide the right answer, which means I also know where to learn something new - more reading material.
For the latter, I just see being wrong as prima facie evidence of recklessness with either oneself, or others, especially when it comes to driving (as well as a few other subjects which do not apply here).

The vast majority of my education beyond high school is derived from reading or watching, discussing, and applying. Being a primarily visual and kinaesthetic learner has taken me places and taught me things the kinaesthetically averse wish to deny existence of.

Most governments tend to suffer from a critical mass of kinaesthetically averse people. Add the belief that 'accidents are unavoidable', motive for profit, and a touch of megalomania, and neither my Department of Transportation, or your Department for Transport, will surprise you often.Since I don't know too much about the peculiarities of your locale, I will simply state that before detection comes prediction, and that the sooner the data collecting starts, the better.

You do understand my point on technology and responsibility correctly. Forgive me for reiterating that if the standard of driver education/training/testing backslides too far, the excuse will be made for the technology to take over responsibility, at which point the second age of slavery will have its next benchmark.

Finally, yes, I forgot to provide the link for Tyre Grip, but at least here's a linkie for
The Auto Sock

_________________
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

Yes, simple searching on the 'Net', inputting 'microclimate' and the name of my County, provided a top of the pile reference to the peculiarities of our region close to the smash-site. I'm in the position, currently, of having collected lots of info about lots of aspects but now need to focus down on the most important. To which data and sources do you think my efforts should now be concentrated, please? For example, I am now intent upon comparing the salting-regime (stated as procedural by my highway's authority), with what their records say for both the actual salting+prevailing-weather on the days closest to the smash. I could do with an easily accessed (online), cost-free source of historical weather-records, along with the expertise to correlate the factors significant to ice formation. Unfortunately, the Met Office's ice-prediction facility can only be accessed by passwords issued to the contract-holder's personnel


This, to me, is a 'slippery-eel' which I still find difficult to grasp. It defies my logic to think that I, and those closest to me, (or for that matter many drivrs) would drive with anything other than regard for conditions.........ergo, with responsibility. After all, when comparing with other, more frequent collisions, those occurring in wintertime suggest that the risk-takers are getting it mostly right. I fully accept that, in winter, preparedness for ' response-ability' needs to be as honed as is practicable, and this is where I believe that available expertise (lots in this Forum) could be more frequently promoted. Yet, it seems that, ultimately, the only true test of preparedness is to experience a skid.


Hmmmmm. In the context of UK Statutory Duty ref icy roads, there are expensive attempts by, eg Met Office in conjunction with control-room expertise, to control the weather. But I know that's not what you meant, eh? How they guage the limits to what they do to fulfil that duty is a moot point.

I would be more concerned with [very] local weather measurements interpreted with an eye toward learning how to predict when and where different types of hazardous conditions tend to occur - bad-weather blackspots, if you like. In other words, the priority of a road should not necessarily be the only determining factor as to when it gets treated.

Signage such as, "This area is famous for black ice, watch yourself", regular reminders in the local media of bad-weather blackspots, blocking off of unnecessary/redundant bad weather blackspots ... just a few low-tech ideas employed in NYC. The vast majority of NYC drivers know where the applicable bad-weather blackspots are.You bet yer @$$.
I'll grant you that if I'd been given what I like to call 'skid appreciation' at too young an age, it might've whetted my appetite for more of the stuff. The real reason why would be because I wanted to learn more about skid control [largely because of my desire for kinaesthetic learning]. (Meanwhile, the kinaesthetically repressed call that kind of urge to learn 'antisocial behavior', then fail to provide safe conditions to learn and practice. What's the word? Bollocks?)

Mature adults should not fear 'skid appreciation' under controlled conditions. How better to learn when and where not to skid?

However, for the kinaesthetically repressed, I offer the following advice:
1) All your turns should be late apex.
2) In inclement weather, and especially on potentially treacherous surfaces, perform each phase of the turn separately before proceeding to the next phase. Combining either braking or acceleration with steering is pretty chancy when road grip is compromised.
3) If you have never connected two Scandinavian Flicks back to back, or one well, your driving education is not really complete.

You can't control the weather, but a good captain with a good ship and a good crew can usually come out on the sunny side of ... nearly ... any storm.

_________________
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

Could I ask people contributing to this debate to send me details/ links, etc., which reported icy-road collisions, deaths and injuries during last winter in their region, please?

Thanks

Hmmmm! That Tyre Grip spray looks pretty interesting! Might have to try and get hold of a couple of cans next winter!

Ah, perhaps I'm asking too much, eh folks?

Unfortunately, it's not something I tend to keep tabs on! The local papers round here are the Whitehaven News:

http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/

and the News and Star:

http://www.news-and-star.co.uk/

if you wanted to have a trawl, but it would be a long and tedious process!

We had few minor bumps round here, one week when they ran out of grit for a couple of days but no deaths that I am aware of. You could try writing to all the area police forces, to get stats for such but whether they would supply you that information, I'm not sure.

_________________
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.

Cheers G You're right, I'm getting help from my County's police force, S'pose that an ulterior motive was that others may be interested in the outcomes of what they might find themselves?

Cheers M Have done a trawl, locally and nationally. Don't mind the tedium, just the frustration of finding the right search terms and sources.

No worries! Feel free to bump this thread back to the top in the late autumn and I'll try and keep an eye out for local stories and post the links.

Could you do one for the 2008/9 winter, please?

Realistically, I'm reluctant to make any promises I might not be able to keep! There simply aren't enough hours in the day! What sort of data are you looking for? Just a record of some kind of local accident of any level of severity in conditions where it was likely to have been icy? If so, the information available would be pretty scant. Newspapr reports and the like.

Oooh,, you're very coscientious, M.
Not looking for anything special, just the sort of stuff which graball sent to me, above. I'll follow up and do the tedious bit once I have some leads.
Oh, about 'hours in the day', I'm retired, so would be pleased to do something for you in return

Does anyone know (or know anyone who may know) about the meteorological data shared between the Met Office & local government highways'-depts; i.e., the data which is used to decide whether to salt or not to salt roads, please?

Oh, I hope that everyone here is enjoying the warmer weather? Things with our family are still a challenge.......still, "bring it on!!", eh?

a mate of mine works for the local highways dept and he was on gritting standby this winter. I know that he had to ring in for a weather forcast at 3 am one morning, to then decide whether or not to send the gritters out but which met office or to what level I couldn't tell you. Why not ring your local highways dept and try to find out from them directly?

_________________
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.