Safe Speed Forums

To me a real rougue driver is somebody who ploughs into the back of someone else in dense fog simply becuase they were travelling too fast for the conditions.

I mena that's some severe deriliction of duty.

It's not rocket science to drive a car. People on this message board seem to make a big deal of it. Any monkey can drive a car safely as long as they follow a few common sense rules.

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Currently undergoing training with the I.A.M.

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A few months ago I was driven in a Ford Galaxy that was a test mule with adaptive cruise control. I think the CC was already in production and in any case it was the engine that was being tested.

Anyway, how do you tell the radar to tell the difference between a stationary object like a bridge and a vehicle? What about a moving motorcycle and a tree on the side of the road?

From the front passenger seat, it seemed to me that adaptive cruise control was still in its infancy and was no substitute for an attentive driver.

I watched that programme that James May did about robots, and it looked spectacularly difficult to get computers to recognise objects, a task that the human brain can do easily. Much better that people open their eyes and used their brains, than to rely on electrickery to stop crashing.

A radar can't scan a mile ahead to look for brake lights and traffic bunching, it can only tell that there is something solid a few, pre determined meters in front.

Spot on, it's not much harder than walking (if not easier). However, you don't see too many people trying to run in situations where it's plainly silly to do so (i.e. round corners, through crowds), but it's endemic on our roads.

I beg to differ. Rocket science is relatively easy although the control functions are a bit harder. A reasonably co-ordinated person can be taught sufficient to pass our driving test in 4 or 5 hours BUT they will not be fit to be let loose on the road because they will not have reached a level of competence in observation and judgement - essentially the things that make up COAST.

Australian driving tests are the first worlds lowest standard - a few minutes on quiet residential streets, a reverse park and a three point turn and, provided that you do not exceed the speed limit, you have passed. My son's test 7 years ago (on his 17th birthday) took 12 minutes including check in time and the examiner doing the paperwork. Of course in the 365 days that he held a learners licence I had taught him a lot more than required Unfortunately there are a lot of kids going for the test who learn to pass but have never been taught to drive - they are the monkeys.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

We need a return to the middle-ages.
Hamlets scattered everywhere, few metropoli, communication by word-of-mouth, ruled by people we never see (no change there then) etc.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Hardly ever...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLMOk9Qv8UA

Driving a car is easy. Driving a car WELL is harder. Like most things, there are varying degrees of skill that are used to accomplish the same task. That doesn't mean that most - probably all of us, couldn't do a particular given task better than we do now.

I can't beleive that's directly attributed to speed cameras. In fact I don't at all. And no, I'm not saying speed cameras are good before the more...ahem, 'dedicated' of this forum start sharpening their knives. I think they should mostly be scrapped and replaced by more police.

I think it's the 2 factors I gave earlier which are the biggest problems, and causes of problems.



Sort of, yes. I managed very well before I read COAST and other bits and bobs. Common sense and patience is a huge plus when driving, and IMO you can get along with that fine.

Is my driving safer now I practice COAST? Yes, a bit as I was doing most of it before.

Should people read and put into practice COAST? Of course they should.

Sadly, not everyone has common sense on the roads (or at all).

I think one of the worst things to do is the whole 'monkey see monkey do'.

A good example, a big traffic jam. Stuck there for ages, and someone decides to use the hard shoulder. What happens then, loads of people follow.

And ever notice in fog/heavy rain, people tent to copy the distance others are leaving inbetween cars even if it's totally inappropriate? I find when I do leave such a gap in weather like that, some idiot thinks I am leaving a space for him and pulls into it.

If people thought for themselves more it would improve the roads greatly.

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If you think everyone else around you is driving badly, perhaps it's time to examine your own driving.

The problem is that the public safety message is _so_ slanted towards numerical speed that the rest kinda gets crowded out, and you get motorists like the woman I heard on R2 Jeremy Vine in a thing about not indicating: "I always obey the speed limit so it doesn't matter that I don't indicate"

Apart from the message there is also the result of the major reduction in dedicated trafpol that's accompanied the rise of cameras. Two or three years ago (sorry I can't link to this) there was a list of the percentage change in the number of motoring convictions over the last 10 years.

Speeding offences had gone up by something insane like 800%, everything else (drink driving, no insurance, no MOT, no RFL, no licence, defective vehicle, DWDCA, etc.) had collapsed.

Now the problem is that the only spanners in the road safety toolkit seem to be lower limits and more camera enforcement. Thankfully KSIs are coming down a bit (largely I would suspect because of improved vehicle safety) but they could be so much lower if the really bad drivers (the drunks, the junkies, the thieves, the unlicenced) were excluded from the roads permanently.

(waits for inevitable weepej response saying a drunk heroin addict in an unroadworthy car doing 30 is safer than someone sober in a well-mainained car doing 31)

I'm still not convinced, though I haven't been near any sort of driving lesson/test for a long time. I suspect that it depends greatly on the instrutor. I had bad ones, and a good one.

It's impossible to say exactly what driving attitudes are like, it's not like you can test for it as most people just give the answers they think they should give, rather than what they would actually do. Personally, I think most people know what they should be doing, but just don't bother.

It's a damn shame that when driving a long distance, you always see someone that should be pulled over and have a 'friendly' word with by the police after doing something.

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If you think everyone else around you is driving badly, perhaps it's time to examine your own driving.

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What on earth has that got to do with a good, bad,indifferent driving instructor????

It's the woman's attitude that's at fault NOT her instruction . She would have been instructed how to indicate in order to pass her test but too many people now are concentrating on being a "good" motorist, by not speeding, that all the other basics like indicators, mirrors and lane positioning gets forgotten about.

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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.

That is true and I generally agree with that. The problem is that one of these rules is being increasingly set to a level devoid of common sense (then en£orced).


I think that's a skewed perception.
There are a great many people who run out into deadly situations; there were over 15,000 pedestrians casualties whose error was a contributory factor) doing just that in 2007, and those are the ones who were unfortunate enough to do so in front of a vehicle - tip of the iceberg?

I’ve come across many idiotic cyclists who had no hope of stopping if someone equalling their riding style had been coming the other way; fortunately for me and themI cycle very wide and slow around blind corners.

If this behaviour is endemic, it is everywhere and not just confined to drivers (or roads).


Weepie,

Given my response to you which you didn’t acknowledge: do you remain by your statement of "it's clear to me that anybody who contacted a car in front (that weren't shoved from behind) should just never be allowed near a car again" as it stands, or have you accepted that innocent drivers can unavoidably shunt others?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

just a thought...

... there but for the grace of god go I

You have set the stakes quite high there weepej, you had better not make any mistakes, or your 100 miles per week on a bike might increase by quite a bit.

In fog? Pretty much yes. I imagine any situation you can come up with where you couldn't blame the shunter would amount to a tiny proportion of rear enders in fog, 99.9% of which I'm pretty sure would be cuased by simply driving too fast.

I'd happily see a policeman by the side of the road ripping up the licenses of people going too fast in fog and taking their cars away to be crushed.

Back to speed again, eh?

I would say rear-enders in general are more generally caused by leaving inadequate stopping distance between your car and the car in front. Otherwise rear enders would increase in proportion to the average speed of travel, whereas I bet they happen more in congested stop/start M/way conditions. It's not all about speed, you see?

(I grant you fog is a special case, but you should never drive faster than the distance you can see; I don't think anyone's arguing with you on that).

I'm pretty sure I could drive at 100 mph in the fog without hitting anyone if A) I knew the road and B) there was on body in front of me.

I am also pretty sure that I could bump into some one else's car at walking pace if I was not watching what I was doing.

Oh, how foggy is foggy? What visability are we talking here? I had a few fog related visbility issues this morning, but as I was only doing 2.4kph no harm could be done, right? Wrong, very wrong

Thank you.

"99.9%"?
Are you really of the opinion that anything close to 999 out of 1000 (foggy) motorway crashes do not involve a spillage from a damaged vehicle and/or another driver desperately changing lanes as they are braking to avoid the pile ahead?
Most drivers aren't the bunny-boiling, child-eating monsters you think they are.


So would I, so long as the definition of too fast isn't left up to someone who has been conned by the speed kills arguments (but I wouldn’t have the car crushed, that’s just an awful waste of resource – unless you’re a car hater?)

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Yup.

Note your second scenario involves the driver travelling too fast for the conditions as they've had to take emergency action in an attempt to avoid the hazard, which means they were travelling at a speed that meant they couldn't stop in the distance they can see to be clear.

How do you know there's nobody/nothing in front of you? Do you get roads closed off for your journeys?

Driving at 100mph in that situation (say where 40 is the maximum you could go being able to stop in your lane in the distance you can see to be clear) should surely result in an instant ban and prosecution for dangerous driving?

Surely it's suicidal and homicidal at the same time?

There is a serious psychological dilemma when driving on a motorway in fog. All conventional wisdom tells you to slow down to the speed appropriate to the distance you can see - perhaps as slow as 15mph. But as you slow down you are aware of other cars passing you at a much higher speed and you realise that there is a very real danger of being rear ended if you do travel at the correct speed.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown