Safe Speed Forums

First of all .. THANK Hi darren and

YOU for making this post as a newly qualified driver. By making this post - you are displaying all the signs of a potentially good driver as you are telling us you are prepared to learn
.. evaluate your skills.. develop and learn as a CONSTANT.


I hope I impart words of wisdom in the COAST message which the Mad Doc thoughtfully re-posted. (Mad Mogs is a medic. He's wedded to my daft foreign cousin (who's always been known to all as a lovable Wild Cat ) We all call him the Mad Lad or the Mad Doc within the family )

I think you have all the makings of an astute young driver because of your post. P plates can be a good idea. DO look at Pass Plus and then IAM later when you feel "ready"

You ask for advice on joining a motorway.

OK L1 is the nearside one. L2 the middle one and L3 the outside one. You have to use your system of car control when joining Slip roads (and there are some exceptions .. check out an early Mad Moggie post in March 2004! when he ranted about the Lancaster slip to M6! )
But by and large - the slips ae designed to help you merge and blend in with the traffic. Often they are elevated. Use the height to judge the flow of traffic and speeds Use your mirrors as constant. Try to match entry speed with that of the flowing traffice You need to plan to COAST. Be aware of all cars around you. If you are joining via the outer lane of he slip road - be aware that you may block his entry by doing so. USE ALL MIRRORS AND LOOK OVER SHOULDER! as constant when joining any fast road.


You must take in all information to ensure right speed/position/gear.

SIGNAL to inform the others you are joining in. LOOK OVER SHOULDER TO BLIND SPOT!

Accelerate to adjust to speeds of the others on the road.


OBSERVATION! Takes a new outlook.


LOOK ahead into the horizon.

Scan ahead and to the rear in mirrors. ALL of them. USE them often. You only need a casual glance.

Be aware of all SMIDSY in your car and potentially other cars (Paul Smith's advice and not mine .. SMIDSY = BLIND spot as in "Sorry Mate I Did Not See You!!") I will always credit Paul Smith for any word of wisdom as a mark of respct to a man who was on the right track - overall but like the lot of use - stuklkhad a learning curve .. but who sadly died before he could make that truly significant impact.



Monitor hat is hapening around you.

Monitor your speed/ And I will quote a paragraph now from Rad craft which SUPPORTS the late Paul Smith




Road craft would appear to be at odds with policy then It's still sound advice though and it helps us "feel the speed" perhaps?


My comment here ?


Apply your skills to date and evaluate and learn as constant

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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.

Thanks for the tips In Gear.

I haven't been avoiding dual carriages this week like I have been doing. And it feels a lot better, more confident in joining them.

Tonight though I went through a red light, so I'll probably get 3 points for that I thought they were for another lane and went straight through! I slowed right down on the approach to the lights to take everything in because it looked so complicated (to me) and just carried on straight through them. The car on the left was tooting his horn at me, if he hadn't of tooted then I wouldn't have realised. Thank God I didn't cause an accident. The lights are in Llansamlet, (Swansea) not sure if anyone knows them. I tried getting a google street view, but couldn't find anything.

I have a couple more questions.

When joining a dual carriageway or motorway why are there TWO slip roads going onto it?

(See if I can explain this properly) Say I'm going down a road at 50mph and I need to turn off, I can either change down from 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 and then turn.....OR I can go from 5th, clutch down, break and when I'm at the correct speed change to 2nd and then turn. But isn't this 'coasting?' which I am not supposed to do? My driving instructor told me I should do this and other people. I couldn't grasp it at first but can do it better now, but isn't it coasting? (DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?)

Why the hell are there traffic lights on roundabouts? I thought the whole point of roundabouts was to keep things flowing, then some have traffic lights? What's the point? I hate traffic lights!

Thanks for everyones patience and replies.

On some roundabouts you might at certain times of day get a constant flow from one or more of the roads leading to it, if this occurs it might block another entrance onto the roundabout so the traffic coming from the busy road needs to be broken up.

Well, that's the idea I think.

That's a question a lot of experienced drivers are now asking. There doesn't need to be traffic lights on roundabouts. When the lights fail the traffic flows better. It's just some misguided fool in the council offices who spends his(our )budget for the year and justifies his inflated salary making "road improvements " that don't work. It's also another way to introduce congestion and the inevitable congestion charge to towns

As for your driving instructor telling you to go from fifth to 2nd after declutching and coasting....I do wonder about modern driving instruction, it seems to be going the same way as road safety....downhill fast.

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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.

AIUI from my son - who is qualified in the last couple of years - modern teaching is that you should brake in 5th gear until you are going at the correct speed for the corner and then select the gear appropriate for that speed before starting the turn. No coasting involved but not a technique that I would ever use for a couple of reasons: I don't like to be in a position where I can't accelerate simply by flooring the pedal: you are distracted by the gear change at the moment when you should be concentrating on making the turn, checking that the road you are turning into is clear and so on.

I prefer to change down well before the corner and allow the engine do the bulk of the slowing down. But engine braking seems to be frowned upon in modern tuition.

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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

Could that be why so many younger drivers are having problems in icy weather? Depending on braking to slow you is not that advisable when on ice, especially in such a high gear. Besides which your brakes are going to have to work harder to slow you. I really can't see the logic is these modern methods at all.

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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.

Probably because the traffic flow overwhelms a roundabout and it's cheaper to put lights on a roundabout than either rip up he roundabout and just put a signalised junction in (though this does happen), or improve the roundabout to cope with the flow.

These are usually found at busier motorway junctions. By having two slip roads , which have joining points seperated by a hundred metres or more, this enables the joining of the motorway to be staggered so that instead of having one queue of traffic joining at one point , you can have two lines of traffic, joing at two different points and this allows the traffic joining on the right hand queue to integrate before the left hand queue and (hopefully) move into the middle lane to leave more space in the left lane for traffic to join from the left hand slip road. There is a slip road like this at junction 10A on the M6 which always seems to work well when I use it.

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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.

There's a road near me that they have totally redesigned (taken nearly two years). Before it had four entrances to a very large roundabout and it worked very well. Now it has four entrances, three of which are dual carriage ways but only 40MPH, leading to a traffic light controlled cross roads.

Within hours of switching on the traffic lights there was a serious accident and now there are delays, even at quiet times of the day, when there were none before.... an idea that's not working in my opinion.

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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.

Get a good condition car that you can afford to run. Keep it all working. If the car steams up , find the leak. Buy the best tyres you can afford. Respect your car. Change the oil on time. Clean it. Scrape or defrost the windows before driving in winter.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Practice...
In fact practice is probably a very important thing to do.
Talking of ice, the first time I skidded on ice was rather scary. My reaction to the wheels skidding was to press the brake harder which of course didn't help and was the opposite of what I should have done.


Only if you were stopped at the time or there was a working red light camera on them with sensors attached to the lane you were in.


The council does not believe you can be trusted to make your own decision. Also they don't like us to have freedom and traffic lights are a very good way of getting in our way and wasting our money.

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Andrew.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I don't mean to be awkward or anything but can someone explain to me what coasting is?

dcbwhaley


graball


Makes sense. I will stick to 5-4-3-2 then.



I get it now, makes sense also. Thanks for explaining it.



Do you mean the windows steaming up? They do pretty bad when it rains. I own a 1997 escort, and have been told the windows on the older ones steam up more than newer models. I have also been told to try ferry liquid on the windows because it helps, anyone heard of this?



I cannot be trusted to make my own decisions sometimes (just kidding)



Well I asked someone about these lights in particular, and they said you have to go into a left hand lane to go straight ahead. So I think I missed the lane completely if thats possible. But I'm not sure. Have to wait and see *says a little prayer*

Coasting is when the engine is not connected to the wheels. Either because the clutch is disengaged or because the gearbox is in neutral.



5th to 3rd or even 2nd is quite acceptable provide you do it quickly.

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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

Ok, thanks DC.

Speaking as a trained motor vehicle technician it strikes me that if you got into the habit on changing down from fifth to second or even third you would significantly reduce the life of the syncro clutch on the gear you were changing down into. Thus leading for the need of premature replacement gearbox, typical IAM bullshit sponsored by the automotive manufacturers, drive a wagon like that and you would loose control pretty smart. Look what happened with a police trained driver relatively new in a wagon, killed several people at Sowerby Bridge back in the 1990s.

Another reason not to do it then. Thanks brossen.

Found this on another site:
http://www.2pass.co.uk/gears.htm



Better fuel economy?

Less wear and tear?

Less fatigue?

More steering control in emergencies?

Bullshit?

This is now standard advice for the DSA test as well as being recommended by IAM and RoADA. Have we seen a huge wave of premature clutch replacements? I don't think so.

If you know that in a particular situation (for example negotiating a bend) you will require third gear, what on earth is the point of a short intermediate engagement of fourth? In practice, isn't that likely to result in more gearbox wear?


Lorry driving differs in many respects from car driving.


IIRC that was caused by faulty brakes and was nothing to do with gears.

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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

Maybe I should buy an automatic