Safe Speed Forums

There is a big difference between bad driving and mere technical infringements (they're independent).

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

Before the pile-up, these 259 drivers were merely guilty of "technical infringements".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8159290.stm

After the pile-up, they were guilty of "bad driving". Funny, that, because they were driving as
they always did. That means they must be frequently driving badly, but not getting caught out.

The weirdest part of the report is that they blamed the rain, as well as the speeding! Yeah,
like it's the rain's fault!!! Look, just ask the speedy cats to do us all a favour and slow down.

Who knows!
Perhaps no one was guilty of technical infringements. All we know is that it is very likely that some of those 259 were guilty of Bad driving!


Bad driving? Not guilty of "technical infringements"?
Anyway, that's a bit of an assumption on your part; if that were the case then such crashes would have to be very, very frequent.

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

On the other hand, theft always leads to deprivation of property, whereas bad driving (even if you can define it objectively) almost always does not kill people. How many road deaths are there each day? How many individual instances of bad driving?

And theft in many cases has negative psychological consequences, so cannot be said to be harmless to health.

_________________
"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

No-one was too close, no-one was too fast, no-one changed lane inappropriately, all of them performed shoulder checks all the time etc. etc.? Maybe it was the rain's fault after all, eh!

Look, there are two ways to detect bad driving. One is to measure it (via infringements), and the other is to measure the outcomes. Measuring the outcomes is accurate, but the drivers already are in the casualty ward by then! And it provides no data at all on close shaves. Measuring bad driving via infringements may be less accurate, but it provides indications prior to a smash. It operates before you wind up dead, which is a powerful advantage!



Yes, including going too fast. That's why I advise drivers to chill.



Accidents are very, very, very frequent - and very, very, very, very disruptive!

Yet it kills often enough to add up to 3000 deaths, and 30,000 casualties. That's a fair few, PeterE.



Is an individual instance of bad driving “pretty safe”? Is an individual instance of bad driving dangerous only if it has a dire outcome?

I have to agree with Abercrombie to some degree on this. Bad driving does lead to road deaths and the "bad drivers" who do not find themselves involved in accidents are mearly the lucky ones. We all have "bad" days wher we forget to use our mirrors or indicators occasionally etc but persistantly bad drivers are to be seen all the time. The only difference between a "bad" driver who doesn't indicate on motorways and pulls into the path of others when he shouldn't, is usually the alertness of other drivers around them, that notice the bad driver's mistakes and compensate for them, unfortunately when the "bad" driver's luck runs out is usually when they stray into the path of another "bad" or unalert driver. It only takes two bad drivers to meet to cause mayhem.

_________________
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.

Who said that was the case Why do you insist on making silly strawmans?
Like I said, I don't doubt there were instances of bad driving (including but not limited to: inappropriate lane changes, too fast for conditions, tailgating etc), indeed I believe I said it is very likely that some of those 259 were guilty of Bad driving!


False dichotomy.
Another method, perhaps the most effective of all, is to watch for, and hence deter, bad driving not via infringements (such as the inappropriate lane changes, too fast for conditions, tailgating etc). Cameras cannot do that, they can only detect technical infringements regardless of circumstance.


That may be, but that only need apply to those driving badly. Everyone else who isn't driving badly, isn't affected and don't need to go slower or 'chill'.


They are indeed ... but on a national scale. My comment was regarding a local/individual level.
Only 0.1% of UK drivers are casualties each year; that's not what anyone could define as frequent when they're "driving as they always did".

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

So are you saying bad driving is a bad thing and theft isn't, or is it just a matter of degree?

By that rationale, if someone breaks in to your kitchen and steals your kettle they shouldn't be punished, but if you drop your kettle - through being clumsy - and scald the dog, you should.

Personally, I believe you should be punished for deliberately doing bad things (don't steal kettles!)and helped not to do bad things inadvertently (here's how to hold a kettle!). I don't see the point in punishing error.

I wonder what you get if you took the numbers of killed or seriously injured caused by inconsiderate/bad/lax driving and compared it to the numbers of killed or seriously injured caused by burglars and muggers.

And then ask yourself why we put so much police resource into the latter and very little into the former.

Because there are important concomitant advantages to allowing people to drive, however badly, which can be set against the disadvantages of the accidents that they cause. There is no such advantage to justify theft.

_________________
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

In my experience the police put remarkably little effort into investigating theft and burglary either. In 2005 I had two examples of this within a month, neither of which they could be bothered to even attend.

_________________
"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

IMO, it was never about the relative quantity of resource expended, rather it is the way it is used (quality).

Then there is the issue of exposure. Taking myself as an (N=1) example, I use the roads a shed load more than I've been burgled; that doesn't mean individual theft cases should not be investigated.

By your rational, we all should be devoting our lives to curing cancer.

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

Presumably by this comment on planet Weepej buglary and mugging are a warm and fluffy crime where nobody gets hurt and the perpetrators don't attempt to escape the law by driving in a ridiculously dangerous manner.

Burglary and mugging especially will almost always end up with a victim being injured, but it sounds like you condone this as long as no speed limits are broken?

On another thread, you were arguing for comprehensive insurance, in case something "unexpected" happens. Now you are saying that you're safe if you aren't driving badly. Like those 259, you can't save yourself from being suddenly barged. It's the way it is. So chill.



Let's translate that into something people can understand. Your figures roughly imply that, each time you see a line of
ten cars, one of the people in them will wind up in hospital or the grave due a crash. When are you going to start
arguing your own case, instead of mine?

Please tell us how we would deal with bad driving, without reference to regulations/infringements?

In practical terms, please. What would be the charges, what would be the evidence? Who would decide? And on what grounds? And what would be the punishment? How would it be classified? How would the various severities be expressed? Would there be the right of appeal? In short, how do you measure "Bad Driving" in the absence of regulations?

I'm saying that, at it's worst, bad driving has worse consequences (death) than theft would have.



That's an interesting idea. We said that P propto S/C (where P=punishment, S=severity of offense and C=chance of being caught). Now there is an extra term
(let's call it M for malice factor). The expression now becomes P propto (S/C) * M



Yeah - next time I rob a bank, I'll just say I was actually there to clean the windows, but I made a couple of mistakes!

If you are going to translate it into figure people can understand, please don't get the maths wrong. 10% would be 1 in 10. 0.1% is 1 in 1,000. This figure is obviously not correct, because of course it was an estimate, consider that there are 30+m registered cars, but the KSI stats next to this figure are monumentally small.

So we'll run with 0.1%, that means that in a line of 1,000 cars there may be an incident.

It's probably burglary's redistributive properties that appeal to him.
Mind you, on planet weepej, "so much" resource goes into catching burglars and "very little" goes into catching motorists... Even if this was true, I'd rather the police tried to deter people from deliberately committing crimes rather than deterring people from having accidents they don't intend to have anyway.
As I've said before, there's a lot more potent reasons why people don't deliberately crash in to other cars than fear of punishment; it's not like it's advantageous with fear of punishment set aside...

That's irrelevant sophistry on your part.
You were arguing the toss about the difference of behaviour fully comp brings against TPFT, not me.
Of course you're never safe if you're in close proximity of someone driving badly, but if you're not driving badly then you're driving safely - yes? Wasn't this the point? If you're already driving safely then why adjust further?


People had already understood it, so why translate it further?
Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant over lifetimes. Let's correct the perspective and apply the original context.
Half of a person in a group of 10 (including pedestrians, passengers and good drivers, not just bad drivers) will be a "casualty" in their lifetime, now that doesn't nearly qualify the statement of "very frequent crashes" "because they were driving as they always did."


Well, we can always start with the behaviours we have already discussed within this thread (!), you know the things that trafpol were already looking out for, unless you believe trafpol don't know how to detect bad driving?

.

That's the problem with many people these days. They don't want to apply common sense, instead they need exacting and comprehensive rules with precise definitions to govern how they behave without their need to think about it (nannied if you will). They aren't capable of acting within the spirit of the law; they need to know the letter of the law to function (and inevitably, that's what they want enforced). Is it any wonder why we have so many rules and regulations!

People who cannot act safely or considerately without needing full, comprehensive and exacting rules and boundaries for all actions in all circumstances, are nothing short of psychotic.

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