Safe Speed Forums

Not clever to be doing that kind of speed on what is obviously such an unforgiving road (wide enough for only 1 vehicle and crests restricting vision), as well as remaining transfixed on his speed/speedo.

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

A sad tragedy all round.

Whether a consequence of restrictive and over enforcement leading to excessive and reckless disregard for others is a question for psychologists and perhaps some highly trained rad safety engineers.

I cannot see how they can report :
How can they know why he didn't act ? Shock and disbelief might be one, and elder drivers act less quickly - not that this is to say in any way that a 'reaction' might have saved lives. They cannot 'know' what he did or did not see - unless I have mis-understood the story.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I am curious too that he is calling out the 142kph after the braking ? Has that been doctored or is that the delayed shock of seeing the oncoming car ?
I had not at first appreciated that he had used a hand held (I assume) mobile to film this too so one had was only partially in use !
His inexperience must have led him to assume that he was safe, I wonder if the brow of the hill was such that he lost control from lift off oversteer or was it due to sudden braking ? i.e. could he have altered the steering and avoided the oncoming car, likely to his own cost but that than what resulted. 87mph is common on the motorways and from our Countries stats shows it to be a safe environment for it.
A shame that if this is what he sought that facilities (race track or other suitable facility) were not available in a safe environment. To even attempt this speed over the brow - even if it 'opened up late' was dangerous and irresponsible. I can only assume that the brow was the incident location on what appears to be a country back road.
I'd like to know if he will be encouraged to fully understand all the decisions that he took and all the stages that should have alerted him to the dangers and why he failed at those steps to appreciate the lack of forethought and dangers present.
If 'just' young, reckless, fearless and inexperienced, at what stage can that be harnessed into a safer manner without destroying the enthusiasm and making a driver paranoid than respectful.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

It looks as though the collision was just over this brow...

No time to react - as the offending vehicle appeared over the brow just in front of them.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Other local reports suggest that this brat was"known to Police". Unfortunately in this world there are some people who do the most stupid things. It is an open question as to whether this sort of thing should be treated as a traffic offence or a version of mental illness.

Not only is that road pretty narrow but in my experience they tend to be rough - at that speed the car would have been 'floating' rather than in contact with the road.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

I think you may be a bit harsh calling it a "mental illness" if I may say so MFL. Or if it is then it's something which afflicts most of us at that age

Dare I say this is yet another case of what I call 'the madness of youth'. When I was 18 I did stupid things which, as honest as I like to be here, I would be ashamed to mention.

You say he was known to the police, so maybe he's not quite like I ever was. But I'm still fairly sure he wouldn't have gone out with the intention of hurting someone, least of all taking someone's life - unless you know more?

He's just 18, an adult in the eyes of the law and able to vote but still just a kid really. I have T shirts older than him! (Not being fictitious).

It sounds as though his youth, inexperience and naivety was reflected in what looks to me as a lenient sentence for the crime. Unless you start a new race of mankind with reduced testosterone these things are always going to happen unfortunately.

A terrible and needless tragedy and one he will have to live with for the rest of his life, but my heart goes out to dear Mr Page.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

It occurs to me that in the last few seconds before the impact the driver was paying more attention to his speedo than on looking where he was going.

I wonder if the outcome might have been diferent if he had been devoting all his attention on the road ahead? (Despite his excessive speed for the conditions)

The point being that, what can provide a lethal distraction at high speed when somebody is driving like a tit can ALSO be a lethal distraction under more normal circumstances!

Ho Humm

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Perhaps a bit harsh but even in my wildest youth I could not envisage doing anything like this. If you look at the road it has patches (lower right) and is narrow and rough - that is rough by our standards! It also has tracks or drives entering and a blind crest not too far away. The benefit of a "mental illness" approach is that the boy would be under psychiatric observation and treatment with the object of attitudinal change. Chucking someone like this in jail and suspending his licence when he was unlicenced is unlikely to have a beneficial effect on his behaviour.

We do have cases where people get suspended and then continue to drive - badly - and get picked up for being unlicenced and our stupid system will have them accumulating 30 year licence suspensions. It does no good whatsoever and it would be far better to treat it as a mental condition and try to bring them back into the mainstream.

Similarly I am not convinced that suspending a licence for an accumulation of offences is beneficial - it might be better to require them to re-pass their test (or a more stringent version) with a failure to pass in,say, 6 months meaning back to L-plates. I do not believe that numerical offences should carry points; if the speed and circumstances were sufficiently bad then a different charge/offence could apply which would carry points.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

I know where you’re coming from MFL and I’m not sure what to think. It has been mentioned on here in the past that finding your limits is good or helpful because only then do you have complete confidence in what you are doing at lower speeds and cornering etc. (I think that was the conclusion).

It’s what has given me the confidence and skill in my driving/riding even though I just tend plod along these days. For people who haven’t found their limits they can feel like they’re driving on eggshells instead of being in their comfort zone. (Been a passenger with a few of them).

I mention this because for anyone who has ever pushed their motorbike or car too much and drifted on the wrong side of road or spun out at an island you could surely argue ‘there but for the grace of god go I'.

I confess to having done that once or twice, when I was young and stupid, but got away with it because of sheer luck and the fact there was always much less traffic on the roads back then in the 70s. I don’t think I would be nearly so lucky today. Obviously I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that now, but when you are 18 you simply don’t think like a responsible adult. (Only generalising).

So what I’m not sure of is where ‘youthful exuberance’ meets or crosses over into mental illness? It does sound like that young guy had an ‘attitude’ anyway, so I’m not trying to defend him, but it’s an interesting area for me. Even today I like to pull the occasional wheelie for which I could get hung, drawn and quartered by the law but does that make me mad or mentally ill?

BTW that does sound like a ridiculous situation you mention, re 30 year suspended licence What the hec is that about!

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Its called dumb bureaucracy - our traffic authorities specialise in it. This lunatic accumulation of suspensions gives no hope of rehabilitation.

We have all done the youthful exuberance bit - even we in our mid sixties give it a twitch now and again. I do not recall doing anything remotely as stupid as this - perhaps I had a good grounding in self preservation. Doing a wheelie in a quiet place is different from doing one through a crowded shopping street but both will have the same approbrium. 10 mph over on a motorway is nothing compared with 10 mph over past busy shops yet they have the same penalties.

Perhaps I was fortunate growing up where there were a lot of abandoned WW11 airfields and local roads were very quiet in the 60's (and still are quiet) so a little experimentation was done in safe places. The self preservation instinct was well re-inforced in me so it was a gradual approach to the limits so I never had spins but did still get some "interesting" angles to the intended direction of travel.

I do think that we need a different approach to dealing with motoring offenders. Those who go out to hurt people (or property as property is merely a substitute for people) clearly have a psychotic problem; youths such as this one who do something that any normal person can see is so far beyond their control as to be extremely dangerous also have a mental problem which may be curable (or containable).

A licence suspension for excess points does not teach anything. It would, in my not so humble opinion, be far better to impose a limited time to pass an enhanced test or, if the miscreant fails, back to L-Plates. That way inherent psychological traits could be picked up and referred for treatment although some things are untreatable - I am not aware of any success in dealing with Asperger's syndrome.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.