Safe Speed Forums

If you are going to allow those who want to drive faster to do so, e.g. raise the limit to 80 on motorways, shouldn't there be a minimum speed limit of say, 60 mph, to reduce the risk from speed differentials. It is not good enough IMO to just ban pedal cycles and tractors.
I found that driving on French autoroutes with the engine in "safe mode" after a sensor failure in the turbocharger (and therefore doing HGV speeds) was really unnerving in places, particularly on long inclines of 15% on two-lane autoroutes, where the speed differential was 40-50 mph.

That's a fair question, but I don't have answers at my fingertips and I cannot possibly deal with it today. Publishing a reasoned demolishion of one of their documents isn't a task I could undertake lightly, but it is a task that I look forward to undertaking.

I read a lot of research and IIHS research is amongst the most twisted. It isn't much used in the UK and I haven't had much need to attack it.

I've added it to my 'to do' list but don't expect an answer quickly. Sorry.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It comes down to event probability, which we were discussing.
If all your journeys were made by plane rather than car, then I imagine your probability of being involved in an 'event' would be a lot higher.



Nothing to do with reaction time, more the fact that turning radii etc (ie manoeuvreability) are proportional to the square of speed - and the (lateral) spacing of vehicles should reflect this.
Incidentally, the minimum lateral separation between aircraft is a lot less than 8km in the vicinity of airports (I don't have the figures) but what I do know is that the minimum vertical spacing is 1000 feet.
On a ratio of the square of speed, this would give motorway lanes 10 feet wide for the same degree of safety.

Cheers
Peter

You could look at it that way - I guess I can't prove that you are camouflaging car-ism with safety talk. You would always admit it, if it is true, I suppose? It is odd that people who want to have the 'right' to ignore the law can threaten critics with the law!

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I stole this .sig

I'd be happy to admit it if it were true. It isn't true. I don't need to falsify anything to win this argument - the facts speak for themselves and every new bit of data or science is confirming our position.



Not at all. I'm a great believer in fair play, so I fully support the law when it's fair and beneficial and fight it when it isn't.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

That is unfortunately very true. However, a dispassionate look at the figures will tell you that the likelihood of them being "taken" by a sober or undrugged motorist travelling in excess of the posted limit is vanishingly small. It is far more likely that they'll be in collision with some poor sod who's plodding along, legally minding his own business, and is devastated to have run over a child who dashed into the road in front of him. It may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but motorists are not normally homicidal maniacs who swerve off the road in pusuit of pedestrians. Pedestrians are killed and injured on the roads, very rarely on footpaths.

So... You want to keep your kids - teach them how to cross the road safely! Don't delegate your responsibility to an amorphous "them" that somehow becomes responsible for your kids once they're out of your sight. A speed limit per se does not posess sense or responsibility - those qualities are down to us... All of us - pedestrians included.

It doesn't come as a surprise to me that motorists are not normally homicidal maniacs. I would hazard a guess that almost zero deaths are caused by people who have gone out for a bit of deliberate roadkill - they happen to people like me you and me as a result of accidents

I'm not sure that we disagree on much except to say, my belief is that car drivers of today are far too cacooned from their surroundings to be fully aware of pedestrians. Anecdotally, I'm told that the average child doesn't fully develop their recognition of speed with approaching objects until the age of 12. This means that the child that steps off the curb to cross the road believes that it is safe to do so based on their cognitive abilities - not because their "uneducated".

The alternative is having zebra and pedestrian crossings at every road junction. Sweden, did this 4 years ago, with zebra crossings as close as 10m to each other. Whilst the initial results were poor (drivers weren't used to giving way to pedestrians), they have improved considerably and have in fact been augmented by a 30km/h limit in Stockholm - yes 30 km/h that's 18 mph to you and me.

These are the road conditions you're going to have to contend with if you're really serious about road safety - sign here

You’re doing good on at least one level – by making people think about they way they drive. But I’m not into barratry and litigation, SafeSpeed! My message is much more simple - motorists have it in their own power to stop all this if they want – by just calming down.

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I stole this .sig

Therein lies the nub! Motorists are "calming down", or at least, to be more precise they are "being calmed down", but it isn't working!

Suffice it to say that the very regrettable and all but unprecedented rise in fatailities last year was accounted for entirely by the rise in fatalities in the regions employing "safety cameras".

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

So how is having to drive with one eye permanently on the speedometer going to improve the situation?



I find that very difficult to believe.. Have you watched kids play sport? Especially ballgames?? The hand-to-eye coordination displayed by most kids not much more than a year-or-two past the toddler stage demonstrates that they have a very sharp appreciation of velocity. They don't, however, have an inate sense of self-preservation and common sense.

As to Sweden.. I used to live there... The Swedes are PC to an almost lunatic degree. Their walking-pace speed limits merely add to the general frustrations of life there... And it's almost impossible - and bloody expensive - to get a decent drink anywhere. No wonder they have the highest suicide rate on the planet.

But it's the older kids who die in greater numbers. See:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 031389.pdf



Rubbish. It hasn't worked in Sweden, and it won't work anywhere except perhaps in certain special zones. Care and responsibility by road users counts for a great deal - speed limits count for very little, and can be distracting.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I've sussed her! Bright star is b'erks missus!

This is where you're going wrong. You've accepted the simplistic proposition that "lower speed equals greater reaction time" peddled by the 'speed kills' brigade without analysing it.

It's simply not that simple. In fact it's SPACE that is far more important in determining available reaction time (I'd prefer to call it 'time to react' to avoid confusion with physical reaction time) not speed (or lack of it).

Take this example -

(i) a car on lane 1 of a motorway driving at 60mph with a 1 second gap to the car in front. The 1 second gap is his 'time to react' or safety margin.

(ii) a car on lane 3 of a motorway driving at 80mph with a 2 second gap to the car in front. The 2 seconds gap is his 'time to react' or safety margin.

Something unexpected happens ahead and the following cars have to take the best avoiding action they can. Given a standard physical reaction time of 0.75 seconds, lane 1 driver uses up 75% of his safety margin and has only 0.25s left to brake and/or steer. As braking is the primary response, it all goes on braking and he loses ~5mph in the available 0.25s so reduces speed to ~55mph.

Meanwhile, lane 3 car uses up only 38% of his safety margin as physical reaction time and still has 1.25 seconds to brake and/or steer. He can lose ~25mph in the available 1.25s so also reduces speed to 55mph. However, crucially, the additional 1.0 seconds safety margin allows him to steer as well.

You cannot deny that lane 3 driver was driving much more safely than lane 1 driver, even though he was travelling 33% faster.

We (meaning supporters of safe speed and SafeSpeed) do not deny that speed is important. But it's not the most important component of safe driving. Most importantly, 'time to react' is delivered by "space" - and the preceding elements of COAST.

Concentration, Observation and Anticipation will lead to Space which gives Time to react.

Right, that's it. Close down the site, disband the partnerships.

Basingwerk has spoken - he has the answer.

Oversimplified rubbish. Sometimes when I am calm I close my eyes....

Yes, it has very little to do with speed.
In 2003 74 child pedestrians were killed, out of 12,544+ who were actually hit by cars. That's around 0.5%. Now if we're to believe that 50% of pedestrians hit at 30mph die, then virtually all of them were hit at speeds a very long way below 30mph.



Quite. I wasn't allowed anywhere near a road unsupervised until I was about 11 years old - and then my mother still walked me to the bus stop every morning.
Nowdays you see little tearaways quite deliberately running into the path of cars, daring them to run them down. It's surprising that more of them aren't run down.

Cheers
Peter

Yep. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

• TRL says injury crashes are underreported by between 2 and 3 fold. Deaths aren't underreported.
• There are at least 5 times as many again near misses. Nothing in the preconditions distinguishes these near misses from the actual crashes.
• A significant but unknown proportion of the deaths are caused by extreme dangerous behaviour (unlicenced drivers, underage drivers, banned drivers, stolen vehicles and so on)
• the DfT says up to 80% of cars are exceeding the 30mph speed limit in free flowing conditions.

The average impact speed of an incident involving a child pedestrian is close to zero mph. Road safety entirely depends on the behaviours that mitigated these incidents. Let's build on these known strengths.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There's an often-overlooked reason for good speed differentials on motorways - and that's to aid traffic flow and increase safety by doing so.

A commonplace situation on motorways is that you get a 'plug' of closely-spaced traffic going at around the speed limit for about a mile or so.
This comes about for various reasons - the patterns of traffic entering and exiting, the presence of HGVs etc.
Ahead of this 'plug' of traffic the road is relatively devoid of traffic for up to another few miles.
If that plug of traffic was spread out over two miles rather than one, the separation would be much greater, the flow would be smoother, safety would be increased and everyone would be happy.
But how does the plug of traffic spread out over that extra mile? Obviously someone has to speed up (or slow down) to make that happen. So now if the front markers speed up by two mph to 72mph, there's a 2mph speed differential front-to-back. At that rate, it would take the traffic a full half-hour to spread out over that extra mile (same effect if the back of the plug slows down by 2mph) And in that half-hour they would have covered a whole 35 miles.
But if the speed differential was 20mph (the front markers sped up to 90mph) then it will only take three minutes for the spread out to complete, and this would happen over only 3.5 miles.
I know this is a simple example, but it illustrates the point. On every motorway journey there are many opportunities to make things better by making use of roadspace which is otherwise wasted.
But this makes lane discipline important as well. If you're passing someone, get it over with in good time. If you're not passing someone, move over. There's absolutely no good reason to be a rolling roadblock.

Cheers
Peter

I’d rather not be treated with reverence, If I’m treated with respect then that may be because of the way I or my colleagues have applied the law to an individual or group, either past or present.

But I’d imagine not many Bib would be delighted at the thought of being ‘trained to believe’. Smacks a bit of brainwashing which is not how things are.

At least that is what I’ve been trained to say!




Contrary to what you say, driving at 100 mph can be ‘safe’. The real issue is the manner of driving at 100mph or whatever speed you choose.

You really have to look at the KSI stats closely. You will then find that, yes, many of them involve excess speed, almost all involve inappropriate speed for the situation and level of concentration.
But the vast majority of the KSIs involving speed also involve the bravado of youth or sport, drink or drugs, criminality, aggression. These groups are responsible for a huge percentage of our KSIs, and their speeding behaviour is either out of the way or out of the control of speed cameras.



Yep, it’s a horrible statistic, and one which we are working very hard with training and pursuit tactics to try to reduce.

Please remember the nature of the driving in these circumstances, and the decision making which must be considered in each individual pursuit, the nature of the offence, is the driver known, is the driver a juvenile, is his driving dangerous, road conditions weather conditions, our own level of training, where is the pursuit, where is it heading, are vulnerable road users going to be placed at risk, where are my colleagues, what plan can I adopt given all of these circumstances, should I abandon the pursuit, should I use tactical contact to end the pursuit. Along with this we are often single crewed relaying these messages and plans back to comms, while trying to provide as safe as possible a passage for the surrounding road users, and at the same time attempting to stick with a fairly slippery customer ‘til air support turns up.

We do not have as many pursuits in Cumbria as we used to, but I have been involved in about 15 incidents which have been recorded as PVA (Police Vehicle Accidents) 5 involved serious injury, three to the subjects, two to police officers. No innocent bystanders were injured. All except one were pursuits.

I was OIC for a head on fatal RTC in Bowness on Windermere which commenced as a fail to stop for police. Unfortunately the innocent motorist was killed.

In these 16 or so incidents, a police vehicle was damaged on only 3 occasions.

In all of these cases there were no investigative questions to be asked of the police drivers.

I really think you have to compare like with like.



There really is a lot you can do to prevent accidents. Buy roadcraft and read and apply it to your driving. It primarily promotes the three major motoring skills of observation anticipation and planning, which for clarity can be expressed as ‘COAST’ using

• C - Concentration and Courtesy,
• O - Observation and
• A - Anticipation to provide
• S - Space, therefore the
• T - Time to react.

Safety and smoothness are emphasised and prioritised before giving any thought to speed. But speed in a progressive driving situation is a product of the consideration given to all these factors and the actual and anticipated hazard density. When (police) driving training, speed in NSL situations does not stop at the limit, it continues until the speed is appropriate for the hazard frequency and type. This is not adding risk, it is driving to the appropriate speed for the conditions and the driver ability.





No-one I know is happy about the current number of deaths on the road, although I recall a Govt organisation, can’t remember which one which has all but thrown the towel in saying that we may already have reached the lowest level of road fatalities!! WTF!


I think that we need to look closely at statistics rather than simply spout them.

The vast majority of fatalities in this country are from a minority of road users

These groups are,

• - Drink/drug drivers
• - Disqualified and uninsured drivers
• - Criminal drivers
• - Weekend bikers
• - Boy Racers
• - Aggressive drivers
• - Pressurised commercial drivers
• - Tired drivers
• - Elderly drivers

There is absolutely no doubt that speed cameras or the threat of speed enforcement would have little or no effect on the manner of driving of these user groups at the point when a fatality is about to occur. Indeed it could be strongly argued that some of the above groups could have their risk exacerbated by the threat or presence of speed cameras.

The astounding thing is that this minority of drivers - possibly accounting for less than 10% of our driver mileage - cause probably 75% to 80% of our fatalities! Possibly even more than that!

Many of the remaining ~20% are down to factors like drunken pedestrians staggering into the road, very poor weather conditions etc etc.

The 91mph speeder I stopped who I believe was what sparked this discussion was no extra fatality risk. Believe me, these are not the motorists who are our KSI stats. The groups listed above are. Our overemphasis on speed enforcement and the consequent reduction in trafpol numbers is giving these risk groups more opportunity to add to the stats.

I did say in the thread that the speeder was close to my prosecution threshold, and had his explanation and his evidenced driving not satisfied me he’d have been +3 points.

To add some reality to the motorway situation in Cumbria.

Last year 2004 we had 6 fatal RTCs on the M6/A74 in Cumbria

• Two involved HGVs – 3 fatalities
• One involved a car leaving the motorway and colliding with an object off the motorway – probably sleep related.
• Three were pedestrian fatalities, all drunk, trying to cross the motorway. (All seperate incidents)

We really have to look closer at what is causing the fatalities, before we simply bedevil speed.



It really is a dangerous soundbite. It puts all the emphasis on speed and none on the REAL CAUSES of collisions. Speed generally contributes to a collision (It must or there would be no collision), but other factors cause the loss of control or concentration or awareness, and they are not getting the proper government resources spent on dealing with them.


SNAP, and we must do what we can to try to mitigate that risk, but does it mean our children should not walk to school, or go out on a bike? I don’t think so, although the obvious risks should be obviated as much as possible.



If you step outside the box a little, and allow yourself not too be too entrenched in the pure physics. There is a lot more to the anatomy of a collision, and it really needs to be properly understood.

I'm still only learning myself.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Ian, thank you for taking the time to share your experiences with us.

The M6/A74 details are certainly an eye-opener...

The HGV's, presumably, were speed-limited, so could not exceed "the speed limit"?

The car which left the carriageway - doubt the outcome would have been any different whether the vehicle speed was 70 mph or 79 mph...

3 pedestrians killed - they were acting illegally. Trespass on the railway is a criminal offence; we wouldnt blame a train driver for killing a pedestrian, so why should vehicle drivers be harassed?

Challenge to JJ (or is it Callaghan today?) - in light of IanH's comments, please provide CSCP's response to why YOU choose to prosecute drivers travelling at 79 mph on the M6, when other law enforcement agencies do not.

Marvellous post Ian. Thanks so much for taking the (considerable) trouble.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety