Safe Speed Forums

This thread is for discussion of ideas specifically aimed at improving our road safety culture. Many ideas - such as better driver training - might improve our safety culture incidentally. They would be off topic in this thread.

The first step in improving our road safety culture is to work towards defining the characteristics of a perfect safety culture.

Then we devise suitable psychological tests to apply to a representative sample of road users thereby inferring the state of our national safety culture and identify the shortfall areas.

Then we devise strategies designed to inform and develop social attitudes specifically to fill in the shortfall areas.

We measure again and repeat.

Read the basic Safe Speed view here:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/roadsafety.html

Safe Speed believes we must urgently re-establish a centre of driving excellence - this was the source of our superior safety culture in the first place - and must form the basis in the future too.

Safe Speed believes that feeding the safety culture is far more important than any other imaginable road safety strategy.

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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 would like to see some of this safety culture aimed in the direction of pedestrians and cyclists, they are road users just as much as drivers.
Pedestrians, for instance, don't seem to understand the concept of the correct use of using crossings, thats if they use them at all. The times I see a buggy being used as a stop signal scares the sh/t out of me.
Some cyclists pay no attention to the road law at all, and break the law with seeming impunity.
Thats three distinct groups of road users, but only one group is ever targetted.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

And don't we all know it!

Those of you who have met the wife on the PH site, and some of the others elsewhere , know we have been banging on about lack of Green Cross Code education and non-existant Cycling proficiency at every opportunity. The teacher in this family made posting on the Nonny section here and elsewhere asking for ideas which she could send to DfT. (She has since sent all reasonable suggestions from here, and from the children she teaches (and promotes love of cars (Definitely not a lentilist and regarded as MADam by her pupils !!! (To her great disbelief - these kids in Inner City school have to refer to female members of staff as "Madam" and it in Scouse twang ), and is waiting for reply).

What we have at the moment is an out-of tune hedgehog which only turns up on Channel 5 on Saturday morning! What we used to have was serious set of adverts courtesy of the Green Cross Code man and the old Tufty Club - which actually drove the message home good and hard!

And that is what we need today!

And while we're talking about teaching children good road sense as pedestrians/cyclists, what about giving them advice on safe driving before they ever get behind the wheel?
I saw something (possibly on local news) several years ago where a school was attempting to do this. It was brief, but the bit I remember was a line of kids on the playground each walking very close behind the one in front. Then the leader suddenly stopped and all the rest 'crashed' into the kid in front. The result of this pile-up simulation was that a couple of dozen kids learnt how hard it is to stop when you're too close - and not one had ever driven a car! I think the piece mentioned that they were covering other stuff too, but that was what stuck in my mind.
I think there's plenty of scope for teaching this sort of thing in schools. Most school kids will one day be drivers, so surely safe driving is a life skill. I'm not saying that they should be allowed to drop maths and do driving skills instead, but nor should it be completely neglected. Thinking back to when I was at school, swimming lessons were compulsory at my junior school and cycling proficiency was optional. Presumably some suit thought that the ability to retrieve a rubber brick from the bottom of a swimming pool while wearing pyjamas was more a more useful life skill . At secondary school there wasn't even a copy of the Highway Code in the library, even though sixth formers who had passed their tests were allowed to use the school car park. How bright was that? Even after my (now ex-)girlfriend had driven into a teacher's car in the car park they didn't take the hint .
Right turn out of memory lane and back on track. If we want to feed the safety culture, as SafeSpeed puts it, then get 'em young I say. I don't think being below driving age means teens can't be taught road manners, HC rules, how to spot hazards, and other basic stuff. Prep 'em with this and when they start taking real driving lessons they can concentrate on car control, positioning etc.
Probably pre-driving lessons would have to be optional after school classes, which of course risks a low take-up. I'd suggest the best way round this is a direct appeal to teenage egos, wallets and vanity by telling 'em that safest drivers have bigger brains, more money and no zits .

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein