Safe Speed Forums

Agreed! Most car drivers leave their brains at home when they get behind the wheel. Its nothing to do with 'not having riden a bike and therefore not understanding' its down to lack of thinking.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I don't actually think that's right. Mostly driving is pretty incident free, with many drivers never being crash-involved in an entire lifetime.

The problem is one of perception - if even 10% of drivers have 'left their brains at home' there's an immediate perception that 'everyone is out to get you' simply because we encounter a huge number of other vehicles. Incident-free encounters are far from memorable, while the one in a thousand problematic encounters is hugely memorable.

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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 can see your point Paul, but I see that kind of behaviour every day, whether I'm on the bike or in the car. I don't know whether its a particular problem around here (find that hard to belive), but the majority of the drivers I see act like sheep. If there's a traffic jam they blindly drive up to the back of it regardless of any junctions / roundabouts that they may be blocking. I'd be more likely to say that its 10% who DON'T leave their brains behind.

Its not just about being crash-free - there are plenty of drivers who are completely incompetent but by some stroke of luck never actually hit anything. I'm sure that you'll agree that there's more to being a crap driver than simply having lots of crashes.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

The difference in perspectives is interesting. I can see your point too Sixy.

Yes, most (90%+) drivers take a passive or reactive approach. They do drive like sheep.

But the vast majority 'manage OK' and don't cause danger to others with a significant frequency.

It's not the passive types that (regularly) threaten your life - it's the reckless and the serious incompetents - the worst 10%.

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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'll have to disagree with that. Watching someone pull just ahead of you, whip on their indicator, slow down and turn across your path would soon change your mind too. That is nothing more than sheer stupidity.

Also interesting. But, I put it to you, that as long as they are truly passive they are predictable and easily avoided.

I'm not trying to diminish the degree of stupidity here, but I am trying to focus on the biggest threats - and by definition they are the ones that are hard to predict or avoid.

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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

well you develop a sort of 6th sense about these things and most of them go to the trouble of indicating which helps. It's the ones that don't that you really have to worry about.

I must say this is very interesting, and we might be tending to break new ground.

Sixy's observation that 'most leave their brains at home' has to reconciled with the fact that the crash risk affecting a median crash risk driver is really very low (with the vast bulk of crashes involving the worst 20% (estimate 80% of crashes are caused by 20% of drivers.))

That leaves us with plenty of passive 'brains left at home' drivers who are not crash involved or even risky. Then you (Johnsher) suggested that they carve you up regularly.

So there's a problem here that must be explained. How is it that vast numbers of passive drivers stay out of trouble? And I've only got one answer:

They must be easy to avoid

Can anyone think of any other explanation?

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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

luck plays a part in it. If you happen to be in the wrong place then you're going to get nailed and become a statistic. I've been hit by 2 of these left turners - the ones that didn't bother indicating. There's only so much you can do to anticipate someone in a queue of traffic suddenly turning left/right. I nearly missed the first one but her bumper just clipped my back wheel. The second one, again I'd almost stopped but still bounced off the back passenger door. A fraction of a second would have meant no contact and neither of them would have known anything about it. An example I had one woman turn right in front of me without looking. I was literally inches away from going over her bonnet. I chased after her and at the ineventiable jam up the road enquired why she'd done that. It was complete surprise - she had absolutely no idea whatsoever that I was there.

Nope. Luck won't do. We were looking at a national picture and all cases of luck are played out daily in populations that large.

If there appears to be a surplus of 'good luck' then that simply means that we've found a way in which the system is 'error tolerant'.

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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 take your comment about 90% of drivers being 'passive OR reactive' a stage further Paul. It may be the case that they are 'passive reactionary' whereby they are passive until something happens that affects them, at which point they react automatically. This would explain the lack of accidents in this group. (Sorry if that's restating what you were trying to say earlier BTW.)

HOWEVER when an event or situation occurs that the 'passive reactive' has either never or rarely experienced, the automatic reaction to that situation will not have been formed. It is at this point, where drivers are forced to think outside of the box, we see problems.

Its been theorised here before that a fair proportion of m/c SMIDSY incidents occur because car drivers aren't 'tuned in' to look for small vehicles like bikes, so even though the driver may be looking in the direction of the bike they may still fail to see it. So in the 'unfamiliar' situation of a bike filtering between two lanes of traffic, the passive reactive will not have tuned him/herself to check for the presence of a bike. Therefore with unfortunate timing the biker may well fall foul of this kind of driver because the 'reaction' has not been triggered.

Sorry if that's a bit waffly...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Most people that drive cars are not professional drivers and do so out of nessecity. You cannot expect the average car driver that has only ever driven a car ( and may only drive his/her car) to know or understand how other vehicles behave in traffic.

I am quite fortunate in that I have driven a fairly wide selection of machines from sit on lawn mowers to the biggest agricultural machines, with cars, pickups, suvs, bikes and artics thrown in. Most people haven't.

I regularly read in various motorcycle publication about "stupid car drivers" and how badly done to bike riders are. well boo hoo. It's just this "them and us" mindset if you ask me. Bike riders like to be thought as as bad ass renagades that are fighting the system that is fighting them.

Three of the most catastrophicaly stupid pieces of road use that I have seen have been performed by (bike) bike riders. Stop whining, stop polishing and get out and ride. Nothing gives me more satisfaction than taking my dirty old scooter out on cold frosty days like today and riding round looking at how few sports bikes I see. The very same sports bike that won't give me the time of day. And if it snows on friday I'll still ride to work.

I don't expect any road user to "understand" how I am likely to behave, but I do expect the f*cker to look properly instead of just tuning themselves in for a vehicle that is at least 6ft wide


Now you are talking shite!


And I could give you many more times examples of "catastrophicaly stupid pieces of road use" by car, bus, taxi, & lorry drivers......what's your point exactly?


Good luck to you, I'll be sitting in a nice warm tin box equipped with traction control, ABS, EBD, and an internal organ warming sound system.
When I finally arrive at my destination, I (unlike you) will not feel the need to take an immediate piss, nor will I need to spend 15 minutes or so in front of a furnace in an attempt to get the blood flowing through the extremities

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Have a look at my avatar adam - does that look like a polished bike to you? She's older than I am FFS. The only reason I don't ride as much in the winter is because the last 2 miles of my (25 mile) journey to work is on untreated roads. I may be a all-weather-biker, but I'm not stupid!

You don't need to understand how to ride / drive a certain class of vehicle to be able to open your eyes. EVERY incident I've had on the bike bar 1 (and that was down to inexperience since I'd only had the bike a week) has been down to someone not looking properly. Its not about understanding, its about laziness and inconsideration.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I work outside so need to wear warm clothes anyway, If I went in my car I'd spend time taking warm clothes on and off. There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. My car doesn't have any of that nanny state BS traction control bollocks on and it's clean, because I don't take it to work. It's also cheaper to write my bike off than to bump my car.

My brother rides his (toy) sports bike in all weather, he says bar muffs are the way forward.

I don't care what you are wearing, by the time you add the wind chill factor on a day that only measures 2°C to start with, you are well in to minus figures within minutes of setting off.


If you think that a potential safety device is "BS", then I really don't know what to say (well I do, but you've already said it for me).
And if it was "nanny state", then it would be standard on every car by now.

No matter how good/careful a driver you are, there is always room for error.
Picture it this way......
You are cornering in the wet...another vehicle emerges from the side almost on top of you....stamping on the anchors won't do you any good (unless you have your "nanny state" ABS), however you know you can avoid an accident by dropping a cog and stamping on the gas to get around the emerging vehicle in time.....hmmm, not such a great idea given the conditions and the fact you don't have any of your "nanny state" technology to help you through


Any vehicle can be clean if you know what a bucket of water & a Hoover looks like.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

if you have traction control then that won't work - the car will cut the power to stop you sliding.

I think Adam you're suffering some confusion between road vehicles and race cars. Yes, we all know that a good driver can outbrake abs, and a good driver can feather the throttle wonderfully and maintain perfect control around any obstacle but I'd love to see you do that when your life is on the line.

Indeed it will, but it will make the correction for you and then lay the power back on at whatever throttle position you have requested and will do this far quicker than what a human can do it.
In some instances, it may very well correct the slide for you before you even knew it was going to happen.


And that is the crux of the matter Johnsher.

It's all very well & good pushing a vehicle to it's limit in a sporting environment, but as you say, a degree of panic will always set in no matter how good you are when faced with a potential crash situation.

FWIW, I have not managed to trigger any of the safety features of our current vehicle. But no matter how good a driver I am, the simple law of averages says that there has to come a day where I will find myself in a situation and when that day comes, then I'm sure I'll be thankful for having them.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Not sure how relevant this is, but a quick bit of praise for the traction control/stability system on the latest gen Accord: About a year ago I had to visit a farm in Lincolnshire somewhere. I had followed the Satnav which - correctly as it turned out - took me on a road that I thought was metalled with a bit of mud on it. not so. It was a clay road - and it was raining.

I half expected to have to be applying steering corrections to take account of the odd bit of slippage. What I did notice was what I at first thought was the engine misfiring. however I soon realised it was traction control - and I had not had to apply ANY corrective steering. I tentatively pushed the "disable button". Engine started behaving, but car was going everywhere. I pushed the button again!

Far be it for me to take the middle ground, but I think one should be able to control a vehicle with no electronic aids, and be happy to have said aids, IN CASE THEY DON'T WORK.

Took my big, long, high-powered Transit home this week in the cold weather. Even gentle throttle round a black-ice infested corner was too much for the traction control, and I ended up very sideways (well, it does have 280 lb ft ).

I'm very glad to have electronic aids, but also glad I know what to do when they don't work.