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Much is made of drivers' reaction time in road safety. The Highway Code has 'thinking distance' as a central concept.

Of course we must always allow for our own reaction time, and guard against the false perception that we can do things 'instantly'.

Reaction time contributes to setting a safe speed.

But how often in driving do we (experienced drivers especially) rely on our reaction time? If we do, then something has already gone very badly wrong. But how can this be?

I'd like to suggest that routine anticipation trumps reaction time to the extent that an experienced driver's average reaction time is strongly negative. Put simply we PREVENT things from going wrong in the first place rather than wait for them to go wrong and then react to them.

One strong shortfall in modern road safety thinking is that we look at crash causation without pausing to consider routine crash avoidance. It's so often true that the entire answer to the former is there in the latter - if only we looked.

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Paul Smith
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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yes, which is why drivers' crash risk typically continues to improve until their mid to late 50s even though their reaction times might start slowing a little twenty years earlier.

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Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

reaction times don't count for much in the real world - even Michael Schumacher is no better than average.

Absolutely.

But I'd like to explore the real-world observe/evaluate/anticipate/decide/act cycle that works so well to keep us out of trouble. We're obviously 'reacting' in the broadest sense, but we're also miles ahead of the game most of the time.

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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'm sure it goes without saying that reading the road and planning ahead is a safer way to drive then to react to events as they happen. Some drivers are very good at this and some are not. It's one particular area of my driving that I am trying to improve, it's not bad, but it could be better. Those who drive soley on reacting to things and relying on their quick reactions usually do so successfully in normal circumstances. However, if you add in a complicating factor such as tiredness, illness, bereavement, relationship difficulties etc, then it becomes much more difficult for such drivers as their mind is not sufficiantly focused to give them the reaction times they need to drive safely. This I belive is where accidents can occur.

A driver who is well practiced in planning ahead can largely negate having quick reactions, though just because you can read the road ahead doesn't mean to say you can't react to something unexpected, and if both qualities of reading the road ahead and good reactions are there then you have got the makings of a highly capable driver.

However, personally I think very few things happen completly unexpectedly on the road. There is usually a clue that procedes what some would describe as being "out of nowhere". Some drivers are better then others at picking up these clues, but a lot of it comes down to expierence which is perhaps one of the reasons young drivers have more accidents.

I am sure IG tounched on this ages ago. Humans can multi-task to some extent - but personal problems - driving after an argument, thinking about work problems, personal problems - all impact on concentration. I always pull in for leg stretch and coffee on long drives anyway as does my wife and rest of our families. I find classical music at low volume does help calm and re-focus mind - but that's me and Wildy will just sing along to her fave singer and eat some chocolates



Why we need to really focus on that COAST training and reinforce it regularly so that it becomes a natural part of riding and driving.

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There must be a difference to reacting to a situation and anticipanting it isn't there?

to my mind they are contradicting. I someone had "perfect" anticipation ie. could see all other road users and read their minds constantly, then you would not need to react, you would be proacting all the time.

Obviously this can't happen but we can make in roads. When I was a teenager my Mother would play a game when she was driving with me in the passenger seat. I would have to say what I thought other cars were going to do at any given time. So say we were behind a car in a single lane NSL - she would say watch that car, and at certain times would ask "what are they going to do now..?"

It was good fun (like people watching) but she pointed out that given enough information (usually time based, but not always) you could read the minds of other road users, ie anticipate what they were going to do.

Now this always falls down when something completely unexpected happens, but if you arm yourself it helps anyway.

Cheers

Paul

I was having a conversation about this with a few friends a few days ago. One is a learner and the other has been driving for 6 or 7 years. The learner didn't understand how drivers 'just know' that someone else is about to do something.

Case in point; I was driving my non-driving mum to Ikea. We were on approach to a roundabout. Dual carriageway on approach, dual carriageway on all exits, but 3 entrance lanes on all approaches and 3 lanes on the roundabout which has spiral markings so entering in the correct lane takes you where you want to go without lane changes.

I was taking the 3rd of 4 exits and was in the right hand lane on the approach - lane 3 at the entrance to the roundabout, behind a car with L-plates. Lane 1 allows for exits 1&2; Lane 2 allows for exits 2&3; lane 3 allows for exits 3&4.

The learner made an error when entering the roundabout and switched from lane 3 to lane 2 as they drove on. I hung back as it was fairly obvious that they were planning to take exit 4. Sure enough, at exit 3 they had to change lanes across my path to get where they wanted to go. Mum says "how did you know they were going to do that?" I'd have been very surprised if they hadn't.

When I'm teaching CBT one of the failings some young riders have is an inability to anticipate the actions of other road users, sometimes to the point where they endanger themselves. We try to counteract that by talking through what we can see and what we expect other drivers to do based on their current actions. Many of the students then come on quickly and are competent to an appropriate extent by the end of the road run. It's as if they've always been able to do it, but haven't had to.

I thoroughly believe that this can be taught, but perhaps not within the confines of a 1-day CBT course.

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