Safe Speed Forums

And we have always lived our lives within 'acceptable risk' parameters. Yet we live longer and richer because acceptable risk parameters are systematically modified. A correlation exists between the length and prosperity of our lives and the political framework that we live within. Life is not safe enough (as you suggest) but 100% fatal. All we can do is strive to slightly lengthen infinitely poor odds!

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This would be a one-sided play were RigPig and I not here to haul the actors from side stage to the lime-lights!



You’ve got me drooling!



An oft repeated argument, i.e. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And the oft repeated reply is that the children themselves are not to blame, and the only people who can save their lives when it happens are good (slow?) drivers.

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Funny, in the previous post you were talking about people leading richer lives.



Why should one persons tragedy through one other individual then result in thousands of other peoples lives being ruined/hurt upon receiving fines. How is that enriching peoples lives? You have no other evidence that those people receiving their fines could have saved another school child’s (yes, that old clique), life. It quite largely comes down to odds.


Didn't the greater good just go flying out of the window?



Neither could it have been the driver regardless of speed?

What about better education on both sides, what about safer crossings, what about better road design?
Yet I never hear nor read about any of these measures, just an instant excuse for another camera which can be used on motorways whilst school hours are over.

No! No! NO!

That's NOT what I'm saying, you're reading things I'm not writing again!

I said

Driver Odds BETTER than 3:1 ie, 4:1, 5:1, 10:1!!! as the stats are offset against the injured non-drivers & pedestrians. Injuries caused BY or inflicted ON drivers remains at 3 to 1 odds per 50yrs driving.

Suppose we assume that 1 in 3 drivers will be involved in some kind of accident injury in his normal driving lifespan. Not great really I agree.(see my older posts) But these are spread over the driver, their passengers and related pedestrians of which, one, some or all are involved at any given time.

The thing with stats like this is "ONE driver is involved in accident resulting in his, two passengers & a pedestrian injury." (Four injuries per driver) This skews the average curve - now, it is concievable that this will result in 4 other drivers having their odds bettered to 1 in 12 (estimate) in order to maintain the 1 in 3 norm, OR, this will push the odds lower - making the figures look bad for other drivers.

ps. I'm glad we're getting somewhere, I'll be a little more amicable in future.

Is there any honour in ‘not being to blame’ when you could avoid crippling a child by driving “differently”?

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Yes, Hobbes, thanks for your kind words. There is nothing special about drivers - injuries hurt whether you are a driver or not. My best reasonable guess about the odds is that, in an average family, several members will be hurt or worse in a traffic accident at some point. That is borne out by experience as well.

To put things in a context, if it were the case that, in an average family, several members would be burned at random by the television badly enough to warrant a trip to hospital in an ambulance, many of us would not be quite as keen on Coronation Street (quite rightly so, as well)!

Let us not think other than the truth – driving is a risk and we have a serious responsibility. By pretending that the risk is low, we court injury. Let us be serious, on this at least. Then we can be as flippant as we like where it doesn’t matter.

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Ah yes, the benevolence of hindsight now.

Im sure both parties would do things differently if the accident could have been predicted. Your asking something from a person of that which defines humans from automatons.

Anyay what about the alternative ending of the driver swerving to miss the child and killing himself? Is this alright so long as the child survived?

Yes. So we need effective strategies and policies based on things that really work in the real world. So modern speed controls go in the bin because they fail to take account of a wide range of dangerous real-world side effects.

You seem to forget that the argument is not about 'doing something' it's about finding the best 'something'.

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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

Basingwerk indulges his trademark predilection for obfuscation by wilfully oversimplifying the statistics. It may be true that the average lifetime injury crash risk in a population of ~30 million drivers over a 50 years driving career is ~1 in 3 but it does not follow that all drivers have a 1 in 3 injury crash risk, as he well knows.

Paul has already pointed out that the median quality driver has a [much] lower than average crash risk. Basingwerk hasn't (as far as I am aware) disputed that argument. It must follow that the (say) top quartile quality drivers have a very-much-lower-than-average crash risk and the crash risk of the top decile will be even lower.

I'm not sure how to prove this, but my instinct is that an advanced driver, who applies defensive driving principles (COAST), but who may regularly or even frequently exceed posted speed limits (but only where the conditions allow) can almost eliminate his risk of crashing except by reason of an entirely unpredictable event. True it may be that the unpredictable event may occur at a precise moment when his speed is faster rather than slower, but that is as unpredictable as the event itself. We cannot plan for events which are entirely unpredictable. We can do the best we can to improve our concentration, observation and anticipation so that we are more likely to recognise the first signs of a developing hazardous chain of events and thus prevent it from escalating into a crash.

The failure of road safety policy is that drivers are not being told, taught or expected to develop their skills in a way which could dramatically reduce their crash risk. They're just being told to stick to a crude and frequently unreliable proxy for safety - being the posted speed limit.

I'm asking for people to drive in a way that is not only safe as far as they can see (i.e. the SafeSpeed rule), but safe far as they can imagine. And for the imagination impaired amongst us, I'm asking them to at least stay within the limit, to mitigate the risk somewhat.

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That is where SafeSpeed’s rule breaks. You must drive according to what you can predict, then according to what you can imagine predicting. Then you are a good driver. Failing that, at the very least stick within the limits and abide by other good advice.

But because there is no way to tell a person who can drive as I recommend, then there has to be a small speed penalty that we all should put up with.

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What's the evidence that the risk would be mitigated?

How much driver attention would you like to divert to speed limit compliance?

How strict would you like compliance with the speed limit to be?

Will the people who comply be the ones that you most needed to comply?

What's the damage to a newly compliant driver who was extremely safe (statistically speaking) before your intervention?

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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

Excuse me arguing with myself. Developing this line of thought a bit further, suppose we take two 'advanced' drivers of (so far as possible) equal skill and ability. Driver A applies best safe driving principles at all times and exceeds the speed limit from time to time but always within the boundaries necessary for safe driving. Driver B also applies best safe driving principles at all times but never exceeds the speed limit.

1. Is the crash risk of driver B: (i) lower than (ii) equal to (iii) higher than, that of driver A?

2. Is the risk of driver B being involved in a crash that causes injury or death to himself or another person: (i) lower than (ii) equal to (iii) higher than, that of driver A?

(iii), (iii)

Strict speed limit compliance squanders precious driver attention.

Driver B will also be less stimulated in clear conditions.

Driver B will also be less inclined to 'reduce speed when necessary' due to the high priority that he must place on the speed limit.

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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

Oh is 'that' all? Then I suggest you contact god as you'll need his help to make all humans comply, as even your most stead fast driver (such as yourself I assume) still has their human flaws.
I believe he may be reached at your most convenient religious spot, just pray hard?

But if I'm going to be late because local authorities think it is acceptable to deliberately congest the roads, then I have to speed, to make up for lost time.

My sources suggest it is partly in the physics. Crash forces rise much faster than speed. It is also partly in the statistics. One example said (with caveats) that the probability of a fatality rises with the fourth power of the speed change at impact. There is also evidence to do with reaction and breaking times, which are constrained and thus less effective at high speeds.



Hard to put a figure on it, but It would be nice (sigh) to divert all the attention drivers pay to lateness and rush and selfishness from that and into speed limit compliance.



Put it this way - in built up areas, I’d like speeders to be as rare as people who do other disgusting (but less dangerous) things like vandalism or vomiting on the sidewalk.



Yes. One person who complies positively affects the behaviour of perhaps 10 other drivers behind, resulting in slower towns and villages and greater serenity and safety for walkers.



He’ll have to set out more early. On the plus side, he’ll affect positively the driving of many drivers who were not extremely safe before the intervention.

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Yes, evil authorities are to blame whatever happens. Never me, or SafeSpeed - just the authorities. Let's have it, BottyBurp! Let's go postal!

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Do not take the Lord's name in vain.

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In the area that I live, yes - you're right. The local authorities are to blame for forcing artificial congestion on the roads in this area.

However, I disagree that LA's are to blame regardless. If I lose control of my vehicle because I was travelling too fast for the road conditions, then that is entirely my fault and no-one else's.