Safe Speed Forums

the point is that everyone thinks they can do things safely until the day they crash and burn. How often do you hear, even on this site "I've been driving for 100 years and 4 billion miles and never had an accident therefore everything I do is perfectly safe"
read: "I have nothing to learn so don't talk to me you young upstart."

Indeed, and that is why we need police out there to be the judge of that.

The odds of dying on the road are many orders of magnitude higher than those of having a blowout whilst having a swig from a bottle. the odds of that happening are rather similar to the odds of a grand piano falling on your head while outdoors.

We shouldn't have policies based on scenarios which are almost impossibly unlikely.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

the blowout was just one example. There are lots of other things that could happen while you take that swig (or do any other 'perfectly safe' thing other than drive the car). Car in front crashes. Car on other side of the road crosses to your side (I'm sure you can think of more). None of them are expected but as the KSI figures show they certainly do happen. I wonder how many of those drivers were not in proper control prior to the accident and might still be around (or not injured in the SI cases) had they been able to take better evasive action?

This thread had me thinking, so on my walk back from the shops today I checked out the passing cars. Of the dozen or so cars that passed me, most of the drivers had their right hand slumped at 10 o'clock on the wheel.

Thing is, most of these things take no longer and are no more distracting than changing gear.

Given that I drive an auto that in theory means that I'm safer than you even with the occasional sip of water, all other things being equal

You can pick up your bottle, take a drink and put it back all in under a second? Is that some sort of world record?

No, but the gearbox on the Passat has seen better days. Yay for double declutching (but only when cold for some reason, just needs a bit of a shove once warmed up)

Although when I really want to, I can get a gulp of water that quick. Driving rarely calls for me to exercise that speed of drinking though.

I don't know, but I've seen it happen - just once. A large articulated vehicle arrived at a food processing plant with a full load of potatoes. While the vehicle was standing on the weighbridge one of the RH rear tyres on the trailer went bang - and it was a hell of a bang. I'm glad I wasn't standing next to it at the time.

Best wishes all,
Dave.