Safe Speed Forums

Obviously a lot of folk claim that "speeding causes accidents" these days.

Well, here's a little intellectual challenge:

Can you conceive a road crash scenario where:

* The cause of the crash is speeding (i.e. exceeding a speed limit).

You can be as wild and as wacky as you like.

How about speed-related mechanical failures? Perhaps the windscreen blows in at xx mph and disables the driver. Would that count as "caused by speeding"? If the windscreen was strong enough to withstand travel at the speed limit indefinitely, could we say that "speeding caused the crash"?

I'm *really* struggling to come up with anything at all.

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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

The only one I can think of is this: safespeed for bend in your car = posted limit. You go into bend at limit + x and exit stage left into scenery. Had you been doing the posted limit you would have made it around the bend.

Surely however this just means that the posted limit happens, quite coincidentally, to match the safe speed for the bend, for that vehicle, at that particular time.

driving to fast to react to hazards.

ie over shooting a junction

However could also be atributed to the driver not reacting to the conditions of the road.

Therefore falls under the catorgory of reckless driving.

You said be wild, here is my Wild comparison

Here is an accident not related to traffic, however is how people blame speed inappropriatly.

The wind speed blows at 90 mph, due to adverse weather conditions. A TV ariel is blown off the chimney and kills a pedestrian walking past.

Anti speed lobbies, had this been a motoring accident would blame the wind Speed as the cause of the accident.

What is the root cause of the accident

Wind speed

Or should the TV arial be fitted to a better standard or of had maintenance to ensure the fitting remained of the required standard


If we looked at every accident scenario, speed would not even be a factor.

Motorway accidents, are mainly shunts, drivers running into the back of other's. Speed has no effect, it is a straight road and the root cause is simply drivers not paying attention to the changing conditions ahead.

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Steve

Speed limits are set for the whole stretch of the road, normally.

Majority of bends require a speed lower than the posted limit

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Steve

And your point caller is....? My statement quoted by you only makes any sense at all in the light of teabelly's entry into the competition. Which is why I quoted him.

If you travel at the posted limit at a bend, at least 90% of the time you will be travelling too fast for the bend.

You would therefore be driving in a reckless manner.

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Steve

This , hypothetical, situation, as mooted by teabelly, is the only situation in which my posted comment was intended to be viewed. Try and understand before one of us dies.

It entirely depends on what you are driving.

In most cases you can exceed the posted limit on a bend and avoid a hedge interface, but there comes a limit as to how far ahead you can see and still be able to stop.

Only the tightest NSL bends need a lower speed simply to get round.

But you often need to set a lower speed in order to comply with the primary rule of advanced driving (always be able to stop safely on your own side of the road in the distance you can see to be clear).

Back on subject:

Some naked and cruiser motorcycles are unsafe above 90mph as you are likely to get blown off the back.

sorry, but that's the best I could do.

I think the official view is inappropriate speed above the limit when the driver had an accident that would not have occured had he been driving more slowly - is speeding. Hence we are seeing lots of NSLs replaced with much lower limits to reduce inappropriate speed and increase speeding. As we all know speed cameras are only useful at detecting speeding.

What makes you think that

i have had naked bikes, no such problems exist at such a low speed

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Steve

But we do not have to be above the speed limit to be involved in an accident.

The vast majority of accidents happen at or below the speed limit.

In every accident, Speed is not the root cause

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Steve

A bloke is going along at 90 in the 30 zone (in a BMW, or an Audi or something like that), he goes around a bend and kills a queue of school children waiting for the bus. If he had been doing 30, he could have made the bend.

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I stole this .sig

Yep. I thought about that. But since we routinely adjust speed for bends, a better description of the cause of the accident would surely need to be:

"failed to adjust speed when necessary"

Of course, the other problem is that the next vehicle to come along has far better or far worse cornering ability...

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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

Clearly the primary cause of such crashes is reckless behaviour. The high speed is a consequence of the reckless behaviour.

Care to try again?

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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

Sure. The same bloke is going in the 30 zone in his BMW, or an Audi or something like that, but this time, he is doing 75. He goes around a bend and kills a queue of school children waiting for the bus. If he had been doing 30, he could have made the bend.

Care to comment on this?

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fx: <shakes head sadly>
fx: <sighs>

No thanks mate.

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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 thought so. As you go lower, closer to the limit, it becomes gradually a case of 'a little over the limit' rather than recklessness. Yet the end effect is the same - a bus queue flattened.

I know you say he could have flattened a queue at the limit or less than it, and that is quite true. But the limit is a compromise equally unpleasant to all the stakeholders: drivers in a hurry, drivers who are not, the cops, the politicians, the ambulance crews, the people who live nearby and the taxpayers who have to shell out a pile of cash every time somebody strikes out. So it is no good looking for an accident solely caused by speeding. Try something else - how many accidents are not related in any way to speed? Hm.. that’s just as hard, isn’t it?

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What is the root cause of the accident, it is not speed.

It is the reckless behavior of the driver.

You could just as well say the car is the factor at fault, if the car had not hit the pedestrians, they would not of been killed.

The ROOT cause is driving in a reckless manner.

A driver on a NSL of 60 mph, attempts to go round a sharp bend at 60 mph and loses control and kills 4 pedestrians.

What is at fault?

He was driving within the legal limit.

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Steve

[quote="basingwerk]..But the limit is a compromise equally unpleasant to all the stakeholders: drivers in a hurry, drivers who are not, the cops, the politicians, the ambulance crews, the people who live nearby and the taxpayers who have to shell out a pile of cash every time somebody strikes out.[/quote]

Absolutely correct - so why do we enforce the limit as a safety issue?

The purpose of a speed limit is to state the maximum safe speed for the road for any vehicle under any conditions. It is not supposed to represent the requests of locals who want less traffic, scamera partnerships who want more money or politicians who want to associate lower limits with safer roads.

If we take the avg. rural recently NSL to 30 or 40 limit. and replace the speed limit sign with a black speed limit sign and a big sign saying please observe our requested speed limit - I'm sure you'd get just as much compliance as an enforced limit.

I'm happy to drive slowly out of courtesy to others - just don't tell me it's a safety issue.

Let's say he was doing, say 50 in the 30 zone. How would you know that he was driving at a reckless manner? Who could judge that? The witnesses are dead. So how would you know, bmwk12?

By the way, I used to ride a boxer 1000cc, nice bike but it made a lot of smoke.

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