Safe Speed Forums

Hmmmm, if we start banding terms like kai-zen about we'll be a laughing stock.

I'm very tired but what are we trying to arrive at here has this tread diverged a little?

'Road Safety' (RS) is definately a function of 'Driver Quality' (DQ)

and I think its fair to say that RS is inversely proportional to DQ

But to quantify

RS = fn (DQ, conditions, time, engineering (auto), engineering (highway), time of year...................)

its a hunch but I would say that DQ is the largest factor, however DQ is going to have a varying importance depending on the other conditions.

for instance highly engineered roads such as motorways can compensate for lower DQ.

I'm losing the plot!!!! what is the question again?

Only just caught up with this thread, sorry - not sure why I missed iy until now. anyway...

YupNope. Pedantic , perhaps, but you're suggesting a hyperbolic relationship. It may well have many humps in it, complex that it is. I suggest a better definition is
d(crashes)/d(driver quality) is always negative ie the rate of change of crashes to driver quality is always negative - for each incremental improvement in driver quality there will be an incremental reduction in the rate of crashes.

which is wrong for the same reason. The rate of bankcrupts per point of interest rate rise is not necessarily constant, but it is (almost) certasinly always greater than zero.

Most people are not good at maths at all.

differential defines it pretty well - it is what you're talking about - a differential equation!

It is true - but not (necessarily) proportional as you've indicated.

More so than currently?

As opposed to using the term "micrometric influence"? One is a recognised term for a process that is used in enlightened management approaches worldwide, the other is something someone made up on the spur of the moment.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

I'm employed in the field of 'enlightened management approaches' however, I also realise that if you start using terms like 'kai-zen', 'black belt' and so on you risk losing credibility. (I'm not a big fan of micrometric influences either mind - sorry Paul) Who are we trying to influence? The MP's? the general public? we have to ajust to our target audience.

99% of the management consultancy and process improvement fraternity will sign up to kai-zen.......99% of the general motoring public will think we're talking horse sh1t!

We need to speak plain english! Leave the jargon to the SCP's and those who would seek to mislead while we speak the simple language of common sense.

look what we are trying to de-bunk 'speed kills' it isn't a difficult concept to grasp.

Nor me. That's the point of this thread.

But unless we come up with a term or a description vital chunks of our arguments are lost on many people.

Let's say the argument is that 0.1% of driver attention is redirected to by current speed enforcement policy.

'Micrometric influence' tells us that this WILL increase the number of crashes. Most individuals will claim that 0.1% of their attention isn't enough to make a difference, and that's why this thread exists.

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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

continuous, incremental improvement?

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

That's an excellent systematic objective (and indeed a Safe Speed objective), but it really doesn't describe the issues that I intended this thread to address.

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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

Back on track then:



The trap here is you have missed other influences. So whilst it would be true to say "The number of crashes is heavily influenced by average driver quality" your statement does not admit other factors.

Gosh, that's a schoolboy error - almost as bad as the Governments view that road safety is only related to speed!!



I don't think it is as alien as you suspect - if you forgive this somewhat frivolous example of something in popular culture:




(my bold) I think the bold bit says it far better than anything else I've said! if not that, then
is quite commonly known and understood (although not at the quamtum level!)


no argument from me ... other than what it's called!


see above!

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Oh, Don't be so silly and annoying!

It's no error at all as you very well know. You need to look at the context. Was I trying to describe a wide range of influences on the number of road crashes? Was I even talking about influences on road crash rates?

No. I was talking about terminology and giving a quick example. I could have written [if all else is equal], but it wouldn't have added anything to the terminology discussion, and frankly life is too short.

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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 Paul, oh dear.

you, who elsewhere on these fora, in your campaign, demand accuracy and application to the real world. Tell you what, based on exactly the same reasons you state in your last paragraph, I can state:

Hitting another car at a high speed will cause more damage than hitting it at a lower speed.

There. As much right to be stated as your statement, equally correct, as it also does not take into consideration the real world.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

So we are agreed that there is an inversley proportional relationship between driver skill and accident rate but the rate is not directly proportional.

Paul's arguement is that tiny improvements or regressions in driver skill can have disproportionally large impacts on accident rates.

So do we have an asymetric inversely proportional relationship between driver skill and accident rate?

What we really need is some means of quantifying this to counter the SCP rubbish. Something like a 2% increase in driver skill reduces accidents by 20%.

Is there a way of looking at the driving test? or comparing advanced motorists to normal motorists?

No, no, no, no! I have far better things to do than to have this silly conversation. Try to remember that a forum post is not a thesis - and especially so when it's posted in 'Brainstorming'.

If you want to discuss speed and crashes, please start a new thread.

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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

Handy,

btw, and before we fall out over semantics, your post earlier contains some useful ideas which I'm considering. Thanks.

But, PLEASE, drop the silly line!

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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

[t-i-c]it's not silly, it's about road safety which is deadly serious[/t-i-c]

expanding on an earlier point, and CE's post:

is the way to describe it "with 30 million [?] drivers on the road, we only need to raise each one's standards by a tiny fraction to have a huge effect"?

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

That's got to be the place to start... Without some empirical evidence you're just trying to plait fog. What's the likelyhood of the IAM or RoSPA keeping stats?

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

I'd rather define average driver quality within the system by reference to average crash rates. This gives a linear relationship, is axiomatically true, and can be read 'either way'.

[either way meaning that:

- an improvement in driver quality will lead to a reduction in crashes
- a reduction in crashes implies an improvement in driver quality (where other parameters can be eliminated).]

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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

That's MUCH more difficult and complex than it sounds.

- For a start there's the issue about 'standards'. IAM is pretty patchy.
- Then there's the issue about 'good training'. Lots of driver training around the world has been shown to increase crash rates. This applies strongly to handling and skid pan courses.

For my evidence, I'd rather look at the crash rate differences between novice drivers and experienced drivers. I'd say experience contributes positively to driver quality and the evidence is completely unequivocal. But we know that.

For my policies I'd be looking to place substantial emphasis on cultural influence and the quality of experience.

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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

Certainly I believe that - and its converse (lower quality raises crash rates).

But within the original topic of this thread, many people don't seem to see a tiny change in average driver attention (for example) will have a visible effect on the system as a whole.

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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

True... But how about the "RoADA" Bronze, Silver and Gold holders - are there enough of each category to form a statistically significant sample?


Agreed. Wrongly applied those types of courses can engender overconfidence. But the type of training that I envisage analysing is directed towards "driving" rather than "car control".

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

There probably are enough And I'm sure there will be a benefit. But the data doesn't exist as far as I know, and if it did, we'd find it hard or impossible to distinguish between the benefits of the training and the 'attitude bias' resulting from self selection.

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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