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PostPosted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 21:23 
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Quote:
y groovemeister on Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:22 pm

graball wrote:I honestly think that they are safer in modern cars with 80plus bhp, disc brakes, better handling and all that's before we start mentioning the "electronic" safety gadgets and air bags etc.



I suspect they feel safer, but is there the possibility that if you're driving a "safe" car, you will be more likely to take risks? Great for those inside the car, not so great for those around the car. I'm sure this isn't restricted to our younger drivers either!


I think that a lot of young drivers will take risks anyway....I know we used to when younger but some of the mishaps we had, skidding off the road etc wouldn't have happeneed if we has esp, abs etc or at least to a lesserr extent. I must admit that I don't agree with artificial driving aids in general, believing that drivers should learn to "handle" a car the hard way. But if young drivers are going to kill themselves in low spec cars why not give them some basic help in their early learning years?

The ideal situation would be to give them cars with all the safety specs in their first couple of years to learn better road skills, then give them "basic" cars for the next few years and say.....NOW learn to drive properly.... ;-)

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 22:38 
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My 1.0L Corsa can do a tonne, so won't low power won't stop speeding.

People have an accepted level of risk and will adjust their driving accordingly to bring their percieved risk up or down accordingly. If little risk exists you create some, through higher speeds or doing something you shouldn't to stave of boredom. Most young people have a invincible mindset (I know because I have it fairly often) that I presume drops with age (anyone back me up on that?) so if your younger you accept more risk, if your doing something riskier your more likely to crash.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 13:14 
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Mind Driver wrote:
Most young people have a invincible mindset (I know because I have it fairly often) that I presume drops with age (anyone back me up on that?) so if your younger you accept more risk, if your doing something riskier your more likely to crash.


I can remember that, though I was riding bikes more than driving cars so the phase ended quite quickly. I did drive cars faster in some situations than I would now, it is possibly less about accepting the risks than not realising what they are. I can drive significantly faster now, with more control and a higher safety margin, though am far more selective about where and when. While age may lose that sense of invulnerability it is replaced by a knowledge of your own limits and, with some effort, limits that are much higher. The downside is you realise the public road is not a place to explore those limits, still that is what track days and motorsport are for.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 14:57 
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I think one of the reasons you get more sensible as you get older is that you have experienced wildly improbable occurences on the road and therefore prepare for things to happen to you that you would dismiss as so unlikely as to be impossible when you first pass your test.

e.g. the ~1m dia. concrete pipe that I encountered in L3 of the M6 many years ago :o

EDIT: does anyone else revisit a road they've not been on since their youth and think "how the hell did I used to overtake along here?" I know cars are getting bigger, but I think I used to overtake in my 1.3 Fiesta in places I would shudder to attempt in my 2.0 Clio.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 17:24 
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Funny enough I travelled a road the other day,that I used to travel a lot in the early eighties, I was amazed to find (apart from having stupid 40MPH limits everywhere) that it also had miles and miles of double white lines where none existed before. I would have had several chances to overtake the old lady in front doing 30 MPH, many years ago but found myself following her for about 2-3 miles before overtaking the other day, and it wasn't down to lack of power etc, there just wasn't a break in the white line.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 11:40 
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in this vein, i would look at restricting them by insurance group rather than engine size. a peugeot 306 1.8 used to be a group 5 when they were new.

the strategy i am thinking along the lines of is a 2 part licence scheme instead. part 1 would be the current test ie basic car controls and highway code etc. once passed the driver is technically legal to drive on any road but still not unaccompanied which would open the gates to part 2 which would be learning to drive ie motorways, awareness of other road users (including pedestrians), skid control, actual roadcraft rather than what the highway code says etc etc etc.
i know the RAC is against further mandatory training as it would encourage more people to drive illegally but the simple answer is that at least those people could be punished once caught. poorly trained drivers are legal and are therefore a higher threat than illegal drivers who would be risking high penalties

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:27 
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That's why I liked the positive points earning scheme I posted from PH recently so much, experience & training gained you points which entitled you to drive higher insurance group vehicles, but penalty points were subtracted from this total. Major drawback would be buying the highest ins. group car you could then getting 3 points and having to sell your car...


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 15:11 
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what differences do you propose between the training stages? driving at 100MPH isnt much different to driving at 80MPH in principle and i cant imagine anyone here agreeing to speeds much beyond that on the public roads at any time anyway. yes, there are times where the roads are empty but i certainly wouldnt like to trust our roads to handle high speed driving. the quality is not good enough, how many times have you been thrown off course on the motorway because of a poor or damaged road surface? no amount of driver training can prepare you for that and the velocity would become dangerous due to both distance covered between the time you see a pothole to reaching it plus the dynamics of the vehicle would prohibit or at the very least, seriously restrict evasive action. in other words, when you see it, its too late to do anything about it

conversly, this is why i am not an advanced driver. what can i be taught about observation in a car that i do not already know from driving a truck?

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 22:38 
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scanny77 wrote:
how many times have you been thrown off course on the motorway because of a poor or damaged road surface?


Other than a bit of tramlining, which I would not consider to be being thrown off course, never. Not that I have driven every motorway in the country as I suspect you may well have done or most of them anyway. :)

Out of interest does this happen to trucks a lot? I ask because except in adverse weather conditions, wind, flooding, snow etc. I have never really worried about another vehicle veering out of lane at legalish speeds just because of a dip or bump in the surface.

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 01:44 
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yes it does. thats why i always sit just off the nearside line when i am being overtaken by another truck or the offside line if i am doing the overtaking. i tend to back off a couple of MPHs too rather than allow myself to sit with a truck next to me at full speed. i know it doesnt take much to 'jump' sideways by a foot or so and if it happens to both trucks at the same time then there could be contact. far better to eliminate that risk by maximising the distance between the trucks and minimising the time spent side by side. trucks do not absorb the bumps as efficiently as soft car suspension can. comfort is not their primary purpose so the suspension is not designed for absorbing bumps.
just for an experiment, sit behind a truck for a few minutes on the motorway and watch the trailer in relation to the lines. it is actually quite hard to keep a truck travelling straight sometimes if the road is not perfect. not all trucks have air suspended cabs so a rough road can be quite an uncomfortable journey for the driver. supermarket trucks are especially bad as they tend to be low spec

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