"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting, but it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." Douglas Adams
end quote“Because traffic safety is often counterintuitive, the biggest hurdle to effective traffic management and a safer environment continues to be interference by well-meaning but misinformed citizen groups and politicians. Education of these parties is the key to allowing the traffic engineer to maximize traffic safety and reduce traffic crashes.”
Michigan State Police
Traffic Services Section, Field Update 32
2008-05
"A woman without curves is like a road without bends, you might get to your destination quicker but the ride is boring as hell'
And what do traffic engineers have to say about it? Double-declutch and left foot brake everywhere?
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
There was a famous junctino here in the UK where all the signs they added "for safety" meant that drivers got informatino overload, confused where they were going and increased the accident rate !!!!
"A woman without curves is like a road without bends, you might get to your destination quicker but the ride is boring as hell'
i see people on the motorway with their seats pushed forward practically clutching the steering wheel to their chest looking terrified - how they got their license is beyond me.
deal with that first before bringing in more stupid laws.
Andreas Preuninger, Manager of Porsche High Performance Cars: "Grandmas can use paddles. They aren't challenging."
agreed clutch. It's as if we decided that as some people can only read at a 10 year old level then we should bring a law in to make it illegal to write a book at a higher reading level !!!
If folks can't drive then we shouldn't let them Roll on benign dictatorship
"A woman without curves is like a road without bends, you might get to your destination quicker but the ride is boring as hell'
if you take 2 seconds to react to things that happen in front of you, you wouldnt survive driving
whole seconds are what you & every other person has & by & large we all manage to survive
because surviving on the road isnt purely about your reaction speed. mentally you are processing whats going on around you & whilst you are covering ground at many meters per second, it remains an easy speed to handel
if human beings were so limited as you make out, our crash rates would be many times what they are now, & the lap times of circuits around the world be 10s & 10s of seconds longer
i think that your in bad need of some speed therapy. you might find your views change radically after 20 minutes of constant 200 kmh
I agree with that. However, I would not be confident that the increased attention levels at higher speeds would necessarily compensate for the risks of the higher speed itself. Not for all drivers, anyway.
And I agree with this, too. I freely acknowledge that more capable drivers would be better able to handle higher speed limits. However, along with those who have both good skills and an accurate knowledge of their own skills, there are also those with skills, but who lack the judgement to drive safely, there are those without the skills and who are aware of their limitations, and then there are the considerable number who lack both skill and judgement. If left to their own devices, only the smallest two of those groups are likely to make appropriate choices.
Even if one's own skill is judged adequate to maintain control and appropriate responses at higher speeds, does that judgement take into account the sometimes bizarre risks created by the incompetent? The rules are written with redundancy, so that normally it takes more than a single mistake to cause a crash. If you follow the rules, and someone else makes one or two mistakes, it will normally be possible for either you or the other party to avoid a crash. If you are driving closer to your own limits, you remove some of that redundancy, and reduce the safety factor. You may still be able to drive correctly, but the number of mistakes or failures needed to overcome your ability to respond is reduced.
People on average do take about 2 seconds to respond. That takes into account the time between the hazard emerging, the eye perceiving the hazard, the brain interpreting the hazard, appropriate action being chosen, and action actually being taken. Racing drivers act faster, because their decisions are normally made quite a while before the action is taken, and they are more often prepared for the hazard to be there. Even they can be caught out by the unexpected, as demonstrated by the occasional but regular rear-end accidents, when someone fails to launch on the start grid. Normal motorists do not expect to be responding to hazards, and so the response takes longer. The reason why there are so few crashes is that most people follow most of the rules most of the time, introducing enough of a safety margin for a 2 second response time to be adequate to avoid most hazards.
Hell yes. The difference is that when someone reads a book that they do not understand, the result is not usually injury or fatality. Unless that book is written by Karl Marx or Mao Zedong, of course.
With regard to both driver training and ridiculous signposts, vetting for stupidity would fix a lot of problems on both sides. It is just limited by practical considerations, such as how to achieve it, and how to placate the equal-opportunity merchants, who think that such discrimination should not be allowed.
Sorry for the essays. I don't like misrepresenting myself, or leaving out details, so I generally over-engineer my comments.
"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting, but it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." Douglas Adams
Skill however can be improved. This would have to bring a complete rethink of the learning process as well as they way drivers are tested. But this takes a lot of time, it would be a complex long term project that would deliver results in the future. Spped cameras on the other hand produce results here and now and are easy to install and maintain as well as producing revenue for the government. Even if there are lots of dangerous behaviours they can't quite detect.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting, but it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." Douglas Adams
So, if you drive a rubbish car it is ok that you are a rubbish driver? I think that those cars are as capable of aquaplanning or losing grip unexpectedly due to surface changes as are BMWs. I would even argue that if you car's dynamic abilities are less polished you should even be more interested in knowing what to do if things get hairy or how to avoid those situations. And in any case those cars are capable of speeds that exceed comfrotable the speed limits, as well.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Totally agree with the last part. And I agree with your take on reaction speed also. This of course only leads me to again question the validity of reducing 60k zones to 50 and policing them so strigently. Claims that an extra 5k takes x seconds to stop presumes the person driving is ecen paying attention. It also relies heavily on the type of car, the weight, the tyres, the brake etc etc. It is a overly simplistic blanket approach that again smacks of attacking the soft target for easy revenue.
Those courses are invaluable though. One should not expect them to make you immune. One should use the advice and drive with it at the forefront of you mind.
Everyone will speed at some time. I never speed intentionally. I occasionally find myself 4 or 5 ks over the limit. I object that if I pass a camera while driving at this speed for 15 or so seconds I will be penalized. I don’t know how much time you spend on the road. In my previous employment ( over the last 25 or more years) I spend most of my time driving. I have probably travelled well over 900,000ks. A fair wad of that without cruise control which I ended up using in the metro area rather against my better judgment. That’s a lot f ks to never exceed the speed limit by a few ks. I get the impression the people who preach the simple “don’t speed” as if it was a conscious intentional act don’t spend much time driving at all.
We effectively have two very poor choices in Australia both federally and in each state. Neither of which ever involve such policies as road safety or speed limits. In fact one thing you can be assured of is no matter whoever gets in they will carry forward any increases in fines or restrictions the previous government did if it means more revenue. We never get to voice our opinion on road rues through the ballot and governments would have it no other way.
Well lets make it 30 ks then. It doesn’t matter who doesn’t mind and it doesn’t really matter how much longer it takes (other than making drivers less patient of making driving in fact more stressful). What matters is the reason these reductions are implemented and to what end. It has not been demonstrated that these reductions have resulted in road safety improvements. Unless it can it is revenue raising and that has nothing to do with road safety.
You appear to be happy to reduce speed limits so that people who drop wheels off the side of the road are given more of a margin for error yet consider those who do so and hit a tree unable to “keep their cars on the road”. To me “road safety” is about making the roads safer for drivers. Not making them more stressful and filed with potential hazards.
As I have said driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do on a daily basis. Anything that can be done to make it safer for those who cannot keep their cars on the road all the time or display bad habits and inattention (most drivers) has to be a good thing.
So at what speed do you think people who cannot “respond appropriately” (perhaps the same ones who “or display bad habits and inattention”) would “not lose control to at least some extent, before stopping or hitting something?”
What weight is this stationery object?
Well the other variable is the angle of the impact and even with a stationery object the car will deflect. Few such accidents stop the car dead against them. It is no different from a head on. The dynamics of each and every collision vary. Trying to come up with a speed that is safe enough to ensure serious carnage will not occur is pointless. Better to remove the hazards.
ANCAP testing attempts to cover “real world” accidents. They cover how a car most likely strike a “tree/barrier/rock/other stationary object”.
How fast were they going? In any case this is why I believe they should be removed.
"A string is approximately nine long."
Egg Nogg 02-04-2005, 05:07 AM
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