Reconcile this garbage.

[henk4]

They should also be able to prove common sense.

I know of several cases where trained racing drivers were involved in road accidents or were caught speeding at very rather excessive levels. So yes, common sense is what is required, and may be we have it, but not everybody else.

[Matra et Alpine]

“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

end quote

[Ferrer]

And what do traffic engineers have to say about it? Double-declutch and left foot brake everywhere?

[Matra et Alpine]

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 !!!!

[clutch-monkey]

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.

[Matra et Alpine]

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

[Badsight]

ha ha, so everybody should be driving 200 then....

well its not really the speed they are going at tho is it

"speeders pay more attention than the average driver"

^ that is a statement id lay money on

[Badsight]

it is not a revenue device. It is a device that punishes people who think they are above the law.

& punishment is what its really about

the money is nice too

posted signs declaring the area as a speed camera area work. but they dont get what the government is after

your cash

[Badsight]

Herein lies the reason behind it all. Contrary to Badsight's assertion, "whole seconds" is not really all that long to react to a situation. The normal braking response time is generally accepted as being about 2 seconds. If you are also distracted for two or three seconds before perceiving a risk, and the braking itself takes time and distance, there is the possibility of travelling 150 to 200 metres forward, or to drift across lanes or off the side of the road, at 100 or 110km/h. It does not make sense to claim that 100km/h is slow, when compared with 200km/h. Of course it is slower, but that is like arguing that being shot once is not dangerous, because it is safer than being shot four times. Both are dangerous. 100km/h is fast enough to be dangerous, while 200km/h on a public road should be cause for capital punishment.

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

[MilesR]

A fundamental problem with the application of lower speed limits is most drivers then think that that speed is "safe" and start paying less attention to the task.

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.

So the impact of moronic behaviour which we discussed above will be far more serious than with lower speed differences. The safest way to drive is to consider everybody to be an idiot, (may be including yourself).

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.

if you take 2 seconds to react to things that happen in front of you, you wouldnt survive driving

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.

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

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.

[henk4]

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

If only that was to be an integral part of driver training, (and repeated on a regular basis), than you may have a point.

[Ferrer]

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.

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.

[henk4]

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.

who is willing to pay for advanced driver training if his daily transport is a Suzuki Alto or Citroen C1 in order to allow the BMWs and Audis to safely drive at higher speeds? Perhaps the drivers of the latter cars should be asked to supply the money....

[Ferrer]

who is willing to pay for advanced driver training if his daily transport is a Suzuki Alto or Citroen C1 in order to allow the BMWs and Audis to safely drive at higher speeds? Perhaps the drivers of the latter cars should be asked to supply the money....

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.

[crisis]

The normal braking response time is generally accepted as being about 2 seconds. If you are also distracted for two or three seconds before perceiving a risk, and the braking itself takes time and distance, there is the possibility of travelling 150 to 200 metres forward, or to drift across lanes or off the side of the road, at 100 or 110km/h. It does not make sense to claim that 100km/h is slow, when compared with 200km/h. Of course it is slower, but that is like arguing that being shot once is not dangerous, because it is safer than being shot four times. Both are dangerous. 100km/h is fast enough to be dangerous, while 200km/h on a public road should be cause for capital punishment.

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.

correctly predict their response to an emergency. A friend of mine discovered that his advanced driver training course did not make him immune to the laws of physics, nor did it train his instincts to produce the correct response to an unforeseen eventuality. He was fortunate that the damage was minimal, and that no-one else was in his path. He had quite a high opinion of his ability, too.

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.

I dispute this. The only way that this logic can be sound is if you intend to exceed the speed limit everywhere. If you do not know where the cameras are, and you object to police revenue raising, then the solution is simple. Don't speed. Anywhere. This is how they are supposed to work.

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.

Crisis, I do not believe that the government is exempt from providing sensible roads and regulations, but it is a more general problem with modern western democracy that we choose our rules only by voting for governments. This pretty much guarantees that we will get some rules that we do not like, and will only be able to change them by protesting, or at the next election, if one of the parties makes it an election issue.

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.

As for "fair" and reasonable limits, I do not find it a great imposition to drive 10km/h slower. Taking into account cornering, acceleration and braking phases, time spent stationary at intersections, and in heavy traffic, less time is spent travelling at the speed limit in cities, than many people might expect. A lower speed limit makes little real difference to travel times. It just makes the drive seem less exciting. I can live with that.

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.

I agree entirely with the first part of this, but the second part raises problems. What are the "real threats", and how should the government target them? If it is by removing the trees and power poles, so that people cannot crash into them, that is only catering to people who cannot keep their cars on the road. It would fail as a road-safety policy, as it would only make it safer to drive on foot paths, not roads (although it might reduce road traffic density), and I do not think that this is the goal of road safety. If it is stupidity, bad habits and inattention, it is difficult to think of a government policy, or police method, that could be applied to it.

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.

Dropping a wheel off the road will not automatically have you losing control, but it is certainly enough for anyone who does not respond appropriately. A modern car only has its commendable grip and handling when it is on a good surface. If you have two wheels (or four) on a gravel shoulder, your grip and balance go out the window, and at 100km/h, I would be surprised if the majority of normal drivers did not lose control to at least some extent, before stopping or hitting something.

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?”

Also, hitting a stationary object at 100km/h is not the same as two cars colliding head-on at 50km/h, for two reasons. The first is kinetic energy. KE=(1/2)mv². Halving the speed reduces the kinetic energy to 1/4, while doubling the mass (two cars) only doubles the energy. Hence a 50km/h head-on crash will dissipate only 1/2 the energy of a single vehicle 100km/h crash.

What weight is this stationery object?

The second reason is that both cars are deformable, whereas the tree/barrier/rock/other stationary object may not be. In this case, you will have twice as much energy being dissipated in a single car, rather than half as much energy spread over two cars.

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.

Modern crash tests do not cover these scenarios. They crash a car at 54km/h or 65km/h into a stationary barrier that is deformable, like hitting a parked car. They do not test at 100km/h, nor on a rigid barrier, nor a deformable barrier at a speed opposing and matched to the approaching car. I doubt that even a modern 5-star car would save all of its occupants from serious injury or death in a 100km/h impact with a tree or concrete barrier, much less from an impact with a truck.

ANCAP testing attempts to cover “real world” accidents. They cover how a car most likely strike a “tree/barrier/rock/other stationary object”.

I believe that a stout tree or pole would be worse, because it is narrow, and can intrude further into the car. A VY Commodore hit a tree a few years ago, near my place, and was torn into three large pieces (front, back and engine), and several small pieces, killing both occupants. The tree had some slight damage to its bark. Tree>car. Speed may have been a factor.

How fast were they going? In any case this is why I believe they should be removed.