Driving at "Driving Test" standard.

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Driving at "Driving Test" standard.

197 posts & 74 voices | Started 7 months ago by michaelmcc | Latest reply from cyclehard

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michaelmcc - Member

I think people training for the test are probably the safest drivers out there... I believe this... after that most people seem to forget everything in the test and drive too fast, don't bother indicating, change lanes like they own the road, etc.
That's really rather silly, isn't it.
You have virtually no experience and yet you feel qualified to make a statement like that Learner drivers may be relatively safe but that is only because there is someone sitting next to them (hopefully) with experience and keeping them right.

How many people do you see nearly cut you off on the bike, rail around roundabouts with no signal, changing lanes nearly causing a crash, mostly drivers with no L plates.. unless theyre learners and just don't bother using them. Ok so in a lot of cases their old people that might be past it and possibly not allowed drive on the roads, but thats a different debate.

I'm much safer at driving than a lot of people out there..

Posted 7 months ago #
IanMunro - Member

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

I think people's atitudes to you might in some way reflect you telling various posters they have their heads up their arses, are on high horses etc., mmc.

I haven't offered any direct advice so far but will now:

Relax, take things in your stride, drive so that however incompetent and aggressive others may be they don't put you in danger or force you to make brusque movements. Leave plenty of distance between you and other road users, react a soon as you identify a potential hazard so that if it becomes a real hazard it's easy to stop/avoid. If the tester can sereenly watch the world go by as you smoothly chauffeur him/her around he/she won't fail you.

When someone raises a finger smile, when they blow their horn impatiently potter on unruffled. And do the same when posting on STW.

Posted 7 months ago #
jam bo - Member

Classic teenager logic. I failed my test but it's everyone else's fault.

My 17yr old brother in law crashed into the back of a lorry in the the snow a couple of winters ago because 'it stopped to quick'.

Posted 7 months ago #
aracer - Member

I'm much safer at driving than a lot of people out there..

Your driving is above average? Or is your "lot of people" your mates who straight line roundabouts?

Posted 7 months ago #
timber - Member

Failed the car test first time. Driving rather over confident, didn't slow for a roundabout because I could see that the other ways onto it were empty, should have at least shown an intention of slowing rather than changing up. Remembered this and passed second time.

Failed trailer test first time too. Just because I am used to driving country lanes and squeezing through a lot of tight gaps, now well practiced and without having to slow much, does not mean that the assessor is and he had a few eye closing moments. Took note, passed second time.

Not stuff that was done because I thought I was a driving God, just got a bit familiar and blase.

Also done a load of stuff through work for quads, 4x4, tractor and stuff, far more interesting and about finding the boundaries.

As for the motorway comment, from where I grew up in West Cornwall, the nearest bit of motorway is Exeter, would make the test a half day affair. Would far rather people learnt to drive on country lanes, not down the middle, most are wide enough for 2 cars to pass and you should not be travelling so slow as to hold up a tractor.

Posted 7 months ago #
Northwind - Member

michaelmcc - Member

I'm much safer at driving than a lot of people out there..

That's entirely possible. But don't be too pleased, it's only because there are a lot of people out there driving who are terrifying. You can be safer than them and still a liability

The idea is to make you a safe, qualified driver; not to make you better than the worst on the road.

Posted 7 months ago #
michaelmcc - Member

I'm much safer at driving than a lot of people out there..

Your driving is above average? Or is your "lot of people" your mates who straight line roundabouts?

I was talking about said people that cut me off when I'm on the bike, don't bother signalling at roundabouts (it seems the norm where i live to not bother after you've passed your test), pass out at stupid places etc.

Posted 7 months ago #
michaelmcc - Member

Anyway I think this thread needs to be put to bed, I'm a bit fed up with it and don't think it's going anywhere now.

Posted 7 months ago #
michaelmcc - Member

When someone raises a finger smile, when they blow their horn impatiently potter on unruffled. And do the same when posting on STW.

Not sure what you're getting at there.. I get on really well with most fellow mountain bikers. The only ones not so much maybe are ones that came to the sport late and haven't developed the biker mentality about things yet.

Posted 7 months ago #
aracer - Member

Anyway I think this thread needs to be put to bed, I'm a bit fed up with it

Can't imagine why that could be.

Posted 7 months ago #
Northwind - Member

michaelmcc - Member
ones that came to the sport late and haven't developed the biker mentality about things yet.

Funny, I feel the same about drivers

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

Edukator although your argument that police driving standards are lousy is as typically sophisticated and nuanced as most police bashing that goes on STW permit me raise a couple of issues with that report.

Firstly - those statistics and that entire article are based on reports from the Daily Mail. Despite me being typical violent, fascist, stupid, racist, jobsworth police officer I distrust anything reported by the Mail or its stable mates.

Secondly - those statistics are collisions 'involving' a police vehicle. Let me do some of the work the reporter hasn't and give you a better understanding of the way in which such stats are compiled. Say for example I'm on a blue light run in a marked police vehicle and I approach a red traffic light. I treat the junction as a give way and slow to a standstill. A vehicle coming from my right reacts to the lights and sirens and slams on his brakes a little quicker than he needs to. A cyclist then slams in to the rear of his vehicle and hurts himself. That would be a collision involving a police car, although it wasn't my fault as the police driver. Let me give you another example. Someone parks a police riot van in the yard of a police station and grazes another police vehicle as he's reversing. Thats recorded as a collision involving two police vehicles! Shockingly bad driving from everyone involved and a totally unacceptable risk to public safety. Let me give you one more example. Say a police vehicle is in a pursuit with a stolen moped. The police vehicle keeps a safe distance in the hope the moped rider stops and gives up. The moped rider takes a wrong turn and ends up at a dead end. He crashes the ped and jumps over the side of a pedestrian bridge, not realising its actually 20 metres up. He dies. This would be treated as a fatal collision involving the police. Those statistics make no mention of who was to actually blame for any fatality or collision. The police invest huge amounts of time and effort in improving standards of driving and the investigation of any collision involving a police vehicle is very rigorous.

I'm also not entirely sure that comparing the general public like for like to a group of people that have to drive at high speed, in pursuits or who come in to contact with intoxicated or criminal drivers is statistically sound. Are you suggesting that if the general public were given blues and twos and asked to drive at full tilt everywhere there would be no resulting increase in crashes? Personally I think only the Daily Mail or someone a little soft in the head would look at it in such a simplistic way.

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

There are plenty of other sources of statistics on police accidents on the Net. The police have lots of accidents and are involved in more fatal accidents than average. It's getting better but still not good. The Sweeny style is no longer acceptable and discouraged but officers still have lots of crashes.

Any casual observer can see why, too many drive too fast on missions that simply aren't life or death.

IMO (and it is only an opinion remember) if the police wish to go around chasing people because they judge them dangerous they should be armed and on motorbikes or in helicopters. They'd stand a better chance of protecting the public without putting the public in danger.

Chasing a stolen moped in a police car is exactly what the police should not be doing. Putting the pulic in danger for something as trivial as a moped when the police can't even follow the thing down an alley way. Who's soft in the head, me or a copper stupid enough to go racing through a residential area in a probably fruitless attempt to recover a moped. Let's keep pursuits for mass murderers and armed robbery eh.

Posted 7 months ago #
IanMunro - Member

Edukator's police force out catching offenders earlier

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtmwACycJGo

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

Not quite what I had in mind Ian but demonstrably efficient.

There might not be quite as much STW police bashing if police contributors were a little less sterotypically heavy handed, condescending and incapable of listening to the views of others without considering those views a bookable offence..

Posted 7 months ago #
GrahamS - Member

I think Nonsense makes a perfectly reasonably point Edukator.

The accident stats for police vehicles will naturally tend to be higher due to the work they do and the way the stats are recorded.

You can't take those figures and correctly conclude that "Police driving standards are lousy". It is classic false reporting. Something the Mail tends to specialise in.

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

So the mere mention on the Daily Mail in an article renders it invalid. OK. Here's the opening paragraph of a Nottingham Unversity study:

"Police pursuit driving has previously been defined as “an active
attempt by a law enforcement officer operating a motor vehicle
with emergency equipment to apprehend a suspected law violator
in a motor vehicle, when the driver of the vehicle in question
attempts to avoid apprehension” (Alpert, 1987, p. 299). This
activity can be extremely dangerous to both parties involved in the
pursuit and the general public. Recent statistics and some highprofile
incidents in the United Kingdom have highlighted a rise in
police-driver accidents. Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the U.K.
Police Complaints Authority, recently commented on a 178%
increase in fatalities involving police pursuits, which he described
as “totally unacceptable. . ."

I'l adopt Sir Grahams vocabulary and refer to police driving standards as "totally unacceptable", which means much the same as lousy.

Posted 7 months ago #
michaelmcc - Member

Can't imagine why that could be.

Because some people here are acting like tool bags.

Mods close this down please!!

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

Edukator - you also missed my point about not being over confident and driving beyond your ability. I don't think you quite appreciate the point I was making and I think you may have taken it a little personally. I wasn't trying to have a go at you. Just suggesting that statistics were being manipulated to support an ill thought through argument.

Now that study. Firstly thats talking about police pursuits, which you correctly identify are highly dangerous and therefore very carefully managed and frequently result in the police ending the pursuit. That is completely different to response driving. Even if the pursuit results in a fatality it does not automatically follow that the police driver was at fault.

I'm not suggesting the police are perfect or that the training, especially for standard response drivers, could be more rigorous. But you are talking about a subject that you clearly know very little about.

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

If you are saying that police drivers are over confident and drive beyond their ability, I agree. Signing up to the police does not improve your vision or reflexes. Training and practice do but only up to a point.

The laws of physics are the same for all of us and being able to give a running commentary of what you are doing at speed does not make that speed any safer. The tractor will still pull out and you'll have no more chance of stopping than any other driver. When you swerve to go around it and a car comes the other way all the training and practice you've done suddenly become useless - there's nowhere to go.

Posted 7 months ago #
TandemJeremy - Member

I have not read the whole thread but top rated police drivers are some of the best drivers in the world.

One of the motorcycle magazines set up some testing on a circuit - the police where faster than any of the journalists by a long way, not much slower than BTTC and BSB riders and drivers and the journos were genuinely respectful of just how good they ( the police) are. this is the elite drivers - not the plod in a panda car

Posted 7 months ago #
aracer - Member

Because some people here are acting like tool bags.

That's your interpretation. Others might suggest they're the ones trying to talk some sense into somebody who's a brilliant driver yet incapable of passing the driving test.

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

"But you are talking about a subject that you clearly know very little about."

See what I mean about police officers being condescending, Nonsense.

All you know about me is that I'm someone that advocates cautious, considerate driving who is encouraging STW members to drive to a standard as good or better than they did when they passed their test. You also know I object to the police driving fast on anything other than life or death missions because they will inevitably put the public at greater risk.

Why insult me by claiming I know nothing about driving and in particular the hazards of high-speed driving on public roads?

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

Motoring ournalists are good with their pens, not behind the wheel TJ. If you were comparing the police to that years MSA champions I suspect the results would have been rather different (Edit, I see they were). It's irrelevent anyway because here we a considering what is an appropriate driving style on the public road where people walk, ride bikes and potter about in cars.

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

I said you know nothing about police driving not driving per se. That's not condescending, it's true. The vast majority of police driver training is about observation and hazard perception, not just driving fast. Which is exactly what you are advocating. Not sure I get your point tbh?

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

Edukator if you ever get robbed or knocked off your bike by a driver who tries to make off, think about how quickly you might want me or a colleague to come to your assistance. I never intended to pee you off or make you feel belittled. If you're near London you can always email me and come on a drive at work to see if you think I'm safe or not?

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

I'm saying no amount of observation and hazard perception training can offset let alone eliminate the increased risk with the speeds used in pursuit style driving. Pursuit style driving by specifically trained drivers should be severely restricted and the vast majority of police drivers should simply be told "don't or you're fired".

Police driving gods with super human powers that mean they can drive fast and safe is a myth. I can drive very fast, I also know that if I do it for long enough on a public road I'll get caught out, however observant and perceptive I am - so I don't.

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

This is a case in point. Most police drivers don't end up in pursuits as they are only trained in the initial phase and it is specifically trained drivers who pursue people if the reason is sufficiently serious for example if they are a danger to the public. A huge number of police pursuits are stopped by the police exactly because it is too dangerous to continue! Your perception of what happens may not be accurate.

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

Good, so if they are only allowed to pursue very occasionally how do police drivers manage to have and provoke so many accidents? Taking personal initiatives they shouldn't? Misusing a certain level of impunity?

Posted 7 months ago #
Junkyard - Member

IIRC somoen in a control station make sth ecall not the driver so it is more subjective and they cannot get caught up in the heat of the moment.
It is a tough call risk lives pursuing them or let everyone go when the drive like a loon....neither is a great choice tbh. I suspect the crims prefer the later whether it would be better [ whatever measure would we use?] who knows and i dont see how you could provide reliable evidence one way or the other tbh.

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

That's it I throw in the towel. You win. The police are all barstewards who do the job to drive like idiots and beat people up. Go back over the statistics and decide for yourself, given the nature of the job they do and the type of driving they are required to do, and the number of emergency calls they deal with, if you think the stats are unreasonable. What about ambulance drivers? Fire engines? Or are they ok because they don't oppress the proletariat.

Posted 7 months ago #
Nonsense - Member

Junkyard the decision can be made by the driver or by the control Inspector who is "managing" the pursuit.

Posted 7 months ago #
Northwind - Member

It's nice when someone's so obvious about the axe they wish to grind, avoids confusion.

Edukator - Member

Good, so if they are only allowed to pursue very occasionally how do police drivers
manage to have and provoke so many accidents?

You think the police only have accidents during pursuits?

Posted 7 months ago #
Edukator - Member

No, Northwind. If you put the quote from Nottingham Uni into Google it'll no doubt throw up the rest of the report with a breakdown.

I think there would be a lot less police accidents if officers stuck to the type of driving the law requires of them and every other driver, Nonsense. Emergency calls alone don't account for the poor record as the Nottingham study demonstrates.

It's not a question of win or lose an arguement/discussion on the Net. It's a case of being objective and in the case of the police, self-critical.

As for the image of the police, you yourselves are responsible for that. Not being seen driving badly would help your cause.

As for ambulances and fire engines with blue lights and sirens on, the urgency is more evident than a police car chasing down a stolen moped.

Posted 7 months ago #