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That’s exactly what I’m saying.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than 1.25 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashesIn 2016 there were 181,384 accident casualties recorded on Britain’s roads; 1,792 of these were fatal.
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7615
So 1.25 million total only 1800 were here and you think we drive badly. Time you take out those people who have had a medical episode while driving, mechanical failure, trees dropping on cars etc we are probably down to 1000 where bad driving was the cause.
Like I said don't let the facts get in the way of your hatred for motor vehicles. Your stats crush your own argument.
Ooh! Only 1000 people dead. Who cares about them eh? That's less that 3 a day, everything is cool.
Ooh! Only 1000 people dead. Who cares about them eh? That’s less that 3 a day, everything is cool.
Everyone dies Dez everyone dies at some point. Your comment is either trolling or extremely naive. How many lives are saved by motor vehicles each year? We can cut road deaths to zero easily, no motor vehicles. That is the only way to guarantee no road casualties. Then no ambulances, no fire engines no deliveries of drugs. My guess and I admit it is a guess more than 1000 lives are saved by motor vehicles a year. Some of you sound like you have the reasoning of children 🙂
If you want to save lives target the big hitters, this is pissing in the wind.
you seem to think it's a zero sum game - you can only reduce road casualties by reducing vehicles.
As you say the UK has lower death rates than other countries so it's possible to engineer roads and train drivers to reduce casualties. All other people are saying is that there is more that can be done to make roads safer for both vehicle occupants and cyclists/pedestrians.
Just blithely saying 'vehicles save lives so we have to accept a bit of collateral damage' is the same language that the gun lobby in the US use.
Just blithely saying ‘vehicles save lives so we have to accept a bit of collateral damage’ is the same language that the gun lobby in the US use.
Deffo trolling now 🙂
Thing is the government has done lots to reduce casualties you only have to look at the year on year stats over the last 20 years for that.
For instance I would love to see a segregated cycle path system in the UK the one we have obviously to any cyclist does not provide any level of protection. That however is selfish, I know in my heart it would not do much to impact that 1800 people. There are however many ways that money could save 1800 people. Lives are lives better to look on it in the round rather than just pick on one area.
My take on UK drivers is they are pretty safe, however I would not say they are courteous.
Weird the stats say we are one of the safest nations when it comes to driving. However lets not let the truth get in the way of a good rant
Not as simple as that. In car safety and medical care has improved massively over the last few decades - you can drive like a complete dick, total your car and if not walk away from it, at least not be a death stat. The UK is a small country, we have the NHS and response times are good.
Things aren't so rosy if you're not inside a vehicle and the UK has been very good at getting people to sit in a car to drive a mile down the road rather than walking. If there are no pedestrians, you don't get many pedestrian deaths but there are somewhat negative knock on effects in terms of public health.
A lot of people die riding bikes in the Netherlands. That doesn't mean it's dangerous, it means a lot of people ride a lot of miles. The death stats for over 65s riding bikes are shocking - a lot of old people die while riding their bikes, but a lot of them are natural deaths. Old people in the UK don't die riding bikes, they die in their armchair in fron tof the TV (which doesn't mean our living room safety is poor)
seems pretty implausible that you could accelerate sufficiently for the car to go behind but would not have been able to brake sufficiently for it to go in front, given that braking is massively more effective than accelerating in all realistic scenarios.
A disappointingly unimaginative statement. I can easily image such a scenario; Cougar tootling safely away from the line, head of the queue. No need to accelerate firmly, and (he thought) no need to look left as the traffic light had given him priority over traffic from the left. As he commences crossing the junction, he looks left, sees numpty on mobile phone/twiddling with stereo/distracted by squawking kids travelling towards him at or near the speed limit against a red light; obviously not going to stop because they haven’t noticed the red light, let alone the baby blue (with brown rust highlights) Vauxhall Nova our hero is driving. The Nova is already entering the danger zone; stomping the brake would only halt it it prime smooshing territory. Fortunately 1st gear on a Nova is a particularly low ratio, allowing the panicked mashing of the accelerator to be almost instantaneously be converted into a gazelle like leap forward, which, along with a rightwards yank of the leatherette covered steering wheel to the right resulted in our hero cheating death by mere centimetres. Huzzah.
It’s a relatively rare scenario, but far from impossible. People are paying less attention to the road then ever before, I’d rather keep every option open to me when attempting to dodge the dickheads on a day to day basis, thank you.
It’s a relatively rare scenario, but far from impossible
Cougar says it happened to him once, maybe 20 year ago so that seems about right
I wonder how many other 'near misses' Cougar has had in those 20 years that would not have happened if other drivers had been obeying speed limits. How much less delay at junctions if pulling out was easier as vehicles were not approaching so quickly.
An interesting listen on the autonomous vehicle issue. The upshot seems to be that robocars will work best if we get rid of those pesky pedestrians, horseriders and cyclists, etc...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bh5x20
Fortunately 1st gear on a Nova is a particularly low ratio
You got the marque right, I was in a Vectra IIRC. Probably second gear though. (-:
I wonder how many other ‘near misses’ Cougar has had in those 20 years that would not have happened if other drivers had been obeying speed limits.
Who knows, I passed my test in 1990 so have covered a few miles since then. That's just one factor of bad driving though, anecdotally I'd be inclined to say that "not paying attention" would be the primary cause of near misses and not-misses. I've been involved in a number of collisions over the years and offhand I can only think of one where excessive speed was a causal factor (and I was stationary at the time for that one).
In and of itself, driving beyond the posted limit doesn't implicitly cause accidents. What it does do is a) reduce the time available for all parties to avoid a collision and b) increase the severity of a collision, potentially dramatically, should one occur.
sure. so people not paying attention is a problem, but at present most of them are doing it above the speed limit as well.
to that list i'd also add c) tend to worsen congestion
Junctions and roundabouts function better at slower speeds
As I understand it collisions increase when speed differential are high, and flow in congested traffic is better if speeds are lower - it's why variable speed limits on motorways have been introduced. Variable limits tend to be enforced quite strictly - flow and collisions on 70mph motorways should be logically be better if there wasn't a subset of drivers trying to travel at 80mph+ and changing lanes frequently.
trolling
Quick note for bazzer - trolling does not equal disagreeing.
We can go back in circles about 'appropriate speed' and that the driving at the speed limit can be dangerous but the reality is the majority of drivers currently flout limits and most drivers treat the limit as a target (and many drive 'as fast as they think they can get away with" - the best part of 10mph above the posted limit. There are 20mph roads in Lambeth where the 85%ile speed is over 30mph.
The research that justifies 20mph limits - those really simple stats that show a pedestrian has a 3% chance of death if hit at 20mph, 20% at 30mph and 50% at 35mph - means we actually do want people to travel at or below the posted limit and that simply doesn't happen at the moment.
The 'speed as a contributory factor' figures are likely massively understated as illegal speeds are so culturally ingrained. It wouldn't take long to dig out a few court cases where someone has been killed by a speeding driver and they've still managed to avoid a dangerous driving charge or some comment was made by the judge about 'speed not being an issue' when it's clear that it could have been the difference between someone living or dying.
trolling
Quick note for bazzer – trolling does not equal disagreeing.
The analogy with gun lobby in US was aimed at provoking a response and nothing to do with the argument, trolling !!
If we really wanted to reduce accidents we would focus on infrastructure - separation of pedestrians, bikes, cars and lorries, each having their own dedicated space, ideally with traffic only flowing one way. Then if you wanted automatically enforced speeds it would be both easier and more effective for its intended purpose.
ok you might not get to 100% this but if you adopted the separation idea as a general principle when say new roads or major upgrades are built you would get closer over time...
obvs you’d need to decide which way the traffic was going to flow around the uk ie clockwise or anti-clockwise
I am going to put forward a psychological answer from my days at Uni where my third year selections included a module on driver behaviour.
For anyone who is more up to date tell me if this has been debunked ....
Wilde's Risk Homeostasis Theory was broadly that any given human in any given situation will tolerate a certain amount of risk.
Bob drives to work.
Bob is on time and he's not got an important meeting today anyway - he will accept a risk of 6.
Bob is running late, he's on a written warning for tardiness and he has a meeting with his boss at 900. He will accept a risk of 9 on his commute.
In unlimited car land Bob will likely leather it along some empty motorway and be a bit pushy through town.
In limited car land Bob will take other risks that don't exceed his threshold of 9 to make up time. Maybe he'll mount the pavement and drive on it or aggressively tailgate and push into much smaller gaps. He might not check his mirrors as well before driving off and he's sure as hell not going to wait to pass that cyclist with a 1.5m gap or stop for an amber light.
Automatic variable limiting should not be implemented without taking into account of these types of consequences.
Look how dangerously many limited vans and hgvs are driven.
There was someone on here who worked for a haulage company and I'm sure they said that went the put a fuel usage bonus into place for drivers that the number of red light jumping and other offences rocketed as people took more risks to secure the bonus.
I will add that I'm firmly in the law abiding camp for speed (and other stuff) but I'm also pragmatic enough to think I'll take speeding over other dangerous behaviours.
The ‘speed as a contributory factor’ figures are likely massively understated as illegal speeds are so culturally ingrained.
I'm not sure as I follow the logic in that. You're suggesting that the people providing these stats are lying?
I'd have thought the opposite to be more likely. Does "speed as a factor" get included whenever a party was speeding, or only when it was decided to be a causal factor? The former would be considerably easier to count I'd have thought, but if that's the case then it doesn't really tell us much of use beyond the fact that a lot of drivers break the limits (which we know anyway).
The analogy with gun lobby in US was aimed at provoking a response and nothing to do with the argument, trolling !!
No, it was intended to draw a parallel between those advocating 'change nothing, it's not broke' in one context with those doing it in another. Most people in the UK believe that US gun laws are 'broken' and that it's too easy to own a gun, too easy to continue ownership and too many people die as a result of the use of guns.
I was implying that the same thing is true throughout the world for motor vehicle ownership. We've given up our urban environments for vehicle access, we believe we have a right to drive and we, on the whole, drive faster than legally allowed (even before you take into account moderatign speed according to conditions) and without paying sufficient attention. Yet we blindly say 'never mind, it's for the greater good' etc. And it isn't.
Cougar tootling safely away from the line, head of the queue.
Yeah, except (a) he specifically said he was going through a green, not setting off from a standstill and (b) the discussion is over breaking the speed limit which probably means 30mph at least and maybe more. At which point the potential for acceleration is much much weaker than for deceleration and if we're talking about a split second when he was already in front of the approaching car then there wouldn't have been more than a gnat's crotchet of either.
Making progress.....
"There was someone on here who worked for a haulage company and I’m sure they said that went the put a fuel usage bonus into place for drivers that the number of red light jumping and other offences rocketed as people took more risks to secure the bonus."
Wasn't me but at my company there was evidence this happened when we had Telematics devices installed and we were given a beeps per hours driving target for the maximum number of infringements it counted for hard braking, accelerating and cornering. One guy rolled a van straightlining a roundabout after misjudging it and clipping the inside kerb and the number of red light jumps increased by a large margin.
Going through red lights is horrendous in Bristol.
In particular buses and tipper lorries are the ones that nearly collect me as I set off from lights on my commute. I know which junctions are the worst so always have a little glance before I get too far across the junction. A I cringe when I see cyclists get the jump on the amber as I am going to see one get smeared over the road soon.
Well actually I now take a 4 mile longer commute and avoid the centre of bristol full stop and skirt around the country lanes to the south.
As for speed limiters - has anyone here who thinks they are a good idea tried using a speed limiter on the road? It feels horrendously restrictive when you are accelerating to change lane or pull out and the car suddenly feels like it's applying the anchors. I much prefer to be able to accelerate slightly over and then lift and drop back to the limit. I use my limiter all the time on smart motorways, signs lit up or not and in road works mainly so i can sit on the limiter with mr angry bmw/audi sat up my chuff and be all smug that I am bang on the limit.
Just nearly got hit walking up our road by some lifted, light bars discovery 1 having a race with a focus. 30mph village with no pavement and they were doing >50mph by my estimates but the answer to that in my opinion is more police back on the beat to catch them driving like the ass holes they are. There are far more things people do behind the wheel than speed that need stamping out.