Thanks Cougar. What you are saying is completely right and I’ve just been putting it across badly. Speed just makes a bad situation a lot worse. Combine it with overall poor driving and you have a recipe for disaster.

I couldn’t talk about or deal with what happened for a long time. It’s been twelve years now and time makes it easier to talk about it. Still upsets me though and hits hard at times. When my son was born three years ago I actually went to ring my big brother. Stopped me dead in my tracks.

I’ll never forget having the Dr explain to the family that my brother was basically brain dead. My mother and older sister were hysterical. It basically came down to me and my estranged father, a man who I’ve never agreed with on anything, to make the decision to turn the machines off. What happens when you do that is not pretty. Sitting in a corridor holding a nine year old boy and trying to explain to him what’s happening to his dad is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

I’m the only member of my family that holds no ill will towards the car driver. I think they all needed someone to blame whereas I just wanted my brother back. It’s sad because he was the only member of my family I was close to. Luckily I’d just moved back to West Yorkshire the week before it happened and spent some time with him for the first time in years. I’ll always be grateful for that.

The missus and I moved back to Cheshire not long after. Too many memories in my home town and I wasn’t coping with grief too well. Mrs Funkmaster retrained as a driving and then advanced driving instructor partly because of what happened. She’s very idealistic and figured she could play a small part by trying to teach people how to drive to a better standard.

The worst fallout was my mother, who’s never really recovered. She had my brother when she was 14 in the 60’s and had to fight to keep my Grandparents from raising him as their own. Her house is basically a shrine to him and I don’t think that’s healthy. My brothers daughter is a mess still in her twenties. He was her rock and that got ripped away from her when she was 14.

Sorry to ramble on. I just wish some people would realise how dangerous cars can be and treat them with caution and respect.

Thanks for being so open, funk, anything else I can say seems trite now.

But I used to be one of those saying it is a waste of time concentrating on speed when they should be catching the bad driving. Not that I ever speeded in 30 limits, though I’ve been caught in a 50 and a 70 limit. However whilst I still have my reservations – though that is still more directed towards the limits and enforcement on higher limited roads, I still have a theory that having limits too low on safer roads leads to disrespect for speed limits in general, leads to people speeding in 30 limits – I am now totally happy with speed enforcement in general. Yes, it is just something easy to do, but it’s better than nothing. I’ve also slowed down even on higher limit roads and try not to be in as much of a hurry. Would rather be a bit late than drive dangerously.

I also wonder if it’s analogous to the West Mids Police close passing cyclists initiative. In their spiel for that they point out that most accidents and deaths are caused at junctions, yet that’s not what they’re enforcing because it would be too difficult. Yet we’re all happy with what they are enforcing because not only is it something which makes us feel unsafe, it also has a knock on effect on promoting safety around cyclists in general. In a similar sense, at least getting people to stick to one rule for driving might help them stick to others.

It often is.

People expect other traffic to behave a certain way. This is a crucial part of how we drive and how our roads are designed. If another road user is going twice as fast as everyone expects, this is going to cause accidents.

When you want to overtake a slow moving vehicle on a single carriageway road, you see a gap, you think ok that’s enough space, and you go. If someone comes screaming around the corner at 100mph, suddenly you have far less space than if someone came at 60.

There are many junctions where you can’t see a long way. So you wait for it to be clear, then you go. Just as you go, a car appears. If that car is doing 50 then you have time to accelerate and there’s no issue. If it’s doing 90, they have to slam on and there’s a risky situation.

Speed CREATES risks. It increases the potential collision radius.

Do you not read these threads fully? 😛

If anyone has not read funkmasterp’s last post, please go back and read it.

At the extreme end stationary bodies do not collide with each other things so speed [ or movement]is always the cause- without it there can be no crashes. Realistically the question is what else contributed to the accident /exacerbated this risk of speed and these are often considered the cause.

Care to cite something?

I bet you guys are a hoot to ride and/or drink with.

Someone mentioned the war in another thread but I think they got away with it…..

It’s taking a philosophical turn in here.

Indeed, which is why it’s perfectly safe to ignore double white lines as long as you can’t see anything coming the other way.

The reason there is so much focus on speed..

Is that it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce RTC’s & improve road safety.

Hoist that concept on board & you’ll begin to understand why the emphasis!

That could cause all sorts of havoc. Especially if the thing you are overtaking also brakes because he sees the imminent collision.

Anyway – what about the other scenario? Or are you asserting that speed never causes an accident? My general principle is that by going fast, you are behaving unexpectedly in a way that introduces greater risk.

And that is?

Incidentally, I wonder why you know so much more about road accidents than the police? I wonder what would happen if they came around your workplace and started telling you about network security?

Are we assuming they’re implimenting road safety policies based on unlimited budgets, or policies which are the cheapest and easiest to get through due to limited budgets?

Again, the usual Brake advocates failing to understand the difference between breaking a speed limit and inappropriate speed within said limit. It’s not difficult, if you are travelling faster than a speed where you can safely stop in the event of a stationary object entering your path or safely negotiate a bend you are going too fast.

Everything else is semantics.

which model of human is driving said corsa or porsche

Which particular part of my path is the stationary object going to be appearing in ?

Half a mile away. No worries. 155mph.
Six foot away…. could be an issue at more than 1mph.

I think your simple explanation may need some tweaking.

Not sure how you arrived at that.

This is no longer productive.

Keep your **** speed down and watch what the **** you’re doing. End of thread.

I have no appetite for the minutiae. There’s a general point somewhere that you don’t seem to care about in favour of nit picking.

Speeders like to speed, which is fair enough. It’s great fun. But because a lot of people are shit at driving, there are speed limits. Rules that apply to everyone.

It’s that simple. Suck it up. There’s no point going on about other kinds of bad driving – no-one’s excusing any of that or suggesting it’s not important.

Anything else in this argument is *irrelevant*.

That wouldn’t be difficult. Lend me a tenner?