Could this lead to tougher tests for older drivers

There is wholesale carnage on the roads – its just as you say become normalised.

The FB page for the area my Mum lives has, alongside all the anti-LTN tirades started sticking the boot into anyone reporting car crashes on the area social media pages. Couple of days ago a car flattened a few traffic lights, the driver did a runner. Someone posted a pic of the aftermath, a comment about how the hell can this much chaos be caused in a 20mph zone.

And the FB is full of “well we don’t know what happened, the driver could have had a medical episode, maybe they swerved to avoid a horde of Lime bikers who were all jumping the lights and coming out of nowhere and then got out to chase one of them…”

Any incident involving a cyclist (no matter how minor, how much of a “near miss”) generates immediate calls for all cyclists to be banned.

Car crashes… “oh well it’s just an accident…”

There is wholesale carnage on the roads – its just as you say become normalised.

Statistically roads are getting safer.  Not as quickly as we would all like, and probably not driven as much by driver behaviour as it should be but “wholesale carnage” doesn’t relate to most people’s experience.  I think you remain more likely to die on the roads than be murdered – but that is not the public perception.  I’m sceptical that retests actually fix that – in fact I imagine that “cycle haters” would be even more enranged that we don’t pay road tax / have insurance / pass a test etc, if they had to sit a retest and cyclists didn’t.  There are things I would change if I was SoS for Transport, but mandatory retests for everyone, every 10 years wouldn’t be on my priority list – insurers seem to believe drivers get better with experience at least until they start to get quite old.

Theres no point, society is happy to have  5ish road related deaths a day

Unless you can convincingly show that retests (or any other major shake up) materially changes that number then you are wasting your time.

if trains or anything else was killing and maiming so many folk then the outcry would be huge

Unless you can convincingly show that retests (or any other major shake up) materially changes that number then you are wasting your time.

The problem is that “the number” is focusing on deaths. 5 deaths a day on average has become normalised – as TJ says above, if 5 people a day were being killed on trains or trams or on building sites, there’d be absolute outcry, the whole industry shut down.

But, alongside the deaths, is just the rest of the massive headache for everyone. Even a relatively simple “accident”, a single vehicle collision where it goes off the road (the way the media report it, “the car left the road” as though it did so of it’s own accord…), involves a police and ambulance response, maybe fire brigade to cut the driver free. Road is closed, massive disruption to everyone, recovery of the vehicle. Every one of those costs a minimum of £100,000 to attend, sort out, clear up and resolve and that’s not counting the economic and environmental cost of congestion.

And in the case I linked to on the previous page (elderly driver crashed their car into a shop front on the high street), that lead to an air ambulance, road ambulances, multiple police vehicles, a complete closure of the high street (and the resulting loss of a day’s takings for everyone), massive area wide traffic disruption including buses being diverted and one shop being left in ruins.

A death is calculated at about £1.2m on average I believe. From an economic point of view alone, that should be enough to be pushing for safer roads, even if they’re currently some of the safest in Europe.

if trains or anything else was killing and maiming so many folk then the outcry would be huge

You ever been on a train that’s struck a person on the line?  I can assure you that whilst there are people who are concerned for the person or often their family, there are people who just want the train moving again to get to their destination.  When I commuted it was sadly a fairly regular disruption and people would get angry with platform staff.  I’ve been on a train that hit someone and was delayed for 2 hours – BTP eventually got on the train at the guard’s request to deal with passengers shouting at him including one who told him “to move the **** train, if they cared what happened to their remains they wouldn’t have been on a railway line”.   People are angry about safety until it inconvieneces them, then they are angry about elf’n’safety gone mad.  You don’t have to go that far back in history to find big train disasters – I don’t think people were marching on parliament.

nope – and the situation you describe happens on the roads as well

Thats not my point tho – my point is that if anything else was causing so many deaths and maimings then serious steps would be taken.  Driving deaths and injuries have become normalised in a way others are not

I don’t think that’s fair (and “carnage” is borderline hysterical).

If someone is killed on the roads, there is an investigation. If there is an atypical speed limit on a stretch of road, this is one likely reason. It’s newsworthy, maybe not nationally unless it’s a big one, but it’ll certainly hit the local paper and TV reports. We’re not just shrugging and going “oh well.”

You’ve got millions of people travelling millions of miles day and night every day. Crucially, as opposed to trains and planes, these people are not professional drivers but just regular people. Vehicles cover 330 billion miles in GB per year.

It’s inevitable that at some point, someone is going to **** up. Are you saying that in your life, in your career say, you’ve never thought “well, I ****ed that up”? If so, I don’t believe you. How many people die on operating tables? So then we’re into Risk Management 101 – what can we do to bring that number down, and what can we do to reduce the impact when something goes sideways?

i think focusing on stopping those without mot / insurance /tax / license from being on the road would be more beneficial than the mandatory retesting.

MIB suggest 1 million uninsured vehicles  on the roads each year

719,000 untaxed vehicles

cant find numbers for licenses but in my county alone a couple of years ago – the local rag reports just under 2000 were caught without licence in one year …. and thats those caught …..

and the kicker 5.2million vehicles without MOT on the roads ….

and while i cant find the figures – im sure you will see a correlation between serious incidents and those that are willing to drive unlicensed and non roadworthy vehicles ….

of course with all that – borrowing a close match set of plates means that you avoid a majority of the current checks and have to do something obviously bad in earshot of a police  car.

Oh yes – all that as well – along with no suspicion breathalyzer traps outside pubs, and black boxes / cameras in every car.

Put down 1984.

along with no suspicion breathalyzer traps outside pubs

not really much point in changing the law for no suspicion –  leaving a pub in itself might be reasonable grounds for suspicion, but certainly since the cops have the power to stop any vehicle at any time and talk to the driver then if you have been drinking they are very likely to be able to augment their knowledge that you left a pub car park with how you respond / behave / look / smell in order to reach a suspicion.   If there’s people the police think might be drink drivers not getting stopped and breathylzed it’s almost certainly a resource issue not a legislative powers one.

I mean like in Aus – a roadblock and breathalyse everyone.  Thats not possible under UK law

Trail rat – surely you have nothign to fear from enforcement of driving law?  I mean you never break the law do you?  😉

Mass breath testing seems like a waste of resources. I never ever drink at all if I am going to drive, the police are welcome to test me but I can’t why it would be useful.

Trail rat – surely you have nothign to fear from enforcement of driving law?  I mean you never break the law do you

Au contare I have cameras front and back capturing inside as well. With GPS and g meters.

It’s still a world apart from what your suggesting.

I still think your ideas are straight out of 1984.

Especially as I’ve seen the black boxes on some of our work trucks doing 130mph in the north sea…… And you trusting our government to run an automated standards system off the back of it.

Bruce – because that way 1) they will catch a load more drunk drivers and 2) it will act as a deterrent – the deterrent effect is with the risk of being caught not the severity of the sentence.  People still drink and drive a lot

Trail rat – thats what I am suggesting every car has 🙂

I mean like in Aus – a roadblock and breathalyse everyone.  Thats not possible under UK law

Saw 2 or 3 of those when I was out in Aus. We didn’t get pulled over (I was a passenger in a car driven by my Australian friend) but saw quite a few people being signalled off into the “test area”.

Needs that over here. Every time the police do any of these “blitz” operations they’ll invariably find half a dozen uninsured cars, a couple of DQ’d drivers, some unsafe vehicles….

Trail rat – thats what I am suggesting every car has ?

You said black box. A black box in a car is a system  monitored by a third party. That shit can get in the sea because the systems are largely crap.

Needs that over here. Every time the police do any of these “blitz” operations they’ll invariably find half a dozen uninsured cars, a couple of DQ’d drivers, some unsafe vehicles….

Seen this in action in NZ. They work. Good idea.

Only issue is. These days it would be all over Facebook like a flash.

I mean like in Aus – a roadblock and breathalyse everyone.  Thats not possible under UK law

but that’s not what you said…

random road blocks to check vehicle condition and driver details are legal.  In that process a large number of people who have been drink driving (which is a small proportion of people on the road) will look/sound/smell like they might have been drinking and give rise to a reason for a breathylser test.   Just the perception that you might get stopped would probably be enough to reduce the number of people who would chance one for the road.   In reality drink driving contributes only a fairly small percentage to the KSI numbers because campaigns and social consequences are so severe.

nothing stopping those sort of roadblocks today except for resources; as is so often the case we don’t need new laws just more resource / focus on the existing laws.

Estimates for 2021 show that between 240 and 280 people were killed in collisions in Great Britain where at least one driver was over the drink-drive limit, with a central estimate of 260 deaths.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-involving-illegal-alcohol-levels-2021/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-involving-illegal-alcohol-levels-2021

Out of 1,624 fatalities,

I’d say that was rather more than a small %

nothing stopping those sort of roadblocks today except for resources; as is so often the case we don’t need new laws just more resource / focus on the existing laws.

Yep it’s just the political will to enforce laws as opposed to the obsession to create more laws.

road.   In reality drink driving contributes only a fairly small percentage to the KSI numbers because campaigns and social consequences are so severe.

Back in the 70’s a beer and driving was an accepted thing,in the last 20-30 years most people find it pretty unacceptable.

So in in the 2040’s most people should be happy driving at 20 mph 🙂

I’d say that was rather more than a small %

but if you want to be pedantic about what an arbitrary phrase like small % means you’ll need to:

– use the same statistic I did (KSI not fatalities)
– actually use the same specific phrase “fairly small”
– understand the sort of percentages attributed to other causative factors

If you scroll far enough down the link you’ll see it’s <7% (and more like 5% if you include all injuries rather than serious ones).   Is that a fairly small number? Obviously it’s subjective – there are other causative factors which are appreciably bigger.  IIRC driver not looking properly is the biggest cause.

but people are shite at understanding the significance of percentages.  Consider the reverse – >93% of KSI accidents happen when everyone driving was sober*.  95% ie. 19/20 accidents resulting in any injury or death are “sober”.  You are suggesting we need to randomly stop and breathalyze everyone for the 1/20 – I’m saying I think the resource could be better spent on the rest and likely further reduce drink (and drug) driving as a result.  Drug driving is a growing issue – but drug tests are slow an orders of magnitude more expensive than breathalysers so make no sense to deploy at random.

Random road blocks are very resource intensive – the old Strathclyde force used to essentially do it during Christmas period (“voluntary” testing!).  They usually had 2-3 vehicles and 6 officers – in modern policing terms that is probably the whole of the traffic division in an evening – all at one location which needs to be practical and safe from a road block perspective – habitual drink drivers will soon learn the likely spots and how to avoid them – especially with social media / waze etc.

we all know that mobile phones are a real issue – do you want officers tackling that or stopping people who they don’t suspect of drink driving for random tests?   I’m a realist so whilst I’d like to reduce the fairly small percentage of serious road traffic accidents where drink is a factor, I’d much rather we put the same sort of effort into higher frequency problems.

*under the drink drive limit.

surely you have nothign to fear

This is a really dangerous path to be going down, comrade.

We’re already one of the most survielled nations in the world. Meanwhile, elsewhere on STW people are asking how they can stop Facebook tracking them, turn off Google’s location history, whether it’s worth paying $55/year for a search engine, how they’d never have an Alexa device because it’s spying on them…

Everyone has something to fear. I don’t want the Stasi kicking my door in because I briefly did 31 in a 30 once. A right to privacy is a basic human right, I don’t want the government – with it’s long history of robust data hygiene and totally never leaving discs and drives on the train – recording me picking my nose.

Technological solutions won’t work because those most in need of it will ignore it. There’s a little prick round here on some ratty offroad motorbike. Straight-through exhaust, usually 2-up, balaclavas, no helmets, no licence plate, no road sense and presumably no anything else. He came round the road the other day as I was driving up it, wrong side of the road so coming at me head-on, then hopped up onto the pavement narrowly missing pedestrians. Do you reckon a mandatory black box scheme would resolve that?

but people are shite at understanding the significance of percentages. Consider the reverse – >93% of KSI accidents happen when everyone driving was sober*.

Conclusion: it’s statistically far safer to get pissed before driving.

cou8gar – did you not see the emoji?  It was a joke!

I am surprised tho that insurance companies have not pushed cameras more

I am surprised tho that insurance companies have not pushed cameras more

Probably because they realise that they will incriminate their insured as much as they will clear them.

Death of the 50:50