Re: Totally OT - Highway Question - Is 100 Metres Enough

[judith]

You seem to persist that you cannot be driving *too fast* if you are driving at the speed limit.

You are wrong - there are many circumstances where you can be.

[judith]

You do talk some s**te.

What about the person who could not see round a bend, traveled around the bend and found a stalled car which he ran straight in to - where if he had been traveling more slowly he would have had time to break and avoid the stopped car.

He caused the accident by speeding - it will probably be you next time it happens.

[judith]

or traveling too fast for the prevailing conditions.

[Andy Hall]

Read what I wrote rather than what you think I wrote.

I said "not exceeding" I didn't say "at"

In terms of the application of speed limits, one is either driving within it or one is not - that is clear.

No. Within the terms of what I said (as opposed to what you think I said) I am perfectly correct.

That's a different issue.

Once you extend the definition of "too fast" to mean "too fast for the road surface, the vehicle, the weather conditions and any of umpteen other criteria" then the judgment becomes a subjective one and you are entering into a circular argument.

One can always say that an accident wouldnt have happened if the driver had been traveling more slowly. On the same argement you can argue that it wouldn't have happened had he reached the point of the accident at a different time by a couple of seconds.

However, one cannot say that this means that speed is the *cause* of the accident. It isn't.

The only non-arguable definition of "too fast" is whether or not the vehicle was exceeding the speed limit. That can be precisely measured. Everything else is subjective.

[Andy Hall]

You obviously didn't read the context of the illustration.

[Andy Hall]

You need to make a separation between fact and emotional, subjective judgment.

Traveling at a speed exceeding the speed limit is going too fast. By definition. There is no argument about that because it can be measured.

That may or may not be the case. It's entirely possible to have reduced speed to 15km/h or even less. If the exit onto the road is narrow enough and blind enough and the driver pulls out from it at the last moment, then an accident will occur. Here we have a test of reasonableness and that becomes a matter of opinion. There are very few people who would consider such a low speed as "too fast" and yet an accident can still happen.

The problem with the "too fast" argument without relating it to the speed limit is that it is subjective.

[Andy Hall]

No, he isn't.

By your (lack of) logic, it is much closer to your position.

[dennis]

You can precisely measure the distance that the driver could see and the stopping distance of the car. If the stopping distance exceeds the visibility distance he was driving too fast whatever the speed limit. It is important to remember that we operate variable speed limits.. its the safe speed or the speed limit whichever is lower.

[Andy Hall]

Rubbish. The stopping distance is an average across a range of cars under certain conditions.

One cannot say that this applies to a given car under all conditions so it's a notional value.

Irrelevant. This then enters the realms of opinion.

Except that "safe speed" is not defined, making the statement meaningless.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In neither case it is the speed, its the speed *in association with a particular manoeuver*.

You can balance a few angels

Take your son to a first rate skid pan, go kart track and race track, and let him learn how to skid, crash a little, and race around generally, and take him to a few races where he can watch other people in full race harness, fireproof suits and crash helmets crash, and I guarantee you he will not bring boy racer tactics of his own to the public roads.

sure.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My point precisely. "WHO is as better judge of the safe velocity, m'lud, a driver of 40 years experience at the wheel of his car, or a bureaucrat in Whitehall'

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, that is driving without due care and attention..

[The Natural Philosopher]

That isn't speeding.

[dennis]

No it is a fact that he was travelling too fast. The question about speed is purely physics and nothing to do with opinion at all. The only opinions are about him being competent and if it was a reasonable thing to do. Its just an excuse to avoid hard thinking to say the speed is opinion.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If they had appeared half a second later they would have been dead anyway.

The first accident I ever witnessed at the age of 13,which I gave evidence for, was an elderly woman who walked out in front of a very well maintained Rover. Hew was travelling under the speed limit.

I saw the other year, a car overturned by 'traffic calming' ..under the speed limit, again.

Travelling under the speed limit(which I do as often as over it, more so these days) is no guarantee of anything. Even the powers that be will only tell you that 30mph is a speed that, with modern car design, gives the pedestrian an better than even chance of survival.

Out here in the boondocks someone hits a deer every other year. Its usually a write-off at anything more than 45mph.

Speed limits are no guarantee of anything. They don't make drivers safer or better. There is some evidence they make them worse.

One accepts urban speed limits as a necessary evil..but where pedestrians are not to be found? no.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The cause of the accident is always that someone was driving a car.

Ban cars. Its that simple.

They are lethal weapons. More people are killed by cars than by handguns. So if handguns are banned lets ban cars,.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, he caused the accident by doing something silly, and in many cases an accident can be just that..something SO unexpected that no reasonable person could be expected to have taken steps to avoid it..like teh person whose windscreen was shattered by a piece of brake drum that went through her windscreen and knocked her out..possibly thrown up from a passing lorry, possibly dropped from a bridge...

The whole point of learning to drive is to find out what you, the car, and the road together can do, first in isolation, then in conjunction with other road users...you don't need signs telling you what is safe and what is not, by and large.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh I dunno. Lots of people fall down stairs and break their necks without any drivers being involved.

If cars did 8mph like horses used to do, would there be less accidents? Nope. Look up the statistics. In a world of 8mph horses, with extremely poor brakes and no driving tests, accident rates were far higher than today.

It's never speed on its own. Its nearly always stupidity, bad judgement or downright recklessness. Or plain ignorance. Or occasionally plain bad luck, though that is rarer.

Exceeding a speed limit is no sure test of any of the above conditions.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Because at any speed there is always *some* event which will happen too fast to take avoiding action.

Even if its a tree falling on your car (if only you had been going faster).

There IS no safe speed to travel at. You are always playing a percentage game.

Theoretically a pedestrian can step out in front of you on a motorway..should you therefore do 20mph along all motorways?

[Andy Hall]

No it isn't.

The only *absolute* definition of "traveling too fast" is if the speed limit is exceeded.

No it isn't. Published stopping distances are based on averages under particular conditions.

To determine the complete story would require details of the precise vehicle conditions, the road surface and conditions and just as importantly the reaction time of the driver.

There is a substantial variation between reaction time among individuals.

Incorrect. The only *definition* of "too fast" is exceeding the speed limit

Repeat in English.

You are attempting to make a circular argument based on if the driver had an accident, he must have been traveling too fast.

There's a basic fallacy in that.