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

[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't think so.

Check the statistics out yourself..the number of horse related deaths was massive around the turn of the 20h century.

[Andy McKenzie]

Perfection must be wonderful. Experienced drivers may well make numerous assumptions. A very common one is that they are 'better than average'. About

80% of drivers think they are better than average, so even if the 50% of drivers who are better than average correctly self identify, 30% of drivers must be deluded. In fact I imagine that some of the best drivers are those who don't think of themselves as good, so probably about 50% of 'experienced' and 'good' drivers are actually poor. (Only 50.7 % of these statistics are made up - the 80% figure comes from a Canadian survey).

I hope that I am a reasonable driver, I hope I'm not deluded, I assume that most other cars are likely to do something dumb most of the time, but I know that I don't always drive at 100% all the time. I worry, I daydream, I swear at the radio or people using mobiles. Still, I can aspire to perfection and being totally alert all the time.

Andy

[Huge]

Quite. Far more people were KSI when we had horse drawn transport (and a lot less of it) than we have now. So, how does that mean that horse drawn transport shows it to be the case that there would be fewer accidents if everyone drove at 20mph?

[dennis]

Yes I know but it still takes time to decide it has happened.

Its even worse when you are stopped behind one accident and watching the jack knifed tanker approaching in the rear view mirror. You think is it safer in the car or out of the car. I choose in and I am still here.

[dennis]

That is a case of two careless drivers. You should have been done too.

A second case of driving without care and attention. I think we can safely ignore any advice on driving for now.

I think you need driving lessons.

[dennis]

I've managed 35 years at a similar sort of millage with zero accidents. It would have been longer if someone hadn't run into me at some lights. It cost £2 to have the bumper adjusted after that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. Know your weaknesses and play to your strengths.

I know my reflexes are not what they were..have to rely more on experience and caution than car control..

I used to do endurance kart racing for fun..if I really concentrated, I was about .2s a lap faster..but I couldn't keep it up more than 10 or 15 laps..

I don't know whether I am a good driver or not, but it appalls me what other people I drive with do NOT notice..or how they lack the most (to me) basic of skills, such as positioning the car for best visibility, and assessing what is happening up the road three to five seconds before its necessary to work out what to do..or night driving..how people will slam on the brakes as if the road they suddenly can't see because they are momentarily dazzled, has in some way changed from the road that they could see a second earlier..

Most people don't PLAN their driving. They just react. Fast driving taught me to always work out your escape routes before entering a tight situation....if HE does THAT where will you go? etc.

I think the situation I hate the most is being boxed in in traffic on the M25, with nowhere to go whatsoever. About 10% of drivers leave the sorts of gaps in front that I normally do. The rest are in my opinion just accidents waiting to happen.

At least to date I have only injured myself slightly once in a crash, and never injured anyone else at all. Although the amount of wildlife I have scraped out of the radiators at times is quite shocking.

Above all, I take driving seriously. VERY seriously. I don;t quite approach a car with the same sort of respect I approach a loaded rifle or shotgun, but thats familiarity. I know I OUGHT to do that.

I wish sometimes the average mum with kids on the way to Tescos would stop and think 'I could be a mass murderer if I don't watch out'..but if you asked them what the most dangerous thing that endangered other people's lives' would be, very few of them would say 'leaning over to stop the kids fighting in the back seat'.

My time pissing about in Karts, but more significantly, watching live motorsport, and fatalaties therein, did not make me a boy racer..it made me utterly serious about just how lethal a car is if things go wrong, and how much discipline is required to prevent them doing that.

[Tony Bryer]

Not if average = mean. If 90 drivers each have one accident every ten years and

10 drivers each have an accident every year, the average driver has 1.9 accidents every ten years but 90% have a better than average accident rate.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That when I'd have tried for the hedge at the side with the trusty 4WD..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Hmm. In which case you are deluding yourself. I have never met a person who claimed to have 'never had an accident in 35 years' whose car didn't somehow betray the fact that they had.

Of COURSE 'that was done whilst it was parked. I wasn't even in it';

'That wasn't my fault' 'someone drove into the back of me'

The ability to claim that you have never had an accident seems to consist mainly on shifting the blame of the ones you have had, to someone else.

Obviously you need driving lessons. You should have seen him coming and braked much earlier.

Obviously you were going far too slow.

[The Natural Philosopher]

dunno. That was my point. Of all the factors that influence frequency and severity of accidents. speed is the one everyone thinks dominates, but the facts and statistics show otherwise when closely examined.

What causes accidents are poor drivers and poor road conditions and poor car design.

Good drivers don't do "inappropiate" speed, though they mostly don't stick slavishly to speed limits.

It is however the EASIEST way to get a conviction if you want to piss off drivers, and raise stealth taxes. Which is pretty much the current govts attitude, AFAICT

[John Rumm]

If you plug 0.1 secs back into that sum I did that means you only lose

3.1m in thinking time. That reduces the deceleration to 0.94g

(might be worth pointing out that some of the more "performance" cars they tested would stop shorter - 49m being the best IIRC)

[John Rumm]

It still illustrates the point that I was making originally - that the distance figures published[1] are significantly out of date for modern cars. If you add the highways code published thinking distance to the actual results obtained for stopping distance (i.e. that including the the actual reaction time in the test), you still end up with an overall distance of 20m (66ft) less at 70mph.

[1] they are about right for lower breaking efficiency vehicles or cars in poor conditions.

[John Rumm]

I think you missed the "not" old boy...

TNP was agreeing with the statement:

"So are you saying if every vehicle was compelled to and drove at say

20mph there would ***not*** be fewer accidents?"

[John Rumm]

You decide:

First one, I was leaving the exit to the road near my house. There was a car in front. He waited until a car coming along the road we were about to join had past, and pulled out behind it. I followed. The car that had just past, turned left into a driveway. Not his driveway, but the one opposite his driveway - he waited until the car in front of me past behind him, and then reversed out across the road, into his driveway, making the assumption that the car behind him was the only one behind him. Given the roads here are quite, it is an assumption that he probably made hundreds of times before and got away with. This time it cost him a new bumper.

Second one, country lane, 110 degree left turn. As I approached the corner (15mph perhaps) a car coming the other way arrived at the same time and turned right, but did so about five feet too soon, hence cutting across the front of me and reducing the available road width to four feet. By the time it became obvious that she was going to cut the corner, her car was broadside across the front of me and about 4 foot away. She would have clipped the front of my car even if I was not moving.

Last one, driving up the high street in our village. A chap parked in the bus stop on the other side of the road decides to pull out without looking, straight into the path of a car. She hits him, which deflects here across the road (and jams her steering in the process), such that she glances off the side of the car coming the other way (i.e. me). I must admit did not even see that one coming - it all happened beside me on the other side of the road, and the first I knew was "clunk", "WTF was that? I think someone must have just hit me".

As far as I can see, the only way that speed figures in any of them, is that a different speed might have placed me elsewhere at the time the accident occurred.

[John Rumm]

If you are counting them, then you can add a pigeon, a starling, and possibly a badger to my total then. (there was one close encounter with a great dane that was scary - it was bigger than the car!)

[John Rumm]

You seem to have an amazing insight into past events and situations where you were not even present.

Is this some form of clairvoyance?

Or do you frequently cause accidents and assume the rest of the world is just like you?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well I dunno,. In the last year probably a couple of pheasants, couple of rabbits, missed most of the pigeons sadly..missed the deer thankfully..seem to have a 6th sense so far about deer..countless small things that you don't even notice..frogs and mice and the like.

The Myxy rabbits sit in the middle of the road waiting for something to hit em, poor sods. Not so many this year - the terrier got a couple. We made pate out of one.

I don't think anyone round here gets away without hitting something feathered or furry at least once a year. There's an awful lot of it about, frankly.

Real dearth of hedgehogs tho. Where are our fleabitten hedgehogs?

Saw a dead dog in Norwich the other week. Nasty. traffic was gridlocked..no idea how that one happened.

Hit a cat once I think..couldn't find it afterwards. Hate that.

Had a few close encounters with White Rhino in Africa, but none decided I was an enemy/mateable with. ;-)

Personally I think the government should ban all insects from the roads and prosecute them. They are obviously flying too slowly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup. almost certainly. Probably has a fish on his volvo and never indicates at all.

[Andy Hall]

.. and wears a hat for driving....