Safe Speed Forums

Let me begin by complimenting all contributors to this thread, especially stevei, for the excellent quality of debate, good stuff, .

I think that one crucial factor in these arguments which stevei almost recognises (when he implies/agrees that many limits are too low) is that motoring fulfills an important function in our society, and that the time taken to make a journey is usually an important factor. Otherwise no vehicles would be built that exceeded, say, 10mph, and road casualties would probably be greatly reduced.
I think that this point is easy to understand, though I sometimes get the feeling that it is not politically correct to mention it without running the risk of being labelled a "speed-freak", "child-murderer" an so on.

I am sure that stevei does not think that everybody who exceeds the limit on occasion is a bad driver, subversive element, evil or even just extremely inattentive (please correct me if I am wrong). After all, who gets all these thousands and thousands of FPNs? I believe that the vast majority are safe drivers who were driving safely and do not deserve to be punished.


Speed limits do not take conditions into account. They may ALREADY be too fast for certain conditions. As a (hopefully) reasonably consistent "National guideline" they are useful.

No, see rest of thread, but FWIW I think that limiters are a BAD idea.

How about an option 3. Enforce the speed limits with discretion (yes, I know that you didn't have much granted to you, but that doesn't make it a bad idea). Paul has explained this very well elsewhere on the site, and Gatsobait's previous entry (which I have just read) covers this point brilliantly! Just added the last bit as Gatsobait has quicker typing skills

Yes, so we come back to the old chestnut of it ultimately coming down to whether you're in favour of the discretion approach, or whether you want to be able to abide by the law.

I don't actually believe that people's greater contentment with the discretion approach was caused by the discretion, I believe it was actually caused by a much lower level of enforcement, i.e. you would encounter a "thing" that can potentially cause you to be prosecuted for speeding far less often than you would now. I believe that if people encountered a trafpol as often as they encounter a speed camera, and the trafpol always prosecuted above a relatively low level of discretion, indeed probably not much above the threshold for triggering a speed camera, then people would be just as unhappy with low speed limits, and we'd be seeing tons of anti-trafpol sentiment instead of anti-speed camera sentiment. So what I think people actually want is less enforcement, much more than a different type of enforcement.

And I totally agree with the need to trade off journey times with safety, I have advocated this many times. I just want it to be achieved via legal speed limits not being set at a level where the vast majority of motorists exceed them by a large amount.

PeterE's website article is interesting because he sometimes speculates about outcomes arising from limiters that are the exact opposite of what I would expect, e.g. he thinks they would result in lowered speed limits due to the increased compliance, whereas I think it would result in increased speed limits due to the increased compliance. E.g. isn't one of the arguments against increasing the motorway speed limit that it would increase driving speeds, as people would simply drive at a margin above 80mph instead of 70mph? Thus I would expect limiters to be helpful in getting motorway speed limits increased.

I do, though, think that if someone is actively trying to abide by speed limits, then a limiter should assist them in their efforts. If you only exceed the limit on occasions due to your speed changing slightly without you noticing, or because you didn't realise what the speed limit is, then a limiter can surely only help you. The only people who would not find a limiter helpful are those who exceed the limit because they choose to do so. For clarity, I do not believe that choosing to exceed the speed limit necessarily constitutes unsafe driving in the "crash avoidance" sense (though it is unsafe in terms of the driver's welfare due to the risk of a speeding prosecution).

So, the safe speed approach can be summed up as believing that it is okay to choose to break the law if the person breaking the law believes no harm is resulting from them doing so. Yes, a person with this belief will not like speed limiters. My belief is slightly different, I want to avoid the risk of prosecution by abiding by the law, and having speed limits set at levels that mean I don't feel inclined to drive faster than them. Limiters are helpful to someone with this belief. So I can only conclude that the majority of people on this forum have the first of these beliefs, and want to be able to choose to break the law by exceeding the speed limit based on their personal judgement of safety. The degree of additional risk incurred in doing so will depend on the skill of the individual driver, some people may be able to do it with minimal increase in risk, others, such as the red fiesta driver in the case in another thread, clearly cannot. I have personally known several people who clearly cannot make this judgement, as they have been habitual speeders who have written cars off.

Yes. We have nutters and incompetents. but how many of these people can there be when crashes caused or contributed to by apparently otherwise responsible motorists exceeding a speed limit are so rare? I reckon it's 1% to 2% of all injury crashes. See:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr110.html
and
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr112.html

If it's 1-2% of crashes then it should be 1-2% of effort.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It is a challenge, but one we are exceptionally adept at dealing with. If it was so easy there would be no need for compulsory driving tests.

I know people who are extremely nervous about driving and avoid motorways whenever they can. These people are not up to the challenge, but the fact that a majority of people are does not diminish the challenge in anyway.

I see the misunderstanding now. I'm not saying it is easy for an untrained human to get in a car and drive it safely, I'm saying that someone who has passed the test and amassed years of driving experience can drive safely very easily. Just like, for example, playing golf well isn't easy for an untrained person, but Tiger Woods could pretty effortlessly go round a golf course in a very low score.

I'm not convinced of the validity of these statistics. I think it is likely that people slow down in advance of the moment of needing to perform the emergency action, and this is why we don't see a lot of accidents where the driver was travelling in excess of the speed limit at the point of taking emergency action. But this doesn't mean that a person who was speeding prior to the slowing down isn't more likely to carry a higher speed (but still below the limit) to the point of emergency action than a driver who was driving at the speed limit, who may reduce their speed by a similar proportion, and perhaps be travelling slow enough to avoid the accident completely. But we've been here before as well, and we know that it has never been established if this link is present. Some studies have purported to establish it, but none have done the correct analysis of looking at the free travelling speeds of vehicles that were involved in accidents rather than the speed at the point of taking emergency action.

I agree that it's interesting to wind the 'accident clock' back until you get to a genuine free travelling speed, but when you do that you find 60% of vehicles exceeding the speed limit - which is far too many to account for rare crashes. Even if 30% of the vehicles that are crash involved were speeding soon before the crash we still have to conclude that speeding is safer than not speeding.

I know we discussed 'different populations' before, but when you wind the accident clock back you bridge into the other population.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And it's further complicated by the fact that there might be significant differences between drivers in the "speeding population", we could choose a simple classification of safe and unsafe speeders, say. We might find that the unsafe speeders are much less safe than a non-speeding motorist, and the safe speeders are more safe. But how does a trafpol tell a safe speeder from an unsafe speeder when deciding whether to exercise discretion? Can we make an unsafe speeder any safer by forcing them to drive at the speed limit when they would otherwise speed?

I, like stevei have had my opinion altered largely through this and other forums, but in the other direction. I did advocate the use of ISA as a KSI reduction tool, because of my research into collisions in Cumbria which showed that a high percentage of KSI collisions involved the at fault vehicle travelling at a speed in excess of the limit.
Seems like a good reason to have mandatory ISA introduced.

However much of the remainder of KSIs were loss of concentration RTCs in the majority of cases involving limited vehicles, and the high speed RTCs were almost entirely also inappropriate speeds for the general conditions - not just the specific pre collision conditions.
So looking at specifics, if ISA were introduced

1. The driving risk takers eg boy racers, joy riders and weekend bikers would by the philosophy of risk homeostasis (I think) look for other risk taking challenges on the road to get their rocks off, or die.
2. Drink and drug drivers whose level of concentration is artificially altered, and the elderly will continue to lose control due for reasons of general incompetence and inability to concentrate, leading to the head-on crash or wall/tree single vehicle impact which is so common with these road user groups, so no change there.
3. Impatient, aggressive commercially driven motorists will have their frustration increased by the inability to make good clear progress, causing a higher percentage of ill considered manoeuvres, which at 60 or 70 mph is still pretty likely to have a serious outcome, and you would be much more likely to be stuck with an aggressive driver for a long period of time on the motorway, affording greater opportunity for road rage to develop.
4. The 30mph ISA limit would be likely to be the default speed though town rather than a chosen slower speed.
5. The vast majority of ordinary motorists who generally drive on the basis of risk avoidance, and yet commit possibly 10 billion speeding offences each year, will have this low risk but active strategy interrupted by an introduction of a passive control. This removal of responsibility IMO will create many more problems than it resolves.

Yes it will make many more drivers legal, but I think we need to look outside the normal restraining borders if we are serious about progressing road safety.

I must admit I do agree largely with stevei's observation about camera v police enforcement, that both can be overzealous with respect to margins.
However, when stopped and reported by the trafpol for whatever speed, at least you can open dialogue into the matter and discuss why trafpol think this enforcement is helping.
What speed enforcement must do is to keep some level of respect for the limit. The enforcement level was pitched at a level which did not strike fear into high mileage motorists. With 10 times the amount of speed enforcement now, 90% of which is remote, I believe these levels of respect have been eroded, and, although they may be obeyed a little more, it doesn't show any benefit in the fatality figures.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

More impressive posts, this thread brings a refreshing angle into the debate, again thanks to stevei's clear and cool communication skills. Excellently reacted to by Paul & gang, of course, but I've long appreciated Paul & co.'s clarity, style and last but not least, standpoint.

One of the major differences in the stevei versus safespeed (am I allowed to express it so bluntly?) debate appears to be ENFORCEMENT and the LAW.

stevei places MUCH importance on legal compliance for speed laws.
My view, which I believe reflects that held by most of the SafeSpeed community, is that SafeSpeed supporters place LESS importance on legal compliance for speed laws.

Why is this? Because for SPEEDING matters, the law is built upon ONE parameter, the NUMERIC speed. As has been discussed elsewhere very well (by one of the Peter's I believe), numeric speed and safe-speed are NOT THE SAME THING.

And as gatsobait so eloquently wrote "Safety trumps legality everytime, and twice on Sundays" (love your style )

So, either we change the law to use SAFETY as a parameter when deciding whether an offence has been committed or not, or we keep the laws as they are and change the ENFORCEMENT practices to prevent punishing safe drivers, damaging police/public relation etc.etc.

It is generally not too difficult, but it involves 'proper' methods of detection, ie time, distance and observation. If you sit behind a speeding motorist for 5 miles and
A - he doesn't see you, especially when you follow him fairly closely after completion of the speed check.
B - he displays impatience, poor lane discipline, and lack of observation and courtesy at the speed.
C - his speed is inappropriate for the conditions

A combination of these factors will lead to the ticket being issued.

If however there are no aggravating factors and the driver if stopped gives a good account of his driving anticipation and planing, then he has a much better chance (in my book) of a discretionary result.

In town it's usually more to do with an inappropriate speed for that road, given the time of day, conditions etc, and IMO a spot check of speed at the appropriate location is acceptable.

$64,000 question - I don't think so, but if they can be stopped and shown the error of their ways, perhaps a course in lieu of points, to introduce them to better driving techniques - would help, IMO.

_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

the main place I can see this being of some help is in residential areas. The are people who drive the streets around my home at 40/50mph when a more appropriate speed is more like 20-25 given that there's lots of cars parked and when they're parked on opposing sides it makes it impossible for 2 cars to pass each other safely. That doesn't stop them trying though. Also when I'm out riding on these narrow roads I have people driving straight at me doing at least 30mph - and I'm not just talking Mr Angry here, women of all ages are just as guilty. Might is right once again. If a child ran out from behind one of the parked cars they'd have no chance.

Now obviously there's not enough traffic on these streets to warrant police action, nor do we want streets full of speed humps. So how exactly do we deal with them?

Stevei,



Yet you also said



That seems contradictory.

For the record i too stick to speed limits ( NSL excepted now and then ), and from what i have read here do quite a few others, and find it easy enough.

I find the idea of drivers prevented from carrying out safe overtakes by a limiter far more worrying than speed cameras. A driver with poor planning will still try to overtake, and the limiter will cause the time exposed to danger to be increased.

I don't see it as contradictory. If someone wants to squeeze past me because I'm driving at the speed limit, and they want to go 50% faster, and in doing so drives their vehicle on a collision course for my car, then I don't consider that scenario to be one that I've caused, so the resulting lack of safety is not of my making. But in any case, you might infer that, therefore, I find it unacceptable to have to keep taking evasive action in this way, and hence drive with the flow of the traffic rather than causing a massive queue behind me. But I find it equally unacceptable that I am forced to break the law to drive safely, hence the dilemma.....

All good stuff Ian, and you sound like a fine example of a trafpol (but I already knew that )

When you ask the driver to give an account of their anticipation and planning, do you do it before or after cautioning them? When I was stopped by a trafpol, he immediately cautioned me, which meant that I was somewhat limited in what I could say when he tried to engage me in a discussion (where I suspect his motive was much more to attempt to get me to incriminate myself than to be educational).

If I know they are getting a ticket, then they get cautioned straight away. If I am in the process of establishing whether to ticket or not, I will not caution until I know I'm going to ticket the driver. The previous conversation does not enter into the evidence, and will not include discussion about the specific speeding offence, but the prima facie evidence of the offence is and always was there. Any comment after caution can be included.

I must admit though, if I have witnessed good quality driving at a speed in excess of the limit, I cannot recall ticketing a driver having spoken to him pre-caution to establish his driving awareness.

_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Responding to an older post of Steve's here. I had to stop part way through and come back to it later, so I know that some of these points may already have been made. Sorry for any repetition.


I think we could satisfy both if the law was more realistic (which would also mean some limits coming down as well as all the ones that need to be revised upwards), recognised its own inherent limitations and treated compliance with the spirit of the law as being as good as compliance with the letter of the law (questions of competence aside, that is).


Well, there are plenty who don't really make any distinction between police and partnerships and whose anti-camera sentiments are directed at the police. poor old plod gets tarred with the same brush. Anyhow, you're right that drivers encounter a lot of speed cameras etc, and that there's a greater level of speed enforcement. Clearly if you pass three gatsos going to and from work you have at least 15 encounters a week, which is far more often than you'd have encountered a police car in the pre-camera days. However, we also need to bear in mind that before cameras there were more trafplod about - something like twice as many? - and the ones left may not spend as much of their duty time patrolling as they used to (I'd really like the opinion of the BiBs who've been around that long on this). So I think encountering a police car probably wasn't all that infrequent back then, it just seems that way compared to how often we see cameras. The other thing is that you never knew where the police would be hanging around. You might not see them all day, but they might be round the next bend. I feel that to a large extent this offsets the lower liklihood of coming across the BiBs then compared to seeing cameras now since the BiBs could have been more or less anywhere (and still can really, but with fewer about.. ). Potentially a speeding motorist could encounter enforcement at any time. I'll give the scamarati this much, to a small extent talivans do this too but since they don't actually stop people who need to be stopped I still don't think they're worth having.


It is an argument against raising motorway limits, but it's a specious one. Raising speed limits generally doesn't increase speeds a great deal, and there's a reason for that. Say for the sake of argument the safe speed in ideal conditions on a certain bit of motorway is 85. Drivers who have determined this for themselves already will almost all be driving around 85 anyway, and will have no reason to drive any faster if the limit was raised to 90. Headcases who ignore limits and safety considerations alike and simply floor it everywhere will also be doing the same speed as before - too bloody fast. The only ones going to go faster are the ones who were obeying the limit before, either because they're law abiding or were using it as a guide. Overall the average and 85th percentile speeds won't change much, but you would have more compliance with the law. What you won't see is large numbers of drivers would doing 105 because it's 15mph over the limit, and they were driving at 15mph over the old 70 limit before.


Again, I must reluctantly give the scamerati some credit here. Their prosecution thresholds mean that someone who is actively trying to stay at the limit is unlikely to get pinged unless they're making a right hash of it, although drivers who are more concerned with making safe progress can still drift over the limit without necessarily casuing risk and get pinged as a result. That does seem like an argument in favour of limiters since that second lot of drivers would no longer have to worry about breaking the limit, but there is so much potential for undesirable side effects with widespread use of limiters that frankly I'd prefer to take my chances with the talivans. IMO they'll never be anything like as good as discretionary police enforcement, but still preferable to having to deal with drivers who are on a sort of mental autopilot. Well, to me at any rate.

I have to keep coming back to my main worry about limiters. Effectively they will make the driving task simpler, which sounds like a good thing. But I feel that if you demand less concentration from drivers, less concentration will inevitably be exactly what you get from some of them. Normally the speed selection part of the driving task consists of a continuous assessment and adjustment of speed, almost as if they're constantly asking themselves if they're going too fast, too slow or about right. I believe that the presence of the limiter can interrupt that process. Rather than changing the question it will often simply stop being asked, the result of which is that many drivers will just plant their right feet and let the limiter take care of speed control. If the attention that was once needed for speed control is given to other elements of the driving task that might be okay, but I think it's more likely that minds will begin to wander instead. Sure, some drivers will work with the limiter by continuing to set their desired speed and allowing the limiter to act as a cap. However, many won't and they don't even need to be a majority to create a lot of unnecessary risk.

It's a fine line between making the task of driving easier and making it too easy. It goes without saying that driving must not be so demanding that many people struggle with it, yet it must also be sufficiently demanding to keep drivers attention on the task at hand. As I said before, demand less and you'll usually get less.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Been away for a few days, so lots to catch up.

Just thought that I would mention that in order for the technology to be effective it has to also automatically apply the brakes too, not just lift off the throttle.

And has anybody considered the impact on fuel economy and the general state of the vehicles that are being driven against the limiter all the time? I would have thought that the delayed ignition option for normal carb vehicles would cause an awful lot of petrol to be forced into the exhaust and the level pollution from vehicles would rocket - especially when all our Cats are destroyed by being swamped with unburnt fuel - that or being set on fire because half of the burn is taking place in the exhaust.

This could be real fun! When I am on a residental road in Stevenage, my GPS is ok for about 50 yards, then sometimes it decides I'm on the A1(M). 70 mph - boy that would be laugh!

Also on the M1 just passed Dunstable (I think), it decides I'm on a road just off to the left for about 100 yards, only a fence separating it from the motorway. Bang - down to 30 mph. That would give the drivers behind a wake up call!


I never heard of such a bl**dy hair-brained scheme as this. Still the cameras have contibuted to a few accidents, (I saw kid on a scooter run in the back of car, when the driver hit brakes when he didn't see the camera until the last moment! Trouble was we were all doing about 30 any away! The kid was cussing as swearing - I'm afraid his tackle had taken the impact - I digress...) why not GPS speed limiting.

Yes, if it can't work technically, clearly it's a non-starter. Perhaps inertial techniques could be used to combine with the GPS, which would cover vehicles through tunnels etc. I believe submarines use inertial measurements to track their location, it's pretty accurate, even over large distances.