Safe Speed Forums

My still-incomplete foray into your website has been fascinating, as was reading an in-depth article about the traffic engineer J J Leeming
http://www.abd.org.uk/jjleeming.htm
(hope you don’t mind mention of the “other place” )

Something bothers me. The underlying argument is that all kinds of factors other than drivers themselves are usually to blame for accidents. Poor road engineering, congestion, ill-considered signage, having to watch the speedo instead of the road... all this is quite understandable. Drivers don't want accidents, least of all do they want to end up in the morgue, so the argument goes.

But what about that small yet significant minority of drivers who are verging on reckless and only seem to be held back by the risk of losing their licence?

Forget the uninsured maniacs with no sense of self-preservation. I’m talking about the inexperienced, testosterone-charged youngster; the rep-in-a-hurry who thinks he owns the road; the tailgater; the showoff. We’ve seen them all and know they are a real menace.

How does the “alternative” view, which holds that the driver is rarely to blame, chime in with the obvious need to tame this group of road-users, who seem to respond to little else but strict law enforcement?

The very small number of reckless drivers as a proportion of the population supports Leeming's hypothesis that drivers are, generally, not to blame for most problems. The answer to the genuinely reckless is (trumpet fanfare) better road policing by actual policemen.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

And therein lies the big question. Where are all these extra traffic police going to come from, especially at a time when the public are demanding more on the street to fight general crime?

So the line of thought will continue to be
- we need extra traffic police
- sorry, no more funds available
- use next best thing; more technology (eg speed cameras) and stricter enforcement.
- now we don’t need extra traffic police; technology is taking care of it.

It’s dead-end logic, I know, but where are the practical, economically viable solutions which can pull us back from the brick wall of speed cameras and black boxes? Has anyone designed a critical path describing all the steps necessary to achieve more sensible road management in a way that would be acceptable to a) the public and b) the treasury?

I don't think the two are at all incompatible. Ultimately, all crashes result from either human error or mechanical failure. But most of those that result from human error are caused by a mistake or an error of judgment, not from behaviour that is in any way obviously reckless.

In many cases redesigning roads so that the opportunity to make a mistake is reduced and/or the potential consequences are mitigated is likely to be an effective way of improving safety.

This is not to say attempting to improve people's mistake frequency by training is a waste of time, but the effects are likely to be much more long-term and hard to quantify.

There is a population of reckless or near-reckless drivers, but I would say it is only a small proportion of the total and, as Malcolm says, needs to be dealt with by enforcement action by traffic police.

And I feel that highway authorities have lost the knack of carrying out small, subtle changes to road design that will make accidents less likely, and instead seem to judge highway works purely on whether they will slow motorists down.

There is no one-trick answer to road safety.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Intelligent management will give us all the trafpol we need.

One problem is availability. I have a correspondent from a traffic garage of 75 cars. They achieve 8% of officer hours on patrol. 92% on sick leave, court work, paperwork, and training etc. That's very very crap.

The there's the other crime work that trafpol are statistically good at. They catch burglars and bank robbers as well as misbehaving motorists. So trafpol tend not to be 'removed' from other work, rather they are available for other work as well.

We've never had more police. Trouble is they are stuck behind desks dealing with unnecessary paperwork.

Trafpol aren't cheap, but they are definitely good value.

And hey look, if we scraped VED and stuck compulsory third party insurance on fuel, then we'd kill two time consuming crimes.

And let's make sure our trafpol are doing the right stuff. Handing out purely technical infringement notices is pretty close to pointless. But it sure uses resources.

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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

From a very small sample size of the ten van drivers that work for me, there is no correlation between the type of drivers described above, and speeding convictions.

I believe three of my drivers currently have points, and the only common factor I think they share is 'unobservant'.

The only one who drives too fast for my liking has never had a single endorsement in her career.

I tend to believe that given appropriate research it would be possible to identify technical infringements that are fairly effective proxies for identifying the worst drivers. "Normal" speeding offences certainly don't qualify, but 98th percentile speeding in certain urban areas might well do, also using hand-held mobiles.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Agreed in principle, which is in part why I wrote purely technical infringements.

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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

Thank you all for some really interesting and intelligent replies. If only our politicians (and, it has to be said, the public they answer to) could find a quarter of that brainpower...

But we find ourselves nibbling away at different parts of the solution. Given that a whole, new, enlightened system of traffic management cannot be implemented in one hit, the question is: Which one, or ones, would have the greatest effect without causing a public uprising or heart attacks in the County Hall?

Paul

No, we don't mind. Information exchange is why we're here. I'd hate to think that anyone might feel guilty posting good information from elsewhere.




I think there are three main groups of drivers who 'need attention'

people who don't understand their responsibilities

I see this as an education failure. They probably don't see the potential for harm. Lots of young drivers are in this group. The least we should be doing is giving intelligent road safety lessons in schools. We need to steer clear of the dry platitudes that make road safety boring, and instead concentrate on human subtlties and the pleasures and complexities of looking out for each other.

people who just don't care

This is a small but dangerous selfish group who need the attentions of the Police. Lock 'em up.

people with insufficient experience

We need to help these people to gain experience quickly and effectively. Traffic Police can play an important role by explaining their mistakes. The right sort of public information should help them to spot smaller mistakes and learn more quickly.

These three groups together amount to well under 10% (and probably under 5%) of the population of drivers. Nevertheless they are extremely important because they are probably responsible for 60% of all crashes.

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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

Ooh, dangerous talk here, Paul. Echoes of the Department of Guesswork. Nor does it sit comfortably with, for instance...

Not trying to tie anyone in knots, honestly!, but careless/ignorant drivers are surely central to public concern about road safety and provide the very reasons for not going easy on enforcement. A large perception barrier has to be overcome before radical changes are made, eg advisory speed limits and abolition of speed cameras.

Had an interesting conversation with the wife last night about a truck driver in a neighbouring village who insists on parking his high-sided van on a blind bend outside his house. Every approaching vehicle has to inch out behind it to see if the way is clear. She thinks, as I have done in the past, that it's a danger and there is going to be a "terrible accident". She says "My heart is in my mouth, my blood pressure's up every time I come up to it".

What she's actually saying is it's inconvenient, it slows her down, and she has to concentrate extra hard. Whether it will ever cause an accident is doubtful; everyone is going so slowly around it. Were it not there, and traffic could move at 30mph along this narrow road lined with cars on one side, I'd say the likelihood of an accident caused by a dog or child running out, is higher. But that's OK - drivers would feel comfortable, you see.

Interestingly, I know this truck driver and recently mentioned his parked van. He said the police had also approached him about complaints from other road-users. They were not bothered by it and even quietly encouraged this unorthodox parking because it acted as a natural obstacle to slow traffic down through the village. There is A LOT of sense in that. But if my wife, a sensible person and experience driver with special knowledge of the law, thinks it is simply a "danger", how many others will fail to see the hidden benefits of it and continue to demand a clear passage where they don't have to concentrate so hard?

This is the kind of comprehension barrier that must be overcome before the public accept alternative road safety measures. So, I repeat, how can it be achieved in practice?

It isn't guesswork, it's a working estimate. At the bottom end of the driver quality scale there are some very dangerous people. Consider the following graph:



The green curve is population - how many drivers exist at each quality level. The average (median) driver has a much lower than average crash risk. This fits extremely well with Leeming's suggestions.

The red curve is crash risk. We can be absolutely certain that the graph is the right sort of shape. We don't have numbers to put on the scales, but having been looking for the answer over about five years I'm pretty sure that:

* 10% of driver cause 60% of crashes and
* 20% of drivers cause 80% of crashes

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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

Point taken, Paul, but I'm still having trouble reconciling these two propositions -

1. They (bad drivers) are probably responsible for 60% of all crashes.
2. Drivers are, generally, not to blame for most accidents.

Can you see the difficulty? I'm labouring the point only because, in the heat of a debate, this kind of trap can destroy the foundations of SS's case. It plays straight into the hands of the safety lobby, who will say "Well if that's the case, all we need do is slow down the 60% who are causing the accidents. Send for more speed cameras."

Statement 1 relates to individuals. Almost all crashes are CAUSED by driver behaviour.

Statement 2 relates to the system or environment. If the environment were improved then drivers would be less likely to crash through their mistakes.

At the system level we can certainly effect large improvements, but that doesn't mean that there are not big gains to be had by influencing drivers.

We know that there are big differences in crash rates from country to country. This MUST relate to driver quality because the environments are too similar to account for the differences.

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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

Bad parking can cause accidents. There are a couple of inconsiderate van drivers that park next to my drive. I have to inch out and can only see until my bonnet is in the road. Someone will hit me eventually however carefully I inch out and it will be deemed to be my fault even though I am doing everything I can not to have an accident. I agree with your Mrs about feeling the same way about the van on the blind bend It also says quite clearly in the highway code you MUST NOT park on a blind bend so I am appalled by the police reaction.

In your case, Teabelly, I quite agree.

The difference is that drivers on the main road cannot see you inching out and may one day clout you. But in this village, the obstacle can be seen by everyone in both directions, so no-one is taken by surprise. They're just very careful negptiating it.

I think this fits the Leeming theory that hidden hazards are the danger, not obvious ones.

While I intuitively concur with the shape of that graph and, indeed, the conclusions you draw, I must question how you arrived at the conclusion that the symmetrical bell-shaped curve you have selected to indicate the distribution of driver quality versus population; as far as I am aware there are no objective, graduated measures of driver quality.

Again, where does the data come from to draw the red line (crash risk)?

The statement that "We don't have numbers to put on the scales" sets my alarm bells ringing.

I don't wish to be contrary or curmudgeonly, but if I were looking to attack these findings (I'm not), I'd start with your graph, and probably make a decent job of it.

This is science at the level of defining research objectives - not drawing conclusions.

The driver quality / crash risk curve is created when drivers are sorted by crash risk. As such there's no other shape it can possibly be.

The distribution curve applies to all such populations, with average behaviour being commonplace and extreme behaviour being rare. Since the graph has no scale we're not claiming a final shape - the numerical scales could be non linear to make the curves correcct, or with linear scales the curves could be skewed.

I'm certainly not claiming to know the scale numbers or the scale linearity, but the graph MUST BE correct. Now we need research to put scales on the curves.

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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

The graph uses normal Gaussian distribution, and is scientifically sound, even without figures.

It is a well established, widely used statistical method for determining probability of an event. It's used in pretty much all statisitical breakdowns of scientific research and trials, and as such, you'd have a bl**dy hard time proving it to be faulty!!

They've done so much research into Gaussian or "normal" distribution - and physical, phsychological, behavioral, evolutionary etc etc etc behaviours and events have all been found to follow normal distribution........given that this discussion is about road safety and eejits loose on the road, perhaps its also relevant that IQ tests follow the same bell curve!

Yes, that's the way I see it. It's virtually axiomatic.

The most amazing conclusion is that the crash risk of the median driver is way way below the mean crash risk. This is far from obvious, but it's of vital importance to road safety policy.

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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