Safe Speed Forums

It's 25 years since the law compelled us to wear front seat belts.

The Bolton paper has taken a look back over the history and reckons 60 000 lives have been saved as a result. Given the Yorkshire "handfree" w:censored:r was not wearing a seat belt and has raised comment over that as well as his other pathetic gesture as an aside comment here - I cannot believe he passed the required IQ test to get recruited given the crass stupid arrogance. If his CC has sense - he should be in receipt of a P45

But anyway.. here's why seatbelts are really rather a good idea. Having said this.. Wildy actually unbuckled hers just before impact as she thought she'd get squashed and in that split second .. managed to shield herself from some of the impact.. but still managed to get impaled on the gear stick. She admits it was a desperate decision .. made in sheer panic.


I have highlighted the bits I think we can discuss. If weepej and pals can offer any input as to how to educate young "stallions" ....



These kids.. they behave the same so how they travel and we've all been there and done it to some degree. Even Dick Brainstropped and Mary Williiams will have had "their moments"





The photos of Tom's injuries on the Bolton News website are quite graphic. Nice looking lads. I do hope Tom has made a full recovery.

Ironically their experienced mirrored the "pizza THINK! advert .. which I thought rather good overall .. but I still prefer the sheer memorable simplicity of Sir Jimmy Saville's Clunk Click Campaign which also featured scary images of similar injuries to young Tom's




I do hope he recovered well.







Pass Plus should be compulsory within this period. It should not be "optional"

We still need to get across the message that no matter what the qualification .. each bicycle ride, motorbike ride or motor vehicle ride is a learning experience. Every drive is unique as we share each one with completely different road users and perfect strangers all the time. Each will have varying degrees of competency too. IG may be sharp as a passenger .. but even so.. he finds something to take me somewhere further I am privileged and a bit spoilt perhaps to have this chap breathing fear of God down my neck whenever he sits in my car on odd occasions




Have odd idea.. how about a short term .. high profile in yer face .. nagging "seatbelt amnesty". Much publicised.. but put more police on the road to carry out an "awarenesss campaign" which will not result in a fine .. but in a common sense lecture on the merits of wearing a seat belt.

The article finishes with a round up of campaigns which led to this law being passed.




I still rate Saville's "Clunk Click" as an icon advert. I was a boy when he started. I can recall most of his adverts.. especially the young woman who was disfigured in the same way as Twin Tom.

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Education is a good idea. And reminders, too. Stickers for the back of front seats, perhaps?

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Why does it seem like 'accidents' / collisions are treated as inevitable?

I'll accept that they happen now and again, but upwards of 99% of the time, they DON'T. (If they did, common traffic condidtions would make Southern California in the 1990s look like an aspirational target.)

Yet vast material, technical, and other resources have been spent everywhere ... except in the one place where the greatest return would yield:

The Driver.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/risky-business.pdf

From the above document, may I bring your attention to pages 14 through 16?
Perhaps these qoutes will whet your appetite? ...It's a given that seat belts save the lives of drivers and passengers every year.

Still, after having read the above, the most specific question I can think of, is:
If the number of drivers / passengers saved approx = the number of pedestrains / cyclists killed, were those peds / cyclists killed by the drunk drivers who were saved by the belts,

Or were sober drivers killing more pedestrains and cyclists?

(When driving my taxi, passengers find stickers reading, "SeatBelts much be available for each passenger's use. Please Buckle Up." My friends and family usually wear their seatbelts, perhaps with a polite reminder.)

I'd like to think that wearing my seat belt has never made me more likely to break Rule #1 (I never have).

I wear my seat belt whenever I am driving because it allows me to better control my vehicle.
Just in case, let me make this perfectly clear:
I wear my seat belt to prevent accidents.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

But the brakes of modern car are a lot tighter.

If I hit brake hard-ish but not emergency in the older classics .. the car silde a couple of yard before halting.

If I hit brake in a car which very road worthy still . an 18 year old Jag.. he stop quite soundly.. but slide half the distance.


I then hit brake in lovely car now aged 12 months. He stop immediately without a murmur. In emergency test .. he shave many life saving feet.

Now.. IG time me on test.. I can move foot from throttle to feather brake in similar time to average racing driver apparently .. so perhaps I have feline reflexes Average driver take 0.7 seconds to my 0.3 to 0.4 average. We then test this with Jazz who ist about this rate in same cars. New car.. including her own ;atest model car ..Vauxhall .. also perform several time better than the 1960/70 und 1990 cars.


The point of above?


We find that we need to wear the belts in the modern cars as the brakes are so sharp that you would go flying forwards


Modern cars then ..as we improve things on one side.. we then find the improvement has downside which require another safety requirement to be put in place in the event of sharp hit of brakes

Given the sharp braking at cam sites one has to wonder if the cam or the brakes or the seat belt "save" the life. Or ist none of these as danger never exist in first place on straight road which suffer one car load of unlicenced TWOCCERS hitting tree whilst high on drugs ...





Discuss

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Except for the 1st word of your post, I agree entirely.
If not for the seatbelt, maximum braking might lead to getting checked in the torso by the steering wheel (possibly the solar plexus).

I just had another thought:

Given the above, might the invention of Emergency Brake Assist have come sooner if wearing seatbelts wasn't mandatory?

"I tried to stop in time, but I'd knocked the wind out of myself about 12 yards back."

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Even a relatively "minor" crash could see decelerative forces of around ten times what you'd get with severe braking! Industry generally works on about 20 - 30 G for a severe car crash into a rigid object whereas at maximum braking most road cars are struggling to get better than 1G deceleration.

A passenger, unaware of the driver's intention to brake sharply, might get jerked forwards a bit before bracing themselves but obviously, this doesn't happen to the driver because he / she is expecting it. To compare this kind of jolt to the kinds of forces one might experience in a crash though, strikes me as a bit odd!

Whereas a growing majority of 'drivers', increasingly uneducated about the maximum braking capabilities and behaviors of their cars, are either avoiding the ABS threshold, or relaxing brakepedal pressure slightly to stop the pedal from 'pulsing' ...during the emergency. In other words, they are avoiding ABS out of ignorance, limiting the precollision G-forces, and increasing either the chances of a collision, or increasing the post collision G-forces; hence the invention of Emergency Brake Assist (as opposed to, say, better training).Put another way, more 'drivers' are increasingly unaware of max braking capabilities and behaviors, thus surprised at either the magnitude of the decel, or surprised at the ABS pulses. In future braking endeavors, ABS pulses and very hard decels are increasingly seen as wagging fingers to be avoided ... thus more and worse collisions, thus EBA.

EBA kicks in and saves more days than uneducated 'drivers', but 'punishes' all occupants for not wearing their seat belts. Seat belts are once again encouraged - a good thing for drivers and passengers, of course ...

but with the focus of the seat belt as an accident mitigator, rather than an accident preventer, risk compensations take place, resulting in greater dangers for pedestrians, bicyclists, and the remaining unbelted.

What seat belts accomplish once everything else has failed is not in dispute. I'm thinking that ignoring the seat belt as an accident prevention tool was a mistake.

I'm asking, what if, from the beginning, people had primarily focused on seat belts as tools to assist in preventing accidents?

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

What are the trigger criteria for EBA?

Does it detect rising rate as well as overall pedal depression?

How does it decide to release?

Why don't I just look this up on the net?

I have not had the chance to drive a car with EBA but the idea of the car deciding to slam the brakes on itself worries me. It could be that I am deliberately modulating the brake pressure to avoid having someone rear end me or because I am timing to go for a gap in an adjoining lane.

In some ways I can see the point, if as a good driver you generally drive so as not to require more than 50% then you may get out of practice in pressing the brake hard.

_________________
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- James May

[offtopic]
I don't know everything about EBA. I do know that it arms itself when the accelerator is released quickly. Some systems arm by closing the gap between pads/shoes and discs/drums. I don't have a problem with any of that.

EBA is for people who are afraid of max braking and or ABS pulsations. It assumes that the driver who has taken their foot off the 'gas' too quickly will not hit the brake hard enough or fast enough, or will back away once the pedal pulses due to ABS.

EBA is another stupid fix, compared to teaching drivers how to use their brakes properly.

American police officers are taught how to use ABS. I'll bet police officers around the world are taught how to use ABS. What about normal people who happen to drive daily? Why don't they deserve better driver training?
[/offtopic]
The point I am trying to make is that society in general waits until the $h!t has already hit the fan before addressing the stench with Febreze. Why not prevent the offal from getting too close to the fan?

In my 2nd post of this thread, I provided information - a link from this very website - that strongly suggests that some drivers who now wear seat belts may be taking bigger risks than they might have before the seat belt law was passed.

To leap ahead a bit, would you rather:
1) wear your seat belt to save your life in the event of a car crash
or
2) wear your seat belt to avoid a car crash?

Seat belts do both. However, 'common sense' - the social consciousness - ignores #2 as a significant reason to put on your seat belt.

Mindset #1 focuses on fixing symptoms while leaving the root cause intact ... which may cancel all but the most effective safety measures.

To distill the info from the linky in my 2nd post, from this very website:
Seat belts are most likely to save idiots (I.E., drunk drivers) who are most likely to perform risk compensation at any given time during the day, thus in turn more likely to hit pedestrians and bicyclists.

Not only are no net lives saved, but idiots are more likely to be saved.
Is mindset #1 actually making things worse?

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Hmmmm!

Interesting points but I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that people don't plant the brake pedal because they're afraid of the ABS pulsations. It might be true for SOME of them but for a great many (myself included), it's more force of habit. Those who grew up with pre-ABS cars would have got used to lifting off the pedal slightly when they felt a slight kick through it because it generally meant that one or more wheels had locked up and they were about to loose directional control. In some of the more skilled drivers, they would have then gone on to re-apply the brakes in so-called "cadence" braking. Although I have done this in the past (and it has helped on a few occasions), I think a great many drivers who CAN do it probably wouldn't in the few seconds preceding a really big, scary crash - human nature being what it is, lots of people SAY they can do it (me included) but I bet that when the kid is about to bounce up one's bonnet, they actually stand on the pedal as hard as they can!

There are also those who would have "beaten the "G"-valve" ay some point and learned a scary lesson NOT to stamp on the pedal too quickly!

Even now, I drive a lot on single track roads with muddy verges in a hilly area. It's a very common occurrence for me to be going down a hill and to have to brake with two wheels on mud. I feel the pedal pulsing and I instinctively lift off. I KNOW that I should keep the pressure on so that the two wheels that are on tarmac can still do the bulk of the braking but it's harder (for me anyway!) to do than I'd care to admit! Maybe if it happened in an emergency situation I'd do it, I just don't know!

These days, fewer cars have G valves (and good riddance to them!) because they have ABS and electronic brake force distribution but I think those habits will still remain in a lot of older drivers.

I don't know a great deal about "panic-assist" but I believe that there are various control strategies employed. I think most of them do it by a combination of how quickly the accelerator is released and how soon afterwards the brake pedal is depressed. Some may also be able to monitor rate of change of brake pedal application and / or brake line pressure increase. I've driven a few cars equipped with it and it's hard to notice that the feature is there to be honest - as soon as you ease off the pedal, you get control back - seamlessly, as far as I can tell!

I think the main advantage it confers is the RAPID application of maximum braking effort rather than increasing the LEVEL of braking effort itself - although it might, of course, do that in some situations where the driver just isn't strong / scared enough to stand on the pedal!

I must confess to being absolutely baffled by the notion that seat belts serve a useful purpose in restrianing a driver during heavy braking though. A passenger who is infirm / young / disabled / not paying attention MAYBE but a driver??? The harder a driver brakes, the harder he pushes the brake pedal and braces his arms against the steering wheel, surely?!

You've just described what the vast majority of Amerikan troopers did when introduced to ABS without prior familiarization. Most older drivers would do the same, while most younger drivers would probably just squeeze harder without newer instruction.Proper prior practice prevents pathetically poor performance.Those habits should be trained OUT if these features are to become standard in all cars in the near future.If they got it right, then I'm happy. Having said that, I've met ABS strategies that I could beat in the rain (mostly in the 90s; they've since earned my nearly universal endorsement). I can count the number of Traction Control and Stability Control/Roll Control strategies that I would leave on in the rain with one hand.
As for EBA, I haven't played with it yet, but I'm willing to bet I can trick it in the rain - unless it simply decreases the amount of pedal force needed to summon MAX braking. Still, that could simply lead to a mere 15lb press on the brakepedal summoning MAX braking in a few generations.

How would you like it if your steering wheel suddenly doubled the amount of power assist it gave you during under / oversteer, for example - Emergency Steering Assist, as it were?The steering wheel shouldn't be a handle. I know it gets used that way for in-/egress, but it should be avoided during driving. It pollutes steering feel, and makes the wheel harder to adjust precisely. If, Fates forbid, one has to summon MAX braking while using the steering wheel at once, not wearing your seat belt properly makes it hard enough that it could wind up a failure.

If anyone here does autocross or gymkhana with the mere OEM seat belts, I'll bet your performance will still degrade without wearing your seat belt. Mine did.

I will admit that the above are mostly my beliefs, but I earned them.

I suppose the upside of making cars better drviers and allowing drivers to become worse drivers will be that, at some point, Risk Compensation will be admitted, and subsequently circumvented with a 'Minority Report'-style automated personal transport system, which will make it nearly impossible to penalize a driver for his beahvior, since all driving behaviors would originate within the system.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

I wish I had a quid for every "racing" driver I'd heard quoting that one and then exiting through the tyre wall! Lots of people (myself included) can make themselves do the right thing when practicing. FAR fewer can actually DO it in a genuine panic situation. As for me, well, I just don't know - I've never been in a situation where I was a split second off killing someone!



The problem is that there will always be older cars around. My daily drive is a modern company car with all the electronic keep-you-on-the-road gadgetry. My own car is 17 years old and has a (fairly crude) ABS system but nothing else. If such behaviour were to become so deeply ingrained in me as to be second nature in a genuine panic situation, I doubt I'd then be able to change it depending on what I was driving.



Earlier 2-channel and even some 3 channel ABS systems were pretty lousy. The most modern ones (at least in Europe - I haven't driven any American cars lately) are (at least in my view) pretty good.



I can't think of any manufacturer that would do that! The problem with under / oversteer is not the amount of effort required to turn the wheel so it wouldn't solve the problem! Most of the Electronic Stability Control systems I've had anything to do with sense over / understeer and then apply either the outboard front or rear brake a bit to balance the car. They also do other things like playing about with the throttle on some cars. I can get the company car to start doing that if I really "horse" it into a bend and it starts understeering strongly. The first thing it does to try and save my life is lift off the throttle for me (throttle-by-wire) whether I like it or not! This is usually accompanied by an angry flashing of it's stability control light on the dash until the car regains it's line. That said, one wouldn't often drive to that point on a public road and even when one did, I doubt ther would be many circumstances when it would actually be USEFUL to keep the car understeering wildly for any length of time! It might be slightly emasculating - having the car take over a degree of control from you but I've got used to it! There WAS a time when the driver was expected to do his own ignition advance via a control on the steering wheel too - but I've learned to let the car do it for me now with no hard feelings!



I had, for many years, a steering wheel salvaged from a crashed sports car in my office. The guy had ditched the standard 3-point belts in favour of proper 5-point race harnesses. He aquaplaned at some insane speed on a wet motorway in Belgium and went right through the Armco. The car largely disintegrated around him and it's the only time I've ever seen someone actually pull the wheel off the steering column. He was still holding it when the car came to rest but had "folded" it up until the rim on either side wheel had been almost touching! Amazingly, he survived (although there were a fair number of operations to undergo and he never walked properly again)! The point I'm trying to make is that in a really severe crash, the laws of physics and the psychology of raw terror tend to make it impossible NOT to transmit significant forces into the wheel! During normal spirited" driving, I completely agree with you that "hanging" off the wheel is not condusive to good steering feel but I still don't agree that emergency braking on its own - no matter how good the brakes are, would be likely to cause the torso to hit the steering wheel - even with no belt at all!



YES, I agree with that! There is a product call the "G-lock" that is starting to become popular with trackday drivers of cars with ordinary three point inertia reel belts. It locks the belt up and makes it behave like a static belt.



The thing I don't understand about "risk compensation" is that safety features on cars cars have been getting incorporated almost since the dawn of motoring and KSIs have been falling (fairly steadily) for many years too. Why haven't we just"risk-compensated away" all the safety improvements over the years?

Somewhat off-topic, but... I don't know whether you do track days, certainly other SafeSpeeders seem to and, speaking as a retired professional racing driver, I would strongly recommend fitting proper 4, 5 or 6-point belts if you're going to do much track work.

Standard belts are actually quite elastic. If you look at racing belts you'll see that they're made of much more substantial webbing and do not have anything like as much "give" in them. Downside of using them is if you have a big shunt you'll get some spectacular bruising, upside is that, unlike a 3-point "road" belt, they'll keep you from hitting the steering wheel!

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Fair comment! I don't endorse the use of them at all and I haven't used one! (and I haven't done a track day for years)! The point I was trying to make is that I agreed with The Rush that using a belt / harness to help maintain you in your seat during spirited driving was a good thing and that these products were intended to make an inertia reel belt behave more like a static belt for that purpose. To be honest, I don't know how one of them would work when used on a more modern car with a seat belt peak load limiter or "grabber" on the retractor. I'm not sure I'd risk it personally, and, of course a device such as this could never be a substitute for a proper motorsport harness even if for no other reason than that a harness spreads the decelerative load over a much bigger area of the body - partly because the webbing is wider and partly because there are more straps! In a like-for-like knock, in fact, the bruising from a 3-point belt would always be worse!

I know of not one person who can do the right thing in a real emergency, but can't do it in practice. Statistically, such people must exist, but I doubt I'll ever meet them.
In any case, they exited through the tire wall because of Risk Compensation; that is, most of them forgave themselves in advance of crashing through the tire wall because they consider the lower potential consequences as an implicit permission to perform a riskier behavior.
Better driver training and education would not only have raised the nanny-bots performance standards, but it would encourage most drivers to avoid the use of such techniques for the very reason you point out.
The only non-4-channel ABS systems that have exceeded my standards were for the Chevy Caprice and the Ford Crown Victoria - both were obviously developed for police pursuits. Most Euro cars with ABS, even in the 90s, were up to my snuff.
Exactly. The problem isn't to make it easier for the driver to do the right thing, it's to make the driver do the right thing. Oh, wait, sorry, I meant the car, not the driver. It's to make the car do the right thing, and make the driver pay for the markup each time, rather than pay once for the training.
It seems to me that the cost-to-profit ratio of installing 'safety' systems external to the driver apears favorable to those who are more directly concerned with money - car companies can afford to spend more money adding 'safety' features to each car, since we'll pay for it again each time we buy another car, so the math works out - for them. If however, you were to invest the cost of 'installing' ABS/Traction Control/Stability Control/EBA/ etc. in each driver, that driver brings that improvement to each car driven going forward at no additional cost. More importantly, their children aren't brought up to be such maddeningly risk-averse wusses.
The car controls ingition advance better than you can - not just more consistently, mind you, but more subtly. A good servo-nanny's average performance should also consistently exceed a good driver's performance.
Keep in mind that good drivers are a minority. That's why I'll never drive a Lexus; I can consistently exceed their Traction and Stability Controls - heck, until the mid-naughties, I could exceed their 4-channel ABS's threshold braking. (I've never liked Toyotas, mostly for that reason.
As a passenger, I've personally witnessed drivers who hit the brakes, and consequently make contact with the steering wheel. If the car had subsequently made contact with the hazard ahead ... None of these drivers had any clue how hard their cars could brake.
Perhaps this isn't a problem in the U.K.?
Risk Compensation isn't the only force at work, of course. Since I am not a scientist, I will merely suggest that the only safety features which truly work today
A) either do so regardless of the driver's understanding, or in fact benefit from the driver's lack of same
B) do not give the driver any sense of empowerment to believe that the activity is safer due to the presence of the feature

As another example, even though I consider ABS (presently) the most important safety feature since the seat belt, most automotive experts disagree with me; they say it's Stability Control (the lovechild of ABS and Traction Control).

According to the 'experts', drivers would:
1) not steer after panicking with the brake, perhaps expecting too much from ABS's threshold
2) exaggerate steering corrections, leading to Newton effectively taking over
3) detect ABS's hepatic feedback pulses, think something was wrong, back off the pedal, and give birth to EBA
In this case, Risk Compensation simply killed the compensators themselves. In other words, ABS didn't save lives because it was misunderstood and misused (like seat belts, I say).

However, it isn't as if better driver training and education is some sort of unfamiliar devil ...

Amerikan (and I suppose other nations') law enforcement received enough training to properly use it, which is why it only showed a lifesaving benefit for law enforcers. (Rather than educate the rest of us, it was decided to make us buy more and more safety features.)

Stability Control, on the other hand, appears to have saved lives without any additional training. In other words, it's idiot-proof. How much of a good thing is that, really?

Seat belts, on the other hand, tend to saved drunks, while also tending to kill pedestrians in exchange. (It is unclear how many sober jack@r$e drivers killed pedestrians as either a direct or proximate result of wearing their seat belts.)

I believe that if the seat belt had been 'sold' to the public as a way to increase their ability to avoid or mitigate accidents, that's exactly what would have happened.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

I'm loosing the will to live now!!!



That's odd! If you've experience of it, well, fair enough. For my own part, I've seen so few people in REAL emergencies that I wouldn't be able to say anything statistically meaningful. If, on top of that, I only counted the ones that I'd seen practice it AS WELL, I wouldn't be able to say anything at all! I have, however, met plenty of people (including me) who can do it fine in practice and I've met plenty who CLAIM they could do it in a real emergency!


I see your theory but I'd need a great deal of evidence before I subscribed to it!



You're not alone in this stance, but I can't see why it should be such a problem - or why it has to be "either / or"? I wouldn't have a problem with car manufacturers developing new safety systems AND drivers getting better training. It also has to be said that you wouldn't get much driver training for the cost of EBA or ESC - they're pennies per car once the hardware is paid for - in fact they almost come "free" with ABS if the development cost is spread over typical mass-production numbers. I also fairly strongly feel that there is only a relatively small number of drivers with the ability to be trained to the sort of level where they can do as good a job as the electronics.

I also believe that the same consistency subtlety and precision are displayed by most current handling assistance packages. That's why I don't think they can ever be replaced by better driver training! When you consider that only the very best racing drivers (some of the time) can get better lap times with traction control switched off, there can be little argument that for the rest of us mortals, these aids are a good thing!


What? with their torso / solar plexus????!!!!

WEIRD!!!

I don't think I've ever seen any part of any driver's body (hands excepted!) touch a steering wheel under braking!




You're not the first on these boards to have drawn these conclusions from Adams' work! I can't comment with any authority because I'm not a statistician or an expert on driver psychology but just intuitively, I think I'd need a great deal of convincing that there wasn't some other explanation! Were there similar increases in pedestrian deaths when (say) ordinary window glass windscrens were replaced with safety glass or when collapsible steering columns were introduced? I realise these aren't good examples because there aren't any other safety features that had laws passed mandating their use overnight. On the other hand, it is also fair to say that increasing numbers of people were wearing seat belts voluntarily before the law was introduced.

Assume for now that those who can't in practice or in real life (inDUHviduals), outnumber those who can in practice, but can't in real life (novices). Novices outnumber those who usually can in practice, and sometimes in real life (adepts). Adepts outnumber those who nearly always can, regardless of the situation (experts).
There are also the anomalies: Those who really can, yet can't in practice (eccentrics).
Then, there are those who say they are adept or expert, usually outnumbering adepts and experts. Perhaps some of these are eccentrics?

Finally, there will always be drunks and other idiots who resist membership in a more favorable category.

My previous driving ... personality ... was coupled with more luck than I deserve (including not running out of luck and stil being available). That mostly accounts for the quantity and quality of my experiences which solidify the tenets above.

Skydiving before the parachute: not that many subscribers, even fewer repeat subscribers.
Skydiving after the parachute: unfavorable consequences mitigated, more subsrcibers, most of whom become repeat subscribers.
The number of people who die from 'skydiving' goes up slightly, of course, largely due to 'parachute failure'. More importantly, the percentage of people who die as a result of skydiving as a whole, goes down much faster than the abosolute increase in 'chute failures', therefore the parachute works, despite Risk Compensation.

Once again, I offer you a trial subscription to the theory of Risk Compensation (for free, and with no obligation to buy anything).

When I said "cost of 'installing' ... in each driver", I know how little it costs to install those things into a car. Perhaps I should have focused on how much people actually pay for these things (between $500 and $2,000 per car) [simply converting dollars to pounds probably isn't sufficient or accurately indicative here, so I won't].
That is, if one were to spend between $500 and $2,000 on my driving attitudes, skills, beliefs, senses, responses, etc. just once, that improvement would
a) far exceed the improvement yielded by the pennies/pence spent on electronannies
b) better prevent Risk Compensation from rearing its ugly head and lopping off someone else's
c) reduce the number of inDUHviduals, novices, and drunks/other idiots driving by prevention, attrition, and everything in between, with attendant benefits on the environments - not just ecologically, and not just the driver's environment, either. All road users would benefit, and those benefits would spill over beyond the road.

A) You obviously have either a better opinion of / or better experience with electronannies than I do. I have found that the newer the electronanny, the more hastily developed it is, the more dubious its driver safety benefits, and the more likely it is to keep those who deserve Darwin Awards from collecting them.

B) Assuming electronics performing at a level I'd approve, well, that would mean less drivers on the road. As long as that reduction is accomplished by removing the least qualified and the most dangerous, I will celebrate. So would many treehuggers, by the way.

Either American electronanny standards are appalling, Euro electronanny stanrds are superior to my experiences, or you are confusing sport-specific 'Traction Control' applications with 'Traction Control' meant for mass consumption (duh-masses / the masses). Sport-specific-type Traction Control variants - those that maximize acceleration - are nearly unavailable for mass consumption. The only notable exception I can think of now is the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The Ford Mustang is an interesting variant; it allows unlimited wheelspin as long as the front wheels are straight ahead, but otherwise operates to eliminate wheelspin generally.

Per my experience, neither I, nor the majority of the poulation have experienced or can afford 'traction control' designed to maximize acceleration. Every instance of 'TC' I have experienced has hindered my forward progress at the slightest hint of wheelspin, which as we all know, always leads to multicar pileups and rampant antisocial behaviors.

(I am not presently permitted to post in the only place for me to make long detailed posts on how to improve electronannies. I trust that situation will be corrected in the future.)

Again, this display of ignorance may very well be unique to ignorant drivers, which are obviously more prevalent in countries such as the U.S.A.

Finally, I didn't draw that conclusion from Adams' work. Whether or not Adams' work drew that conclusion itself isn't my point either.

I am saying that any so called 'safety improvement' that is not introduced, received, or used properly, will fail in some way, and that Risk Compensation appears to be one of the main ways that failure will manifest itself.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Infiniti's only criteria, of course, is not to save good or bad drivers, but to save all buyers. (LDP is part of a $2,000 option package.)

This mindset is much more flawed than the attitude of preventing or mitigating the consequences of an accident that has already happened. I am suggesting, however, that the two attitudes are related, perhaps dangerously so.

"Clunk Click Every Trip - Still Sound Advice!"
This statement is, of course, true.
The preoccupation with preventing or mitigating the consequences of an accident that has already happened, however, may have allowed Risk Compensation to negate the obvious benefit of the seat belt.

Yes, I think that those who believe seat belts help to prevent accidents are less likely to hit unprotected road users - or other vehicles for that matter - than those who hold the prevalent mindset.

I submit that the mindset which seeks to prevent accidents:
1) is in danger of extinction
2) is superior to consequence mitigation or negation
3) is the best use of existing safety features
4) tends to prevent Risk Compensation
5) might prevent the birth of safety features such as LDP and EBA
6) would hold safety features to a higher standard of performance, which might improve their attendant benefits

A viewpoint not limited to a single fiscal year would probably be necessary in order to fully collect the benefits.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

I liked the skydiving analogy! Not sure it's valid though. As far as I can see, it's not that the parachute "mitigates" the unfavourable consequences though. I could see how it would elimiate them most of the time - i.e. you don't die at all most of the time, but sometimes you die completely (rather than just a little bit). With the tyre wall, I could see how that WOULD mitigate the effects of going off - i.e. it wouldn't injure you AS MUCH as hitting something solid. If you could show me some statistics whereby LOTS of people on circuits fall off into the gravel traps (where they're very unlikely to get hurt), SOME fall off into tyre walls (where you're a bit more likely to get hurt) and hardly ANYONE fell off into a (say) pit wall where you'd be VERY likely to get hurt, that might sway me. The trouble is, you'd have to weight it such that all other factors were even (i.e. there are probably very few yards of circuit where you could hit something solid and there will be many more with gravel traps). Also, in a well- designed circuit, the gravel traps would be put at the places where one was most likely to come off - so it would be very hard to "control" the statistics.



I don't see them as being much different in operation to be honest but I've never driven a racing car with such equipment. It is worth noting that at the top levels they have banned it because it worked so much better than the best driver though! I was lead to believe that they employ very similar protocols for road and track cars. As one who spends a fair bit of time driving a two ton MPV along narrow lanes with two wheels on the grass, I think the TC isn't bad - it brakes the spinning wheel slightly to make the diff transfer some of the torque to the one that's still on tarmac. I have good data here because the model of car that I drive has only farily recently got TC as standard equipment do I've driven plenty of examples of the same car with and without it.



Huh? I don't understand!



Sorry if I'm being a bit dim here but it's been a long day!! How do seat belts "prevent" accidents from taking place? I think you mentioned earlier that they help keep the driver in position during "spirited" driving, but surely you don't JUST mean THAT do you?