Safe Speed Forums

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/8046817.stm




We hope it will enhance our efforts

Do be careful on our A1(M.) Resurfacing work means 12 months of 50 mph limit

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Is that the same stuff as the high grip tarmac that is put at junctions, that stuff works really well until after a year when its worn back to normal. I don't like it being called 'anti-ski' though, gives off a false impression of safety. Would prefer if they just called it necessary resurfacing.

It's the stuff that consists of fine grit embedded in epoxy-resin.
It wears off and leaves a pile of grit in the centre of the lane to await the arrival of the next m/cycle.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

It's brilliant stuff when it's new - you can go into the bend faster and put the power down earlier without falling-off!

OK, the serious point behind this remark is that it would be worth doing a large scale controlled experiment whereby half the "danger spots" get this grippy coating and the other half just get warning signs showing a low friction bit (the standard triangle with the skidding car). My guess is that the results will be very similar!

Very true, the fact that (here anyway) the grip stuff is a different colour just highlights the fact and people will just brake later because of it, or decide to test it to see how good it is (not saying I did that )

Using tarmac instead of grit and tar to resurface roads would be a good start.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

It wears-out faster on bends, and faster still on tight bends. Mainly because of the rear wheels on artics being dragged across the surface.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

In Gear, you know as well as i do that it wont make the blindest bit of difference to road safety. skid training (which includes learning how to avoid a skid) is the answer, not anti skid surfaces. people will skid on any surface and that is down to ignorance. they dont know the physics behind skidding so they dont know how to control or even avoid a skid. i think its high time the driving test was 2 parts. part 1 would be the existing test which covers basic car control, part 2 should be learning to drive ie skid pan, joining motorways, adverse weather etc etc etc. that would be an effective road safety strategy!

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

I know I wasn't called, but may I?

I'm not sure that's the whole answer.

1) Nearly everyone - over 99.9% of drivers - don't skid when road conditions are optimal, over 99.9% of the time.
Even if the number of people who skid increases by an entire order of magnitude when weather conspires to reduce grip by as much as 50%, you still have 95% of drivers not skidding, or at least managing skids so that they don't metastasize into collisions.

This is one of the situations where I do not believe that drivers will 'consume' any of the additional available grip. Most people are not driving their cars to the dry grip limit, they are driving their cars in a manner so as to stay BELOW a certain kinaesthetic threshold - either theirs, or their passengers'.

So as long as they tend to drive under the available road grip, all is well.

Will this stuff enhance bad weather grip? That's when drivers need extra grip.

I personally think the answer to improving grip begins with better tires, although I'd begin by raising the minimum legal standard for tire performance, so that people aren't driving on polished soles with interesting tread patterns passing themselves off as tires.

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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

Round by us they need some better anti skid surfaces on the roundabouts. I know of at least 3-4 roundabouts where a rear wheel drive car can lose traction in the wet at anything over15-20 mph but instead of resurfaceing the bits round the roundabouts (they are only medium size ones) they are reducing the speeedlimit of the whole 1 1/2 mile stretch of road because of the accidents on it. I've seen a plan of all the accident spots and all the wet weather ones are on the islands but no one has the brains to improve the road surface on the islands, they seem to think that lowering the speed limit to 40MPH will cure all.....not when you can lose traction at 20 MPH it won't...still I suppose the next solution will be a blanket limit of 30MPH......

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I mentioned earlier that people tend to drive so as to stay BELOW a certain kinaesthetic threshold.

For any given road speed, the turning method that provides the lowest kinaesthetic stimulus - while still making the turn - is the perfect apex. Most people tend to prefer to take this line, rather than a late apex; most drivers prefer to turn the steering wheel as little as possible.

Whenever weather adversely affects grip, braking grip and acceleration grip are not as adversely affected as turning grip (or, the friction circle shrinks at the sides much more than it shrinks from the top and bottom). The drivers who are most likely to skid, are most likely to do so in turns because they aren't adjusting their kinaesthetic thresholds low enough in the turns.

I'm convinced that if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then the late apex is the ounce of avoidance, and the ability to recover from the skid is the cure.

(For those who skid in the straights, they either need to not use so much speed in the first place, or brake earlier. Either way, they also didn't lower their demand of the altered friction circle sufficiently.)

_________________
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

graball, that does seem patently ridiculous.

If that is the case, either better tires with more grip, better tarmac, or both.

Oh wait. It probably wouldn't be practical to increase the radius of those tight roundabouts, would it? That would also make more grip available. I suppose the applicable governing body wouldn't even want to comprehend acknowledging that possibility.

_________________
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

Rush, there's only one answer in UK to reduce accidents....it's reduce the speed limit every time....it's regardless of if the accidents are happening anywhere near the speed limit or not.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The epoxy resin/grit surfacing is not supposed to be applied to other than straight roads. The grit becomes separated from the adhesive by vehicles dragging their wheels across it....ie: articulated trucks. That then leaves a pile of loose grit on the road, usually on the cornering line of motorcycles.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

i have never crashed a truck but i am subject to ever more restrictive legislation in the name of road safety. the mistakes made by few affect the majority hence we get all sorts of ill thought out reactionary methods to increase road safety which simply do not work. better gripping surfaces may go some way to alleviate the problem but the effectiveness is reduced without education. those that even notice the difference might even think that it means it is safer to go faster because of the extra grip on offer. that is only the case when it is combined with other driving skills, not on its own!
of course one type of surface that may improve the situation is a surface which is level without pot holes or changes where previous repairs have been carried out

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

From one professional driver to another, it's obvious that the restrictions placed upon professional drivers are dreamt up by people who have no idea what it's like to drive at all, much less what it's like to drive a taxi, or an articulated lorry, in the real world.
I've never driven a tractor trailer, by the way.We've been banging on that education/training/testing drum for quite a while now; it probably needs to be tightened.
Those drivers who keep letting Murphy back-seat-drive, inch ever closer to their Darwin award ...[luddite]Maybe so, but in the 21st Century, it seems like an ever growing number of people can't leave well enough alone, as if they are secretly allowing things to fall into disrepair so that they then have an excuse to reinvent what could've been fixed a decade ago.[/luddite]

_________________
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

Is this the light sandy coloured surface in use at road junctions etc .About a year or so ago we saw M6 J3 island treated to this .Now it's an effective way of slowing traffic down as the surface has lifted /cracked etc .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on