Safe Speed Forums

Cumbria's Police Chief has called for changes to the way drivers are tested, and restrictions for new drivers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/6168116.stm

The call for action from Cumbria was inevitable given the number of fatals involving teenagers.
This may stem from an event "close to home" - the daughter of a senior police officer was killed when the vehicle she was in collided with an oncoming car, and burst into flames.
Three other teenagers perished in the same car.

I forsee difficulties in monitoring drivers, and enforcing, yet it has been done with motorcycles with some success.
The last sentences in red seem to hold some promise - but the Transport Minister has already voiced objections to such proposals.

Anyone any thoughts on this? I started a dialogue with my MP on this earlier this year, and other Cumbrian MP's may be sympathetic.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Well Ernest, Germany does so does Australia and NZ and all have shown improvements over the training/test system it replaced. NZ is a good example as the NZ was based on the UK test till it went the multi part route.

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

A restriction on engine size / BHP for the first 2 years of driving is a good idea, but (unless the driver is very wealthy) Insurance Companies already enforce this to a degree. Presumably, the stats are already there to show how many accidents have been caused by new drivers and what cars they were driving. If a fair proportion of them were driving powerful cars, then there's your answer.

Restricting the number of passengers carried by new drivers also seems like a good idea on the face of it. As well as the "damage limitation" factor (if these people DO have an accident, less people will get hurt), having 3 or 4 mates in the car is a significant distraction that new drivers don't need when getting to grips with driving.

In both cases, enforcement would be difficult, but not impossible.

Debarring new drivers from motorways doesn't sound quite so useful - how can one get experience without experience?

New driver training courses (hence improving driving standards) will save lives, no doubt about it. But you would need to offer incentives to people who take them (e.g. being allowed to drive more powerful cars, lower insurance). The carrot would work much better than the stick here.

Trouble is, such schemes are unlikely to find favour with the government because they don't involve:
- additional tax income
- spending huge amounts of money on IT

_________________
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

The restrictions on passengers could have problematic consequences eg young parents with children! Engine size restrictions might cause other problems as 5 up in an underpowered small car is far more dangerous than 5 up in a 1.8 mondeo as the latter is designed for carrying higher loads but young people have to have small cars with poor crash worthiness as they are cheap to buy and insure. The saxo is about 2 or 3 stars in ncap! Same aged mondeo is about 3 or 4 stars. Altering the insurance system for young drivers so that cars with high ncap ratings which cheaper might help to steer them into safer cars but it is probably best not to mention that is what you're doing as they'll probably drive more dangerously to keep their risks the same!

A 2 year probation time with P plates on and compulsory improved pass plus to get P plates removed would seem the most sensible way. If you made pass plus more like the IAM then you would see a proper improvement in driving standards. You'd also have to end the allowance for overseas licence holders to drive on british roads without a proper assessment as I'd imagine the influx of people with a differing safety culture is leading increased accident risk (ditto when brits go abroad)

There is little mention of what proportion of the young people causing the accidents were a) not licensed b) not insured c) off their heads d) using the vehicle during a crime/fleeing police car.

Nothing teaches you how to drive more than experience but it seems young drivers are less willing to learn from the mistakes of others. If there was a way to educate them via others' mistakes then it might help the situation. I don't know whether today's learners are taught defensive driving and that to assume everyone else on the road is a nutter and could do something stupid so you need to always have an escape plan. Making sure they're always thinking about disaster scenarios would take some of the edge off their bravado.

I guess that would be the same way as you get experience on the roads - not BARRED, but accompanied by a more experienced driver.... but incredibly difficult to police - UNLESS they were displaying P plates.
In which case a police officer would think (I presume) when he sees a car on the M-Way:
1. P Plate = new driver.
2. Does he have a passenger? If yes, then...
3. Is he driving competantly? If yes, then...
Driver and mentor are doing just fine, no cause for concern.
If NO, then observe - he might just have been spooked by actually seeing a policeman.... and if driving is below par, then stop and offer advice/caution.


Again, rather than restrict passenger numbers, the presence of P Plates would alert an observer that a driver WITH passengers is a novice driver, and observation would show whether he/she is displaying required level of competancy.
All of these measures would require more traffic police on the roads.


In Cumbria, the young driver stats are generated by youths who are under no pressure from the law, and in most cases driving legally in terms of licenses, insurance etc.
Sadly, they often have a car FULL, and in one instance were driving on an airfield while below legal age.
I feel CERTAIN that underestimating the effect of a full load on the handling of the car is a major contributing factor - especially in regard to steering, but also braking distances.
I tend to look at a bend as I approach it, and think "What is the safest line, and smoothest course?" i.e. line up for the next bend or road feature if I know the road.
Inexperience seems to lead some drivers to think "What is the fastest line through this bend?" and if they did it at 50 mph yesterday, they try 50 mph again, either without factoring in the weight of another 4 people, and drift over the line, or without being able to manouvre if somebody comes the other way with their wheels on the centre line, cutting the apex of the corner.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I think it might be worth the police collecting some data on the engine sizes of the cars in which these "yoofs" have all their accidents. If they're all driving Imprezas or Evos then fair enough - there might be a case for restricting engine size. If, on the other hand, they are all 1.2 Novas / Corsas / Saxos etc, then there doesn't seem much point!

If it sends the message that they (young drivers) still have lots to learn, that would be good. If it provides an incentive to further training that would be good.

And if it directly prevents even a few crashes involving young drivers in high-powered cars that would be a very nice bonus.

But the downside of not being able to drive the family car could be serious for some.

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

What about a power to weight ration, so different sizes of car can be driven but the 'mid' spec rather than the 'sports' or 'performance' spec versions of the car??

Likewise what about a restriction of modified cars (eg not allowed to drive a modified car or own one in the first two years of holding a licence with the emphasis on egine mods), have seen some typically the Saxo and Nova class with huge engine mods capable of propelling these things at loony speeds, yet when I get close enough I see the same shitty shocks and brakes that were on my bog standard Nova. In no way suitable for the lumps in them or teh performance being asked of them.

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

It's unfortunate for a few, that they WERE allowed to drive the family car, but in general they would appear to be driving their own, from my own observations here. Some accurate data would help form a more accurate picture.

Maybe the family car aspect imparts some degree of responsibility or assessmant of character by an experienced parent?
I would not let ANYONE drive my car unless I knew they were both competant and responsible, otherwise it's like lending somebody a precision screwdriver, and finding they used it to pry open a wooden crate, only more expensive.
However if it's their OWN vehicle, then you are trusting to luck as to whether they put into practice all that they were taught, and tested on.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

You need to be careful about restricting modifications. Some of the popular young driver cars have some modifications which are pretty much required either for safety or reliability.

For example, the Vauxhall Nova. Everyone knows they have crap brakes as standard and usually swap on brakes from an Astra. It's quite important to do this even if you don't plan on any performance mods. However the insurace will still increase your premium for having better brakes.

The Nova is also a special case because if you have one made in Spain then you stand a very high chance of having the wrong brakes/suspension etc. on your car from the factory. You could be lucky have have Nova GTE brakes on your 1.2 Saloon, but equally you could have 1.2 Saloon brakes on your GTE! This is not meant as a dig at the Spanish generally, but the workers as Vauxhall's spain factory were pretty incompetent and lazy by all accounts. The point being how are you going to be able to tell if it's modified or not?

My first car was a 1.3 Mk4 Escort and I put a Weber carburettor on that, again this wasn't a performance mod, since it was functionally identical, it just had the advantage not not being a badly made piece of crap like the stock Ford VV carb. Interestingly my insurance didn't increase for this one.


Now obvious performance mods (or attempts at performance) like intake and exhaust kits, maybe a different matter, but where do you draw the line? Is a Halfords backbox a performance mod or a waste of money, and in whos eyes?

I think with regards any modification ban it should be on the basis that it cannot take the car over the power to weight ratio that I proposed. Or as an additional caveat anything that takes the car beyond the performance envelope of the other components. Or is not for a genuine safety/reliabilty reason

I 'm not against mods per se but am concerned that around here in Chav central the little sods are dropping great big lumps in without any thought to what they might need to do to uprate the brakes and suspension accordingly. Likewise the lowered cars that have been done by chav boy attacking the springs with a hacksaw rather than a proper kit.

Surely before they start driving round in cars modified for performance they should learn how to control a basic car and learn the rules of the road.

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Can anyone see any benefits/drawbacks to a ban on any mods under 21yrs age / 3 yrs driver (Whichever comes later - same as minimum requirements to supervise a learner) which could not be proven to be a safety benefit?

i.e. fart cannon exhausts, tinted windows, spoilers, bodykits, big alloys etc?


It may seem like an odd line (and it may prove nonsense - but this is brainstorming right? ) but I reckon a lot of young driver cock-ups are made whilst trying to do something to look good.
Only the other day whilst out for my lunchtime walk some dips**t in an old Civic with his mate in the car (from the Technical college on the industrial estate I work on) nipped the handbrake to induce oversteer on a wet roundabout.

Why do that other than to show off?

Why modify cack cars other than to make them look like more worthy steeds?



Would refusing insurance cover on cosmetic mods for that age group help stop them from trying to show off in some way during the early years of their driving career?

I'd like to see some figures though which showed how many of the young drivers who crashed were driving modified cars.

I've nothing against modded cars (well not tasteful ones anyway ) but I do recall when I was 17 driving as inconspicuously as I knew how because I didn't want anyone to see me in the purple Nissan Micra I was driving around in

_________________

For some it may make them less likely to do something stupid, for others they may feel the need to do something even more stupid in order to compensate for their cack looking car.

Define safety benefit, for example:

Fart Cannon - Lets other drivers know you are a moron and take appropriate pre-emptive action
Tinted Windows - Reduces eyestrain at night from Mr BMWs fog lights, prevents sunlight from behind reflecting off the inside of glasses, keeps cabin temperature down a bit
Spoilers - Ok, I'll give you this one, how about actual functional spoilers though. Surely it would be helpful to have one of these if you drive a Capri
Bodykits - Again, I'll give you this one, but very occasionally they can be functional
Big alloys - wider wheels = more tread on the road = more grip = safer

And again, where do you draw the line? On my first car (1.3 Escort) I replaced the stock 135/13" bicycle wheels with 185/14" wheels from a Sierra, this improved the grip immensely, and allowed me to use cheaper tyres (since 13s were getting rare) and thus made me more likely to be able to afford replacements when they were getting low. So is that a performance or a safety mod? (Later replaced them with a cheap knackered set of RS Turbo alloys to get 195/15" which handles even better still)
I also painted the grey bumpers&sills black to match the rest of the car, and turned the blue Ford badges into black ones. Insurance didn't care, and while the car looked better it was hardly chavvy. I made no effort to disguise the 1.3 litre nature of the engine.

Personally I like that the idiot chavs who ruin it for everyone else get to make their car look hideously ugly. Better to be able to see them than to have them hiding in nondescript cars and suddenly spring their idiot manoeuvres upon you.

Also where would barryboys.co.uk get new material if you did this?

Well now that's a tough one!

There is a lot of sense in SE's suggestion to limit power-to-weight ratio rather than engine size or even just power. Years ago, I had an old Scimitar with a 3 litre engine. It barely managed 130 horsepower and was actually quite heavy for what it was! My wife's 1.4 Metro would give it a run for its money and on a twisty road, the Metro would actually be the tool of choice if I wanted to get anywhere quickly!

But limiting power-to-weight isn't the whole story though. One could almost argue that limiting TORQUE-to-weight might have better safety results. In my last job, I dealt a lot with kit cars and saw plenty of cars that weighed next to nothing but had huge (as in "cubic inches") engines that didn't actually develop much power but did develop obscene amounts of torque. When they had accidents, it tended to be the sort of accident that stemmed from a loss of traction (e.g. loosing it coming off a roundabout or pulling out of a side road). The nastiest ones were a loss of traction at higher speeds - often pulling out to overtake someone, accelerating hard and breaking traction.

As for the idea of banning modifications, that too is a difficult one. The UK is currently regarded as one of the best places for motorsport engineering in the world. We seem to have a gift for this embedded in our gene pool and culture. We also need to remember how people like Colin chapman, Trevor Wilkinson, Keith Duckworth, Frank Costin, Malcolm Wilson...and so on started out. I'm sure that many of their contemporaries charged about in modified cars too. Some would have had accidents and died, most would have just "grown out of it". By preventing this sort of hand-on experimentation, we won't be doing anything to foster the next generation of motorsport legends! OK, there will always be those who learn best in the classroom but there are many for whom this is a complete turn-off.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that some of these young "muppets" don't have a clue what they are doing and can quite easily make things more dangerous rather than safer. Even the so-called "safety mods" (like bigger brakes) need to be carefully scrutinised. For a start, do we have any evidence that this mod makes the cars safer? I'd have thought all it would do is allow the "pilot" to leave his braking later and/ or reach higher speeds before jumping on the anchors. When the Single Vehicle Approval test was first introduced, I was astounded by the number of kit cars that failed the braking test on brake force distribution. I was even more amazed at the number of kit car "manufacturers" who didn't even understand the significance of this! I wonder how many cars are out there now with "bigger brakes" or "competition pads" that actually cock the brake balance up between front and rear? The same could be said for wider tyres. They MIGHT (depending on suspension geometry) give more grip in the dry but they MIGHT not! They MIGHT also aquaplane much earlier in the wet!

I think the answer would be to FIRST analyse the crash data to find out if we have a problem. If there is a significantly higher risk of a serious accident in a "modded" car, then we need to go to the next stage. If not, we let them get on with it and good luck to them!

If we DO find a significant correlation, maybe the next step would be to change the law such that ANY vehicle that had been modified in such a way as to be capable of failing an SVA test, should need to HAVE an SVA test. These only cost less than £200 so I'm not sure that even "Johnny urchin" can't afford it. - Especially if he's just stumped up £1000 for wheels & tyres to put on his £500 car!

I like the idea of size restriction - years ago it was possible ( if daddy was wealthy) to sit the test in the morning in your 898cc mini ,dash off home and celibrate by taking his E type out for a burnup ( hypethetical case , but possible) with no advanced training. Nowadays substitute Fiesta for mini and BMW M series and same applies.
Not sure how the bike world behaves, but from daughter and boyfriend banter about bike sizes it looks like bigger bike licence has to be earned

( no doubt bikers will keep me straight ) ---looks like a good path to try.

On the stats side - another one worth looking at - how do the figures in areas where SCP have decimated Trafpols rank in comparison to areas where Trafpols STILL RULE - in other words do areas like Northants and Wales have more young driver incidents than say Durham ?

One other one that would sway things ( but impossible to guage, i think) would be the respect for road rules in both of thes areas.

Good points on both accounts Lum & Mole

Something else I just thought of - regarding brakes.

Is there a point beyond which extra braking force is detrimental? Adding bigger brakes is all well and good but if the standard brakes are capable of locking wheels in the dry then perhaps bigger brakes are just asking for a loss-of-control?

I recall that purple Micra I drove. The brakes were very powerful on that car. It could easily lock a 4 wheels in the dry with it's little 155/70R13 tyres. In the wet it was lethal if you were accustomed to more composed saloon cars (that's how I crashed it ).

The extraodinarily low levels of grip did however ensure that the young driver (and obviously the experienced) was aware of rather low limitations and drove accordingly.

I would also have thought that wider tyres fitted to a stock suspension setup might be a good formula for rolling the car?


Anyhow - I'm just thinking outloud here

_________________

I remember my first Company car - Sierra - fitted with 165 xxxx tyres . Had several discussions with other company car users and found that most firms insisted on at least 185 xxx being fitted as replacement - and Ford had gone over to that as a standard, due to lack of grip in the dry.
First tyre change - i asked for and got 195 -the tyre fitter ( a keen rally bloke ) saying to me and the lease company that the car was overbraked for 165 .

On overbraking - once had a Vauxhall Victor of ancient vintage - point is that bigger brother was around with bigger engine and better braking system - and mine had the servo on of the 3.3 litre model -- with the adjuster to the master cylinder free to adjust. It didn't feel right -so i adjusted by trial and error -- till it felt right ( and car now had largest tyres i could fit - found these sizes were cheaper ) --one day had to perform "stand on em " stop - it did in straight line with no probs -at maximum braking.

This is typical of the sort of report we see in our local paper - this one from an online source, but was in the Gazette too:


With 6 up in a Peugeot 206, we are lucky the death toll was not higher.
My wife has a 206, and even with all four of us (two children, 9 & 14) in it, the steering is less responsive, and breaking becomes more critical in terms of timing and foot pressure, and that's with more than 30 years of experience.
The driver in this case seems almost certainly not up to scratch, and has paid the price - along with his passengers who will now carry through life a most unpleasant memory.
Should the Government be trying to improve things, or should we just cross our fingers and hope for the best?

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

It doesn't work like that though.

For most people modifying their car is a gradual process over the years, so new wheels, then a tweak to the exhaust, then new brakes, then an intake and so on and so on.

Are you saying they're going to have to stump up £200 after every single change?

The comparison with kit cars is also a little unfair, since typically things like brake swaps will be with OEM brakes from a higher spec version of their car, eg Nova GTE brakes on a 1.2 Nova.

I think there's a safety benefit in helping people to build a positive relationship with their vehicles. For some young drivers, modifying is an expression of such a beneficial relationship. And it 'feeds back' too. Having put in the effort changing something, the whole ownership experience becomes more personal. With the right beliefs this WILL lead to safer driving.

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