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 Post subject: On observing bad driving
PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 14:07 
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When we observe other drivers driving badly there are two fundamental explanations:

1) We've seen a perfectly normal and competent driver make a mistake (perhaps he's made several mistakes because he's having a 'bad day'.)

2) We've seen a serial bad driver doing his normal thing

Any thoughts about what the relative proportions are? Having seen a single incident, it's very hard to know which is which.

My guess is about 50/50. Put that another way and we'd see that 50% of crashes are caused by 'normally competent' drivers. In fatal crashes I'm sure we'd find a much larger proportion of very bad drivers indeed including drunks and unlicenced drivers (for example).

This follows on from Pete317's poll at:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2143

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 14:24 
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I would like to think they are mainly 1's and experience of people I know would back that up. At least 90% 1s, possibly more.

What do you do if you know a 2, say a work colleague or older relative?


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 14:51 
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I once knew a typical no.2. The one time I was in a car with him was enough to discourage any repeats - he never seemed to watch the road at all.
Strangely enough, he never had any accidents. I can only put that down to sheer luck.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 15:31 
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This old graph of mine...

Image

...is relevant to the discussion.

I'm quite certain that the risk below the 5th percentile is massive compared to the average.

I'm quite certain that the vast majority of drivers have much less than average risk. This may help explain the old chestnut about '90% of drivers think they are better than average'.

I guess the answer to the first question depends on where we draw the line between bad and average. We could calculate population risk at each skill level by multiplying the green and red data points. Then we could fill in the average risk as a horizontal and read off the driver quality percentile where risk crosses average risk.

Unfortunately we have no data at all to work with.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:26 
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I think it's only human nature to make on-the-spot judgements about other peoples driving. Unfortunately, when we witness someone driving badly we only have a small portion of the information necessary to make an object assessment...
How competent is the driver?
What are his/her perceptions of the situation versus your own?
Is the individual really driving badly, or are we just piqued that someone else has taken an opportunity that we really could have made use of?
What constitutes bad driving? One persons cautious approach is another persons ditherer; someone else's 'impatient fool' is yet anothers 'assertive but safe'.
And so on.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:47 
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its not uncommon (i find) to have an on the spot judgement confirmed as you can end up following wthin view of the offending driver for several miles (usually dubious driving doesnt gain them much anyway).

there's something about road/lane position, following distance, cornering speed/response that makes me wary of some people.

(that said, i had an off day this morning straight from lane 2 onto the slip road at 80... didnt make any friends there.. poor judgement on my part)


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:56 
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ed_m wrote:
its not uncommon (i find) to have an on the spot judgement confirmed as you can end up following wthin view of the offending driver for several miles (usually dubious driving doesnt gain them much anyway).


The problem here is that you cannot easily tell if you're observing with prejudice after the first event.

To make matters harder, sometimes we do see another driver making bad serial mistakes and our judgement is confirmed.

We're just too subtle, at least on occasions, to be sure...

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:46 
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I have seen accidents where those involved wer the "victims" of bad driving. For example one occasion where I saw dangerous overtaking caused someone to run off the road to avoid a crash. The car that cause it drove on without a scratch. Probably didn't even know the outcome of his stupidity.

On the other hand I can remember a couple of occasions where I went through a red light thinking it was on green...a momentary lack of concentration. With complex filter junctions it is so easy to do. Got away with it but it could have been much worse.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 14:01 
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From time to time I encounter people who seem to drive "out of synch" with me. By this I mean they change their speed in what I would consider to be an inappropriate way and position their car very differently to me and most other drivers.

I am not sure if this is bad driving, poor training or is more risky but they are certainly at odds with the majority of us.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 03:25 
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malcolmw wrote:
From time to time I encounter people who seem to drive "out of synch" with me. By this I mean they change their speed in what I would consider to be an inappropriate way and position their car very differently to me and most other drivers.

I am not sure if this is bad driving, poor training or is more risky but they are certainly at odds with the majority of us.


There are certain junctions on my route to and from work where I find myself as virtually (and in two cases actually) the only driver to take what prima facie is a very unauthodox position of approach and egress, which I maintain reduces both risk and consequences of otherwise unforeseen altications. I think of the phrase "only one in step" :roll:


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