Safe Speed Forums

They already have, in fact the camears had only been up 6 months when they were touting their effectivenness.

Conveniently forgetting the causes of the high profile crashes leading to the SPECS installation.

One driver, drunk and drugged, believed he was on a motorway and drove down the right hand lane at one of the 3 lane sections. He didn't even have a licence.

And there has been a spate of accidents immediately outside the SPECS covered zone.

Another was a badly judged overtake, clipping another vehicle as the driver returned to the left.

The changes to the road markings may help but didn't the steel works close down? I have been told that most accidents on that road occured where HGVs were turning right across the carriageway to enter the steelworks.

I've been driving through numbers of SPECS-infested 40mph motorway roadworks each day for the last few days and I'm REALLY learning to hate them with a passion.

They change everything. They change attention levels. They change hazard perception. They change observation. They change space management. In fact they are a vision of hell - a real nightmare.

I'll tell you what it feels like - it feels just like driving in fog. Anyone got any detailled theories about why?

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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

Sensory deprivation...

From my experience, the traffic bunches up and it all travels at virtually exactly the same speed. This limits your peripheral view to a static and very limited frame of reference. Add to this almost no change in direction of travel as you're stuck in one lane on an essentially straight road, low speed implies low noise, low vibration, etc... Just like fog (my least-favourite driving condition!).

Post number 1000!

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

How about 'unatural constraint'?

Like fog, I've found myself leaning on the steering wheel, far forward, peering through the windscreen. I'm really not sure why, but there must be a reason...

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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

That sort of pose is usually associated with someone who hasn't brought their specs...

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Andrew.

From the reading I have done on the subject of SPECS I seem to recall that the system currently (at whatever time the material I read was written) only works between discreet pairs of cameras, so 3 cameras wouldn't happen, but with 4 it could either pair 1+2 and 3+4, leaving an unmeasured gap between 2 and 3, perhaps for a roundabout or speed limit change, or 1+3 and 2+4, covering the whole section, or even 1+4 and 2+3, which seems to serve no purpose on the face of things, but could be a sneaky trick to catch people if they suspect that people increase speed between 2 and 3 while the overall average is below the limit. This is only my recollection and interpretation, could be way off the mark.

I too am aware of the effect of SPECS sections on my driving, and in my case it manifests as a feeling of discomfort and, like Paul, a feeling of lowered situational awareness.

In my day-job as a pilot, we are reminded again and again of the bell curve representing performance against arousal. Certainly one of the extremes is coming in to play in this situation, but it could indeed be either:

Does the increased prominence of the speedo in your scan affect your work-cycle to such a degree that your capacity is tested? The comparison with driving in foggy conditions would suggest this, and theres no question that foggy conditions adversely affect your SA. In the absence of an average speed readout the only sure way to keep your average at or below the limit is to drive at or below the limit at all times. This no doubt requires a lot of attention, and with limited capacity this drawn attention away from other aspect of driving. Unquestionably a very dangerous situation.

On the other hand, the mention of monotony and the soporific effect of being forced to drive 'too slow' hints at understimulation. The requirement for monitoring the road/met/traffic conditions is all but removed, and so the speedo becomes the only concern. Particularly on motorways, where traffic is highly unlikely to encounter conditions to fall below 40, the focus may switch to the speedo, with traffic only being monitored in the periphary, an obvious reversal of the disirable situation.

My theory

Theres also an additional factor that could well affect the mix. Through specs sections, where all the traffic is moving at almost exactly the same speed, other vehicles to not move relative to your own to any great degree. The human eye (or brain's interpretation of the eye's information) is far more likely to detect the presence of an object that is moving, so if a vehicle has low or zero relative speed it is likely to go unnoticed. If the vehicles behind 'crept up' on you at a very low relative speed (which they must have if you were travelling at or near the SPECS enforced speed) it is unlikely that your peripheral vision would have registered them.