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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 11:23 
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After hundreds of thousands of miles it's happened and in my brand new car!!!!

m5 northbound, heavy stop start traffic approaching the m42, drizzly mucky weather, rush hour, first school day after xmas.

Car in front brakes as I'm adjusting the radio volume. braked hard....too late bump.

a couple of seconds later a big impact up my rear end!

Summary, no damge to car in fron, minor damage to my front end.

superficial damage to my rear end

following car....not pretty, whole front smashed in...he's not going anywhere. Old Astra I would imagine write off.

No injuries.

Summary.

My attention was distracted - learning point for me.

My car was very intact - volvo's are bl00dy robust.

Rush hour stop start traffic requires immense attention and concentration. We need to tackle congestion from a safety point of view as well as a time/pollution point of view.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 19:54 
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Glad everyone is ok.

I totally agree - stop/start is where a high attention span is needed yet paradoxically a situation where we sometimes all softpedal attention from time to time for some reason. Could it be we know we're way below the speed limit and therefore feel invincible?


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 20:02 
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Roger wrote:
Could it be we know we're way below the speed limit and therefore feel invincible?


Is that not always the case? I mean thats what the goverment tells me, and they wouldn't lie to me, would they? :twisted:


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 23:21 
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civil engineer wrote:
380 miles on the clock!

...

Car in front brakes as I'm adjusting the radio volume. braked hard....too late bump.


DEFINITELY connected. You didn't worry about adjusting the radio volume because it's a familiar action and not normally significantly distracting.

But this car is different, and you have to both think about it and look down.

I'm guessing that this is a fairly classic way to screw up - the subconscious risk assessment didn't keep up with the change in circumstances.

Glad you're OK, sorry about the motor.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 23:36 
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Another classic excuse :evil: eh, how many times have you heard it in this country, we get a bit of bad weather and people start running into the back or front of people, and what do we do blame the weather, even though we have had years of getting used to it.

Now, we had the same amount of years of congestion, the slow moving stop start that has been described, and what happens we run into the back of each other and what do we blame,the traffic. :evil:

It must be a sign of the times when we fu*k up who do we blame ourselves no, anything but ourselves, ah well never mind,lets put it down to experience,perhaps you should have got a car with a multi function steering wheel, that might have stopped you running up the arse of someone in your new motor :lol: .
Stephen


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 23:52 
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Stephen wrote:
Another classic excuse :evil: eh, how many times have you heard it in this country, we get a bit of bad weather and people start running into the back or front of people, and what do we do blame the weather, even though we have had years of getting used to it.

Now, we had the same amount of years of congestion, the slow moving stop start that has been described, and what happens we run into the back of each other and what do we blame,the traffic. :evil:

It must be a sign of the times when we fu*k up who do we blame ourselves no, anything but ourselves, ah well never mind,lets put it down to experience,perhaps you should have got a car with a multi function steering wheel, that might have stopped you running up the arse of someone in your new motor :lol: .
Stephen

I dont think CE was making excuses Stephen - more flagging up his mistake for others to learn from. He reminds us that SLOW stop start is NOT straightforward or without risk.
Hard day at the office?? :roll: :)

CE, I cannot help thinking that if you had STOPPED before you hit the car in front, then the car behind may well have still hit you, and maybe even harder.
I'm assuming you did brake quickly.... but a little late, and did not skid. The trouble is if you leave a reasonable gap in front of you to allow a longer stopping distance (thus giving the motor behind time to react too), somebody usually dives in and fills it up - and it only prolongs the congestion anyway!

I'm with Stephen on the multi-function control on the steering wheel - all my vehicles over the last 7 years have had them, and I cannot understand why VOLVO and others have not made them standard.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 00:31 
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Stephen wrote:
Another classic excuse :evil: eh, how many times have you heard it in this country, we get a bit of bad weather and people start running into the back or front of people, and what do we do blame the weather, even though we have had years of getting used to it.

Now, we had the same amount of years of congestion, the slow moving stop start that has been described, and what happens we run into the back of each other and what do we blame,the traffic. :evil:

It must be a sign of the times when we fu*k up who do we blame ourselves no, anything but ourselves, ah well never mind,lets put it down to experience,perhaps you should have got a car with a multi function steering wheel, that might have stopped you running up the arse of someone in your new motor :lol: .
Stephen


This really isn't good enough! We need to know much much more about why people make these mistakes and even more importantly why other people DON'T make such mistakes.

As for the blame and excuses thing, your position is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. In all other accident situations (air, marine, industrial) the objective of investigation is to prevent repeats rather than apportion blame. It's a great tragedy that we learn so little from road crashes because the investigation stops when a violation has been determined. The key here is 'root cause analysis' - just keep asking why...

- Why did he crash - because he was distracted...
- Why was he distracted - because he was in a new car...
- Why didn't he allow for the potential distraction associated with a new car? - because no one highlights the danger...
- Why didn't anyone highlight the danger? - because we don't perform the right sorts of analysis and reporting of road crashes...

See how we routinely miss the point?

As for the difficulty people have admitting responsibility, there are two main reasons:

- 1. The blame culture...
- 2. Because the true causes are usually subconscious, and subconscious causes appear to be outside our personal control. In a very real sense it isn't the responsibility of your conscious self. And anyway, we're not giving folk the right information about skills, attitudes and responsibilities.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 05:05 
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Paul makes a good point on radios. I remember about 1 - 2 decades ago radio facias and control functionality got seriously complicated - soft controls, arrays of buttons.. so much so that I refused to use them as a driver. They've for the most part learned their lesson now I think - back to basics supplemented by wheel-mounted controls.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 08:46 
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SafeSpeed wrote:
As for the difficulty people have admitting responsibility, there are two main reasons:

and a 3rd... everyone thinks they are the world's best driver ("I've driven 5 billion miles and never had an accident!") so they can't possibly be at fault.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:30 
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SafeSpeed wrote:
In all other accident situations (air, marine, industrial) the objective of investigation is to prevent repeats rather than apportion blame. It's a great tragedy that we learn so little from road crashes because the investigation stops when a violation has been determined.


This blame culture took a long time to condition out of the air world, and even today the option remains to report human factors issues annonymously.

I guess a large portion of the blame aspect is driven by the insurance companies, who are more interested in getting their 'pound of flesh' than in preventing accidents in the future. Short sighted, but thats business, and I guess if we never had crashes, we wouldn't need/pay as much for insurance!


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:31 
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Stephen, this is the second time you've severely p!ssed me off with some stupid comment!

Where did I blame anything other than my innattention?

Had I not given all the environmental conditions I would have been asked for them.

As I recall, the last time you riled me you said I was a 'disgrace', I can only assume that jumping to apportion blame without considering the facts isn't regarded as disgraceful within the police any more, I guess it's just a sign of the times!

What I did say was that congestion is dangerous and probably moreso than we tend to realise.

And furthermore why would I go to the trouble of posting about my accident/near miss were it not to add to debate in this thread.

As for the multi function wheel, it does have one so in retrospect maybe it wasn't the radio, maybe it was the air con, either way I was momentarily distracted no doubt compounded by my unfamiliartity with the car.

I did hit the car in front but at low speed with no apparent damage to her and a very slight scratch for me.

It was the car behind who I can only imagine was not only tuning his radio but also clipping his toe nails that is the reason that caused the biggest damage. As I was stationary when the car struck me and that there was a definate delay then I would estimate that had I stopped without hitting the car in front then he would have still hit me.

Another lesson is the development in car design over the last ten years. the rear of my volvo whilst scratched and dented was relatively undamaged, his P reg astra was a real mess.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 12:35 
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johnsher wrote:
SafeSpeed wrote:
As for the difficulty people have admitting responsibility, there are two main reasons:

and a 3rd... everyone thinks they are the world's best driver ("I've driven 5 billion miles and never had an accident!") so they can't possibly be at fault.


I think that's 'too simple' - your statement is more-or-less accusatory. Instead we need to deal with the reasons that many express such things.

The first part of the problem is that people are sometimes 'afraid to admit' responsibility, even though they know they are to blame. This is part of the blame culture fostered by insurance companies and unfortunately reinforced by the nature of Police accident investigation. I listed this as 1) above. So to summarise, I'm saying that some of the denials are an assumed stance as opposed to something that is actually believed.

The second is my point 2) above, but I probably didn't give enough detail. I'm saying that the screw-ups normally take place on a subconscious level where the subjective assessment of 'a normal person' (i.e. someone who hasn't studied the subject) is that the error was outside of their conscious control. The first consequence of this is the impact on pride. People claim that they are 'good drivers' because they don't feel that they have any control over how good they are. The second consequence is the impact on subjective responsibility - if the error is outside of normal conscious control (because it happened on the subconscious layer) then in a very real and practical sense our conscious self isn't to blame.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 13:21 
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I hit a stationary object! My judgement lapsed.

The root cause wasn't my distraction though, the root cause was the traffic conditions and whatever caused the initial braking.

I should have anticipated, I should have accounted for the conditions. I don't think distance between vehicles was the issue, I think it was attentiveness.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 19:52 
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I'm not a fan of buttons on the steering wheel, one control, one job I say. Anyway, if it was a new car you would have still been looking around for the buttons unless it was exactly the same as your old car.

I'm not sure you can thank Volvo too much for the lack of appartant damage to your car unless they hit bumper to bumper. Other wise if his grill is lower than you bumper it's going to be messy.

When I was learning to drive a, new 5 series ran into the back of my mums Skoda Favorit while I was waiting to turn right (a regular thing at that particular intersection). The Skoda left with a hair line crak in the rear numberplate, the BMW was very crunched in the nose region and was bleeding antifreeze.

The dent in pride and having to repeat the accident every year for the next 5 years untill the insurance company forget about it, will be the worst out come of you fender bender.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 20:26 
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The insurer of the bloke who rear ended me has called to say that their policy holder has admitted full liability for the incident.

So Stephen I guess I can go on my merry way safe in the knowledge that I'm not to blame. I hope everyone else here learned something, I don't need to take a thing from it any more.....not my fault guv!


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 22:33 
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civil engineer wrote:
The insurer of the bloke who rear ended me has called to say that their policy holder has admitted full liability for the incident.

So Stephen I guess I can go on my merry way safe in the knowledge that I'm not to blame. I hope everyone else here learned something, I don't need to take a thing from it any more.....not my fault guv!


One to take away from this: If you're involved in a rat-tat-tat shunt, if you can, talk to ther one in front of you and ask how many shunts into his back he felt. If it is one, the fault lies behind you. If it is more than one, there is a probability (but not a certainty) that you hit that one, then got biffed, ie, you have some blame. the reason this is not certain is that the chap in front might have imagined more than one bang or might haver felt a secxond bang transmitted by one hitting the one behind you too.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 09:50 
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civil engineer wrote:
The insurer of the bloke who rear ended me has called to say that their policy holder has admitted full liability for the incident.

So Stephen I guess I can go on my merry way safe in the knowledge that I'm not to blame. I hope everyone else here learned something, I don't need to take a thing from it any more.....not my fault guv!


Sarcasm?

I hope.


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PostPosted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 22:57 
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Another lesson is the development in car design over the last ten years. the rear of my volvo whilst scratched and dented was relatively undamaged, his P reg astra was a real mess.


A couple of years ago some muppet in a P-reg Astra t-boned me on a roundabout (Headington roundabout, A40, Oxford). I was turning off the roundabout onto the A40 westbound, this guy comes tearing on to the roundabout from the A420 doing about 70mph in the pouring rain, picked up the left lane (left turn only) and attempted to go straight ahead in contravention of the road markings.

I don't know if any of you have seen what happens when a P-reg Astra hits a 52-plate Audi A4 but it's not pretty. After swapping details I drove home - he nearly ended up with his engine in his lap. My car needed a new rear nearside door.

Had another one about 6 weeks ago (56-plate A4), pulling up to park on the offside of the road, 54-plate Honda Civic comes tanking round the blind bend on the wrong side of the road, runs wide and sideswipes me. Loud crunch - I end up with a tiny dent in the front nearside door, a scuff to the rear door and a scratch to the rear wheel arch. His whole front end was caved in and his car was undrivable.

I've come to the conclusion that certain cars (Audi, Merc, Volvo to name 3) are built like tanks, others (Honda, Vauxhall, Ford) are built from tinfoil. I know which one I'd rather be in!

(And yes, I'm well aware that tanks aren't invincible. The day you start thinking you're invincible is the day you come a major cropper.)


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