Safe Speed Forums

Safe Speed calls for the return to intelligent road safety and this means engineering, statisticians (maths) and science, working hand in hand with research old and new.
Would there be the resources for every accident to be thoroughly investigated, who might decide when this required? For example can a local policeman/woman, or more senior officer be able to decide when there 'is' more to the accident and requires an engineer.
Is it a 'luxury' or a basic & absolute necessity for every accident, to be investigated?
(For example let's say, two cars hit, clear witness and evidence, perhaps even one admits guilt? - so, if this doesn't need an investigator, who might decide when and who?)
Following this thought, would it be possible for an investigator to be deployed on a motorbike for easier ability to reach accidents, and 'make a judgment' then off to the next accident - or, maybe this can be achieved by observations from on-site live images and assessments made if an attendance is required ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

The opinion of a resident New Yorker follows ...
If we could trust the officer's impartiality, then we could trust that officer to either say
a) this one's simple, and the engineer agrees with me
or
b) this one's not so simple; the engineer will be here for a while.Depends on how much suspicion and distrust exists.
Were I there, regardless, I'd push for a 'truly neutral' party, who may wind up being the fourth or fifth party, what with all the new self-interests and represented interests that have metastasized.If both drivers agree to its open-and-shut nature, and the officer agrees, it may not be essential for the engineer to analyse, but there may still be things to be learned from what looks obvious.

If the officer's investigation were more comprehensive, I'd feel it less necessary in certain circumstances. At the very least, police investigations should seek out info above and beyond the purpose of merely blaming one driver or the other or both, since factors independent of the either or both drivers could easily have altered/prevented/mitigated the outcome, blame/responsibility notwithstanding.

Too many studies generate a hypothesis first, and then seek to confirm or deny it.
By "generate a hypothesis", I mean come to a conclusion. By "deny it", I mean that if the study disproves the hypothesis/conclusion, the information is either edited, distorted, blatantly altered, redacted, or simply ignored or destroyed, preserving the conclusion.
More than ever, there is much to be learned from information gathered bereft of a hypothesis.

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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

One thing that I've noticed doing CDM / safety on a few projects are where engineers have been ignored in favour of of other voices and in more than one occasion they haven't been consulted and the 'designers' on the project have ended up designing in hazards - a clear breach of the CDM regs.

A reason given on several occasions behind these 'designs' is that they were introduced to CAUSE congestion and act as a puch to get drivers to give up cars.

Designing in safety to facilitate social change or effect policy change is a large chunk of the problem on projects I've been involved in.

Another problem I've seen is that going back many moons engineers were employed directly by the LA and as such had a great deal of independance and security, that may sound arse about face, but the current situation often depends on using extrnal engineers either consultancy or one man / small firms. If they don't provide the answer required or raise concerns baout safety too loudly, they often find that they are dropped from future projects or even dropped from the approved contractors list so are unable even to bid for future works.

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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

I agree that we need to ensure that Design and Road and Traffic Engineering solutions, also need to work hand in hand with the Safety Engineers too.
Having shown (solutions and concepts), input from each area, who can be qualified to 'rule' on the balances of each sector ?
How (& who can) can we advise those who have to judge those balances?

Anyone have a view on how much % each area has had typically over many, many years and how that balance has changed over the last 20 yrs ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Your welcome ,knight of the highways .When I passed my test ,trafpols were a welcome sight ,a font of knowledge and help(even if you'd been naughty) and sometimes even useful if you'd broken down . But that was in the days when a bloke in blue was looking to help you ,not find an excuse to give you a ticket .

Perhaps some CC might research the decline in police /public relations - (Hint ,here's a good starting place )

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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

Perhaps we need someone to start looking at the stats from accident sites . E.G.- road I used to travel to work had a junction that (according to the "Steve" from Warks SCP) had no history of accidents , yet I have seen several , caused by either poor visibility or poor appreciation of the speed of traffic from the right . I did suggest to him that perhaps this might be a site to investigate and got the reply that this area was not regarded as a prime site .( Perhaps not a prime money making site ).

I ,personally regarded this junction as being of bad design , from the POV of visibility .But then ,I'm just an ordinary motorist .

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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

No, every accident doesnt need to be investigated as a matter of course.

However when looking at accident data for clusters, for example, the information given on the stats19 forms or whatever theyre called, is surprisingly sparse to be of any real use to an engineer looking at the causes of accidents. And the location is rarely given accurately either, so alot of time is spent working out from experience what is likely to have occurred.

The problem in alot of places is that "road safety engineers" just look at the NUMBER of accidents rather than the causes of them. Also, regression to mean is rarely taken in to consideration when claiming the sucess or otherwise of a safety scheme... notwithstanding the fact that a package of measures is often introduced to combat a number of circumstances which as a whole may affect a route or indeed even move a problem elsewhere (I am thinking overtaking accidents here as an example).

"(x-number of) accidents on this stretch of road so something must be done".

However there is little that can ever be acheived to prevent Captain Cock End from driving at 90mph clipping a kerb and rolling his car, or Drunken Dave from nodding off at the wheel and colliding head on with an innocent victim. Should these figures be included in the decision-making process on when or how to treat a route or blackspot?

No, I dont think they should, as the attributable causes are driver misadventure - nothing you do to the road bar removing the metalling would have changed the outcome really.

Should the number of casualties be a deciding factor?

No, absolutely not. A minibus with 16 people on it rolling over and bursting in to flames would give 16 casualties according to the stats. Or a full people carrier may give five or six casualties. But it could be a single vehicle accident. Therefore the figures would be skewed immeasurably from one year to the next, making the stats insignificant.

The best thing is to remove any links between local bods or politicians and the people running the highway network. That way, the decision-making is truly impartial and cannot be influenced in any way. Where I work there is too much pandering to either local politicians, vocal M.o.P's, MP's or anyone with a loud enough voice when "something must be done".

Regional Highways Offices, based around the HA areas for example, would be a much better and more efficient way of managing the road networks. Local authorities would be charged on the basis of km of road/public r.o.w and if they want to put extra monies in to the pot for spending in their areas, then they can do so. But any extra spending would be on a needs basis, not for a local authority's wish-list of silliness.

Local government is TOO local for it to be efficient. The goals are rarely long term.

A classic example of this is a recent speed reduction of a NSL near me. Reduced to 40MPH and 50MPH. Yes there have been a lot of accidents but not enough A/100mvkms to register it as above normal. However when I queried the accidents I was sent a detailed map of each accident, it's type and weather conditions at the time.

The majority of accidents were people turning right against traffic flow (remedied by a no right turn) and people skidding in the wet on a mini island. Now reducing the speed limit won't stop any of these accidents (especially as I find the mini island to be "iffy" at anything over 20MPH in the wet) (resurfacing would help)...no doubt the "no right turn" will cut the accident rate considerably , so some bright spark can say in a few years time...."cutting the speed limit helped the accident rate"

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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.

Many so called "Road Safety Engineers" are not safety qualified or engineers - I know I've worked with a lot of them of the years, as someone who is safety qualified and qualified as an accident investigator I use a tool called root cause analysis - the aim of this tool is to find out (as the name implies) the root cause of an accident.

Accidents generally have several causes - primary (also called root or causal) and secondary (also called contributary), remove a secondary factor - the accident will still happen but with a lower or reduced severity of outcome, remove a primary and you prevent the accident. This has worked as a basic principal of safety for god knows how many years, sowhy do we have to keep explaining it to these used car salesmen in mufti ??

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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