Safe Speed Forums

I didn't say it did, so I totally agree.


Let me make it concete. You are well aware that speed causes increased braking distance (A causes B) and that increased braking distance causes a reduced ability to stop when a hazard presents itself (B causes C) and that this reduced ability to stop causes accidents (C causes D). Thus it can be deduced that A causes D, i.e. speed can cause accidents.

Now this is a genuine insight. I totally agree with you Paul.

Shows what confusion can be caused when you start talking about the relationship between A, B and without first defining them.
Now I know what you're on about.

I do have an answer for that one, but it will have to wait for tonight - I'm on my way out soon.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

In which case you were not addressing the point I made, you were proposing a slightly diffferent on. No matter, such is the nature of web forums




No, there is no empirical evidence relating to speeding, but we have a little worldly experience and our knowledge of other systems.

When motorists make their way along our highways they do so in the knowledge that a speed limit exists. Thus, their actions must be affected by their knowledge of the limit, its (purported) purpose and the concept that it is unlawful to break that limit; the fact that many do so by various margins does not negate this observation.
Now, I accept that drivers don't set out to have accidents and attempt to avoid them through driving mechanisms which include speed correction where necessary. BUT, I find it extremely difficult to believe that if all speed limits became, in effect, advisory (because that is what it would boil down to) we would not see a rise in accident rates as, here and there inappropriate speeds are chosen.

I don't like the system either, but we can't oppose it with untruths like this, our arguments must be based on sound reasoning. They don't send you a pro-forma confession, they ask you to identify the driver. If the driver wishes to contest whether they committed a crime or not they can do so. This is no different to if a policeman sees a crime in the street, e.g. mugging, and arrests you there and then - they are entitled to establish your identity, and this is a completely separate issue to the question of whether you really are guilty of the alleged crime or not.

Sorry stevei, but you are missing the point. Whatever they say the S172 request is actually for, and I'm not disagreeing that it is 'to identify the driver', ultimately they will use it as evidence that the accused committed the offence. In essence, they turn the information into evidence. Given that this evidence is a written statement from the driver admitting that they were driving at the time of the alledged offence I don't agree that it is untrue that they are asking for a pro-forma confession, since that's what it transforms into in court.

Your 'cop on the street' example is irrelevant. The officer witnesses the crime and arrests the perpetrator at the time - identification is not reliant on a S172 request, and you can be damn sure that the accused would be told "you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence". To make your example relevant, your cop would have to lose his suspect in a group of people, select the most likely suspect and then force them, upon threat of penalty if they refuse, to admit to being the mugger at the time the victim was mugged.

I don't see how it can be used as evidence that a speeding offence was committed. It is not illegal to drive a car, so admitting that you were the person driving a particular car at a particular time is not incriminating, as you have not admitted to doing anything illegal. What the court must then establish is whether the driver was indeed committing an offence, and you have every opportunity to defend yourself in court if you wish. I do dislike the fact that they blackmail you with a threat of worse consequences if you choose to contest it court, but that is where my dislike ends.


I doubt we'll be able to agree on this one, but I do maintain it's the same . The police have a suspect who they need to identify in both cases. When they have physical access to a person, you can be damned sure they won't let them go till they know who they are, e.g. if you got stopped on the road by trafpol for speeding. The establishing of identity of the suspect is completely separate to establishing whether or not the alleged crime was committed - it may not have been committed at all (e.g. faulty speed measuring device), or it may have been committed by someone else (e.g. cloned number plates) - the court will decide this.

I think your'e right!

First a thankyou to the members who bid me welcome, it's nice to be here.

I must say I'm surprised at the number of comments to my post, very gratifying to see such interest.

Just a couple of points:
Rigpig wrote that "if we have to wait for accidents to occur.......before we punish people........there would be far more of them" So, is what you are saying that we should punish people who might not go on to have accidents for breaking rules which (debatably) are intended to minimise the risk of accidents? This is Big Brother land! Lets look at an analogy: Anyone walking down the high street might rob a bank. To minimise this risk we make a law that people cannot enter a bank without first showing their face and some ID to a camera at the door. Mr Smith forgets this and enters the bank, he is arrested , charged and convicted of breaking said law. The fact that he never intended to rob the bank and did not rob the bank is ignored, he broke the law and must suffer the consequences. Absurd, yes but not wildly dissimilar to the speed limits law!

Mrs Miggins wrote: about the farce whereby murderers are not required to incriminate themselves but motorists are. There are excellent articles on this very subject here http://www.abd.org.uk/ This is a subject I feel very strongly about. The right to silence is enshrined in English Law but has been ignored for the trivial matter of exhorting money from motorists!! There is no way this can be justified (go on I dare you)

I really think I'm going to like it here!

Erm, yes. If it is statistically demonstrable that behaviour x very substantially increases the risk of an accident, then it is reasonable to prosecute people for that behaviour even if they haven't had an accident.

The drink-driving law is a classic example of that - also the law that prohibits you from driving at 70 mph along residential streets.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Thank you Peter, that's what I would have put, more or less.



For an analgy to be taken seriously it has to in some way represent reality or be pretty damned near it. This doesn't come anywhere close, its pure invention, contrived to demonstrate your point.

The analogy isn't far away in my opinion, Rigpig. They're half way already - where they've banned people in baseball caps from shopping in, I think, Lakeside.... No - it is Bluewater - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4537459.stm

I certainly see value in the analogy. It's about defining a proxy measure intended to prevent a somewhat different behaviour.

Our speed limits ARE a proxy measure - we don't have speed limits to stop people going faster than (e.g.) 70mph - we have speed limits to help stop people selecting dangerous or inappropriate speeds.

The problem is we've forgotten the original purpose and become obsessed with the rule.

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Paul Smith
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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I couldn't disagree with you more. The basis of all just law is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. prosecuting people because their behaviour can be considered as likely to lead to misconduct is not defensible. Also consider your words "very substantially" can you give me any examples of ststistics which demonstrate any trends to be very substantially likely?

The drink driving law is a bit of an anomaly as far as I'm concerned. It's a good law because it seeks to safeguard the majority from the reckless behaviour of the minority. Having said that it is also a bad law because it presumes guilt without proof. By that I mean the basis of the law is that if you drive with a certain level of alcohol you are considered to have your ability impaired to a level which could be dangerous. Clearly this is nonsense because, as we all know, there will be some people who are better drivers when over the limit than some who are sober. I am not defending drunk drivers here, I am totally opposed to people who drive when their ability is impaired, I'm just pointing out the absurdity of the law.

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I'm not always right, but my score is higher than the government's

There are plenty of other examples where the law penalises people for acting in a way that incurs risk for other people, regardless of whether the risk is realised or not. Take health and safety rules, for example. Your argument is like saying forget about enforcing H&S rules, and just punish people when an accident in the work place actually occurs. Or I could walk into a shopping centre with a gun, put on a blindfold, and fire the gun in a random direction. I'm not intending to kill someone, I'm simply choosing to impose a risk on those present, and my action may or may not result in someone being hit with my shot. Would you suggest people should be allowed to do this and only be punished if they actually hit someone?

Oh for crying out loud people give me bloody strength

Please re-read goldminers first post in which he stated...



And my follow ups in which, having proposed that if nobody were ever prosecuted for speeding the accident rate would go up and later proposing that:



And tell me what this has got to do with someone inadvertently walking past a bank security system or a shopping centre banning youths in hoodies?

Just so we're absolutely clear...I'm not talking about prosecuting drivers going about their normal business and exceeding the limit as a result, perhaps inadvertently.
I'm not talking about prosecuting people taking their pregnant wives to hospital.

I am talking about rightfully prosecuting behaviours which are willfully and demonstrably unsafe or are deliberately taking the piss out of the law.
In other words, I'm saying that there are quite rightfully times when drivers should be prosecuted for breaking the speed limit, even if no incident occured as a result..
And if anyone tries to tell me it shouldn't be so then I'll begin to wonder if I haven't backed the wrong horse here .

[Edit - Thankyou SteveI, at least someone round here can see the wood for the trees]

But ...in some cases - like "casing the joint before breaking in" and "loitering with intent" - part of parcel of police intelligence? Depends on the typ e of crime pervecieved to be reasonably foresseabale - and with drink driving we have prrof that the drink undermines performance. YTet more comeptent motorists have reacted to the hazard and started the adjust mechanism within 0.7 seconds of observing it )



Hmm someonebeen watching "Cat Ballou" Lee Marvin was acting - I think.... Just because as the drunken twin he could not hit anything when sober...and yet hit target when drunk proves nothing. Not heard of anyone being a better driver when drunk or drugged as yet . As far as I hear - does not do much in the passion area either Slows reactions .... and tires you more quickly. We have something tanglible to refer to on drink driving which can justify current legal limit as it is based on the noral average person - globally. With a 70- mph speed limit - we have some recorded evidence h 80- mph and higher limits that the higher speed limit does not increase the dangers significantly. The real danger lies in our urban and residential areas and this is where 30 mph limits etc should be adhered to without question.

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OK, as promised, here goes:

Yes, it is true that, in the absence of other factors, your risk of colliding with another road user increases with speed - although slightly less than linearly, as I explained in depth a few weeks ago in another thread. So doubling your speed less than doubles your risk.

And the difference is very small when expressed in units of time - around a quarter of a second for every 10mph.

But this assumes both a complete lack of hazard awareness and anticipation on the part of the driver, and that other road-users appear suddenly and instantly in the path of the vehicle without any warning.
This only happens in cases where the driver is inattentive.
In the majority of cases, hazards, potential hazards and simply dodgy-looking or unsure layouts, or 'sixth-sense' (anticipation) episodes are spotted when the driver is still several seconds away, and there is plenty of time to adjust their speed, positioning and spacing to other vehicles (you can scrub off 10mph speed in around one second with moderate braking) so if and when the other road user appears within their path, they are able to deal with it.
In effect, speed has - by the actions of the driver in those few seconds - been completely removed from the equation in terms of accident risk.
So the driver has, by applying attention, hazard awareness and anticipation, reduced their risk to virtually zero.
Of course, the accident risk will never be absolutely zero - things can happen, such as another vehicle cutting you up without warning, suddenly changing lanes without warning, suddenly coming over onto the wrong side of the road without warning (as happened to me 25 years ago), that cannot be anticipated by the driver. Speed has no direct effect on the risk - these are purely "wrong place at the wrong time" events. The risk of accident from such causes is proportional only to the time spent on the road, ie inversely proportional to speed.
The point is, a fully attentive and hazard-aware driver has an accident risk which is far, far below the accident risk of the inattentive driver described in the first instance.
And slowing drivers down will only significantly affect the accident risk of inattentive drivers - the danger being that measures employed to slow drivers down could have a detrimental effect on the majority of drivers who are sufficiently attentive and hazard-aware.
I would reckon, as an educated thumb-suck, that the accident risk of a fully attentive and hazard-aware driver is in the order of a hundred times less than that of an inattentive driver.
The number of accidents and casualties is likely to be strongly influenced by the ratio of attentive to inattentive drivers - which may well explain why countries with similar roads, speed limits, cars etc have such big differences in accident and casualty figures - it could be down to culture.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I must admit, I do love Paul's submission of stacked reprimands for unneccessary emergency braking.

After all, in the vast majority of cases, if your observation is up to scratch you should be aware of a dangerous incident before it happens - and should have also commenced evasive / defensive actions

S

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Safe yet Swift.

I'm still trying to understand how your computer model works, which is where I assume you're getting results from such as the risk being inversely proportional to speed. I can only see this being the case if the model essentially has everyone driving around with their eyes closed. For example, suppose we consider a crossroads, and we have a stream of traffic in one direction, where there are cars 10m apart travelling at 30mph. We then model a car trying to drive across this stream. If everyone drives with their eyes closed, then if the crossing car drives at 0.01 mph, it will be certain to have a collision because one of the other cars will drive into it. As we increase the speed, the risk will be reduced, because the window of opportunity for a car to hit it will decrease. The risk will asymptotically approach the ratio of car length to vehicle separation in the stream being crossed as the speed of the crossing car approaches infinity.

However this is a totally invalid result because people do not drive around with their eyes closed in the real word. In the real world, the driver carefully approaches the junction and waits for a suitable gap. If they approach very fast, there may be a gap visible for all the time they are approaching, then a car becomes visible, but now they can't stop in time, and they hit it. In the real-world situation of people reacting to what is happening, the relationship of reduced risk with increased speed is not preserved.

No, I don't think it is the same thing. H&S rules are there as an aid to prevent accidents. They are only mandatory where obvious danger can be forseen (like making sure flammable materials are stored in areas away from ignition sources) They also exist to protect employees from unscrupulous bosses. I've rarely heard of a prosecution for neglecting rules unless it has resulted in serious injury.

Your second case does not hold water. If you fire a gun blinfolded among people you should be punished because it should be obvious that you pose a very real danger. It's the same as driving a car at 100mph through a busy town centre, it would be madness.

You have to consider a lot of factors when assessing risk and try to come to a balanced and reasonable judgement. Consider this: We could eliminate the risk of death and serious injury on our roads entirely simply by ensuring that all vehicles are fitted with a speed limiter which keeps them below 15mph! Why don't we do this? Because the economy would be destroyed within a week. So, It would appear that the government (and the population) are prepared to accept some thousands of deaths every year as a price which has to be paid for a reasonable transport system. It is no good saying that we strive to reduce casualties either, accidents will happen, inevitably, so we know that this amount of death will continue to occur every year.

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