Safe Speed Forums

Could you cite for this?

And what do you do if a significant proportion of drivers are simply driving too fast?

Literally? Have an accident.

But more seriously, work to minimise the real underlying failures.



That's a very multilayered sort of question that's inherently difficult to answer.

I say at least 95% of all failures are due to shortfalls in skills, attitudes or sense-of-responsibility.

[the other 5% might include medical conditions, mechanical failures, etc]

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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

Too fast for what?

What's a significant proportion? More than 10%?

Such conditions are indeed rare (given appropriate specification of the question) and are likely to call for a specific local solution. (Usually nicking boy racers who congregate as it happens.)

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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

Quoted some time ago by "teabelly", don't have original reference - search for his post.


How do you define "too fast"?

The answer would often be to raise the speed limit or, if there genuinely are deceptive factors, make engineering changes to the road to reduce the perceived safe speed.

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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

Ok, I'm also off to bed now, anyway.



Ok, let's just ignore the legalities and say 36mph - plain and simple.



Well, then let's examine the relationships between the relevant factors.

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

85th percentile speed is proven science. 'Safety' cameras are not.

Surely, the local speed camera partnership should have to demonstrate their effectiveness at such sites?

Or would evidence-based professionalism be too crazy a concept for them?

Any by evidence I mean independent, credible, valid statistical analysis performed by an unbiased individual.

Not 'spin' or propaganda reported by and organisation with a vested interest in proving their own self worth.

Think about it. For example: Schools aren't left to reivew their own effectiveness and performance; we have ofsted!

Yeah... Right...

You could have picked a better example!!

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

Thats simplistic. It is perfectly possible for one part of the system to fail but for no accident to result - be it through a good effort to recover by the driver who failed, good effort by others to recover, sheer good fortune or whatever.

Take the driver who (say) approaches a bend too fast, and the car starts to skid as a result. The driver may control the slide and get away with it, thus redeeming themselves and avoiding the accident - or they might not. Either way, they failed.

As we know from the principle of the accident pyramid, most accidents never happen - but this doesn't mean a failure hasn't occured.

So how to prevent such failures, especially where there is a site where a significant amount of drivers make similar failures (even if most don't result in accidents)?



Agreed



Absolutely - and its one you to look at on a site-by-site basis - you can hypothesis at ones desk - but you cannot come to any meaningful conclusion without going out and looking.



Surely the road environment has an impact?



OK

Is there such an animal?

And why not analysis beyond statistical analysis?



How do you propose we sort the sheep from the goats?



Perhaps an similar body would be a good thing wrt traffic engineering - however, would everyone accept its results if they disagreed with peoples beliefs?

Nah. That's a joke.



Locally improve the environment (easier said than done, of course).

Nationally improve the drivers (equally, easier said than done).



Yes. It can make road user mistakes more or less likely or it can make road user mistakes more or less tolerable (in the sense of 'fault tolerant' - an error that one 'gets away with').

But it's still road user error that causes each and every crash (except the odd medical or mechanical one).

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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

Does it necessarily have to be that many?

Accidents are rare and random. The failures that lead up to them are also rare and random (if less so).



So are accidents.



Yes



Who said anything about boy racers?

But thats all expectation - what has actually happened?



Too fast being that their speed presents an unacceptable risk of an accident occuring and/or that the consequences of an accident occuring are unacceptably high.



Not by that definition of too fast.

If people are exceeding the speed limit but the risk and/or consequences presented by this are with acceptable levels, then the limit should be raised.



Certainly works better than legislative measures - but easier said than done though.

Clearly the concept of professional behaviour challenges you.

I must reiterate the importance of evidence-based practice in a situation like this.

It is important to remove bias or hidden agenda when evaluating effectiveness of a speed camera or SCP. Surely you agree with that?

I don't think sheep, goats or even squirrels have anything to do with statistical analysis.

And my theory is that you are SafeSpeed's poodle

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I stole this .sig

I have no quibbling with the first point - where it makes sense (and I don't merely mean for safety reasons), the limit should be raised.

As for the "engineering changes to the road", I have no problem with narrowing roads with stout iron or concrete bollards, as they have done in London. These are far scarier to perps than road humps, and many of them have lots of paint on them, showing that they creating employment in bodyshops!

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I stole this .sig

Answers to my questions are needed.

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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

It just shows that it's a recognised behavioural phenomenon. And it does seem to accord with common sense, in that if you're forced to do something more slowly than you would otherwise choose to do so, your level of performance is unlikely to improve and may even deteriorate.


Are there really many roads like that, where there is an unusually high proportion of accidents that can be attributed to excess speed? The fact that the 85th percentile speed is well above the speed limit does not in itself mean that it's dangerous.

Also bear in mind that speed limits are set in large increments of 10 mph. Even if they're set properly, there will be 30 limits which would get limits of 36 or 37 mph if they were done in 1 mph increments. If the 85th percentile speed is around that level then in reality it might not cause any kind of problem and the best solution is simply to leave well alone.

Most speed enforcement occurs where speeding is least dangerous.

_________________
"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

Of course.

How do we propose we do that?



Whoosh!

Apologies for missing this - but it happens I answered this when Peter asked this:

Too fast being that their speed presents an unacceptable risk of an accident occuring and/or that the consequences of an accident occuring are unacceptably high



That would depend on the site and the other circumstances. There isn't a blanket answer.



Until you answer my concerns regarding your analysis of 20mph zones, speed cameras in roadworks and reductions in fatalities on the continent, you are in no position to criticise in that regard.