Safe Speed Forums

In the time that I've taken a personal interest in Safe Speed and the work that Paul has done regarding the myths of cameras and road safety I've slowly moved away from the 'cameras catch the naughty people' attitude towards one more aligned with the prevailing view expressed here. However, every now and then something happens that shakes my faith in the belief that, underneath, motorists don't deliberatley and wantonly break the speed limit. Such a thing happend today.

Driving up the 30mph approach to RAF Cosford I noticed a VW people carrier approaching at some speed from behind. The vehicle drew up behind me and procedeed to tailgate me all the way up to the carpark whereupon I apporached the driver who turned out to be a middle-aged female (not that it makes any difference).

"What", I asked politely, not aggresivley "did she think she was doing driving at such a speed down that road then tailgating me?"

The response was:

Abuse
I was driving too slow - 29 mph ish
There was no reason for me to do so - er no? How about mums walking along taking kids to playgroup, going to shops. Personnel walking to work, trainees from the base crossing the road to reach the sports fields on the other side.
Mind my own business - so being tailgated isn't my business then?

Had she carried on at the speed she'd weanted to she'd have sailed through at 40 odd mph by my guestimate, far too fast obviously.

Her appaling attitude was one of 'I'm not going to cause a crash by going too fast so don't lecture me'.

Come to think of it, how ould you all react if someone told you that you were driving too fast down a particular road? Was it just because I'm NOT a policeman and just some ordinary bloke trying to address what I considered to be a selfish and arrogant example of bad driving?

A terrible attitude indeed.

Just where would her extra 10mph have got her should she have gone on at 40mph.

If she had followed you at 30mph at a safe and acceptable distance she would syill have got to where she wanted but just a little bit later. It would have taken her 1 hour to gain 10 miles.

Lets say her journey was local and was one of 5 miles. at 30mph it would have taken her 10 mins. At 40 mph it would have taken her 8 mins. Big deal, all of that aggro for a 2 minute saving. i ask you.

What did she expect you to do? Pull over and let her past.

Motorists don't deliberately and wantonly break the speed limit, but a minority of them do deliberately and wantonly drive in an aggressive and irresponsible manner that may involve breaking the speed limit.

Unfortunately the spread of cameras and stupid limits, and the withdrawal of traffic police, encourages the attitude that "I can do whatever I can get away with".

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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

Thanks for the kind comments.

I see it this way: Between 5% and 15% "need attention". You encountered a member of this group. We need traffic cops, we need accurate information and most of all we need to demonstrate to drivers that they don't know everything about driving.

While we don't have those three things it seems to me that the "need attention" groups gets bigger.

I thank the last point might well turn out to be the most important - so many folk assume they know everything they might ever need to know about safe driving - this includes drivers, but also politicians, researchers, campaigners and all sorts of folk who affect our road safety systems. But if we had an optional official advanced driving test, then at least the majority would get the message that there was more on offer for them to learn.

So - we need cops, truth and attitudes. That'll make it better (not perfect overnight, but progressively better).

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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

You are all right of course, and we do only tend to notice the bad apples don't we?

Can I just add another couple of observations/experiences for your comments, I may be repeating the point but here goes?

1. Driving home along the M54 last night the rain was driving down and visibility fell to 150m or so. I slowed to a speed I was more comfortable with (as did others) but was passed consistently by the outside lane conga, cars travelling nose to tail at (I guess) 70-80mph - potentially into oblivion for all they knew. Just the scenario where the news reporter would later be heard saying:
"Police blamed motorists for driving too fast and travelling too close to the vehicle in front for the conditions".
I cannot understand this behaviour, it is no less than mass stupidity. So why do people do it?

2. Driving in to work this morning, in the rain again, I took a different route to yesterday. I used a small backroad called Neatchley Lane, a single track metalled road with many twists and turns and along which I always drive carefully because you never know what you're going to meet coming the other way. In this instance it was a maroon Rover going far too fast that locked its brakes as I appeared cautiously from around the corner - fortunately I was able to move aside in time. I gestured to the driver (a middle aged man this time) with a 'palm down' gesture to slow down and was greeted with the traditional defiant 'elevated index finger' in return. The fact that we'd have almost certainly have collided had one of us not been driving sensibly was clearly not considered relevant to him

So, why do people do it? Why do normally sensible, level headed, intelligent people behave in this stupid, defiant and often arrogant manner? I would love to get to the bottom of this I really would. Perhaps its the slow dissapearance of all those old road safety commericals i.e.
The 2 -second rule
Dont dazzle, dip your headlights
The Weaver Bird

Etc

<mode=Manuel> ¿Qué? </mode>

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

It was a cartoon road safety commercial screened in the 70s or 80s and featured a sports car being driven by a man with a birds head. It was aimed at reminding people of the dangers of undertaking (weaving through traffic) and featured a commentry that went something like...

On motorways how oft is heard
The honking of the weaver bird
The weaver bird has little brain
And something something something gain
Something blah etc.

Interesting. Can't find that one on the web particularly quickly, but there are a few more here:

http://625.uk.com/pifs/

You'll find the Amber Gamblers here, also Dazzle, Driver Fatigue, Fog, Tufty going for an ice-cream, Brake, Fool (2-second rule), and others (not all driving-related). They don't make 'em like that any more.

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

The Public Information Films section of this site has quite a few, too:

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/

(Again, not all road-related, bit of a nostalgia trip for a forty-something).

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Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Simple answer: insufficient knowledge.

There's only one way to fix it - better info.

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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

Wasn't there a rather tasty TV anti drink driving ad slot featuring potty-mouthed US comic Denis Leary carolling about his proud drunk-driving? "I'm an asshole" went the pretty refrain. More of this would be a fine thing...

Yup, they do it time and time again and due the law of averages nothing happens. People do learn from their mistakes but in we really don't want them making those mistakes in the first place.

I don't really agree with "the law of averages". Isn't it more the case that our road safety systems are fairly error tolerant?

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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

Can I press you on this point Paul, what are we saying here? That the supposedly intelligent, rational, level headed individuals in whom we trust our banking, our legal affairs, our business etc etc (because these are the types of people we are talking about) don't possess sufficient knowledge to say to themselves...

"Hmmm, it's peeing it down with rain and my visibilty is greatly reduced, in fact I can't see beyond a couple of cars ahead. Best I slow down and back off the car in front a bit, just in case something happens that I can't see".

Or is it more fundamental than that? Is it that the trigger mechanism that should be kicking in to initiate the thought process outlined above doesn't do so because of the 'familiarity breeds contempt' phenomenon that Homer was perhaps alluding to?

I'm very happy to be pressed on such points!

I see it much the way you are suggesting. Given an error tolerant road safety system some patterns of driving that I would regard as careless can persist without MUCH in the way of warning signs.

For example, the persistent tailgater might only get a fright a few times a year. The fright would happen when some braking takes place ahead and our tailgater has to brake very suddenly and very firmly. If he doesn't recognise that as HIS safety system failure (and most don't) then he doesn't learn from it.

We have to take account of the fact that most drivers take little interest in driving. We'll be looking for "tricks of communication" - a shocking TV advert perhaps - to blast through the lack of interest and land a positive safety message. But we can go further if we also start sending out the message that drivers are not very skilled and still have much to learn. This message would best be sent by offering a higher level optional driving test, with a range of supporting priviledges.

But we already have the safest roads in the world and we should be looking for regular incremental improvements rather than having a full scale panic about driver inadequacy.

Interestingly, I believe that exceeding the safe speed for the circumstances very quickly leads to frights and consequently drivers do learn safe speed behaviour very well indeed.

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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

Which is precisley why this forum is so intelligent, cos we can all present our points of view and have them analysed by each other.




Is it that they take little interest in their driving, although I agree that most don't give it much thought.
What about your TV commercial though (an idea I totally concur with)? I believe that, unless it screams....
"Hey Mr Fred Bloggs of 18 The Gardens, Surbiton, switch on pal because its YOU we're talking to in this advert", Mr Bloggs and his 30 odd million buddies will switch off mentally because they don't see their own behaviour as being problematical. There needs to be some way of cutting through this fog of denial and pointing the metaphorical finger squarely at each and every viewing driver. And THAT ain't gonna be easy my friend.

A training specialist I was talking to likened it to dripping water onto a stone. One drip doesn't change much, but if you keep it going there'll soon be a mark, and eventually a hole.

Remeber in my last post I mentioned small incremental improvements?

But, possibly optimistically, I think we could make quite a significant difference with a series of "learn from your mistakes" TV adverts. We'd have to show mistakes leading to near misses or accidents in a form where real drivers could recognise themselves. - Then we hit them with the: "If you think about it hard enough it'll never happen again." (I'm not trying to write the script here, and I know it'd need plenty of hard work to get it right.)

There's an old saying: "If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach him to catch fish, you feed him for life." If we can teach drivers that they need to understand and correct their own mistakes we're having a "for life" effect. Sounds good doesn't it?

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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

I think it's necessary to educate people but, equally, they should be taught the right things.
As an analogy, when I was young we were told the dangers of smoking in no uncertain terms - jars containing the blackened lungs of smokers in the classroom, etc. But what we weren't told, is the simple fact that cigarettes are highly addictive - that once you start you simply cannot stop. So I started smoking, thinking that a few fags wouldn't do me much harm. Let's just say that I now know better.
Similarly, when I was learning to drive, I had it drummed into me the importance of obeying the rules - stopping at a red, sticking to the speed limit etc. Several accidents later it dawned on me that the most important aspect of driving is paying due care and attention at all times. Perhaps I was just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I did learn the hard way.
Unfortunately, too many people have a 'crash course' in road safety. Many learn from this but, sadly, for many it's their last lesson.

Regards
Peter

Yes. An excellent point that highlights a modern danger: Sticking to the speed limit won't save you.



Percentagewise it's pretty tiny thankfully. But unfortunately the number of road users is so very large that we should probably accept the word "many".

Roughly:
Most drivers have a near miss in a year.
About 1 in 10 drivers has a crash in a year.
About 1 in 100 drivers has an injury accident in a year.
About 1 in 1,000 drivers has a "serious" injury crash in a year
About 1 in 10,000 drivers has a fatal crash in a year.

It follows that each fatal accident has about 10,000 preceding "learning opportuinities".

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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

I don't think it works that way, ie I don't believe that many drivers involved in fatal accidents have thousands of 'near misses' or worse before - if they did, they'd probably mend their ways long before it got to that.
Going from the experiences of people I know of, and other anecdotal evidence, it seems that for many drivers their very first accident is a fatal one. I wonder if there are any reliable stats on this.

Regards
Peter