Safe Speed Forums

If the objective is to promote safer driving, then the current craze for speed cameras defeats the object because the driver can be so intent on watching the speedo, that attention to driving becomes secondary.

It is so much safer to watch the road, rather than the speedo

If the system were designed to support this principle, police would be targeting the minority who grossly exceed the limits and who drive dangerously.

I suspect that the current situation is a consequence of the modern trend of wanting to measure everything. Cameras allow measurement, they do not address driving safely.[/b]

Welcome, steamer

More and more people are coming to the same conclusion as you. You will find a lot of interesting reading here and in the main site.

To be a good driver requires you to move your eyes all the time, a quick glance is enough to check your speed, you have to do this anyway regardless of cameras.
check all forward views
Then look in your mirrors
then check your speed, then check the road ahead, then check your mirrors then look ahead etc

It would be a silly statement to say that someone who concentrates so much on the road ahead is a better/safer driver.

Not having a go at you mate, but being a good driver isnt just looking ahead, but at everything.

(occasional rearrangement of wedding tackle optional and not recommended)


Oh yeh, welcome in.

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

Why?

(apart from legal compliance)

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

I'd like to know the answer to that as well. How can it possibly help other than for legal compliance?

There's a perfectly good page about this on the main site, but to summarise being a good driver means looking at what is important, the point being that what should be most important in the mind of the driver is what makes him or her and those around them the safest. The government is convinced that the most important, in fact the only important thing is the speed limit. Common sense should tell you that is 'spheroid wedding tackle', but that is where everyone is looking more and more ie. at their speedo.

I use it as a sanity check, especially when I've just entered a slow zone from a much faster road.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I agree. I think the difference is between choosing to check the speed at a convenient time, as with the mirrors, and being forced to check at what may be a bad time.

you can do that by making sure you're driving in the right gear for the type of area you're in - eg in my car I wouldn't be using anything other than 2nd or 3rd and low rpm in a residential area. The question remains, other than for legal compliance why do you need to know precisely how fast you're travelling?

Yeah I can see that, not sure I've ever done it, but it could be a subconscious thing, certainly doesn't require doing every few seconds.

There is always as part of the "sweep" a look at the dashboard but I think I'm looking for lights rather than the speedo, again I'll make a mental note to check next time I'm out.

But going back the "sanity" is it legal or safe sanity?

I'm trying to think of a road where the sign\speedo combination tells me more than everything else around me.

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

I drive a lot of different cars, I can't rely upon having learnt the sounds and ratios for each one.


You don't (at least not precisely anyway), so long as you can judge an appropriate gap or your stopping distance (which you have to do anyway).

You also have to know that you're not going significantly above the limit, not for yourself but for other road users, especially when they are acting based on a reasonable expectation of you being within the limit.

That's reasonable and considerate, however do you not also agree that the other road users should never base their own safety on their expectations of others?

I mean should a driver looking to turn right at a junction see an approaching car and assume they are doing the limit or less, or should they judge the approach speed?

With pedestrian users I guess it's a different matter, but even then the driver may have a (legal or illegal) reason for doing the speed they are doing. Acting a certain way because of the local speed limit is bad judgement IMO

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

Yes (take pedestrian crossings, no-one in their right minds accepts that they can walk onto them without checking even though they have priority), although expectation of speed will invariably be used as part of their decision making process - especially as this is subjective and open to subconscious assumption. Also, the abilities of those less experienced (or the inebriated) must be considered: I won’t trust the speed/ETA recognition abilities of the young with vehicles significantly above 30mph, even if they have been exposed/taught to cope with it.

Drivers and pedestrians can indeed be considered as being worlds apart. A pedestrian need not ever be in a position to be able judge the ETA of an oncoming vehicle at 70; conversely a driver must be able to otherwise there is an awful lot of the road network they won’t be able to use. Motorways are an extension of this as it is known/expected that many do not adhere to the limit anyway (and the differential speeds will be lower).

Exactly, its the knowing how to adapt to any situation as to the attention you give something.
But, just because there are more urgent observations at any given time, it doesn`t excuse the neglect of all points to consider.

To the question of why you should check your speed periodically regardless of whether a camera is present or not, yes because its law, but also the speed has been set at such a rate for safety sake.

I would rather a driver trying to stop from 25 than 35 mph if my children happen into their path, safety mate, safety.

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

Smeggy,


I can see your approach to the problem and it seems to work, my approach for some time has been mainly the "able to stop in the space you know to be clear", maybe that (I think you use the same method as well) combined with the speedo glance may give you the edge, I don't know.

I'm not sure there is a huge difference in terms of KSI collision risk, I'm happy that the Safespeed approach will usually see you travelling well under the speed limit in high hazard densities and probably not that much higher in very low hazard densities where the speed limit has been set properly.

Is there perhaps an increased pedestrian risk where speed limits have been set unnecessarily low and driver\pedestrian expectations differ? Interesting that (I think) pedestrian casualties increased in 2006?

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

I think that we need to separate law and safety. The law says we can travel past a school at kicking out time at 30mph, safety says 20 is stupid (for example)

With regards your children do you want a driver who is concerned about his legal speed approaching them, or one that is concerned about his safe speed approaching them?

(I am trying very hard not to sound like a Zealot here, but think about it, how often is a speed limit correct? 1 in a hundred? 1 in a thousand? all the time? never? It's rarely right because on most a and b roads it's far too high and drivers know this and choose the safe speed. It's actually quite easy)

Are you certain that the speed limit has been set for safety sake or has it been set as a proxy for safety sake?

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

if the driver was watching your child rather than his speedo then he will have noticed that the child was potentially going to step into the road without looking and will have adjusted his speed so that he could stop safely. He doesn't need to know his speed either before during or after in order to do this.

If you were driving down a single track NSL road how would you work out what speed to drive at?
IF you were driving through a crowd of pedestrians, how would you work out what speed to drive at?
If you were on a completely deristricted road, how would you work out what speed to drive at?

and for the lurkers... how do you decide what speed it's safe to ride at? (personally I'm too busy looking out for myself to worry about checking precisely how fast I happen to be travelling)

Do you think you'd need to consult your speedo in any of these cases? If not then why should you need to do so anywhere else? (and please don't respond with generalisations about the incompetence of the average motorist, I'm talking about YOU here)

But what if my child is so small he can`t be seen through the windows of parked cars? or suddenly appeared a couple of car lengths in front of you?

Remember, every mile an hour adds a yard of thinking time, so you should endeavour to keep your speed at a sensible level when faced with restrictive sight, ie, in town, with its many obscurities and distractions.

As for the other questions on judgement of speed to do, its obvious johnsher, its down to common sense, experience and yes, the law. If you speed, you risk a nick. Plain and simple.

I always make a check on my speed, wherever i am.

I hope this helps,

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Any man can be a father, it takes someone special to be a daddy.

That is exactly the point I was making, thank you. Again, would you prefer legal speeds (30 past a school at chucking out time) or safe speeds (crawling speed past a school at chucking out time) ?

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

I think we might be talking apples and oranges. I know the regulars on this site and none of us would consider speeding down a narrow street in town with parked cars. That isn't what the message of this site is about at all. Also note that there are virtually never cameras on roads like that.

All the cameras are on wide open clear roads, which is the only place responsible drivers are actually likely to speed.