Safe Speed Forums

Hi All,

There's some gold in the archives of the BMJ and its sister (daughter?) publication: "Injury Prevention".

Having done a bit of digging after the Pilkington stuff I found these:

Discrepancy between actual and estimated speeds of drivers in the presence of child pedestrians.

They found that drivers (even 85th percentile drivers) didn't slow much in the presence of child pedestrians.

Risky business: safety regulations, risk compensation, and individual behavior

Some nice clear stuff concerning risk compensation and unexpected side effects of safety oriented efforts.

I recommend searching the BMJ archives... I bet there's loads more interesting and useful stuff.

http://www.bmjjournals.com

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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

So how does this conclusion tie in with your own assertion that drivers make adequate speed adjustments according to the conditions and hazards etc they encounter?

It certainly doesn't tie in at all. I hope there's something wrong with the research. I haven't yet studied it, but it's interesting (either way) in the context of other stuff we have been discussing recently.

On the other hand, if it's true research and applicable in the UK, how on earth do we manage not to kill 99.6% of the child pedestrians injured in built up areas?

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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's probably worth bearing in mind that Medical opinion changes very quickly. What's gospel one year could be considered fatal the next.

I sometimes wonder whether Medicine should be considered more of an Art form rather than a Science.

Next time you hurt yourself, don't call the Tate Modern instead of an ambulance!

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I stole this .sig

So many different opinions theories and conclusions and can be drawn from analysis of road safety statistics, because of the huge range of variable and intangible factors.

Completely unlike art!

After all an unmade bed is just that..............

An unmade bed!

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Maybe if people were slowing down due to child pedestrians there would less injuries to begin with? And likewise perhaps it would be 99.8% rather than 99.6% Just a thought.

Sure. Have you seen these three threads?

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1667
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1575
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1571

It's all a bit of a mystery how we do so well. It sure as hell isn't by sticking to the speed limit - and the physics suggests it should be far worse than it is.

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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 isn't about the speed limit though is it? Its about driving at the appropriate speed according the conditions. You claim drivers are good at doing this. If the BMJ report is accurate then most drivers don't seem to slow down a lot in the presence of child pedestrians. I can only see that meaning either one of two things. Either the proximity of child pedestrians have little or no bearing on the conditions (or what is considered a safe and appropriate speed for them), or most drivers are unable to select a safe and appropriate speed for the conditions.

The significance of the speed limit is two fold:

1) It superficially appears to set an expected level of death, and we know that most cars are exceeding the limit in free flowing conditions in 30mph zones.

2) It's extremely relevent because it is the proposed solution.



Agreed. My guess is that the children used in the test were 'too safe' to alert the drivers. This might be because of the children's behaviour or the lateral separation available. I still haven't studied the report. (It's been quite a day!)

Whatever the facts of the BMA report we still have a pretty tiny proportion of child pedestrians killed. I mention that, not because I think it's good enough, but because we need to do more of whatever we're already doing right. It sure as hell isn't sticking to the speed limit...

I'm going to shut up now until I've studied the report!

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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

Child pedestrtians are only a problem due to the lack of duty of care by the parents

It is crazy, to set speed limits, to allow for children walking in front of traffic, it is far better to impose laws, to ensure children are kept away from traffic.

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Steve

When I was a kid I used to walk all the way home. Parents can't be expected to be with the child every moment they are near a road.

As I said, my point was seperate from speed limits. The speed limit could be 90 miles an hour for all it matters...if it is true that drivers are not responding to potential hazards by slowing down where appropriate then it creates a problem for the credos of this website which centres around the driver's ability to mostly select appropriate speeds without speed limits to do that for them (or more often - using speed limits as a guideline rather than as a limit).

The details of the conditions used in the research are particularly important.

If I drive past a school which has a fence, and there are no parked cars, and there are no children outside the fence then I would not slow down.

If children were outside the fence but there were no parked cars, I might slow down, but that would depend on the age of the children or if they were playing a game involving moving rapidly.

If there were parked cars or children were playing with a ball outside the fence I would definitely slow down and keep a sharp eye out.

So we have several situations involving child pedestrians which I personally would react to differently. In at least two of them I would not have slowed down and so would have been included in the numbers of vehicles not slowing.

Does this make me a bad driver? Does it increase the risk of me hitting a child? I think not.

Edited to add: The distance between myself and the children would also have to be considered.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Despite all the hype - lot of kids do behave around the roadside. Mad dash into the road can be due to many different instances - the kid running from a bully, a wasp and even a spider (yep - had one of those as a junior - she broke a leg!)

We all drive on the look out - and we personally check under a car for a ball, a foot and are particulalry vigilant if we know we are one mile each side of a school or approaching a park.

But this is experience and COAST in action.

The study appears to suggest that drivers are used to children behaving fairly responsibly at the road side that they are not prepared to the sudden dash. From my own obervations I would agree that kid are not dashing out in front in a mass suicide bid .. but that there is a danger of the sudden dash.

But would fining for exceeding a speed limit whenevre a child is walking on a pavement work


And how on earth would you police it given that children are roaming around all over the place?

So they come out with this gem - which we broached on back in March: namely that there is a reluctance to admit any mistake when driving because perhaps deep down we are all aware of the dangers anyway.




and



In other words - what we've been saying all along - driver training and the adverts we used to see:

Such as the ones which show a child kicking a can and a driver approaching. This old 70s advert was tow-fold: it warned me as a teenage wannabe Dalgliesh type not to mess at the road side and aught my Mum to approach kids with care. The message was simple and easily understood by all road users.

The current one is a nonsense and does not really teach any observation or anticipation skkills like the good old fashioned one did... and deaths were probably decreasing at a faster rate then despite the Red Robbo Friday afternoon/Mionday morning cars (if you were lucky!)

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You've said this quite a few time before BMWK12, but it's one of those viewpoints that the anti-car brigade just love to cite as being indicative of the selfishness of car drivers.
Responsible parents will teach their kids road safety, but they will also let them walk to school, to the shops etc. But kids will at times behave like kids and it's only right and proper that car drivers acknowledge this potential source of danger and recognise that they should properly slow down in their vicinity. Speed limits should be set to refelect the liklehood of this hazard materialising.



Aha Well haven't I said this before?



IMHO this study demonstrates a couple of things:
Firstly, there is a demonstrable discrepancy between the way people think they drive and reality.
Secondly, the 99.6% of pedestrians are not killed because, although drivers don't always slow as much as perhaps they should, there is still sufficient margin (and hence time) between recognising the developing hazard and initiating some sort of reacting (usually BRAAAAAKKKEESSSS!).

If you look at the models in the Safe Speed forum threads cited earler, it appears to be hugely insufficient to brake before impact.

It's possible that other actions like swerving make the difference, but I don't believe that's anywhere near sufficient either.

I still haven't read the BMA paper in detail, but I'm seriously hoping to find something wrong with it, because I believe that the ONLY explanation for our good performance is appropriate driver behaviour.

And don't forget the 99.6% performance is based on reported injuries -v- deaths. In the real world there are zillions of incidents that end in no injury or no impact and no report - yet all the fatalities are recorded. That probably makes the real ratio better than 99.95% survive.

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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

Well yes, we've discussed this before in the 12mph thread. The greater the number of near-miss categoris you choose to include, the better the overall ratio looks.



Well, WRT braking I did say usually, but OK there's probably more to it than that. But this isn't the point beign made in the report is it? It is noting that, whatever drivers think they do (in terms of speed adjustment) in the vicinity of child pedestrians isn't what they actually do. Nonetheless, it would seem that what they actually do does is still sufficient to mitigate the outcome in huge numbers of incidents.

An alternative viewpoint. Could it be that this is indicative of the overreaction to circumstances some people exercise because they think they should rather than they know they need to - like slowing down to 5-10mph below the speed limit when passing a camera, even though one was probably 2-3mph below the limit already.

Is there a real need to slow down at a school for example just because it is a school? The belief in some people that you do is what is exploited to allow the enforcement of lower limits around school buildings even at weekends and on holidays!!

Is it so bad not to slow down to a crawl just because there are kids about?? The accident statistics would suggest not.

We've got it easy in this country. In Alberta, the limit around all city schools at all times is 30 kph (18 mph) and you are never, on any account, allowed to pass a stopped school bus. It's easy and simple to remember.

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I stole this .sig

Oh crikey mate, not being pedantic but I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. If you're suggesting that, when questioned directly in a survey etc, people tend to say whatever they think the proper answer is, not what they actually belive, I'd agree.
If that's not what you meant, could you elaborate please - I'm a bit hard of understanding today