Safe Speed Forums

What makes us 'know' someone is to pull out. Assessing / observing this during this trip and thinking on many previous discussions, I think there is a key to pre-car/driver behaviours and manners.
The subtle slowing, slight decrease in gap to car in front.
I have also noticed that when speed differential is increased, the space requirement to overtake is far greater than when the speed differential is far less. I estimated that this 'space time gap' is 7 seconds and seems very consistent ! When speeds are much closer matched then a 2 sec 'space time gap' is all that is used.

When the motorways are bunched and busy, then the gaps are altered and far less acceptable for safety. With faster traffic moving from 'one small bunched group' to the next one, (include those within and above the posted limit) it helps to filter out and spread out the traffic. The more bunched traffic keep little or good gaps and overtake in the typical 'one after another' approach.
Watching the instincts of the traffic moving through the slower bunch, show them to leave better gaps and react sooner to others.
The bunched group has from my observations (over many yrs), a far worse, driver behaviour, but there are some very good interactions, mostly just all done a bit late and too close to each other.

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Repetition does it. But mental recognition doesn't kick in for false positives (when someone pulls out that we don't predict) and false negatives (when we think someone will pull out but doesn't). It mostly kicks in when we are right. We live under the false belief that we can predict well. This explains why people get addicted to gambling, and why great economists fail to predict credit crunches, even when they should know better etc.

Gambling and economics aside, most drivers 'predict' what other drivers will do correctly upwards of 99% of the time. Otherwise, the automobile industry would've committed suicide long ago.

Pull out, as in, pull out of a parking space/private driveway? Pull out, as in, to begin a passing maneuver?

I'm still alive because of the truth: I predict extremely well, but I still leave a sufficient margin of spacetime, that if I'm wrong, nothing will come of it.

If you cannot predict what other drivers will do to the effect that you cannot follow the rules in my sig, you have no business driving.

Mental recognition should definitely take note of false positives; those are important lessons to be learned. (The first lesson is probably 'leave margin for errors'.) False negatives come under 'no harm done'.

There's an important difference between focusing on expectations, and focusing on possibilities. The former tends to leave less margin for error than the latter.

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The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

I think .. observation skills.. looking at road position .. even the position of driver's head on approach .. knowing/feeling/seeing how fast you close in .. travel per second.. all help us "predict" or anticipate correctly what the others sharing the same road with us might do. I think as IG say .. to be aware of them .. how they affect us und how what we do affect them also part of the equation.

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That's the big problem. If someone predicts falsely once in each thousand times, and if he depends on being right because he _thinks_ he's good at predicting things, then he's headed for the emergency ward To be good at predicting drivers, you need to be right much more than 99.9% of the time, or do as you do, and cut yourself some slack.

I agree, but we have less choice in it than we think. Much of what we think is not even apparent to us, in our daily lives. In fact, we only think we think what we think! What we really think is much more difficult to be aware of.

The only times I've been headed for the emergency ward, are those times when that was my original destination to begin with, or my client's.

Leaving margin for error is what allows the majority of false predictions to come to 'no harm done'. Most drivers leave margins of either space, or time, or as I like to call it, spacetime - aka as adjusting one's driving to suit road and traffic conditions.

The major error is to leave oneself with no margin of attention. Only good attention and situational awareness allow drivers to proactively give themselves enough spacetime to react so that another driver's errors result in, at worst, a mild preventive or evasive maneuvre followed by some mumbling and a finger wag. As a novice driver, good attention and observational habits will provide the lessons that create good predictions.

People who are regularly wrong
a) haven't been paying enough attention (multiply experience times proper observational habits)
b) lack empathy, the ability to think like someone other than themselves, or both
c) can still avoid breaking the first two rules in my sig by leaving themselves - and everyone else, for that matter - some slack.

I suppose the only thing left, would be to determine how much slack is 'necessary'. That could be a big problem, as I know that my spacetime margins contract a bit when I'm going to meet a fare, or when the fare requests that I 'step on it'. I then try my best to put myself in situations where I have a better than 99.9% predictive accuracy.

To a novice, every situation is inherently very unpredictable, but for both the novice and the seasoned driver, the answer is not to put your car where your eyes and your mind haven't been, or couldn't drive away from, even if you are in a Rush

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

FWIW, whenever I become too conscious of myself - as in, when I become separate from the vehicle - I probably need a personal pitstop of some sort.

When I'm driving properly, those things about 'me' which do not pertain to the operation of the car, are irrelevant. I've set aside all distractions to the best of my ability, and to my satisfaction, and I've no pressing needs except to keep my mind on the task of responding to road and traffic conditions. With the distinctions between me and my car temporarily negated, I'm on my way.

If I'm thinking about what I'm thinking about while driving, even if I'm thinking about driving, I'm distracted, and am already seriously reconsidering continuing my journey.

On those occasions when my destination was the emergency room, I stopped thinking about the emergency room the moment my @r$e hit the cushion. By the time I'm in gear, my mind is focused on one thing - the next three to ten seconds ahead of me/my vehicle. Until I arrive at my destination, nothing else is important enough to be on my mind, otherwise I'd be doing that thing, and I wouldn't be driving.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Yes. But consider just one psychological tendency, known as the primacy effect. In a list of things (items, events, whatever) we all tend to remember the first ones in the list. We then tend to ignore, forget or dispute subsequent things. This is an example of a defect of human cognisance that we all suffer from to a lesser or greater degree. That's not the only defect - there are many of them. When we add them up, it means that we don't know ourselves. We only know what we want to know or what Darwinism has imbued us with. We build a picture of ourselves that bears little relationship to the truth. We cement that image using "consistency". If we repeat a thing often enough, it becomes "true" to us. If we believe we predict well, it becomes true to us, whatever the actual reality. Thus, in matters of safety, it is best to be humble about our abilities. This allows margin for hubris (that men especially suffer from).