Safe Speed Forums

I can identify with that. I had one of those one night about thiry years ago on a SC road (a drunk driver overtaking when he shouldn't have). For many years afterwards I resisted driving at night unless I absolutely had to, and I still feel uneasy when I see a string of headlights coming in the opposite direction.

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

Surely it's risk acceptance that changes?

More like a change to the credit limit, rather than the balance?

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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

Partly, because one is aware that a smash causes a significant amount of pain and inconvenience (at least!) But also the perception itself is changed, because one always knows afterwards that a smash is a real and present danger. It think perhaps it is like a person who has survived cancer, but is always conscious that a relapse could happen any day.

I had several motorbike crashes in the 70's. I rode away from all of them with bent handlebars and torn jeans and I never looked back, then. But a head-on smash out-of-the-blue is different, I reckon.

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I stole this .sig

Yes and no, depends on the circumstances, really.
Before the head-on collision I had had several minor-ish accidents - which all fell into the category of gradually waking me up to hazard perception and risk avoidance. They were all my fault, and eventually caused me to wake up to the fact that I'd better pay more attention to the road if I wanted to stay alive.
But what I didn't really fully realise at that time was that other people also do really stupid things on the road - I fell into the mindset that, because all my previous accidents were my fault, it was down to me to ensure I had no further accidents. My risk perception had changed.
Then came the head-on - which really changed my risk acceptance because it was in no way my fault, and there was nothing I could have done to avoid it, or to mitigate it.

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

Perception of risk is probably now defined by the published euro NCAP tables because everybody has access to them, however that has only happened in the last 5 years or so and any effects would not have shown up on Paul's graphs yet.

I think that prior to euro NCAP most people would have assumed that large cars were safer than small cars but that assumption is not necessarily true.

Other things that have had an effect in the past are safety devices such as anti-lock brakes, when they were first being introduced I was a very active cyclist and I could always tell if a vehicle was fitted with anti-lock brakes as they would charge up to junctions and brake at the last minute trusting the anti-lock to stop the car for them. It was most unnerving if I was approaching the junction on the major road because having the right of way is no comfort after the accident.

Duncan Macarthur

[I fixed the quotes in this post by unchecking 'Disable BBCode in this post' ]

The risk recognition (hazard perception) performance and risk acceptance threshold are together the holy grail of safe driving.

As we gain experience hazard perception improves markedly, and with good information (/ training / whatever) can literally approach perfection. ('Perfection' in this case means no surprises while driving.)

But perfect hazard perception is no use if we're always driving on the edge of crashing - we also need a margin for error. This is where risk acceptance comes in. We need to reject risks that fail to provide an adequate margin for error. We need to be 'risk averse'.

So we have two fundamental way to make drivers safer - the first is to help them recognise hazards and the second is to help make them more risk averse.

There's a real potential problem where a skilled driver with excellent hazard perception may become less risk averse because hazards are always apparently well managed. The margin for error may be eroded simply because less margin is needed routinely.

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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 drive 1 ton vans, a small toyota with air bags, abs and classic cars
I believe that I do adjust my driving to the abilities of the car to corner and stop, but I adjust my speeed and cornering to a level of equal care/risk.
I curtainly don't drive slower because I have no laminated windscreen, or a seat belt or a 1965 steering column pointing at me.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

If this is true then will we see more collisions with pedestrians now we have cars achieving the full score for pedestrian safety? Are pedestrians more likely to step out in front of a Citroen than a BMW because the Citroen has 4 or 5 stars on pedestrian safety and the BMW only 3?

No, because its all subconscious.

Though in a similar vein, it has been known for accident rates to go up upon the installation of 20mph zones due to pedestrians compensating for the reduced risk (though it is important to note that KSI rates do go down, due to lower speed impacts and thus lesser consequences of impact).

Average crash severities are HIGHER in 20mph zones. See: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr116.html (I haven't done that check on 2004 figures.)

As far as I know there's no official explanation for those results.

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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 wasn't thinking of pedestrians but high pedestrian safety scores are currently the exception rather than the rule, let's wait and see what happens in 10 years or so when most cars on the road will be much more 'pedestrian friendly'. I would expect that pedestrians will have reacted to the perceived reduction in risk of serious injury and that the number of collisions between cars and pedestrians will rise out of proportion to any change in traffic volume.

Duncan Macarthur

I will attempt to explain this 'coincidence'

It will be a "mirror" because there are fixed factors,
I mean there can only really be peds, motorcyclists
and cars, or at least that is all that is depicted there.

So for one to change, it affects the other
to the exact opposite effect, because there
are only three lines on the graph and one
of those is unaffected by the seatbelt law!

The amount of "motorcyclists hitting peds" would
obviously have absolutely zero influence on this
graph. The "mirror" will always be a mirror where
something like a seatbelt law is introduced, shifting
drivers priorities, by what the graph shows, a seatbelt
added a sort of carelessness to other on the road.

It is not because of any "trend" the graph is a mirror!

it would be very hard to say for sure though wouldn't it? I guess a great many pedestrian casualties (especially in 20 MPH areas) will be very young (too young to read EuroNCAP repsort!) or very old (no longer interested in EuroNCAP reports).