Safe Speed Forums

One o'clock radio news announced, as I turned into my driveway, that BRAKE has now come up with a marvellous answer to road safety....

All new drivers should have compulsory lessons after they pass their test to equip them better . After all statistics show that these people are involved in more accidents than experienced drivers/



Well, majority on this forum have been saying this since it opened. Paul has said it several times too. My guvnor has said it as well.

Penny droppeth at last!


Driver ability or lack of ability and skill cause accidents. Address this and we get to more drivers choosing the safest speed by default. More often than not - a COAST driver will be driving to 10% margin of the legal limit on all urban roads - and but may be a little faster on a motorway. within reason of course.

I am sure there will be a link or something published in the morning. This was the last item on the news as I pulled in - and not seen it on Mary's site as a release.

But - are some BRAKE people starting to realise that the policy needs a re-think after all?

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Ah - just heard the updated news. BRAKE surveyed drivers and found 80% were in favour of extra training for new drivers and said that road deaths may be falling but that young and new drivers accounted for a larger proportion of these deaths. They also said that these accidents were down to inexperience and are now going to lobby for compulsory Pass Plus.

Mary You 'eard it 'ere first, m'dear!

They lurk - you know!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I fully support further training, but pass plus is a gimick.

BRAKE also want to ban night time driving for new drivers and limit the number of passengers that they can carry. Plus make them have P plates attached for a year.

Perhaps a better solution would be to allow new drivers to take extra training and earn credit points which would accelerate their current two year probation period.

I see no point in limiting night time driving or the number of passengers a new driver can carry.

Its that 80% rule again!!

T2000 use it, camera partnerships use it, anti 4x4 brigade use it! The ban smoking in public places lobby use it.

Do you learn it in some sort of school for those who want to ban things?

I am from an aviation background.
In pilot training, one first qualifies to fly solo in daytime with good visibility (known as VFR - Visual Flight Rules). Then one moves on to qualify as a pilot able to carry passengers in VFR conditions. To fly in bad weather one must have further training (known as IMC - Instrument Met Conditions) and pass a further test, and to fly at night still further training plus a further test is needed to achieve a night rating.
What is wrong with graduated type training for driving. Start with daytime driving, then qualify to drive at night and carry passengers after a further 12 months accident free daytime driving.
Then have a basic re-test every 10 years with a comprehensive re-test at, say, 60 years old and a basic re-test every 5 years after that. It the re-tests were to be failed, don't immediately ban the driver, but order further training over, say, 6 months and allow for another test then. Eyesight and reactions could also be tested at those times.
Would this improve road safety?
I wonder how the 'Speed Kills' freaks in some of the fringe groups would react to having to do this to keep their licences.

I seem to remember that quite a lot of my driving instruction was at night due to fitting it around school and the time of year so I'd like to think that I was as competent at night driving as day driving by the time I passed my test.

However, I'd have no particular objection to having a two part test, daytime/nightime so long as they were within fairly quick succession.

Personally I'd scrap the theory test (which lets face it has more to do with itellectual ability than anything else) and invest in doubling the duration of the driving test itself.

I've always been anti the 'P' plates, I really don't see what they'd achieve.

I think the BRAKE suggestion is wothy but not fully considered. Its primary aim is probably to appeal to those of us who find the 'speed kills' philosophy fundamentally flawed.

I wouldn't scrap the theory test because as you say it is an intellectual test - it forces people to think about road safety and their driving. Is that a good thing?

I also learnt with about 30% of my lessons in the dark, and the concept of a driver not being able to drive as soon as the sun goes down is just stupid. What if the new driver drives off to visit Granny in a town 30 miles away, and leaves an hour before dusk, but then finds that the road back is heavily congested and that they are still 10 miles from home as the sun sets? What do they do - park up at the side of the road and call a taxi? Does this mean that all new drivers are only allowed to drive to work in the summer months, but have to give up work in winter?

Limiting the number of passengers may actually be quite a sensible idea. I have had several situations where a group of passengers in my car have caused dangerous situations - for example when a back seat passenger that was slightly "merry" decided that reclining the drivers seat was a good idea while I was driving at 40mph. Many of the accidents reported in the local paper are about 4 or 5 youngsters in a car that looses control, and how many of those might be down to the passengers "larking about"? However like all suggestions that sound attractive there is a counter argument - if we restrict new drivers to perhaps a single passenger, then to make the same journey we now have 2 or 3 cars going to the same place, and somehow I just know that many such journeys will turn into races...

I agree with both of these. I had my first on-road driving experience on my birthday (early August), but beacuse of various holiday commitments etc it was early September before I had my first lesson, I passed first time (just!) in early February so of necessity I did a lot of driving after dark - heck in the middle of winter it was dark when I got home from school. This meant I had adequate experience of night time and day time driving, and also driving in bad weather. Even after this the first time I drove solo after passing my test was a few days later when I had the chance to do it in good weather in daylight.

Things that I feel would help would be a motorway driving test. Had I driven away from my test centre I could have been on the M5 in about 15 minutes and negotiating the very busy M5/M4 interchange less than half an hour after that.
I did get expereince on a variety of roads during my test - village, rural, urban, short dual carriageway, although due to location I didn't get to drive in a congested city centre or on a grade separated dual carriageway or a DC with right turns. Driving lessons should aim to give you experience of as much of the road network as they can, although I realise for someone learning in central London, having experience on unfenced moorland road would be difficult.

Also, I think that it should be mandatory to have driven at least two different types of car before passing your test. When I was learning I drove my mum's petrol Renault 11 and my driving instructors diesel Peugot xxx. This made me realise more than any theory can that different cars handle differently. As anyone who was listening to Radio 5 live this morning will know, the consequences of not realising that can be fatal.

Chris

These extended test options such as motorway and packed urban as part of the driving test is a problem for people in many areas. Many driving test centres are more than 15 minutes away from a motorway, and the duration of the test is limited - this is why even in the more enlightened days of no cameras and limits set to 85% it wasn't introduced. Image including negotiating complex packed urban layouts (you know get across 3 lanes of traffic in order to get to the road you want while sitting through 3 changes of lights) - if you did so it would take half the exam time just to get onto such a road in the first place, and whoops, we didn't have time for the motorway bit because having got to the nearest motorway it would have been a minimum 30 mile round trip to the next junction and back.

Perhaps a decent simulated environment would be best? Something that uses a real car interior, 360 visuals, movement and audio, and AI control of the other drivers. This could include any necessary elements including adverse weather conditions, day/night, motorway, urban, sun in your eyes, but would be expensive to set-up. It wouldn't replace the on the road test, but would allow the assessment to cover a much wider set of scenarios, and also would test the driver on their own in the car. Most of the necessary technology is already available as a spin-off from aircraft simulation, and the things already exist in many theme parks simulating roller coasters and similar and don't cost vast amounts of money either.

Excuse me, I am off down the patent office....

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti the theory test as such but anyone with half a brain should be able to pass, we have similar tests for the various trades and management levels in our industry.

I read my book of questions the night before and passed the next day. Ok I should know most of it anyway but the point is that you can cram for it without necessarily learning much.

Surely better for a longer more rigorous driving test, when the tester can make you pull over at various stages and interrogate your reasoning and knowledge.

Or, a pre driving interview where you can be challenged on your knowledge of road safety and the highway code rather than a mulitple choice touch screen.

Of course, it costs but as the camera partnerships say 'we don't want your money - we want to save lives'

The degree of visual detail required for good realism is immense - way way beyond anything needed to train pilots. We need to be able to pick up subtle visual clues at considerable distances and simulators would really be struggling to manage the visual data required. One day I guess, but probably not for another decade.

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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 have started a new thread in Brainstorming here http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2775

The visual technology has definitely been a letdown in the past, with many systems effectively using slow refresh VGA. the problems are due to the processing power available. Moores law however is still in effect, and current high-end graphic cards are getting very good.

If you think that realism is not close to being achieved, then did you try looking for little details in films such as Lord of the Rings - Return of the King? OK it wasn't generated in real-time, but neither does much of the driving simulation either - you only need realistic overlays of predefined elements.

The probationary system that BRAKE proposes isn't a bad idea. In my part of the world, when a learner driver passes their driving test, they're restricted to a 45mph speed limit and must have a provisional license for one year and also any vehicle they drive must display an R plate for one year.

Where BRAKE are going wrong is that they want a curfew on all new drivers as far as night driving is concerned. I don't agree with that. If you're serious about driving a vehicle, then night driving is just as important-if not more important than daytime driving. You learn from your experience. For instance, would you know what to do if there's someone dazzles you with their lights on full beam, or how to cope with poorly lit roads and streets or even a cyclist who wears dark clothing at night?

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Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

Not sure about R or P plates, won't it make the new drivers a bit of a target? Also 45mph? thats just going to cause frustration all round. I remember that my driving instructor would insist that I drove at NSL and would bollock me for dropping below 55/65.

A different angle could be a means of making the lessons more rigorous. There do seem to be marked difference between those instructors to teach you to drive and those who teach you to pass the test (pardon the cliche).

From a personal point of view, when I passed my test age 17, I felt (and I still think this is true) that I was a technically good driver. In fact I don't think I am as technically good now. The reason I was dangerous was that I had less fear of crashing.

Any extra training should take this into account ie an emphasis on how stupid a 17 year old can be and the consequences of that impetuousity. I would have found a stricter test easier to pass then than now.

I like the US graduated system for young drivers. Some states alow driving as young as 15 but there are restrictions and I think we could adapt it here such as having a qualified driver over a certain age as a passenger (similar to learners here at the moment) , restrictions on time (6AM to 10PM) for newly qualified drivers etc.

It may help prevent this "off the leash" feeling that young drivers have for the first couple of years....I know, I was one of them...

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Speed camera policy Kills

I thought that too... Until my father persuaded a friend of his, who was a retired police instructor from Hendon, to "teach me to drive properly"... For a normal, immortal, 17-year-old it was a salutory experience!

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Ok so imagine I'm 18. Do I
spend a grand learning to drive, pay 2 grand to insure it for the first year, be unable to use if for work in the winter, carry no passengers and only drive on non M-class roads.

Or do I just buy a disposable car, no licence or insurance. but hey I'll only get caught every 6 years and I'll still save money even after the fine.

The govt. has done nothing to encourage new drivers to take extra training. Advanced take up amoung car users is pathetic. How about a scheme to work of penalty points via extra training instead

... all of which brings us to the argument about third party insurance being funded from fuel.

Two factors I suggest come into play with young drivers.
1. They are more likely to take risks.
2. They have less "miles" of experience.

Looking at the second factor of experience and the example of pilots. Rewcently I had a go at the computer based hazard perception tests and it has some good aspects whilst not being upto the full quality of a plane simulator. If however as a part of the test every learner driver had to pass a minimum of I suggest 100+ hours in a "car simulator", that would be a way of boosting experience in a structured way. Higher hours (with a pass rate) may even be linked to the attraction of lower insurance groups so that drivers could choose to invest in training and be rewarded through lower insurance.