Speeding Does Not Cause Accidents
Discussion
OTBC said:
Speedophiles are not to be confused with paedophiles. Speeding drivers are far more likely to kill or injure a child than a paedophile is. Eight children a year are abducted and murdered by paedophiles in the UK, a shocking figure. Ten children a day and killed or seriously injured by drivers, a third of them speeding. Speeding drivers are a much bigger danger to children than paedophiles are, they inflict more injuries, more deaths and more misery. Chemical castration would have my support if it worked against stupid, selfish and reckless drivers who rely on a load of old b
ks from the ABD to justify their criminality.
New poster, posting complete crap. yep, you are entirely worth listening to.ks from the ABD to justify their criminality.t
t.AA999 said:
OTBC said:
It's almost as if the speedophiles exist in a bubble of impenetrable ignorance..
This "5%" figure is regularly trotted out. It's piffle. It's made up, plucked out of thin air, you won't find it repeated anywhere with a scrap of authenticity, it's usually the Association of British Drivers who post that lie, them or the new defunct Safespeeding website, set up by a man in a shed with zero academically background and zero training in road safety.
That 5% myth has been posted here a few times! it's been corrected! the correction is ignored and hey presto! there it is again. Boring, dishonest, and recklessly irresponsible, it's very much like the boast of drunk drivers that a couple of pints make them drive better.
Speedophiles - haha, I also was laughing at that phrase..... anyways...This "5%" figure is regularly trotted out. It's piffle. It's made up, plucked out of thin air, you won't find it repeated anywhere with a scrap of authenticity, it's usually the Association of British Drivers who post that lie, them or the new defunct Safespeeding website, set up by a man in a shed with zero academically background and zero training in road safety.
That 5% myth has been posted here a few times! it's been corrected! the correction is ignored and hey presto! there it is again. Boring, dishonest, and recklessly irresponsible, it's very much like the boast of drunk drivers that a couple of pints make them drive better.
The 5% figure that is used is a number determined from the national accident database of road traffic KSI figures.
The police accident investigators use their particular set of skilled knowledge with the use of various equipment in order to determine the primary causes of any accident/collision they are called out to investigate.
The cause(s) is logged and entered on to a database of accidents.
The database is such that one can check through the entries and determine the primary causes, the results are actually available on FOI requests.
You can prove yourself wrong by making such a request if you like Mr OBTC ?
The reason I am able to make this post is because from time to time I work with the database and I notice that speeding (ie. travelling faster than the posted speed limit) is not frequently, in the broad scope of things, a primary cause of KSI accidents.
Driving without due care and attention, adverse road/weather conditions, drug/drunk driving as examples, far outweigh 'speeding' as a common causality.
The cause of KSI collisions may have a 5% or lower contribution of speed in the cause of those collisions.
What you and many others miss is this; speed is a primary feature and contributing factor in more than 50% of deaths and even more in serious injuies. Now if only 5% or less collisions have speed as a contributory factor a massive number of that small percentage convert to fatal and serious injuries.
The thread title "Speeding Does Not Cause Accidents" is bunkum however it is more correct to say "Speeding Does Not Cause the Majority of Accidents" because that is true, it is also true to say "Speeding Does Cause and Contribute Greatly to most Road Deaths and Serious Injuries"
Hopefully you can now see the difference and spot the nonsense in the ABD and SpeedSafeKnobSite and similar arguments that either deliberately inore the full facts or simply display complete ignorance in understanding the significance of speed in road safety, as indeed you have displayed in your post.
The Slower Speeds Initiative wrote to the Transport Research Laboratory concerning the ABD's use of the study. The TRL referred us to reports on speed. This is because the TRL study cited by the ABD, TRL Report 323, concerns "A new system for recording contributory factors in road accidents". TRL 323 is not a study of crash causation. It is a study of how to collect data. It was not designed to draw statistically reliable conclusions about the causes of road crashes. The accidents included in the three month study were not a statistically representative sample of all accidents. There is no basis for using the study to generalise about the speed-crash relationship.
Ibid.
So those who are desperate to mitigate the role that speed has with regard to KSI rates rely on highly dubious, misleading and utterly false statistics. Why? If their case is so strong why make stuff up?
Children are far more likely to be hurt on the roads than by a paedophile, that's a fact, however much you bh and moan about it, and remember, there doesn't have to be a funeral for speeding to be anti-social, aggressive and bullying. It terrifies old people, it frightens children, that's why speeding drivers was the number one anti social behaviour cited in the BCS.
Ibid.
So those who are desperate to mitigate the role that speed has with regard to KSI rates rely on highly dubious, misleading and utterly false statistics. Why? If their case is so strong why make stuff up?
Children are far more likely to be hurt on the roads than by a paedophile, that's a fact, however much you b
h and moan about it, and remember, there doesn't have to be a funeral for speeding to be anti-social, aggressive and bullying. It terrifies old people, it frightens children, that's why speeding drivers was the number one anti social behaviour cited in the BCS.v12Legs said:
AA999 said:
Speedophiles - haha, I also was laughing at that phrase..... anyways...
The 5% figure that is used is a number determined from the national accident database of road traffic KSI figures.
The police accident investigators use their particular set of skilled knowledge with the use of various equipment in order to determine the primary causes of any accident/collision they are called out to investigate.
The cause(s) is logged and entered on to a database of accidents.
The database is such that one can check through the entries and determine the primary causes, the results are actually available on FOI requests.
You can prove yourself wrong by making such a request if you like Mr OBTC ?
The reason I am able to make this post is because from time to time I work with the database and I notice that speeding (ie. travelling faster than the posted speed limit) is not frequently, in the broad scope of things, a primary cause of KSI accidents.
Driving without due care and attention, adverse road/weather conditions, drug/drunk driving as examples, far outweigh 'speeding' as a common causality.
And yet RAS50001 publication from ONS gives 15% of fatal and 6% of serious. The only way of getting the number to 5% is by including slight accidents - I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why exceeding the limit is a low % of contributory factors for slight accidents.The 5% figure that is used is a number determined from the national accident database of road traffic KSI figures.
The police accident investigators use their particular set of skilled knowledge with the use of various equipment in order to determine the primary causes of any accident/collision they are called out to investigate.
The cause(s) is logged and entered on to a database of accidents.
The database is such that one can check through the entries and determine the primary causes, the results are actually available on FOI requests.
You can prove yourself wrong by making such a request if you like Mr OBTC ?
The reason I am able to make this post is because from time to time I work with the database and I notice that speeding (ie. travelling faster than the posted speed limit) is not frequently, in the broad scope of things, a primary cause of KSI accidents.
Driving without due care and attention, adverse road/weather conditions, drug/drunk driving as examples, far outweigh 'speeding' as a common causality.
The 5% figure is at best a wilful misrepresentation of the figures, and at worst an outright falsehood.
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
I repeat the two because they are quite different.
ACCIDENTS - Speed has a LOW observed contribution to the cause of accidents
INJURIES - Speed has a HIGH observed contribution to the cause of injuries
The reduction of speed in collisions will have a significant impact in reducing the number of fatal and serious injuries.
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
Accidents - Injuries
They are quite different.
Edited by emmaT2014 on Monday 20th October 12:47
vonhosen said:
And it could be somebody with a less developed sense/appreciation of speed having to make the judgement. It's not only about you, it's about catering for all & creating a framework that achieves the best compromise.
You evidently didn't read my comment properly.If someone judges that they're going to take 3 seconds to cross the road, and they correctly judge the car to be doing 30mph, and that they'll have sufficient time to cross without causing the car to slow down, the car would be 3 * 13.33333 = 40 metres away.
So, even if they've misjudged the speed and the car is actually doing 40, it will be able to stop in time
However, if they underestimate the time taken to cross the road, let's say 1 second instead of 3, then they're in trouble even if the car's doing 30.
OTOH, if they over-estimate the time taken to cross the road, to, say, 6 seconds, then the car will be 80 metres away, and will be able to stop in time even from 60mph.
However, they could also misjudge the distance, in which case they could also be in a lot of trouble.
So there's a lot of factors they could misjudge besides speed, which are at least as significant, so why place so much emphasis on the one factor?
And, in any case, given the short distances involved - it's unlikely that someone would deliberately step out in front of a car that's almost on top of them, it seems far more likely that the pedestrian has failed to notice the approaching vehicle at all, or is completely heedless of the traffic, rather than just being a case of simple misjudgement of the speed/time/distance.
Also, from the driver's perspective, the distances involved are very small indeed.
Given that you're supposed to be able to read a numberplate from 20 metres, at the bare minimum, it's reasonable to expect that a driver ought to be able to see a pedestrian who may be about to cross the road from sufficient distance to be able to slow down comfortably in good time.
Of course, the pedestrian might run out from behind a parked car, for example, but if that's a possibility then even 30mph is probably way too fast under those circumstances, and the driver really ought to have paid attention to the parked cars at the side of the road and slowed down to a commensurate speed in good time.
But simply driving according to the speed limit is analogous to walking in a permanently stooped over position, in case you should encounter a low doorway - the danger being that you stop looking out for low doorways, and end up banging your head on one which is lower than usual.
The danger to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users is the false sense of safety which they, as well as drivers, get from very low speed limits, causing them to take less care.
vonhosen said:
I believe the math is (assuming all else being equal with a good reaction time by the driver in each case of 0.67secs & a deceleration of 8.5m/s-2, which represents a fairly good modern car with ABS)
That the 30mph car will take 19.56m to stop & the 40mph car will take 30.79m.
The result of that is that at the point in the road that the 30mph car has come to a stop the 40mph car will still be doing 30.89mph (which will hurt).
That's because when you increase speed you are much further down the road before you even hit the brakes & a lot of your speed is lost in the last metres, which results in high impact speeds at the position in the road slower vehicles have already stopped. Fairly modest increases can result in high impact speeds.
This has been covered on other threads - suffice to say that comparing stopping distances like that tells you nothing, because if your speed was any different then you would not have been at the same place at the same time.That the 30mph car will take 19.56m to stop & the 40mph car will take 30.79m.
The result of that is that at the point in the road that the 30mph car has come to a stop the 40mph car will still be doing 30.89mph (which will hurt).
That's because when you increase speed you are much further down the road before you even hit the brakes & a lot of your speed is lost in the last metres, which results in high impact speeds at the position in the road slower vehicles have already stopped. Fairly modest increases can result in high impact speeds.
Edited by Phatboy317 on Monday 20th October 12:51
Take the Home Zones where 20mph limits are imposed, the KSI RATES went down by up to forty per cent with no regression to mean or migration of collisions to outside the zones.
Really, this is basic human physics, the human body can withstand running into a tree at top speed, sub twenty mph for all. Above that speed the risk of injury or death increases exponentially. Basic human biology, or physics, call it what you like but if you're still in doubt I can drive a metal box that weights two tones into you at fifteen mph then thirty mph and you can tell us what hurts more. Deal?
Really, this is basic human physics, the human body can withstand running into a tree at top speed, sub twenty mph for all. Above that speed the risk of injury or death increases exponentially. Basic human biology, or physics, call it what you like but if you're still in doubt I can drive a metal box that weights two tones into you at fifteen mph then thirty mph and you can tell us what hurts more. Deal?
http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4469
Results The introduction of 20 mph zones was associated with a 41.9% (95% confidence interval 36.0% to 47.8%) reduction in road casualties, after adjustment for underlying time trends. The percentage reduction was greatest in younger children and greater for the category of killed or seriously injured casualties than for minor injuries. There was no evidence of casualty migration to areas adjacent to 20 mph zones, where casualties also fell slightly by an average of 8.0% (4.4% to 11.5%).
End quote. That's why Southwark, ISlington and now Camden are introducing Home Zones, they're proven to work, they save lives, and they do so by reducing drivers' speeds.
Results The introduction of 20 mph zones was associated with a 41.9% (95% confidence interval 36.0% to 47.8%) reduction in road casualties, after adjustment for underlying time trends. The percentage reduction was greatest in younger children and greater for the category of killed or seriously injured casualties than for minor injuries. There was no evidence of casualty migration to areas adjacent to 20 mph zones, where casualties also fell slightly by an average of 8.0% (4.4% to 11.5%).
End quote. That's why Southwark, ISlington and now Camden are introducing Home Zones, they're proven to work, they save lives, and they do so by reducing drivers' speeds.
OTBC said:
Speedophiles are not to be confused with paedophiles. Speeding drivers are far more likely to kill or injure a child than a paedophile is. Eight children a year are abducted and murdered by paedophiles in the UK, a shocking figure. Ten children a day and killed or seriously injured by drivers, a third of them speeding. Speeding drivers are a much bigger danger to children than paedophiles are, they inflict more injuries, more deaths and more misery. Chemical castration would have my support if it worked against stupid, selfish and reckless drivers who rely on a load of old bks from the ABD to justify their criminality.
ks from the ABD to justify their criminality.
Phatboy317 said:
vonhosen said:
But the car driver has acted outside of reasonable expectations & was braking the law imposed by a democratically elected government.
Ah yes, the old attorney's maxim: when the facts aren't on your side, pound the law.Can you point to where it is set out that it's OK to act as described above? Thought not.
There's some interesting research on this|
There are few reliable statistics on stranger danger and the increase in child molestation and abduction. It can be said with certainty though that the number of reported cases remained extremely small. A much greater threat to children's lives was road traffic accidents - made worse by the increasing number of parents who began driving their children to and from school in order to protect them from the dangers of the outside world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm
It's a sort of vicious cycle, children get driven to school because of all the cars. See what I mean? The fact is, a speeding driver is by any measure a far greater danger to children than paedophiles are. Attitudes are changing, slowly, so speedophiles are beginning to receive the same disgust and loathing that child abusers receive. For instance, notice the reporting following a KSI road collision where the reporting is passive " a car collided with". This happens a lot. Newspapers will report a car overturning and not even mention human involvement, like that strange orange lady in Essex who rolled her Range Rover on a straight road with no other vehicles involved. In The Netherlands the reporting is very different, "idiot driver hurts a child" is not uncommon, with Presumed liability in solely civil cases being a factor, so the operator of the larger vehicle is deemed at fault in civil proceedings, and this works down the line so a cyclist hitting a pedestrian enjoys a similar civil burden.
There are few reliable statistics on stranger danger and the increase in child molestation and abduction. It can be said with certainty though that the number of reported cases remained extremely small. A much greater threat to children's lives was road traffic accidents - made worse by the increasing number of parents who began driving their children to and from school in order to protect them from the dangers of the outside world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm
It's a sort of vicious cycle, children get driven to school because of all the cars. See what I mean? The fact is, a speeding driver is by any measure a far greater danger to children than paedophiles are. Attitudes are changing, slowly, so speedophiles are beginning to receive the same disgust and loathing that child abusers receive. For instance, notice the reporting following a KSI road collision where the reporting is passive " a car collided with". This happens a lot. Newspapers will report a car overturning and not even mention human involvement, like that strange orange lady in Essex who rolled her Range Rover on a straight road with no other vehicles involved. In The Netherlands the reporting is very different, "idiot driver hurts a child" is not uncommon, with Presumed liability in solely civil cases being a factor, so the operator of the larger vehicle is deemed at fault in civil proceedings, and this works down the line so a cyclist hitting a pedestrian enjoys a similar civil burden.
emmaT2014 said:
What you and many others miss is this; speed is a primary feature and contributing factor in more than 50% of deaths and even more in serious injuies. Now if only 5% or less collisions have speed as a contributory factor a massive number of that small percentage convert to fatal and serious injuries.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that higher speeds do not involve higher energies and as a result higher risk of injury/death.But you are correct that the 5% mentioned does have a large death/serious injury factor to it.... but also what I think a lot of people miss as a point is that vehicles are what they are by nature of the fact that they travel, and to travel from 'a' to 'b' involves a speed.
So to involve 'speed' in to all equations that result in an injury is the same thing as stating simply that a vehicle was involved.
emmaT2014 said:
What you and many others miss is this; speed is a primary feature and contributing factor in more than 50% of deaths and even more in serious injuies. Now if only 5% or less collisions have speed as a contributory factor a massive number of that small percentage convert to fatal and serious injuries.
This part of the post you made makes no sense whatsoever.Speed must by definition be a factor in 100% of accidents. If there is no speed (velocity) involved there cannot be a collision. Things have to move to collide.
Speed is NOT speeding. Speeding is where a vehicle exceeds the speed limit.
I am not sure whether what you are saying is just poor use of english or whether stats are being quoted where someone is misinterpreting them.
Can we see the source of this info please.
blueg33 said:
emmaT2014 said:
What you and many others miss is this; speed is a primary feature and contributing factor in more than 50% of deaths and even more in serious injuies. Now if only 5% or less collisions have speed as a contributory factor a massive number of that small percentage convert to fatal and serious injuries.
This part of the post you made makes no sense whatsoever.Speed must by definition be a factor in 100% of accidents. If there is no speed (velocity) involved there cannot be a collision. Things have to move to collide.
Speed is NOT speeding. Speeding is where a vehicle exceeds the speed limit.
I am not sure whether what you are saying is just poor use of english or whether stats are being quoted where someone is misinterpreting them.
Can we see the source of this info please.
The English was not unclear in my post, you simply didn't read all of the words.
Third time:
Among the TRL reports the ABD does not like to cite is TRL 421, "The effects of drivers' speed on the frequency of road accidents" published in March 2000. Unlike TRL 323, this study was designed to discover the speed-crash relationship.
The authors looked at 300 sections of road, made 2 million observations of speed and got 10,000 drivers to complete questionnaires. They found that
the faster the traffic moves on average, the more crashes there are (and crash frequency increases approximately with the square of average traffic speed)
the larger the spread of speeds around the average, the more crashes there are
Significantly for the ABDs argument, and for the rest of us, they also found that:
drivers who choose speeds above the average on some roads tend also to do so on all roads
higher speed drivers are associated with a significantly greater crash involvement than are slower drivers
For these reasons they conclude that the speed of the fastest drivers (those travelling faster than the average for the road) should be reduced. The study confirmed what is described as a 'robust general rule' relating crash reductions to speed reductions: for every I mph reduction average speed, crashes are reduced by between 2-7%. More specifically, the crash reduction figure is around
6% for urban roads with low average speeds
4% for medium speed urban roads and lower speed rural main roads
3% for higher speed urban roads and rural main roads
To put the dangerousness of speed into perspective, how many drivers care about or would notice a 2mph reduction in their average speed? Yet, averaged across the entire road network, a mere 2mph reduction in average speeds would prevent more than 200 deaths and 3,500 serious casualties a year. The authors of TRL 421 suggest that this target (about a sixth of the overall speed related casualty figure) is a 'reasonable minimum' to aim for. More importantly they use it to show "the sensitivity of accident numbers to a small change in average speed". In other words, speeds that might not seem excessive. Speeds that TRL323's methodology wouldn't even record.
Ibid.
Lower speeds mean fewer collisions, injuries and deaths. Basic common sense.
Among the TRL reports the ABD does not like to cite is TRL 421, "The effects of drivers' speed on the frequency of road accidents" published in March 2000. Unlike TRL 323, this study was designed to discover the speed-crash relationship.
The authors looked at 300 sections of road, made 2 million observations of speed and got 10,000 drivers to complete questionnaires. They found that
the faster the traffic moves on average, the more crashes there are (and crash frequency increases approximately with the square of average traffic speed)
the larger the spread of speeds around the average, the more crashes there are
Significantly for the ABDs argument, and for the rest of us, they also found that:
drivers who choose speeds above the average on some roads tend also to do so on all roads
higher speed drivers are associated with a significantly greater crash involvement than are slower drivers
For these reasons they conclude that the speed of the fastest drivers (those travelling faster than the average for the road) should be reduced. The study confirmed what is described as a 'robust general rule' relating crash reductions to speed reductions: for every I mph reduction average speed, crashes are reduced by between 2-7%. More specifically, the crash reduction figure is around
6% for urban roads with low average speeds
4% for medium speed urban roads and lower speed rural main roads
3% for higher speed urban roads and rural main roads
To put the dangerousness of speed into perspective, how many drivers care about or would notice a 2mph reduction in their average speed? Yet, averaged across the entire road network, a mere 2mph reduction in average speeds would prevent more than 200 deaths and 3,500 serious casualties a year. The authors of TRL 421 suggest that this target (about a sixth of the overall speed related casualty figure) is a 'reasonable minimum' to aim for. More importantly they use it to show "the sensitivity of accident numbers to a small change in average speed". In other words, speeds that might not seem excessive. Speeds that TRL323's methodology wouldn't even record.
Ibid.
Lower speeds mean fewer collisions, injuries and deaths. Basic common sense.
emmaT2014 said:
blueg33 said:
emmaT2014 said:
What you and many others miss is this; speed is a primary feature and contributing factor in more than 50% of deaths and even more in serious injuies. Now if only 5% or less collisions have speed as a contributory factor a massive number of that small percentage convert to fatal and serious injuries.
This part of the post you made makes no sense whatsoever.Speed must by definition be a factor in 100% of accidents. If there is no speed (velocity) involved there cannot be a collision. Things have to move to collide.
Speed is NOT speeding. Speeding is where a vehicle exceeds the speed limit.
I am not sure whether what you are saying is just poor use of english or whether stats are being quoted where someone is misinterpreting them.
Can we see the source of this info please.
The English was not unclear in my post, you simply didn't read all of the words.
emmaT2014 said:
Ah yes, the maxim of "when you don't beleive the law applies to you it is OK to ignore it and do your own thing and expect that the law deems that reasonable"
Ah yes, the maxim of "anyone who dares to discuss any shortcomings of the law/policy must be a lawbreaker, and should therefore be marginalised"Edited by Phatboy317 on Monday 20th October 14:23
OTBC said:
Their preferred technique is for one or two writers to flood papers with pseudonymously penned letters to make it appear they have widespread public support.
Ahh.. you are talking of Steve Callaghan of RSS Ltd., a man who has more "faces" than Big Ben and has posted on forums including PH under so many aliases they fill an A4 page! 
Hasn't he given up posting on PH under his usual nom de plumes?
Mill Wheel said:
OTBC said:
Their preferred technique is for one or two writers to flood papers with pseudonymously penned letters to make it appear they have widespread public support.
Ahh.. you are talking of Steve Callaghan of RSS Ltd., a man who has more "faces" than Big Ben and has posted on forums including PH under so many aliases they fill an A4 page! Hasn't he given up posting on PH under his usual nom de plumes?
For those (Emma or Steve) who claim that speed enforcement is not being used as the magic bullet for road safety can I refer you to the siting of average speed cameras on the A9 in Scotland. A road with an infamous reputation for frustration driven overtakes and head on collisions as a result, (where the average speed is already below the limit over the length of the enforcement area) the fix according to the politicians? Yup you've guessed it, average speed cameras for over 80 miles at massive cost, I am soooo looking forward to the reduction in accidents with that brilliant idea! Not!!
Gary
What really bugs me is the total blindness many people have to common sense
Its NOT speeding that causes accidents is being a st driver that causes accidents.
I can think of one dual carraigeway near me that had its speed limit reduced from 70 to 40.
If I drive it illegally at 70mph today I am no more likely to have an accident than when I drove it legally at 70mph. The only thing I am more likely to get is points for speeding.
Now, if I drive that same road at 40mph whilst turning to talk to kids in the back, looking in the glove box for a cd and generally not paying attention, I am more likely to have an accident.
Its really not hard
Accident reduction should not be used as the excuse for speed cameras, just be upfront and say "its to stop speeding" not pretend its to reduce accidents.
Its NOT speeding that causes accidents is being a s
t driver that causes accidents.I can think of one dual carraigeway near me that had its speed limit reduced from 70 to 40.
If I drive it illegally at 70mph today I am no more likely to have an accident than when I drove it legally at 70mph. The only thing I am more likely to get is points for speeding.
Now, if I drive that same road at 40mph whilst turning to talk to kids in the back, looking in the glove box for a cd and generally not paying attention, I am more likely to have an accident.
Its really not hard
Accident reduction should not be used as the excuse for speed cameras, just be upfront and say "its to stop speeding" not pretend its to reduce accidents.
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