A poem for those that love speed limits
Discussion
fluffnik said:
...and what's OAP?
Observation. Anticipation - Plan
We extend it
C - concentrate on road ahead (and we use C for COURTESY/CONSIDERATION
O - Observation - means using all senses - sight, smell, sound.
A - Anticipation - based on observation - aware of hazard und risk assess them
S - ist PLAN.. we split as ist vague. We allow Space for manoeuvre und
T - Time .. to complete manoeuvre und journey
Ist simple.. nicht?
vonhosen said:
OAP?
You forget that most of us have direct experience of it on Germany's unrestricted Autobahnen where everyone deals with it quite safely.
Perhaps more emphasis on lane dicipline rather than speed would help.
You mean where there are higher fatality rates than here ?
These statistics are the ones ones that show the truth:
Fatals/bkm Motorways
UK 2.1
Sweden 2.5
Netherlands 3.2
Switzerland 3.5
Germany 3.7
Denmark 4.1
Japan 4.1
Finland 4.5
France 4.8
US 5.1
Ireland 7.4
Belgium 7.6
Austria 9.2
Italy 9.9
source: 2001 IRTAD International Road Traffic Accident Database OECD August 2003 www.bast.de/facthemen/irtad//engliIf I used your level of spin, I would employ these figures to compare the effects of a 55mph limit in the US with no limit in much of Germany and conclude that low limits are lethal.
And look who tops the table & as such could be said to have the right balance ?
Coach crashes skewed Austrian, French und German figures.
And I suppose we don't have coaches & they don't crash here ?
Our figures are consistently higher up the table, it's not in isolation.
I think if you look closely - you find more such crashes abroad than here.
vonhosen said:
These countries also have an even higher proportion of foreign drivers from the East on their roads. These drivers are skilled within driving test requirement of own country but not of standard required in West. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France do require non EU residents (including US .Canadain/Oz) sit their national standard driving tests within 6 months if permanent residency planned.
And we have seen a large influx of Eastern Europeans in the last few years too.
Und not wishing to be unduly racist... but these feature raher prominently in the tabloids und local press as prime cause of incident.
vonhosen said:
Also Germany? If you look closely Rhein/Ruhr limited und congested stretches und Dresden routes see most of their A/bahn KSI.
They are not alone, we have our own very congested (probably more so than them) sections of our network.
You do not know these stretches , Liebchen.
I choose not to drive them as it take longer
vonhosen said:You resisted typing "hope" instead of "think" there!
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
In Germany, speed limits are politics. CDU/CSU is against. When the SPD has to go into coalition with the stinky Greens, it is forced to impose them.
vonhosen said:
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
Austria seems to be doing the Right Thing, or at least something close.
Zod said:
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
In Germany, speed limits are politics. CDU/CSU is against. When the SPD has to go into coalition with the stinky Greens, it is forced to impose them.
Er why do you think I resisted ?
fluffnik said:
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
Austria seems to be doing the Right Thing, or at least something close.
& look where they are on the motorway fatality table.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Saturday 15th April 20:35
vonhosen said:Your devotion to speed limits (so strong that it has inspired a large proportion of your 900+ posts in a single month) led me to think so.
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
In Germany, speed limits are politics. CDU/CSU is against. When the SPD has to go into coalition with the stinky Greens, it is forced to impose them.
Er why do you think I resisted ?
Zod said:
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
In Germany, speed limits are politics. CDU/CSU is against. When the SPD has to go into coalition with the stinky Greens, it is forced to impose them.
Er why do you think I resisted ?
Oh I'm not devoted to them. I'd rather the standards & attitudes to driving were such that it wouldn't be necessary to have speed limits.........that's bit of a pipe dream though.
Germany must do as they see fit, that's their democratic choice.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Saturday 15th April 20:51
WildCat said:
...and what's OAP?
Observation. Anticipation - Plan
Doh!
...somehow I could only think Old Age Pensioner when von posted it.
WildCat said:
We extend it
C - concentrate on road ahead (and we use C for COURTESY/CONSIDERATION
O - Observation - means using all senses - sight, smell, sound.
A - Anticipation - based on observation - aware of hazard und risk assess them
S - ist PLAN.. we split as ist vague. We allow Space for manoeuvre und
T - Time .. to complete manoeuvre und journey
Ist simple.. nicht?
COAST I know, and do my best to practice.
vonhosen said:Well, we're not so far apart then. I strongly believe that they are necessary in towns and villages and that 20mph is appropriate for some residential streets, but to most of us here it is obvious that driving over 20 mph along a narrow street with cars parked on both sides is reckless. There are plenty of roads around with 50mph speed limits and repeater signs on bends that it would never be safe to attempt to negotiate at 50. The motorway limit is absurdly low, as is evidence by the proportion of drivers who ignore it.
Still, it's nice being treated like adults.
But unlikely in the UK.
To be honest I think further regulation of Autobhans currently de-restricted sections is more likely than de-regulation of our motorways.
In Germany, speed limits are politics. CDU/CSU is against. When the SPD has to go into coalition with the stinky Greens, it is forced to impose them.
Er why do you think I resisted ?
Oh I'm not devoted to them. I'd rather the standards & attitudes to driving were such that it wouldn't be necessary to have speed limits.........that's bit of a pipe dream though.
Germany must do as they see fit, that's their democratic choice.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Saturday 15th April 20:51
Zod said:
The motorway limit is absurdly low, as is evidence by the proportion of drivers who ignore it.
It isn't if you have to stop quickly or having stopped quickly try to get out of the way of someone who is ignoring the limit and everything else that is at that moment rather important!
In all these league tables for motorway accidents being bandied around here, has anyone actually researched the official causes for the accidents?
Or are we all assuming that every single accident on these league tables was caused purely by excessive speed, and excessive speed alone, with no other contributary factors?
When statisticians say that this country/that country had X amount of road deaths last year, do they actually bother to tell us the primary causes of the accidents, or just throw numbers at us?
Speed per se doesn't cause accidents, it simply reduces your chances of escaping from one unscathed.
Going faster doesn't mean you're suddenly going to collide with everyone on the road now, does it?
If the road is clear ahead you accelerate, if someone pulls in front of you, you brake. Simple really. I've found that the faster you go the easier you can follow and predict the actions and possible actions of other road users, and plan your speed/braking distances accordingly.
You can also watch the rate that other vehicles 'wobble' across lanes, and you can also predict quite accurately when someone is going to pull out in front of you, by watching the rate at which they're closing on the vehicle directly in front of them.
So I check my mirrors, take the outside lane, and speed up to a velocity that gets me past the 'indecisive' drivers quickly and safely, before pulling back into a clear stretch of road, ready for the next manouevre.
It's called 'situational awareness', and fighter pilots are renowned for having it in order to live and not get shot out of the sky.
I liken driving to flying a warplane, where you constantly have to scan the skies to see who's going to attack you in whatever shape or form.
You can't relax for a minute or take your eyes off the road for a minute, or you'd be dead, shot out of the skies, or off the motorway and down a ditch in a pile-up.
All the officialdom and rules/regulations/enforcements/faceless infantile speed cameras, ad nauseaum, are an unnecessary encumberence that corrupts the purity of the mobile 'warfare assessment' on the roads, whilst driving.
I find it all unnecessary and it reduces your ability to make split-second safety decisions, for fear of setting off an electronic box on a grey pole.
One thing I object to in the most strongest terms possible is the practice, used by some enforcement authorities, of calling speed cameras 'safety cameras'
They're not 'safety cameras' in the slightest. They are an infantile device designed purely to measure the mathematical velocity of a vehicle moving in a straight line between 2 abritrary reference points.
And that's all they are.
If they were safety cameras, then they'd photograph unsafe activities such as driving whilst drunk, tired, drugged, using a mobile phone, weaving all over the road, tailgating, not indicating when changing lanes on a high speed motorway, pulling out of junctions onto a main road of fast moving traffic, and then dawdling, driving an unsafe vehicle, driving at night on sidelamps without putting full dipped headlights on etc-the list is endless.
So please don't have the temerity to call them 'safety cameras'.
They are speed cameras, full stop. They photograph you exceeding a politically imposed speed limit at a certain place at a certain time in a certain vehicle at a certain velocity, and nothing more.
The number of road deaths per year in the UK has not drastically reduced for many years now, and seems to hover around the 3500 mark, give or take a few hundred each year.
And of these 3500ish fatalities speed, ON IT'S OWN, was not the major cause of death. Not paying attention to the road was.
Simple really. If you don't look where you're going, you crash, end of story. Whether you were going slow or fast won't alter the fact that if you are not looking at the road-YOU WILL CRASH, speeding or not.
The speed element in a crash situation determines how much avoiding action you could have taken, and what the severity of the crash will be.
But it wasn't the cause of the accident-inattention was.
So can we have some 'inattention cameras' put on poles please, then we can photograph and ban drivers who aren't paying attention, and the roads will become a safe Utopia.
Oh I almost forgot, the criminal/reckless element of those poor drivers will drive regardless of what laws they break, and will drive whilst banned.
They will also steal cars, drive whilst unlicensed/uninsured/drunk etc. Then they will have a crash at speed and kill someone (not themselves, however).
Then the tabloids will say 'speeding motorist in high-powered BMW/Porsche etc mows down and kills innocent people-huge tragedy etc.
Then the witchhunt against 'speeders' will begin, and everyone who played no part whatsoever in that particular fatality will be punished by a new witchunt designed to 'make our roads safer for little children'
Well excuse me, but we didn't cause that particular accident, so vent your spleen on the idiot who did, and leave the rest of us alone.
You've got the reckless idiot/criminal who did, so hang him/her out to dry.
And stop assuming the moral high ground against the rest of us
If a particular individual causes a horrendous accident, make them pay for it, and stop pointing the finger at everyone else.
I've also noticed that the police seem to take a dim view of drivers who think they do actually have some ability, even though they may not have had official training.
Well who do you think actually wrote the official driving handbooks in the first place? It's an agglomeration of experience that humans have discovered for themselves, and put down on paper for others to read.
Just because you're not a Police/Advanced driver doesn't mean you have no ability, so why treat us like we know nothing?
I saw one clip where a motorbike had been pulled over for doing way over 100mph on a motorway. The motorcyclist stated to the Traffic Officer that he was in control of his motorbike and was in not danger, either to himself or others.
The traffic officer then asked what would have happened had someone pulled out in front of the bike whilst the bike was at speed, in the tone of voice that you just can't give an answer to because you know he's not interested and you're going to get a ticket anyway.
The obvious answer is that the bike has stupendous brakes and weighs considerably less than a big lumbering truck, had a truck pulled out in front of the bike.
The bike would have been able to slow instantly without danger, apart from maybe dragging the motorcyclists eyeballs out of his sockets, and everyone would have been happy.
But no, the motorcyclist was made to feel unqualified to do this manouevre, and made to doubt his own ability as an experienced rider on a big bike with full riding outfit etc.
Tell me, does this actually do any good or benefit anyone with this patronizing attitude? As if the police don't have crashes themselves and don't kill members of the public in poilce car chases when the officer has an attack of 'Red Mist'.
Just to further illustrate the double standards, remember the case of good old PC Milton who maxed his Police Vectra 3.2 V6 down the M54 and reached 159 mph, then got let off in court on the first hearing.
I wonder how many people know that the M54 is actually only a 2-lane motorway, not a full 3-lane motorway.
Also, how long do you think it takes for a vehicle to reach it's terminal velocity? Quite a long time, so he was doing around 150 mph for a considerable distance.
The excuse given was than he was 'exploring the vehicle's capabilities'.
What, at nearly 160 mph on a 2-lane road? At the maximum velocity of a vehicle it is right at it's limits and hanging onto the road on a wing and a prayer.
Had anyone wandered across the 2 lanes in front of PC Milton doing 60 mph, he would have had virtually no chance whatsoever of avoiding a huge, massive crash, going 100 mph faster. How quickly do you think a Vauxhall Vectra, even in police spec, can slow from 160 mph to 60 mph? Not very quickly I'll wager.
Yet he gets away scot-free, whilst we get busted for going 10 mph over the limit in perfect conditions?
You try and convince us that's right, proper, and fair.
Enough said
Or are we all assuming that every single accident on these league tables was caused purely by excessive speed, and excessive speed alone, with no other contributary factors?
When statisticians say that this country/that country had X amount of road deaths last year, do they actually bother to tell us the primary causes of the accidents, or just throw numbers at us?
Speed per se doesn't cause accidents, it simply reduces your chances of escaping from one unscathed.
Going faster doesn't mean you're suddenly going to collide with everyone on the road now, does it?
If the road is clear ahead you accelerate, if someone pulls in front of you, you brake. Simple really. I've found that the faster you go the easier you can follow and predict the actions and possible actions of other road users, and plan your speed/braking distances accordingly.
You can also watch the rate that other vehicles 'wobble' across lanes, and you can also predict quite accurately when someone is going to pull out in front of you, by watching the rate at which they're closing on the vehicle directly in front of them.
So I check my mirrors, take the outside lane, and speed up to a velocity that gets me past the 'indecisive' drivers quickly and safely, before pulling back into a clear stretch of road, ready for the next manouevre.
It's called 'situational awareness', and fighter pilots are renowned for having it in order to live and not get shot out of the sky.
I liken driving to flying a warplane, where you constantly have to scan the skies to see who's going to attack you in whatever shape or form.
You can't relax for a minute or take your eyes off the road for a minute, or you'd be dead, shot out of the skies, or off the motorway and down a ditch in a pile-up.
All the officialdom and rules/regulations/enforcements/faceless infantile speed cameras, ad nauseaum, are an unnecessary encumberence that corrupts the purity of the mobile 'warfare assessment' on the roads, whilst driving.
I find it all unnecessary and it reduces your ability to make split-second safety decisions, for fear of setting off an electronic box on a grey pole.
One thing I object to in the most strongest terms possible is the practice, used by some enforcement authorities, of calling speed cameras 'safety cameras'
They're not 'safety cameras' in the slightest. They are an infantile device designed purely to measure the mathematical velocity of a vehicle moving in a straight line between 2 abritrary reference points.
And that's all they are.
If they were safety cameras, then they'd photograph unsafe activities such as driving whilst drunk, tired, drugged, using a mobile phone, weaving all over the road, tailgating, not indicating when changing lanes on a high speed motorway, pulling out of junctions onto a main road of fast moving traffic, and then dawdling, driving an unsafe vehicle, driving at night on sidelamps without putting full dipped headlights on etc-the list is endless.
So please don't have the temerity to call them 'safety cameras'.
They are speed cameras, full stop. They photograph you exceeding a politically imposed speed limit at a certain place at a certain time in a certain vehicle at a certain velocity, and nothing more.
The number of road deaths per year in the UK has not drastically reduced for many years now, and seems to hover around the 3500 mark, give or take a few hundred each year.
And of these 3500ish fatalities speed, ON IT'S OWN, was not the major cause of death. Not paying attention to the road was.
Simple really. If you don't look where you're going, you crash, end of story. Whether you were going slow or fast won't alter the fact that if you are not looking at the road-YOU WILL CRASH, speeding or not.
The speed element in a crash situation determines how much avoiding action you could have taken, and what the severity of the crash will be.
But it wasn't the cause of the accident-inattention was.
So can we have some 'inattention cameras' put on poles please, then we can photograph and ban drivers who aren't paying attention, and the roads will become a safe Utopia.
Oh I almost forgot, the criminal/reckless element of those poor drivers will drive regardless of what laws they break, and will drive whilst banned.
They will also steal cars, drive whilst unlicensed/uninsured/drunk etc. Then they will have a crash at speed and kill someone (not themselves, however).
Then the tabloids will say 'speeding motorist in high-powered BMW/Porsche etc mows down and kills innocent people-huge tragedy etc.
Then the witchhunt against 'speeders' will begin, and everyone who played no part whatsoever in that particular fatality will be punished by a new witchunt designed to 'make our roads safer for little children'
Well excuse me, but we didn't cause that particular accident, so vent your spleen on the idiot who did, and leave the rest of us alone.
You've got the reckless idiot/criminal who did, so hang him/her out to dry.
And stop assuming the moral high ground against the rest of us
If a particular individual causes a horrendous accident, make them pay for it, and stop pointing the finger at everyone else.
I've also noticed that the police seem to take a dim view of drivers who think they do actually have some ability, even though they may not have had official training.
Well who do you think actually wrote the official driving handbooks in the first place? It's an agglomeration of experience that humans have discovered for themselves, and put down on paper for others to read.
Just because you're not a Police/Advanced driver doesn't mean you have no ability, so why treat us like we know nothing?
I saw one clip where a motorbike had been pulled over for doing way over 100mph on a motorway. The motorcyclist stated to the Traffic Officer that he was in control of his motorbike and was in not danger, either to himself or others.
The traffic officer then asked what would have happened had someone pulled out in front of the bike whilst the bike was at speed, in the tone of voice that you just can't give an answer to because you know he's not interested and you're going to get a ticket anyway.
The obvious answer is that the bike has stupendous brakes and weighs considerably less than a big lumbering truck, had a truck pulled out in front of the bike.
The bike would have been able to slow instantly without danger, apart from maybe dragging the motorcyclists eyeballs out of his sockets, and everyone would have been happy.
But no, the motorcyclist was made to feel unqualified to do this manouevre, and made to doubt his own ability as an experienced rider on a big bike with full riding outfit etc.
Tell me, does this actually do any good or benefit anyone with this patronizing attitude? As if the police don't have crashes themselves and don't kill members of the public in poilce car chases when the officer has an attack of 'Red Mist'.
Just to further illustrate the double standards, remember the case of good old PC Milton who maxed his Police Vectra 3.2 V6 down the M54 and reached 159 mph, then got let off in court on the first hearing.
I wonder how many people know that the M54 is actually only a 2-lane motorway, not a full 3-lane motorway.
Also, how long do you think it takes for a vehicle to reach it's terminal velocity? Quite a long time, so he was doing around 150 mph for a considerable distance.
The excuse given was than he was 'exploring the vehicle's capabilities'.
What, at nearly 160 mph on a 2-lane road? At the maximum velocity of a vehicle it is right at it's limits and hanging onto the road on a wing and a prayer.
Had anyone wandered across the 2 lanes in front of PC Milton doing 60 mph, he would have had virtually no chance whatsoever of avoiding a huge, massive crash, going 100 mph faster. How quickly do you think a Vauxhall Vectra, even in police spec, can slow from 160 mph to 60 mph? Not very quickly I'll wager.
Yet he gets away scot-free, whilst we get busted for going 10 mph over the limit in perfect conditions?
You try and convince us that's right, proper, and fair.
Enough said
mg6b said:
The motorway limit is absurdly low, as is evidence by the proportion of drivers who ignore it.
It isn't if you have to stop quickly or having stopped quickly try to get out of the way of someone who is ignoring the limit and everything else that is at that moment rather important!
You equate higher speeds with being unable to stop, which is rubbish. And clearly the majority of the drivers on clear motorways think it's rubbish too, because in my experience the vast majority exceed the speed limit when conditions allow it.
RedOctober said:
Lots
Of course not everyone who can fly a plane, can safely & adequately fly a multi million pound war plane. To do so you have to have a lot of training.
So it should be with not being restricted by speed limits on our roads. You should have the highest available training before you are allowed to drive at the highest possible levels.
Until then it's Pipers not Eurofighters.
Of course there would then be the question of do we all need Eurofighters or are Pipers actually perfectly serviceable for the intended job etc.
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