Speeding Does Not Cause Accidents
Discussion
jaf01uk said:
I totally agree, there seems to be a lot of 1 and 2 month log ins in these discussions with blank profiles?
PS Emma, at work I can go at any speed I deem appropriate, does that fry your brain? Or would you rather I slow down going to 999's?
ooooh! Send me to the burns unit.PS Emma, at work I can go at any speed I deem appropriate, does that fry your brain? Or would you rather I slow down going to 999's?
I don't advocate any prosecution of any emergency service driver; there is an exemption after all. Now does that fry your brain?...such as it seems to be.
WD39 said:
Our village is soon to have a legal 30mph speed limit. We fought long ang hard to achieve this. Why ?
Drivers are simply travelling far too fast through a very narrow and tight village road with blind 45 degree bends at each end.
Oh goody, I can now do 30 through your village.Drivers are simply travelling far too fast through a very narrow and tight village road with blind 45 degree bends at each end.
Haven't been able to get over 20 up till now!
Edited by Phatboy317 on Friday 31st October 23:59
WD39 said:
Our village is soon to have a legal 30mph speed limit. We fought long ang hard to achieve this. Why ?
Drivers are simply travelling far too fast through a very narrow and tight village road with blind 45 degree bends at each end.
My village recently got a 30mph limit too. Long straight wide road with excellent visibility and not a single serious accident in living memory - and not a single minor accident that I heard of in my 5 years living there (all this in spite of the 40mph limit that it had for decades).Drivers are simply travelling far too fast through a very narrow and tight village road with blind 45 degree bends at each end.
That's ok though - my lane, which is basically single track road and only surfaced about half way down - managed to avoid the cuts in the local area and kept its NSL limit.
Edited by Moonhawk on Saturday 1st November 00:11
Guybrush said:
Jon1967x said:
Phatboy317 said:
Jon1967x said:
Seems like a good argument for lower speed limits as inappropriate speed seems a very common cause of KSI without breaking the speed limit.
If the speed limit was 0mph then 100% of accidents would be in excess of the limit. But, by your logic, you would be using that as an argument for still lower limits?And, conversely, if the limit was 300mph then zero accidents would be in excess of the limit so surely, by your logic, you would be arguing for higher limits?
Anywhere you sit along the line between those two extremes, the logic is the wrong way around.
The limit is simply a line drawn in the sand - it has at best a loose connection with whether a speed is inappropriate or not - even on the same road at different times.
A lower speed limit, strictly enforced, may serve to reduce the number of inappropriate speed accidents, however it cannot, even at best, reduce the overall accident figure by more than the original 8% claimed, nor the overall fatalities by more than the original 11% claimed.
Yet, elsewhere, claims are made of huge reductions in accidents and casualties being down to poorly-enforced 20mph limits.
Edited by Phatboy317 on Friday 31st October 06:11
I'm getting very tired of this binary argument where something is either relevant or irrelevant - the world is analogue, full of factors, some we can control or at least influence and some we can't.
If speed limits are meant to be a safety measure then the more accidents that are caused by inappropriate speed but which are not above the speed limit implies it's far to easy to drive at an inappropriate but still legal speed. We'd need further information to further prove that argument - if all those accidents were in heavy fog or on black ice then that would be a potential explanation, although I suspect a lot of these actually relate to NSL roads especially in the countryside where it's hard at times to reach the speed limit let alone exceed it.
If welcome more variable limits, both higher and lower than current speed limits - the empty motorway where 70 is a joke v the heavy traffic on a dual carriage way on a dark wet night where 70 can be frightening.
jaf01uk said:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you 120 miles of average speed cameras on the A9, a road famous for low average speed and high amount of frustration overtaking accidents!!!
This is quite interesting, and probably worthy of more consideration.It's quite a common trope on Pistonheads, and no one ever actually considers it.
The way in which it is phrased/used is that the people who have the "frustration overtaking" accident are, in some strange way, the victim - they were forced into the unsafe overtake, and the whole thing is blamed on the (lorry/caravan/whatever) which they "had" to get past.
Which is lunacy - if it's unsafe to overtake, wait until it IS safe. None of us have the "right" to go as fast as we possibly can, all the time, and everyone else should expect us to come past come what may.
It strikes to the very root of what is wrong with the driving of a lot of people in the UK (and probably globally), this whole "must get past" thing, which "forces" them into doing so unsafely.
Grow up, man up, learn to exercise some self restraint, and don't potentially kill the innocent in the opposite lane because you can't bring yourself to do 40mph behind a horsebox for another 30 seconds.
Which also circles back to HBGT's misconception - that we have the bare minimum of deaths on our roads due to everyone being quite frankly excellent at driving a car. The vast (well into the 90% range) of accidents are caused by people driving badly - not paying attention, not knowing the basic physics that inform how their car behaves (Phatboy), not looking (HBGT again), or performing a rash, dangerous overtake due to being "frustrated". Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are frustrated, but it doesn't kill anyone, it just sells a lot of kleenex. It's not a valid excuse to trot out after you've caused a prang.
Dammit said:
jaf01uk said:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you 120 miles of average speed cameras on the A9, a road famous for low average speed and high amount of frustration overtaking accidents!!!
stuff jaf01uk said:
Dammit said:
jaf01uk said:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you 120 miles of average speed cameras on the A9, a road famous for low average speed and high amount of frustration overtaking accidents!!!
stuff I know some people hate speed cameras, there's only one possible reason and that is that they don't like being caught breaking speed limits. I don't like getting fines and points myself and it has happened in the past.
Now I just leave home a bit earlier, and enjoy the trip without feeling obliged to press on, make progress or any other the other euphemisms people use.
jaf01uk said:
Point completely missed [snip]
Sorry, what was your point again?It seemed to be a response to Robin Essex's post, which was a remarkable demonstration of unwitting irony.
I'll reproduce it here for you:
"Similar situation near me. 3 accidents in a year on NSL single carriageway road. Call for lower speed limit, so it's now 50mph. Except, ALL the accidents were head on's whilst overtaking. Nothing to do with speed"
I'm going to make an assumption, which is bad practice, but I'll call it out so people can choose to validate it themselves.
Here it comes: the people overtaking unsafely wanted to get past the vehicle "in their way", as they wanted to travel at a higher speed than would be possible if they continued to follow the vehicle in front of them.
Quite how that has "nothing to do with speed" I am unsure - unless, of course, the reason for the overtake was, erm, nope - nothing else springs to mind.
Now we don't know if the vehicle that was the subject of the overtake was travelling at 10mph, 50mph or 1,000mph - it doesn't matter, all that matters is that a) the overtaking driver wanted to go faster and b) they could not exercise any self restraint and wait until it was safe to so do, leading to c) head-on collision with an innocent third party.
Unless, of course, as I pointed out in my response, you view the overtaking driver as the victim, as they were "forced" to overtake, due to that well known killer, frustration.
Dammit said:
jaf01uk said:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you 120 miles of average speed cameras on the A9, a road famous for low average speed and high amount of frustration overtaking accidents!!!
This is quite interesting, and probably worthy of more consideration.It's quite a common trope on Pistonheads, and no one ever actually considers it.
The way in which it is phrased/used is that the people who have the "frustration overtaking" accident are, in some strange way, the victim - they were forced into the unsafe overtake, and the whole thing is blamed on the (lorry/caravan/whatever) which they "had" to get past.
Which is lunacy - if it's unsafe to overtake, wait until it IS safe. None of us have the "right" to go as fast as we possibly can, all the time, and everyone else should expect us to come past come what may.
It strikes to the very root of what is wrong with the driving of a lot of people in the UK (and probably globally), this whole "must get past" thing, which "forces" them into doing so unsafely.
Grow up, man up, learn to exercise some self restraint, and don't potentially kill the innocent in the opposite lane because you can't bring yourself to do 40mph behind a horsebox for another 30 seconds.
Which also circles back to HBGT's misconception - that we have the bare minimum of deaths on our roads due to everyone being quite frankly excellent at driving a car. The vast (well into the 90% range) of accidents are caused by people driving badly - not paying attention, not knowing the basic physics that inform how their car behaves (Phatboy), not looking (HBGT again), or performing a rash, dangerous overtake due to being "frustrated". Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are frustrated, but it doesn't kill anyone, it just sells a lot of kleenex. It's not a valid excuse to trot out after you've caused a prang.
Dammit said:
Which also circles back to HBGT's misconception - that we have the bare minimum of deaths on our roads due to everyone being quite frankly excellent at driving a car. The vast (well into the 90% range) of accidents are caused by people driving badly - not paying attention, not knowing the basic physics that inform how their car behaves (Phatboy), not looking (HBGT again), or performing a rash, dangerous overtake due to being "frustrated". Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are frustrated, but it doesn't kill anyone, it just sells a lot of kleenex. It's not a valid excuse to trot out after you've caused a prang.
The vast majority of drivers are competent. Given how many vehicle journeys occur on the roads every day, the number of vehicles, the population density etc - i'd say the fact that our road safety record is as good as it is, is quite frankly remarkable.Take Denmark as an example. They do have a slightly better casualty rate than we do (3.0 vs 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants) - but Denmark only has half the population density of the UK, much lower road density and a much lower incidence of car ownership.
Of the accidents that do occur - the majority will of course be caused by human error - as most accidents involving complex tasks are, whether in a car or not (it's kinda implied in the definition).
The DFt statistics are quite interesting (pages 189/190)
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
For example - did you know that poor road condition or layout is responsible for pretty much as many fatal accidents as speeding is - and is responsible for twice as many accidents overall. Spending money on repairing potholes, better road markings etc could have just as much impact on the fatality rate as preventing speeding - yet for years our roads have been massively underfunded from a repair/maintenance perspective - whilst speed limit reductions and speed cameras have proliferated (one even wonders whether they are trying to use the speed limits to mitigate some of the risk posed by the poor and deteriorating condition of the roads - rather than eliminating the risk directly. If they are - that's very short sighted).
Driver error, as expected, accounts for almost 70% of all fatal accidents (not looking properly and loss of control being the primary causes - with around 30% each) - yet when we look at the behavioural aspect, driving aggressively accounts for 7% of fatals and "being in a hurry" 19%. That means that the vast majority of fatal accidents involving driver error occur when the driver is neither driving aggressively nor in a hurry.......just your average Joe/Jane bumbling around oblivious to the world around them - which certainly fits with my experience on the roads.
For accidents involving pedestrians, the actions of the pedestrian themselves is implicated as the major contributory factor in 21% of fatal accidents.
On the positive side - accidents involving vehicle defects account for only 2% of fatalities - I guess that shows how reliable our cars have become and how well our MOT system works.
Jon1967x said:
Having been in Wales for a few days and stuck behind cars driving along at 50 in a 60 limit there is frustration - hence this isn't always about someone wanting to break the speed limit behind someone who's doing it. When you do get a chance to over take safely you take it, but I find it frustrating when they put the speed camera on the only straight bit of road where this happens. If they deem it unsafe to overtake, stick a double white line down the middle otherwise the camera would be better placed on the approach to some of the nasty bends or near the end of the said straight to get the speed back down before the road gets twisty, but not right in the middle in the overtake sweet spot which is actually more dangerous because the last thing you want to do is cause someone to brake in the middle of an overtake because they spot a camera at the last minute.
The problem is - the "speed kills" mantra has become so ingrained - that the 40.01mph brigade now think that they hold the moral high ground when travelling at such a speed even on clear, dry NSL roads with good visibility - they simply don't give a monkeys about the traffic they are holding up behind them.The thing is however - if they displayed such behaviour on a driving test - they would likely fail it under section 20.
https://www.learnerdriving.com/driving-test/markin...
"The examiner is expecting you to - Drive up to the speed limit if road, weather and traffic conditions permit or at a realistic speed if not"
Driving faults recorded
20 Progress
Appropriate speed:
*Crawls along at slow speeds on clear roads.
*Makes no attempt to achieve maximum speeds for the road when safe to do so.
*Reduces speed excessively when the conditions do not merit doing so.
*Makes slow progress through the gears in normal driving.
Moonhawk said:
The vast majority of drivers are competent. Given how many vehicle journeys occur on the roads every day, the number of vehicles, the population density etc - i'd say the fact that our road safety record is as good as it is, is quite frankly remarkable.
Take Denmark as an example. They do have a slightly better casualty rate than we do (3.0 vs 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants) - but Denmark only has half the population density of the UK, much lower road density and a much lower incidence of car ownership.
Of the accidents that do occur - the majority will of course be caused by human error - as most accidents involving complex tasks are, whether in a car or not (it's kinda implied in the definition).
The DFt statistics are quite interesting (pages 189/190)
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
For example - did you know that poor road condition or layout is responsible for pretty much as many fatal accidents as speeding is - and is responsible for twice as many accidents overall. Spending money on repairing potholes, better road markings etc could have just as much impact on the fatality rate as preventing speeding - yet for years our roads have been massively underfunded from a repair/maintenance perspective - whilst speed limit reductions and speed cameras have proliferated (one even wonders whether they are trying to use the speed limits to mitigate some of the risk posed by the poor and deteriorating condition of the roads - rather than eliminating the risk directly. If they are - that's very short sighted).
Driver error, as expected, accounts for almost 70% of all fatal accidents (not looking properly and loss of control being the primary causes - with around 30% each) - yet when we look at the behavioural aspect, driving aggressively accounts for 7% of fatals and "being in a hurry" 19%. That means that the vast majority of fatal accidents involving driver error occur when the driver is neither driving aggressively nor in a hurry.......just your average Joe/Jane bumbling around oblivious to the world around them - which certainly fits with my experience on the roads.
For accidents involving pedestrians, the actions of the pedestrian themselves is implicated as the major contributory factor in 21% of fatal accidents.
On the positive side - accidents involving vehicle defects account for only 2% of fatalities - I guess that shows how reliable our cars have become and how well our MOT system works.
So based on the figures you've presented we could reduce the number of fatalities by 70% if people simply paid a bit more attention to what they are doing?Take Denmark as an example. They do have a slightly better casualty rate than we do (3.0 vs 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants) - but Denmark only has half the population density of the UK, much lower road density and a much lower incidence of car ownership.
Of the accidents that do occur - the majority will of course be caused by human error - as most accidents involving complex tasks are, whether in a car or not (it's kinda implied in the definition).
The DFt statistics are quite interesting (pages 189/190)
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
For example - did you know that poor road condition or layout is responsible for pretty much as many fatal accidents as speeding is - and is responsible for twice as many accidents overall. Spending money on repairing potholes, better road markings etc could have just as much impact on the fatality rate as preventing speeding - yet for years our roads have been massively underfunded from a repair/maintenance perspective - whilst speed limit reductions and speed cameras have proliferated (one even wonders whether they are trying to use the speed limits to mitigate some of the risk posed by the poor and deteriorating condition of the roads - rather than eliminating the risk directly. If they are - that's very short sighted).
Driver error, as expected, accounts for almost 70% of all fatal accidents (not looking properly and loss of control being the primary causes - with around 30% each) - yet when we look at the behavioural aspect, driving aggressively accounts for 7% of fatals and "being in a hurry" 19%. That means that the vast majority of fatal accidents involving driver error occur when the driver is neither driving aggressively nor in a hurry.......just your average Joe/Jane bumbling around oblivious to the world around them - which certainly fits with my experience on the roads.
For accidents involving pedestrians, the actions of the pedestrian themselves is implicated as the major contributory factor in 21% of fatal accidents.
On the positive side - accidents involving vehicle defects account for only 2% of fatalities - I guess that shows how reliable our cars have become and how well our MOT system works.
That sounds about right (based purely on anecdotal observation, I grant you).
Moonhawk said:
(one even wonders whether they are trying to use the speed limits to mitigate some of the risk posed by the poor and deteriorating condition of the roads - rather than eliminating the risk directly. If they are - that's very short sighted).
Or perhaps they see the bad condition of the roads as a good thing, because it slows people down.This seems to be their reasoning, considering the proliferation of other measures being, and having been, implemented, such as road narrowing, reducing lines of sight, reducing the radius of corners, pinch points, reducing or eliminating safe overtaking opportunities, and others.
All of which increase danger, in order to slow people down, in order to make the roads safer!
Dammit said:
So based on the figures you've presented we could reduce the number of fatalities by 70% if people simply paid a bit more attention to what they are doing?
That sounds about right (based purely on anecdotal observation, I grant you).
It could be lose to that especially when you factor in pedestrian errors too - however we have to remember that many accidents have multiple contributory elements to them (hence why if you add them all up - the overall comes to much higher than 100%).That sounds about right (based purely on anecdotal observation, I grant you).
It would certainly make a huge difference - and hence the reason more emphasis should be given to combatting it (education etc)
Phatboy317 said:
All of which increase danger, in order to slow people down, in order to make the roads safer!
Seems a rather contrived way to go about it - and in doing so they may be mitigating many of the benefits that could have been realised by simply fixing the root cause directly.Moonhawk said:
Seems a rather contrived way to go about it - and in doing so they may be mitigating many of the benefits that could have been realised by simply fixing the root cause directly.
Indeed, but they seem to be wedded to the notion that most of the danger comes from speed itselfGassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff