Standard of UK driving over the last 10 years
Discussion
Streetcop said:
A recent IAM pole has revealed, in the opinion of the people who voted;
It has got better: 8.6%
It has got worse: 81.6%
It has stayed the same: 9.8%
Street
I was about to say those figures are up the pole, but as I don't have any better ones I'd better keep quiet.
Best wishes all,
Dave (smartass again)
Streetcop said:
A recent IAM pole has revealed.....
Is that the one flying the flag outside the IAM's plush HQ in Cheesywick
Drove (safely) past it today, somebody remind me not to send any more donations. As to driving, things will only get better if each individual takes responsibility and improves their own standard before complaining about the rest. Pauses to duck while flying pig passes overhead More trained traffic plod and less talivans and greed cameras would be helpful in another way. Edited to add applause and admiration for the no-cameras decision of CC DC 
What a one-woman police force, who'd misbehave in N Yorks eh, crikey lad not me fella, blimey
>> Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 19th October 21:32
It's all very well having a poll, but doesnt that just give the public an opportunity to air their ignorance? I have been driving for over twenty years, and the overriding impression I get of motoring now compared to years ago is the sheer number of cars and volume of traffic that has increased. I expect that if someone did the math, number of deaths/accidents for number of vehicles on amount of available road etc, It wouldnt surprise me if the conclusion was that standards are actually better. If the number of cars/drivers doubles, but the level of accidents/deaths remains relatively stable, how can 80% of people conclude that things have got worse?
Balmoral Green said:
If the number of cars/drivers doubles, but the level of accidents/deaths remains relatively stable, how can 80% of people conclude that things have got worse?
Just because people are not driving as they would on a driving test, does not mean that there will be more accidents.
It just means that we are all more alert than we used to be.
We know there is always some idiot that will break every rule because they know they will get away with it.
Of course the standard of driving has dropped.
1) Fatalities aren't dropping despite big gains in vehicle crash safety. Actually they're going up.
2) If we give out rubbish road safety information, of course drivers will believe it and pay greater attention to the wrong things.
3) If we let traffic police numbers decline, then who's out there maintaining standards?
4) Half the drivers spend half their time looking out for cameras instead of at the road ahead (OK, not literally).
Why doesn't the government understand this basic stuff?
1) Fatalities aren't dropping despite big gains in vehicle crash safety. Actually they're going up.
2) If we give out rubbish road safety information, of course drivers will believe it and pay greater attention to the wrong things.
3) If we let traffic police numbers decline, then who's out there maintaining standards?
4) Half the drivers spend half their time looking out for cameras instead of at the road ahead (OK, not literally).
Why doesn't the government understand this basic stuff?
Balmoral Green said:
It's all very well having a poll, but doesnt that just give the public an opportunity to air their ignorance? I have been driving for over twenty years, and the overriding impression I get of motoring now compared to years ago is the sheer number of cars and volume of traffic that has increased. I expect that if someone did the math, number of deaths/accidents for number of vehicles on amount of available road etc, It wouldnt surprise me if the conclusion was that standards are actually better. If the number of cars/drivers doubles, but the level of accidents/deaths remains relatively stable, how can 80% of people conclude that things have got worse?
I should coco.
See these pages:
www.safespeed.org.uk/fatality.html
www.safespeed.org.uk/effects.html
www.safespeed.org.uk/smeed.html
www.safespeed.org.uk/factors.html
I've got plenty more if you need more. Basically the gains in engineering safety far outweigh the growth in traffic. This alone should be leading to fatalities dropping by around 3% pa.
And don't trust the serious injury stats. They are going stupid:
www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html
I can only speak of the area for which I live and travel.
The main A roads and motorways around Mid Glamorgan are generally very good. However, once leaving these roads and entering surburban areas the roads become a nightmare.
Around the South Wales Valleys there is an abundance of old housing due to the mineworkings etc. These properties were not built with a motor vehicle in mind. Over the years these same houses aquired a car then two going on the theory that most houses in this day of age as two vehicles.
Where do the owners of these houses park their cars? Yes outside on the road. Most of these roads are a throughfare for other motorists getting to their home. Not to long ago the general motorist used the unwritten rule of give way to others coming up an hill etc etc. It as generally been getting worse in this area with most motorists believing there is enough room for two vehicles if we squeeze tightly, you only need to look at the broken wing mirrors to realise it does not work.
Blame therefore, can be laid on the local authorities for not addressing these issues in previous years and the planning department for allowing new houseing to be built without upgrading the aaccess roads to cope.
Lets face it parking causes a considerable amount of accidents on our roads.
Apologies for the gripe its that the problem is swept under the carpet.
The main A roads and motorways around Mid Glamorgan are generally very good. However, once leaving these roads and entering surburban areas the roads become a nightmare.
Around the South Wales Valleys there is an abundance of old housing due to the mineworkings etc. These properties were not built with a motor vehicle in mind. Over the years these same houses aquired a car then two going on the theory that most houses in this day of age as two vehicles.
Where do the owners of these houses park their cars? Yes outside on the road. Most of these roads are a throughfare for other motorists getting to their home. Not to long ago the general motorist used the unwritten rule of give way to others coming up an hill etc etc. It as generally been getting worse in this area with most motorists believing there is enough room for two vehicles if we squeeze tightly, you only need to look at the broken wing mirrors to realise it does not work.
Blame therefore, can be laid on the local authorities for not addressing these issues in previous years and the planning department for allowing new houseing to be built without upgrading the aaccess roads to cope.
Lets face it parking causes a considerable amount of accidents on our roads.
Apologies for the gripe its that the problem is swept under the carpet.
While a lowering of driving standards will inevitably lead to an increase in accident figures I think we should be looking at the daily standards encountered as a starting point.
It used to be called manners and common decency when I were a lad.
You know the things. Like not using your indicators, lane hogging, using the phone, parking on a blind bend/junction/across someones drive, tailgating,pulling into a gap thats too small, not backing off to let people filter into lanes at road works, pulling out without proper observation, etc., etc., etc.
All those little things that good old, almost extinct, Traffic Police used to slap your wrists for.
It appears it is OK to drive like a twat, as long as it is within the speed limit, safe in the knowledge that nobody is there to do anything about it.
It used to be called manners and common decency when I were a lad.
You know the things. Like not using your indicators, lane hogging, using the phone, parking on a blind bend/junction/across someones drive, tailgating,pulling into a gap thats too small, not backing off to let people filter into lanes at road works, pulling out without proper observation, etc., etc., etc.
All those little things that good old, almost extinct, Traffic Police used to slap your wrists for.
It appears it is OK to drive like a twat, as long as it is within the speed limit, safe in the knowledge that nobody is there to do anything about it.
The post below is copied from a post I made on the CSCP forum, responding to their administrator claiming our polls showing nobody like or wanted SCPs were skewed because of the posters. The final section is totally relevant on this topic:
johnyforeigner on CSCP Forum said:
You mention profile of the active posters as a reason for the skewed opinion. If you remember the 'What do you do?' topic we all detailed our credentials.
Yes we are biased - towards safety. We are generally all very experienced drivers who have above average qualifications, yet we are all against cameras.
Do you not think this means something more than the fact that we do not like cameras in case we get personally zapped? For my case the chances of getting penalty points are realistically zero, I am in the UK several times per year, drive a foreign registered vehicle on most of those occasions so tracing me would be difficult. This means I have no 'fear' of the cameras. So why am I so verbose?
It is because I believe that cameras are a backwards step in road safety and do not provide a positive contribution at all, rather the reverse.
A camera can only monitor one thing, exceeding the speed limit, which in itself is the cause of only around 5% of accidents. As a result of this policy there has been a drop in the number of traffic police and we see an increase in other motoring offences and still an increase in deaths.
I live in Hungary which has one of the worst records for road safety. I firmly believe this is a result of the lack of police, this view was recently backed up by a retired police officer who travels Europe advising on road safety policy. Hungary has a much tougher driving test than the UK yet a worse accident rate. I have personally witnessed incidents of dangerous driving in the vicinity of a police unit where it has been totally ignored. Strangely road rage is much less here, everybody accepts aggressive driving as the norm and allows for it. On many occasions this aggresive driving leads to dangerous driving and ultimately collisions.
We (UK and Hungary) need traffic police not robots to ensure proper driving standards are reached.
ca092003 said:
Safespeed
Do you have any figures showing the accident/mile ratio for police drivers before and after the change from old style "class one" to "advanced"?
No, but I have a verbal report from a met police traffic bod that met police accident miles per accident followed this approximate pattern:
1935, 7,000
1950 50,000
1990 110,000
2001 12,000
I'd be most interested in figures from any Police force, verification for these figure, and especially Class 1 / advanced figures.
An HPC chap claims that they are running at 500,000 miles per accident. (somewhere around class 1 standard, but without scrotes and emergencies).
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