Speed awareness course inbound

[revvingit]

Strudul said:

I guess it depends what the writing / gorilla is supposed to represent.

If you're puling out of a junction looking for cars and the gorilla is a bike, then fair enough, but considering a bike is something you should be looking for, I don't see how that applies.

Probably taking it too literally, but spotting the gorilla is more like noticing an aeroplane flying overhead. Not relevant to the situation and you should be concentrating on people / cars etc, not getting distracted by other stuff.

Just seems like a silly exercise designed to trick you but doesn't really prove anything.

I always took it as being a crash amongst a sea of cars in front of you. If you're focusing on all the other cars or counting out distance between you and the next car and solely focusing on that you could at high speeds miss the crash - i.e the gorilla. It's about how if you start focusing on one thing solely you could completely miss something else, to reinforce the need to scan around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

[The Rookie]

fatboy b said:

Nothing said I already knew.

Either the course was amazingly good or you've missed a negative out......

[ghe13rte]

The Rookie said:

fatboy b said:

Nothing said I already knew.

Either the course was amazingly good or you've missed a negative out......

Well fatboy May have been like 95% of the other attendees who indeed knew a lot less than they thought they did so like them he learned a great deal.

[Dr Jekyll]

fatboy b said:

Course done. Nothing said I already knew. The two presenters were completely pro-brake and had no common sense between them. One was an ex-cop, and would have been more at home running a hotel in Torquey from the 70s tbh. When I tried to partake with an answer to a question, I was shot down in flames in front of everyone for giving (so they thought) an incorrect answer. I kept quiet after that and started clock watching.

What I took away:
3/4 of the room had little idea on the rules of the road. So I guess I will drive with that in mind now. 3/18 didn’t know the national speed limit for car on a single carriageway. 17/18 didn’t realise two lanes in each direction separated by a white line wasn’t dual carriageway.

Has anyone tried out-Braking an awareness course? If you argued with them from the opposite side insisting that anyone involved in a crash must have been exceeding the limit and asking why all single carriageways aren't 20MPH with overtaking banned. Would they smell a rat or carry on agreeing with you? It would be fun to see just how extreme you could get.

[ghe13rte]

Dr Jekyll said:

Has anyone tried out-Braking an awareness course? If you argued with them from the opposite side insisting that anyone involved in a crash must have been exceeding the limit and asking why all single carriageways aren't 20MPH with overtaking banned. Would they smell a rat or carry on agreeing with you? It would be fun to see just how extreme you could get.

I can tell you exactly what would happen. In a very short time space, about 2 minutes, you would be informed that the course wasn’t suitable for you and your case would be returned to the police for prosecution. Whether they give you a FPN or go straight to court is for them to decide, I know where I would send you.

[anonymous-user]

ghe13rte said:

I can tell you exactly what would happen. In a very short time space, about 2 minutes, you would be informed that the course wasn’t suitable for you and your case would be returned to the police for prosecution. Whether they give you a FPN or go straight to court is for them to decide, I know where I would send you.

Yup - one woman and one man got very argumentative and only shut up when threatened with the above.

Things I learnt:

1) Was genuinely amazed the difference in impact forces stepping up from 30 to 35mph. It's slowed me down in built up areas.
2) I'd say about 50%+ of my group thought dual carriageway NSL was 60. Still find that appaling.
3) There was no compromise on the "speed kills" ethos. At all. No point discussing. Just shut up and hope to leave on time :-)

[kiethton]

RogerDodger said:

1) Was genuinely amazed the difference in impact forces stepping up from 30 to 35mph. It's slowed me down in built up areas.

Never done a course but had this graphically demonstrated on Thursday.

Car: BMW M135i
Location: Brunters

Set out a box of cones, denoting the start point of an emergency stop. Prior to attempting to stop from each speed you'd mark where you think you'd actually end up stopping.

30mph equated to about 9 yards
60mph was significantly further, ~35 yards
100mph, 120mph and then 140mph.....the latter was an eye opener!

The lower speeds did however make a complete mockery of the highway code guidance however

[ghe13rte]

kiethton said:

Never done a course but had this graphically demonstrated on Thursday.

Car: BMW M135i
Location: Brunters

Set out a box of cones, denoting the start point of an emergency stop. Prior to attempting to stop from each speed you'd mark where you think you'd actually end up stopping.

30mph equated to about 9 yards
60mph was significantly further, ~35 yards
100mph, 120mph and then 140mph.....the latter was an eye opener!

The lower speeds did however make a complete mockery of the highway code guidance however

The Highway Code stopping distances are not emergency stopping distances...are they?

Your test effectively removes the thinking distance as you know where you are going to start your braking.

At 140mph, close to 63m/s you will do between 60-100m before you even thought about needing to stop in an emergency, let alone stopping in a typical situation.

I figure it may be a good thing that your elementary and ill-prepared test is not being used to review the Highway Code. There is a mockery afoot but it is not a threat to the Highway Code by you and your test IMHO.

[kiethton]

ghe13rte said:

The Highway Code stopping distances are not emergency stopping distances...are they?

Your test effectively removes the thinking distance as you know where you are going to start your braking.

At 140mph, close to 63m/s you will do between 60-100m before you even thought about needing to stop in an emergency, let alone stopping in a typical situation.

I figure it may be a good thing that your elementary and ill-prepared test is not being used to review the Highway Code. There is a mockery afoot but it is not a threat to the Highway Code by you and your test IMHO.

I appreciate that, although even allowing "just" the braking distance the distances achieved are significantly below those quoted.

[Strudul]

ghe13rte said:

The problem with the highway code is that it's so dependant on the car being driven but it's stated as a generic fact, especially on SACs.

Yes, the thinking time is the same regardless (or probably worse), but as we've seen from tests such as the ones done on Top Gear in Oz, a 2 tonne M6 will stop in 22m from 60mph, not 38m like the highway code states.

This means 2 things for cars with better brakes, they:
1) can go safely go faster as they can still stop in time
2) should go faster as this will increase stopping distance, reducing the chance of someone with worse brakes going into the back of them

[spikeyhead]

I've got a course to go on next month.

Should I take the Atom?

[fatboy b]

Strudul said:

The problem with the highway code is that it's so dependant on the car being driven but it's stated as a generic fact, especially on SACs.

Yes, the thinking time is the same regardless (or probably worse), but as we've seen from tests such as the ones done on Top Gear in Oz, a 2 tonne M6 will stop in 22m from 60mph, not 38m like the highway code states.

This means 2 things for cars with better brakes, they:
1) can go safely go faster as they can still stop in time
2) should go faster as this will increase stopping distance, reducing the chance of someone with worse brakes going into the back of them

I was going to point out that. And the fact that there are also buses and lorries occupying our 30 limits that will take way longer to stop than a car at 30. So, given the worst case - a 40 tonner, maybe we should drive at the speed that allows us to stop in the same distance it does at 30.

[Sheepshanks]

kiethton said:

140mph.....the latter was an eye opener!

I had to stop hard from 140mph once and wished I'd started braking a bit earlier!

Edited by Sheepshanks on Tuesday 13th February 07:47

[pingu393]

My van needed some new discs and pads for its MOT. £25 from the local motor factors. I did a hard stop from 70mph for traffic lights. I started braking about 80 yards from the junction. I slowed from 70 - 40 as expected, then brake fade meant that I sailed through the junction by about three van lengths. Luckily, it was the middle of the night and I went down the vacant slip road to my left, rather than crossing the main part of the junction.

EBC Ultimax are now fitted.

[BrewsterBear]

spikeyhead said:

I've got a course to go on next month.

Should I take the Atom?

For the last SAC I attended, roughly 8 years ago I'd say, I turned up in my (then) 996 C4S. As I walked from the car park to the front door there was a chap in a pastel short sleeved shirt with a grey moustache stood in the doorway slurping a cup of tea. I correctly assumed he was the ex-trafpol instructor. Without any introduction he nodded at my parked up Porsche and asked "That your car is it?" to which I replied "Yes, does that make me exempt?"

Apparently it did not.