RE: Speeding is Rife
Discussion
The problem in my opinion is the driving test standards and educating drivers. In the US they have "drivers ed" at high school, an excellent idea so why don't we have the same at sixth forms or colleges across Britain. The driving test in Britain is bobbins too!, it doesn't teach you about car control, in fact the examiners or the instructors don't tell you why a car will slide, over/under steer which is so important. These are things that the new driver (me included) then went out to discover for myself, obviously dangerous on the public roads. I also think that the driving test puts too much focus on silly things like the manouveres(?) which are rarely used, when did anyone ever do a turn in the road and look both ways four times during the turn!?!
New drivers should be taught car control first.
pablo
The government should remember that speed limits, like gun controls, are a restriction that is placed on everyone in an attempt to control a few pillocks. It is a blunt tool that should be used out of necessity, not by choice. It isn't the enforcement of some basic moral code. As per usual, Blair and Co. could do with a dose of humility. They are our elected public servants, and nothing more.
A civilised society bases itself on the responsibilities that citizens owe each other. One of these is clearly driving sensibly. People who drive dangerously aren't living up to their responsibilities and need to have their behaviour curbed, and that should be the aim of the law and its enforcement, not the strictest adherence to some arbitrary set of rules.
But we live in pea-brained times. The government is fixated with setting itself crass numerical targets in order to "demonstrate" its performance. Health service not performing? Set yourself a waiting list target. Kids can't read? Make five year olds sit exams.
The immediate consequence is that managers focus on the target and not the quality of the service they’re supposed to be providing. Kid's don't get taught to read, they get taught to pass the test. Doctor's don't treat more patients, they stop them being put on the waiting list.
And the same happens for motoring. Safety is not the focus, adherence to an artificial speed limit is. Pathetic
Indeed. And as in so much in life, it is the irresponsible behaviour of the few that ruins it for us all.
And the worst thing is that whatever you do to try and address this, you end up penalising the many and barely affecting the few.
Educating the irresponsible is the answer, of course, but entirely unfeasible as one of the hallmarks of irresponsibility is not being able to recognise it in oneself. 
Education is the key but not impossible. As an X-teacher I used to teach my students in "tutor time" about the highway code and good and bad driving. They enjoyed it, and I'm sure it will help when they learn to drive. One of my favourite methods (and you should try this some time) was to get the students to guess the stopping distance by walking it. We also used slides of roads/traffic and played "guess the hazzards" to increase observation skills.
It has also been shown that educating offenders about their actions is far better than a points and fine system.
Clearly insurers believe education is also the key as insurance premiums are lower with people who have taken the adt.
TV campaigns can work. I think drink driving is a good example. It has become socially unacceptable, and that represents a general change of attitude. I'd imagine that motorway driving could be improved by a TV campaign as most people's bad habits(e.g. sitting in the middle lane, crawling past slower traffic, tail gating, not indicating) is down to ignorance/laziness rather than the urge to piss everyone else off. If the general standard gets raised, then the plonkers who are intentionally driving badly will stand out from the crowd more clearly and can therefore be dealt with more easily.
My 1600cc (96 Civic VTI) is good for 130mph+ and sub 8 sec 0-60 at around 160bhp so maybe less than 1200cc would be the answer.
Edited by dsa on Tuesday 4th September 13:27 
Type of brakes (i.e Metro Brakes or Drilled Disks ), Grip on road (+type of surface - potholed not good) , Tread on Tyre, reaction time of driver... All sorts of things need to be taken into effect for stopping distances..
But unfortunately Speed is the easiest to target....
It is a shame people don`t seem to think ahead when driving and slow down when it is req`d.
You must have an arrestor hook on your car! On normal road tyres in good conditions you can expect to get about 1G braking. (In ideal conditions with hot tyres on a race track you might get up to 1.2G. I've averaged as much as 1.1G from 100 to standstill but you can't expect to pull that on cold tyres in the high street.) At 1G with 9 feet to stop in, you could stop from about 17 mph. The stopping distance from 30 mph is about 28 ft. The stopping distance from 35 mph is about 39 ft. This is based on simple physics assuming good conditions, zero reaction time, no locked wheels.
The difference between 30 mph and 35 mph is about eleven or twelve feet, and I think this was roughly what they said in the advert.
Where the advert misses the point IMO is that the reaction time makes *far* more difference than the speed, in these conditions. Half a second delay adds about twenty feet to the stopping distance, that is the blink of an eye. If the driver was paying attention and covered the brakes when the child started walking towards the road they could have reacted half a second sooner and stopped twenty feet earlier. Isn't this a more important point? And I have to wonder why the back wheels were still going round when the fronts were locked up during a panic stop.
I pay particular attention to my speed in built up areas and this usually means staying below the speed limit, but IMO paying attention to approaching hazards makes far more difference to safety than watching the speedo.
Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)
quote:
When a post passed the bumper of the car at 35mph, I stomped on the breaks for an emergengy stop. EBA kicks in, I nearly choke on my seatbelt, but the post stopped level with my headrest. I'd estimate that's a maximum of 9 feet. Now, you can quibble over the inches, but 35feet for the ENTIRE stopping distance sounds outrageous to me never mind 5mph!
A half second delay at 25mph DOUBLES your stopping distance with 1g breaking. If you encourage people to keep staring at their speedo (the painting-by-numbers approach to driving) rather than teach them to judge the conditions and drive appropriately, you are actively encouraging them to pay less attention to what is going on around them.
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