driving slow : your views ?

matttye

brat wrote: »

That's the value of awareness and anticipation at all times. It's not about right or wrong, it's about self preservation. I would not be prosecuted for a collision caused when legally overtaking someone on a motorway who pulled out into my path making the collision unavoidable. But I like to think I drive in such a way that such an event would never happen - and it doesn't significantly impede progress.
Road safety is best served when we each maximise our own personal safety buffer. That way, we don't put ourselves in situations where we are likely to create risk for ourselves and others, and if we or someone else inadvertently or inconsiderately makes a manoeuvre that creates a risk, the other party's personal safety buffer should prevent us all from becoming a victim.

Just driving on a road puts your life at risk. It's one of the most dangerous things we do.

No matter how safe a driver you are, you couldn't stop someone from careering into you from the other carriageway or running straight into the back of you. Likewise, when overtaking, if a vehicle turns into you, there's nothing you can do about that. You presumably do overtake vehicles sometimes.. well, any of those vehicles you're overtaking could turn into you. This is no different than what I do!

It is inattention that is the problem here.

redmike123

I think that we should all recognise that we each have different opinions, and we each drive differently. What may be perfectly safe to one person could be viewed as dangerous by another. I tend to drive as though everyone else is is an idiot and make allowances accordingly.

bartelbe

redmike123 wrote: »

I think that we should all recognise that we each have different opinions, and we each drive differently. What may be perfectly safe to one person could be viewed as dangerous by another. I tend to drive as though everyone else is is an idiot and make allowances accordingly.

Well exactly, at the end of the day these are public roads with a mix of different vehicles and drivers. All with different capabilities and pockets. Ever heard of hyper mileing?

As long as a drivers speed isn't stupidly slow, you just have to put up with it.

Strider590

How about in a slight twist to driving slowly.......

People driving at the speed limit UNTIL they get to a SLIGHT bend in the road, where they then slow down to less than 20mph, before accelerating off to the limit again. Got to be the most wasteful (fuel) way to drive a car.

Driving behind them you initially think " OMG, I can't believe its someone I dont need to overtake!!" Followed by "oh !!!!!!" at the first bend in the road.

brat

matttye wrote: »

Just driving on a road puts your life at risk. It's one of the most dangerous things we do.

No matter how safe a driver you are, you couldn't stop someone from careering into you from the other carriageway or running straight into the back of you. Likewise, when overtaking, if a vehicle turns into you, there's nothing you can do about that.

There is a lot you can do to avoid collisions, using awareness, concentration and anticipation, and changing your mindset to accept that there are times when we all either inadvertently or inconsiderately get it wrong.
Of course there are some collisions you can't avoid - but we can, and we are creating safer roads. In fact our roads are about the safest in the world, and the motorways are the safest roads in the country with approximately one fatality for every 700 million motorway miles driven. The average motorist would have to do the equivalent of 1200 years of constant motorway driving before dying from a motorway accident. So it's certainly not one of the most dangerous things we do. Driving 60,000 miles on the motorway carries the same risk of death as childbirth.

matttye wrote: »

You presumably do overtake vehicles sometimes.. well, any of those vehicles you're overtaking could turn into you. This is no different than what I do!

I often overtake faster than most. My job requires it. But only when the circumstances dictate.

matttye

brat wrote: »

There is a lot you can do to avoid collisions, using awareness, concentration and anticipation, and changing your mindset to accept that there are times when we all either inadvertently or inconsiderately get it wrong.
Of course there are some collisions you can't avoid - but we can, and we are creating safer roads. In fact our roads are about the safest in the world, and the motorways are the safest roads in the country with approximately one fatality for every 700 million motorway miles driven. The average motorist would have to do the equivalent of 1200 years of constant motorway driving before dying from a motorway accident. So it's certainly not one of the most dangerous things we do. Driving 60,000 miles on the motorway carries the same risk of death as childbirth.


I often overtake faster than most. My job requires it. But only when the circumstances dictate.

Whatever the statistics say, it's quite clear that driving on a road is dangerous. If a car coming the other way hits you, and you're both travelling at a significant speed, the chance of death is very high. THAT is significantly more dangerous than what most people would do in an average day.

Even if it's unlikely that this will happen, it doesn't mean it's not a possibility and that being on the road is any less dangerous.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

matttye wrote: »

I understand what you're saying, but I'm saying that if you try to account for others' stupidity all the time, you'll never get anywhere.

I think that like is the biggest thinking mistake that drivers make - that slowing down will massively increase journey times.

The reality is that if you cruise along the motorway at 70, you more or less cruise along at 70. The faster you go, the more you catch up with the person in front and so on. By the time you are trying for your 90mph cruise, essentially you are a frustrated mess, stuck up some slower driver's backside for most of the journey.

Same in town, try driving around at 40, like many do, and what happens is that you actually drive at 40 for a little bit until you catch the car in front - mentally you are driving at 40, but actually you are rarely driving any quicker.

Try driving with a speed limiter on to resist the urge to keep up with the car in front, no trying to keep up with the flow but driving to the limit where it is appropriate, at times a large gap appears and the people behind start to get twitchy, but you soon catch up at the next junction, and the biggest trick is by approaching junctions more slowly, giving yourself time to assess what is going on, more often than not you will not stop. Come up to junctions too quickly you end up stopping, looking then going.

The other side to driving at 30 in a 30 is that eventually cars around you relax and fall into step. I think some drivers are glad of the excuse to stick to the limit - so many of us have competitive heads on, fixated about what other drivers, who you don't know and will never see again, think about us.

matttye

IanMSpencer wrote: »

I think that like is the biggest thinking mistake that drivers make - that slowing down will massively increase journey times.

The reality is that if you cruise along the motorway at 70, you more or less cruise along at 70. The faster you go, the more you catch up with the person in front and so on. By the time you are trying for your 90mph cruise, essentially you are a frustrated mess, stuck up some slower driver's backside for most of the journey.

Same in town, try driving around at 40, like many do, and what happens is that you actually drive at 40 for a little bit until you catch the car in front - mentally you are driving at 40, but actually you are rarely driving any quicker.

Try driving with a speed limiter on to resist the urge to keep up with the car in front, no trying to keep up with the flow but driving to the limit where it is appropriate, at times a large gap appears and the people behind start to get twitchy, but you soon catch up at the next junction, and the biggest trick is by approaching junctions more slowly, giving yourself time to assess what is going on, more often than not you will not stop. Come up to junctions too quickly you end up stopping, looking then going.

The other side to driving at 30 in a 30 is that eventually cars around you relax and fall into step. I think some drivers are glad of the excuse to stick to the limit - so many of us have competitive heads on, fixated about what other drivers, who you don't know and will never see again, think about us.

I made sure that I never broke the speed limit for the first few years of driving (other than in moments of inattention), because I knew it would make a massive difference to my insurance (which was already extortionate) if I was caught speeding. This included driving the whole dual carriageway/motorway at 70mph.

I only ever speed on the dual carriageway/motorway, or back roads where I know there are no traffic lights, because that's where it makes the most difference. Speeding in town is pointless because there are too many vehicles around, and you end up having to stop at traffic lights anyway. Not to mention that I do actually think keeping your speed down in built up areas IS very important. The same cannot be said about back roads, dual carriageways or motorways. You can actually cut time off your journey.

Although, admittedly, this is hardly a precise measure; it takes me about 2 hours 15 minutes to travel 120 miles (mostly A1 and A1(M)), whereas it used to take me around 2 hours 30 minutes. So it does make a difference.

Nearly_Old

brat wrote: »

Our area, and most I'm familiar with, used Gatsos in roadworks from about 1995/6, well before the use, or even the consideration of the use of specs, so I'm not sure that I buy the theory that Gatsos were only designed as a temporary measure due to their ineffectiveness. The argument doesn't hold up anyway, because the same ineffectiveness would translate directly to Gatso use on non-motorway roads, and these have never been talked about as a temporary measure.

The point is, however, that TRL595 recognised no safety improvement in specs over active speed enforcement, and the gatso, the weapon of choice of most speed camera partnerships, was less safe than no speed enforcement.


Hmmm... I'll let you get away with that as a humorous anecdote, no more.

In trying to keep posts short sometimes the real points don't come through. My comments refer solely to the use and enforcement of mandatory limits during highway works.

We had actually been fighting for mandatory limits with enforcement from the late 80s and from 1990 it was evident that a GATSO camera would be type approved in the not too distant future, it did happen in 1992. So in 1991 when design for the 1992 schemes commenced we requested using a mandatory limit and GATSO cameras, they could easily have been deleted from the contract if the type approval had been delayed. This request was refused on the basis that the type approval may only be for permanent installations and not temporary ones.

We did finally get to use GATSOs (IIRC in 1993 or 94) but had to apply on a scheme by scheme basis but by 1995/96 they had become the norm on HA schemes. Subsequent discussions revealed that some of the initial reluctance to use a mandatory limit had been the cost. If there is a mandatory 50 then the road layout has to conform to that design speed and the central reserve crossovers for 2 lanes now had to be around 250m long. So for a scheme >4km with two overlapping contraflows required 4 crossovers so getting on for £1M in cost.

Development of ANPR systems from the first rather crude systems of the late 70s was continuing both in the UK and overseas and by 1990 automatic ANPR speed systems for highways were being talked about. In fact the first systems were developed and type approved in the 90s with the first systems in use in 1999. Given the limited value of GATSOs then yes by 95/96 we were thinking that, hopefully they would soon be replaced by an ANPR system that would be more benficial on long schemes.

I don't have any comments on TRL595 as I was only involved in maintaining/improving existing highways although that did include numerous major schemes (>£300M) when converting an existing road to a motorway. However the recovery vehicle logs are a source of actual data as they attend every incident that distrupts traffic including damage only accidents. Unfortunately they have probably been long since destroyed so no actual figures. However the workforce did feel safer when SPECS was installed.

The husband/wife numbers were from the people dealing with the NIPs and FPNs. Although the RE on one site did once say that someone who had received a NIP had turned up at the site office demanding to see CCTV, etc.

brat

IanMSpencer wrote: »

I think that like is the biggest thinking mistake that drivers make - that slowing down will massively increase journey times.

The reality is that if you cruise along the motorway at 70, you more or less cruise along at 70. The faster you go, the more you catch up with the person in front and so on. By the time you are trying for your 90mph cruise, essentially you are a frustrated mess, stuck up some slower driver's backside for most of the journey.

A big mistake is believing that the primary reason people speed is to shorten journey times. Most people exceed speed limits because they tend automatically to want to drive at a speed they feel most comfortable at.