war on britains roads

DavidJB

diy wrote:

simianwatching wrote:

This is in addition to 163 which you referenced. 163 has a very clear picture of what is meant by at least as much as a car:

Why is he wearing a fruit bowl on his head.

Team4Luke

it already is socially unacceptable but drivers continue to not give a toss the way they drive, standard has got worse and worse even with the slightly harsher punishments around know, points, fines, cost to go on an awareness course, cameras everywhere, you can even get max points and just say I need my car and be back on the road.
A simple removal of a car removes bad drivers off the road giving us all a rest from them and reducing chances of injury/death, making them, walk, bus, bike, car-share will educate them that it is not acceptable to drive like a moron all the time, it could be a further option, you will be fined as normal and either take points or a week off the road, of course fines and driver awareness courses are all revenue generating.
Drunk driving yes, it was back in the day kind of socially acceptable but a lot more controlled, this was a different generation whom could actually get themselves home with incident, today's are blathered out of their brains however drunk drivers are not even a blip on a cyclist's radar in comparison to poor driving towards us and that later point is the real issue, making drink driving unacceptable has no doubt reduced injury can't disagree too much on that. How many poor drivers are there compared to drunk drivers.

diy

Team4Luke wrote:

A simple removal of a car removes bad drivers off the road giving us all a rest from them and reducing chances of injury/death, making them, walk, bus, bike, car-share will educate them that it is not acceptable to drive like a moron all the time, it could be a further option, you will be fined as normal and either take points or a week off the road, of course fines and driver awareness courses are all revenue generating.

My worry would be that we would get an increase of disposable motoring where drivers go out and pay cash for a sub £1000 car and not bother registering to themselves, insuring, MOTing, and maybe they would think twice about stopping if they hit someone. They certainly wouldn't care how they drove.

We saw a lot of this happen in London when the congestion charge came in.

jgsi

diy wrote:

Team4Luke wrote:

A simple removal of a car removes bad drivers off the road giving us all a rest from them and reducing chances of injury/death, making them, walk, bus, bike, car-share will educate them that it is not acceptable to drive like a moron all the time, it could be a further option, you will be fined as normal and either take points or a week off the road, of course fines and driver awareness courses are all revenue generating.

My worry would be that we would get an increase of disposable motoring where drivers go out and pay cash for a sub £1000 car and not bother registering to themselves, insuring, MOTing, and maybe they would think twice about stopping if they hit someone. They certainly wouldn't care how they drove.

We saw a lot of this happen in London when the congestion charge came in.

Which makes any seller very cautious about getting the v5 paperwork completed correctly for fear of DVLA coming after the event against you for whatever that car and driver got up to...?
Saying I just got rid of said car is probably no defence in that agency's eyes

dynamicbrick

Team4Luke wrote:

it already is socially unacceptable but drivers continue to not give a toss the way they drive, standard has got worse and worse even with the slightly harsher punishments around know, points, fines, cost to go on an awareness course, cameras everywhere, you can even get max points and just say I need my car and be back on the road.
A simple removal of a car removes bad drivers off the road giving us all a rest from them and reducing chances of injury/death, making them, walk, bus, bike, car-share will educate them that it is not acceptable to drive like a moron all the time, it could be a further option, you will be fined as normal and either take points or a week off the road, of course fines and driver awareness courses are all revenue generating.
Drunk driving yes, it was back in the day kind of socially acceptable but a lot more controlled, this was a different generation whom could actually get themselves home with incident, today's are blathered out of their brains however drunk drivers are not even a blip on a cyclist's radar in comparison to poor driving towards us and that later point is the real issue, making drink driving unacceptable has no doubt reduced injury can't disagree too much on that. How many poor drivers are there compared to drunk drivers.

Paying no attention to what you're doing behind the wheel isn't socially unacceptable - otherwise statements I suggested above wouldn't be as commonplace as they are.

But, seeing as we're never going to agree on the matter, let me throw another spanner in your works - who, exactly, is going to police all these moron drivers?

One of my closest pals is a copper in Kent, and I know how many Traffic Police are on at any given moment across the whole county - and on a typical day I could fit all of them in my car. Certainly non traffic police don't have the resources to police normal people going about their business. A camera only catches a moment in time such as speeding or being in a bus lane.

Which also leads to another problem - 'bad driving' is highly subjective, and thus would be very difficult to prosecute.

Briggo

butcher of bakersfield wrote:

diy wrote:

The stats are publicly available why don't you have a read
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... TMHc#gid=0

Drink Driving accounts for 15% of road deaths, breaking the speed limit is way down on the contributory factors.

I may be reading it wrong (it's a little bit confusing), but looking at the contributory factors in that spreadsheet, speeding comes in above drinking...

...
Exceeding speed limit 13
Travelling too fast for conditions 12
Failed to judge other person’s path or speed 12
Poor turn or manoeuvre 11
Pedestrian failed to look properly 11
Impaired by alcohol 9

Either way, that spreadsheet clearly shows speeding as a common contributory factor.

Why did you bold the word speed within the sentence "failed to judge persons path or speed", that's not describing the party was speeding its saying someone failed to judge the speed the other person was travelling at.

Speed isn't the root cause of the problem, it's a contributing factor to a situation which has an impact on the outcome. As per usual investigations by certain parties focuses on what it wants to.

Exceeding speed limit - what does that tell us other than someone was travelling faster than a predetermined limit, nothing about the actual scenario.

Travelling too fast for the conditions - same as above it tells us nothing, it's too vague and subject to someone's opinion, is this opinion correct, what does it take into account?

butcher of bakersfield

Briggo wrote:

butcher of bakersfield wrote:

...
Exceeding speed limit 13
Travelling too fast for conditions 12
Failed to judge other person’s path or speed 12
Poor turn or manoeuvre 11
Pedestrian failed to look properly 11
Impaired by alcohol 9


Either way, that spreadsheet clearly shows speeding as a common contributory factor.

Why did you bold the word speed within the sentence "failed to judge persons path or speed", that's not describing the party was speeding its saying someone failed to judge the speed the other person was travelling at.

I was just being mischievous really.

Speed isn't the root cause of the problem, it's a contributing factor to a situation which has an impact on the outcome. As per usual investigations by certain parties focuses on what it wants to.

Exceeding speed limit - what does that tell us other than someone was travelling faster than a predetermined limit, nothing about the actual scenario.

Travelling too fast for the conditions - same as above it tells us nothing, it's too vague and subject to someone's opinion, is this opinion correct, what does it take into account?

Most of the items listed are vague and say very little about the scenarios in which accidents took place. However, without speed there is no potential for accidents in the first place. The faster we travel, the less control we have, and the greater the consequences of not controlling that force.

Under the above rules of physics, for whatever number of reasons, accidents do often occur with speed being a large contributing factor (as pointed out in the attached document). Speed limits are irrelevant in many ways, because as rightly pointed out previously (at least I think it was), you drive (and ride) at a speed you can maintain safely in the conditions; whether those be traffic conditions, road conditions, weather conditions, etc.

It's all relative though, and one man's risk assessments may not match that of another man. Speed limits are only introduced to bring a general standard to that relativity.

And that's partly why I put the speed related parts of that report in bold. Because it all comes down to speed. You could say speed is a contributing factor in every single road traffic accident since the beginning of time, and you would not be wrong. It just comes down to what is acceptable in our society. Collateral damage and all that.

dynamicbrick

You've been very selective there though, have you not?

Loss of control was 34, failed to look 25, careless/reckless 16 above the figures you've quoted.

Furthermore, the total only comes to 143 on that part of contributing factors - and it's unclear how that fits in with the section above, which itself doesn't neatly fit into the 1900 deaths.

There's also the slight issue that arguably you can't say that exceeding an arbitary limit can be a contributing factor in accident - it should really only ever be excess speed for conditions.

For example, if I did 120mph down my 20mph road and the speed hump launched me into someone's house - is that excess speed, or exceeding the speed limit which has been the major contribution to that accident?

Pigtail

I've driven fast pretty regularly in the past and simply don't buy the whole speed is dangerous thing. It depends on the context. Speed cameras are placed on long straight sections with no history of accidents - what good does that do?

There are a lot of dangers associated with speed - big variations being one of them. The A9 between Perth and Inverness has far too many accidents - with the biggest problem being the mixture of drivers. You have tourists doing 30 and taking in the scenery and locals doing 90 to get to Perth as quickly as possible - all sharing the same tarmac. That's one of the reasons I don't personally like cycling on dual carriageways. I don't think me at 20 makes a good mix with cars at 80.

Briggo

butcher of bakersfield wrote:

I was just being mischievous really.

Sums up your argument.

diy

Since we are now talking about speed as a factor, its well established that speed above or below the 85th percentile of speed chosen for the road in the absence of a limit, increases the risk of an accident. Higher speed equals higher consequences, but drivers who drive below the 85th have a real risk of being hit or losing concentration resulting in an accident.

There really isn't much of link between free traveling speed and impact speed. (motorway avg impact speed is <20mph free travel speed is 60-80, Urban roads is 10mph, free travel speed is 20-40mph).

The anti-speed campaigners will often claim the misleading tag line that "80% of children hit at 40 die, where as 20% at 20 die". This implies that drivers driving at 40mph are 80% likely to kill if the hit a person and drivers driving at 20 are only 20% likely to. However, this is Impact speed not free travel speed. Less than 2% of pedestrian hit by cars die.

I generally found
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/speedlimits.html
a good source for understanding the statistics.

Jolly Swagman

I think number plates with PL on are a greater contributor to accidents.

butcher of bakersfield

Jolly Swagman wrote:

I think number plates with PL on are a greater contributor to accidents.

That's possibly because here in the UK we do actually have a very good standard of driving. In comparison to other countries at least.

It's just a shame we're so intolerant of cyclists.

diy

That is because you actually have to sit a test here, rather than handing over money for "drive licence"

adr82

I'm pretty surprised nobody seems to be talking about the bike policeman who was interviewed... am I the only one who was shocked at his behaviour? Watched it on iPlayer a few days ago but from what I remember, he sees a guy on a scooter who might be going a few mph over the speed limit and takes off after him as if he thinks he's in a police car with lights and sirens rather than being just another cyclist. A few seconds into his sad little chase he promptly almost gets wiped out by another driver as he zips through a big junction without even slowing down! It's like he didn't realise how much less visible/audible he was. If someone else had gone through a junction like that I'm sure he'd have been after them with his whistle in no time. And then he did something similar again later on too IIRC... it's hardly setting a good example.

YIMan

adr82 wrote:

I'm pretty surprised nobody seems to be talking about the bike policeman who was interviewed... am I the only one who was shocked at his behaviour? Watched it on iPlayer a few days ago but from what I remember, he sees a guy on a scooter who might be going a few mph over the speed limit and takes off after him as if he thinks he's in a police car with lights and sirens rather than being just another cyclist. A few seconds into his sad little chase he promptly almost gets wiped out by another driver as he zips through a big junction without even slowing down! It's like he didn't realise how much less visible/audible he was. If someone else had gone through a junction like that I'm sure he'd have been after them with his whistle in no time. And then he did something similar again later on too IIRC... it's hardly setting a good example.

Presumably he's done "police cycle pursuit" training, the same as police pursuit vehicles that can behave in ways the general public wouldn't be allowed to. Don't see the problem really.

secretsqizz

YIMan wrote:

adr82 wrote:

I'm pretty surprised nobody seems to be talking about the bike policeman who was interviewed... am I the only one who was shocked at his behaviour? Watched it on iPlayer a few days ago but from what I remember, he sees a guy on a scooter who might be going a few mph over the speed limit and takes off after him as if he thinks he's in a police car with lights and sirens rather than being just another cyclist. A few seconds into his sad little chase he promptly almost gets wiped out by another driver as he zips through a big junction without even slowing down! It's like he didn't realise how much less visible/audible he was. If someone else had gone through a junction like that I'm sure he'd have been after them with his whistle in no time. And then he did something similar again later on too IIRC... it's hardly setting a good example.

Presumably he's done "police cycle pursuit" training, the same as police pursuit vehicles that can behave in ways the general public wouldn't be allowed to. Don't see the problem really.

You are all far too young on this website to know it's all been done before....

napoleond

http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/bik ... roads-fake

diy

Very interesting can of worms that one. I suspected it was some sort of crowd source PR stunt. But for the maker to offer a cash reward for people to break the law, puts him in an interesting (and not out of time) predicament.

I doubt he has much of IPR claim though.

adr82

YIMan wrote:

adr82 wrote:

I'm pretty surprised nobody seems to be talking about the bike policeman who was interviewed... am I the only one who was shocked at his behaviour? Watched it on iPlayer a few days ago but from what I remember, he sees a guy on a scooter who might be going a few mph over the speed limit and takes off after him as if he thinks he's in a police car with lights and sirens rather than being just another cyclist. A few seconds into his sad little chase he promptly almost gets wiped out by another driver as he zips through a big junction without even slowing down! It's like he didn't realise how much less visible/audible he was. If someone else had gone through a junction like that I'm sure he'd have been after them with his whistle in no time. And then he did something similar again later on too IIRC... it's hardly setting a good example.

Presumably he's done "police cycle pursuit" training, the same as police pursuit vehicles that can behave in ways the general public wouldn't be allowed to. Don't see the problem really.

As I suggested in my original post, being on a bike with nothing but a fluorescent jacket to make you more visible and having nothing to give any audible warning to drivers is hardly comparable to being in a police car with flashing lights on the roof and a loud siren! That's my problem with what he did. He may well have had police pursuit training in a car, but things are different on a bike. I couldn't believe how he reacted to the guy on the scooter, it was crazy. If he'd been hit by a car it would have been entirely his own fault. Even regular traffic police will call off a chase if they judge it to be unsafe, I don't see why he couldn't have used some common sense and done the same instead of charging blindly through a junction after that scooter - it was hardly a matter of life and death.

ianbar

finally got round to watching this, not really balanced as most of the the footage was very anti cyclist. it does however show why i avoid any town never mind city riding and very glad not watched this with the wife.