Re: What a mess, eh?

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

Look, if we had a driving licence setup such that only the people with
good driving skills were able to get a driving licence, then your point
of view would have a lot going for it.

That is something else I'm on favour of.

I reckon there ought to be some sort of way of ensuring that you can't
get any sort of driving licence without doing training in a car, on a
bike, and in a lorry. Except of course that not everyone who can drive
a car can ride a bike and... But aside from that, I think it'd be a
good idea so that everyone on the road understood things from the
different points of view.

And while I'm at it, driving training ought to include special
pedestrian sections - that is, you go out with your instructor on foot
and walk around and he points out stuff to help you see and understand
the world from the ped's point of view for when you're driving.

An age-related progression from 'Green Cross code' (or whatever it is now)
for kids old enough to go to school, to 'Cycling Proficiency', to
'Compulsory Basic Training' and 'Road Test' on a moped,

.... taking care to test people on the highway code at each stage. I
say that because when I took my bike test, about a decade after I'd got
99% in my cycling proficiency, I had assumed that I still knew all the
highway code. It turned out that what had been my near-encyclopaedic
grip on its contents from when I was 11 had faded somewhat. It was
faintly embarrassing, but I managed to get a driving licence despite a
really really silly mistake.

and then anyone
wanting a full licence for a motorcycle or car should automatically get
training on both

Yep.

- and car drivers should need to get to a standard at
least as good as the current bike tests before being allowed to go solo.

Yep.

Then a 'probationary' period subject to power and weight restrictions

Umm... As being implemented now for motorcycling, that approach is in
fact designed to make it near-impossible to actually get a full bike
licence - the powers that be in the UK have been working to effectively
ban motorcycling since Peter Bottomley's turn at the Ministry of
Transport in the 1980s.

Some sort of staging, yes, but not the current arrangements which exist
mostly to make it near impossible to get yer full bike licence.

and
further training and tests for dark, motorways, ice, etc before being
given 'free rein'.

Yep.


Analagous to the A1 licence for people who only want to ride 125cc bikes
and nothing bigger, I feel that there ought to be some sort of provision
so that people who aren't good enough to get a normal full driving
licence (under your new regime) should be able to get a restricted
licence - maybe one that only permits daylight and non-motorway travel,
or something. And only lets you drive vehicles of limited performance -
top speed of 70mph or less (like the 15hp learner legal 125s), perhaps.
It's fine if you're not going on the motorway, is a top speed like that.

Hell, I've spent quite a lot of time actually on motorways, four up with
three slalom kayaks on the roof, trundling along at `oh look, 50mph and
slowing up hill argharghargh well there's plenty of time no need for
stress and now we've got up to 70mph on the downhill whoopee that's
fast' in an Ami 8.

HGV and Bus driving should be something you can only
get to after further experience on motorbikes *and* cars.

Hell yes - but I'd like to see people have to drive some sort of lorry
on the road before they're allowed a full driving licence of any sort.
Not an HGV, but something to give drivers a clue about how bloody
awkward big lorries can be.

I had specific training about lorries when I learnt to ride motorcycles
- lots of stuff about HGVs on corners in particular. That should be
built into the training formally for all.

Naturally there
would need to be special arrangements for those physically unable to walk
or manage two wheels, without preventing them from getting a 'full' car
licence if appropriate.

Yep.

The psych tests should come in somewhere at the
moped stage, I think. (I know mopeds can be a real menace in the wrong
hands - but at least the rider is likely to come off worst, and probably
survive anyway).

Pff... Sort of, sort of. Because they're nothing like as scary as the
300mk/hr limited big bikes, people tend not to take riding them
seriously, so people often ride very very dangerously when on a moped.

I reckon something with a touch more power would be better to start
with. The nominally 11hp 125cc CZ I had (but with the performance of a
nominally 9hp Kawasaki 80cc bike I tried at the time) with its `struggle
to maintain 50mph and superb brakes' seems about right if you ask me.

Yeah, we all walk here and there but how many people actually think
about the traffic dynamics of how all road users including pedstrians
fit together? I know I do - I see the interactions between all road
users as a sort of dance. But I can see that most people don't see it
like that.

They don't; even with physically good senses they often don't seem to see
it at all.

`I'm in my domain, I have a right to do this, I shall do this, and
that's that.' They don't even bother with basic minimum observations,
just assume that all other road users will give way to them. That's the
worst type, but they're very very very common round here at least.

(actually, it's a bit like our newish next door neighbours - last
weekend, they had their dog out the back barking like mad very late at
night. I went next door to ask 'em to stop the dog making a noise.
`Well, what do you want me to do about it?' `Whatever it takes to keep
the dog quiet' `Well it's not bothering me I'm not going to do anything
and get off my property don't you dare come on to my property'

`You've got no right to stop me knocking on your front door and if you
don't want me to don't give me any cause to. And I'm going to ring the
police.'

Which I did. A couple of coppers turned up and had a word with 'em -
again... The dog's been quiet since.

The shrieking harpy I mention above has in the past asked me: `Why do
you keep picking on us?'

Well, let's see, litter thrown onto our property from theirs, lots of
late night noise, cars parked in front of our driveway, that bloody dog,
more noise and noise and shouting at me in an aggressive and threatening
fashion, being incredibly aggressive and obnoxious every time I speak to
them, that sort of thing.

I think I might look up the details of the covenenant that everyone who
buys a house on this entire housing estate (it's a middle class housing
estate - just a splurge of normal suburban roads) has to sign - the one
that says you mustn't annoy the neighbours... The reason for that is
that the aforementioned shrieking harpy keeps saying `We have a right to
do what we like and you've got no right to stop us' or words to that
effect.

Well, I have stopped you behaving antisocially, haven't I? And you have
no right to behave like that and that's that.

But (again) I read (or heard on the radio, I forget) recently about how
to cross the road in one of those Asian nations with chaotic scooters
everywhere. The trick is to walk at a constant speed across the road -
oncoming traffic will know where you're going and will ride round you.
Do not change pace - that only leads to disaster.

I was taught a similar method in Mexico City. It does work, mostly.
(Just after I left, a plane came down on one of the main streets - but you
can't legislate or practice much for that sort of thing).

You can legislate for that sort of thing a /bit/ - put the flight paths
places such that aeroplanes aren't in a position to come down like that.
And I expect there are other things one could do.

Having said that, we get aeroplanes coming in overhead on their final
approach to Liverpool Airport - right over the house, pretty much.
Sometimes a bit off to one side and all that. Quiet, though - it's
about 5 or 6 miles to the runway, at a guess, but the aeroplanes are
hardly noticeable. They tend to do their take-off climb over the Mersey
estuary because that's noisier but the estuary doesn't actually have any
houses in it - at least, not houses with people in.

So it seems that in nations where all the road users have to fit in with
each other by paying attention to everyone, /everyone/ (who's going to
survive) works it like a dance. Why not try to get pretty much everyone
on our roads to use 'em the same way? <heh> Should be able to get the
BNP to agree: `What do you mean, you're not as good as a Cambodian?' ;-)

Central London streets often work that way too,

I've seen it and it's alarming. I stick to the Tube and rapid dashes
across the tarmac with *me* firmly in charge - I use a `scoot across
before anyone's got a chance to have to proceed around me' process.

(I've always been taught that a person should make use of the highway in
a fashion that does not impede anyone else's progress... Okay, I've
also been taught defensive riding techniques which sometimes
deliberately impede someone else's progress, but only because you want
to make sure that they don't drive into you - that is, defensive
techniques make 'em slow down and ease off and back off and give you
some rispek, man - before it gets to the slamming into your arse stage.)

but with the added
complication of traffic lights and so on which do confound attempts at
'common sense'.

But if you only had good drivers
on the road, then they'd benefit from the driver aids because good
drivers *do* learn to do things properly - that's kind of inherent to
being a good driver.

But stuff that gets between the driver and the real controls, makes it
impossible to learn how to use those controls properly.

I don't see that traction control, ABS, and electronic stability control
get between the driver and the real controls - they're all over-rides
that kick in to keep things sweet if the driver's not controlling things
properly himself (well, stability control involves applying the brakes
on each wheel independently, so I gather - can't do that with one foot).

You should learn to drive without all that stuff - I'd like to see more
training and a more stringent test - but I can't see that it's anything
but helpful on the road.

Hmmm. If could be turned off ...

For training purposes, certainly. Training should be done without the
fancy active driver aids at least in the initial stages.

Look, either you can learn to control a car well in which case you'll
learn in your initial training (if it includes all the stuff we both
want to see in that line), or you can't and either shouldn't get a
licence or will need some help to be safe.

Either way, I don't see any downside to the sort of driver aids that
exist now.

They really do encourage worse driving. People tend to drive to the limit
of what they feel they can manage - and that means to the limit of the
'traction control' etc if fitted,

When I was young, an awful lot of the drivers I knew drove to the limit
of their traction control (consisting of one young man, one normal car
or motorcycle, one ribbon of tarmac). They kept crashing and crashing
and crashing and it was only the luck of the holy fool that stopped any
of 'em suffering or causing death or serious injury.

(<cough> Me too, but I wasn't stupid in the way that they were stupid -
I learnt from their mistakes, and carved out my own unique niche in
terms of being an idiot on the road and didn't come off anything like as
often as the more dangerous of my peers)

Primary active safety aids would undoubtably have prevented a good many
of the crashes that I knew about, because such a large number of them
were caused by just that patch of diesel (or similar anomaly). And I
don't see that those aids would have caused the idiots in question to
drive any closer to the limit because they were bang on the limit anyway
- hence the frequent crashes.

which means all hell is let loose when
the robots get to their limits,

.... and all hell was frequently let loose when they screwed up. A
properly reliable set of active driver aids to address primary safety -
well, I don't see that it *would* encourage worse driving on the whole,
I really don't. Drivers are so often so bloody dangerous anyway that I
really can't see how the active primary safety features could make
things more dangerous.

Crumple zones, seat belts, air bags, side impact protection - all those
secondary safety features do make life more dangerous for everyone
outside the cars, but I'm not at all convinced that improving primary
safety makes things more dangerous.

<shrug> I'd like to see properly reliable primary safety features, and
keep the crumple zones and air bags (inside the car *AND* outside, to
protect peds who get hit) but delete the driver seat belt and add a
spike in the steering wheel. Protect everyone to the max - except the
driver, who should feel very vulnerable.

That'd improve road safety no end.

I recall coming across a crash scene, A41, rural Cheshire, at a
dangerous traffic light controlled cross-roads in a village with a pub
on the corner (the pub landlord of the pub that sat next to the junction
was out with his cones - *HIS* cones, this sort of thing happened so
often: he was the man on the spot the emergency services relied upon to
make the scene safe before they turned up).

Anyway, three cars were stopped and mildly crunched. Two were clearly
empty with the occupants doing what you'd expect with `here's my
details' and `Oh dear I'm a bit wobbly how am I going to explain this
one to the spouse? etc.

One car's occupants were unaccounted for by my eyeballing and I could
see there was something in that one car over the steering wheel and
no-one taking any thought for anyone who might be hurt.

The thing over the steering wheel turned out to be the deployed airbag.
I had a chat to the driver of that car - a little old lady who was very
irritated because she was going to be without the use of her car for a
while.

I suppressed my natural urge to pick her up, shake her, and yell `You've
just had a car crash and you're unhurt stop bloody whinging you've got
absolutely nothing to worry about because *YOU* are totally unharmed you
dippy old bat.' And also `And the only person you've got to complain
about your car being crunched is you because if you'd been driving
properly, you wouldn't have driving into anything and I don't care if
you had right of way and that it was someone else's two-car crunch you
ran into - you shouldn't have, the insurance will say it's there fault,
but I can see you hit 'em because you could have been driving more
carefully paying more attention for gawd's sake you've got to be at
least 80 years old ever considered flogging yer motor and catching
taxis?'

etc., etc.

unless the robots refuse to get anywhere
near that point in which case they can become a hindrance in an emergency.

That's why I only want carefully designed active primary safety features
with good reliability.

Things like electronic stability control (ESP is one TLA for it),
traction control, and ABS all take you right to the limit, closer to it
than a human being can get. They're no trouble.

I suspect that the automatic braking setups are a potential source of
worry - but none of the three I list above can cause trouble /if they're
working to spec/.

Without all the clever gubbins, a car reaches different limits at
different points and the driver can learn to feel where they are and how
to avoid them - or exploit them, if they want to develop their skill as
much as possible. (Learning off road, of course!).

Yes, which is why you should have training without the active driver
aids.

I would like to see snow, ice, and motorway, driving as part of the
driving test - along with a psychological test to weed out those
temperamentally unfit.

I've heard that if you fail your driving test three times in Germany,
you have to have a psychological examination before you can try again to
see if you're suitable to drive at all.

And the Finnish driving test does involve training at least on exciting
road surfaces.

At least they can rely on nature providing them fairly predictably; one of
the problems with British weather is that we don't get enough snow and ice
every year to be prepared for it when it does happen. (I don't think I've
ever seen 'snow chains' on sale in a shop, for example).

`Illegal on the public highway in the UK' is one good reason for that
observation.

[snip]

(I'd like to point out that if my emergency stop had been at full force,
my front wheel would not have gone over the line, but when I do an
emergency stop, I slow down at the slowest rate practical - basically, I
aim to come to a halt at `just enough before the obstruction such that
if I have one instance of wheel lock-up, I can recover without hitting
anything. The idea is to use all the tarmac available in such
circumstances.)

That's what an emergency stop should be - just quick enough. The more
time and space you can give the driver behind you, the better, too.

Yup. But that sort of thing is a secondary consideration; I usually
have quite a big gap behind me in any case. Any car that does follow me
too closely soon gets the hint that I want a bit more space behind me,
ta. Often by me showing rear brake and turning and giving the driver a
Paddington stare (police training, that). If that doesn't work, showing
rear brake and slowing down quite a bit often gets the message across.

My most scary experience was driving a Reliant trike along a narrow twisty
Cornish lane, with a huge over-loaded coal lorry almost pushing me along
far faster than either of us should have been going. He wouldn't have
seen any brake-lights, he was too close for that.

EEEK!

btw, I once met a cess pit cleaning lorry on similar roads in Devon. I
was riding a GS500 motorcycle. I couldn't keep up with the lorry - oh,
my bike could go round the corners quicker than I was travelling, if I
could assume race track conditions, but such do *NOT* apply on narrow
West country lanes, do they? Lorry driver didn't care. But then again,
the lorry driver could see over the hedges and my head was too low down
to do that myself.

(I pulled over into a
wide bit ASAP, and the trike was rocked by the suction as the lorry went
past with its horns blaring).

Ye gods. I have a good stock of `filthy looks' I give people for doing
that sort of thing.

Assuming I get my bike back on the road, I really do want to get round
to fitting the air horns I bought some time ago. I need a louder horn.

(I got the idea from a uni friend, who'd managed to cram a pair of air
horns onto his Yamaha RD350 YPVS - the ultimate Yamaha baby two-stroke
twin with the `Yamaha Power Valve System' which is valves in the exhaust
to modify the resonant frequency so as to improve power characteristics
from the usual very peaky sort you get on a highly tuned two-stroke to
merely a bit peaky. Anyway, I thought if Alex can fit 'em to that, I
can fit 'em to my VFR. Thing is, now I've got 'em and looked, I have to
say that a 350YPVS has a lot more spare space on it than my VFR750...)

When riding a fast motorcycle, you have lots more options available than
when in a slow little car. For example, I've often slowed right down
when I've had people hard on my tail in that sort of situation. Oh yes
I've had tooting and flashy lights and the following vehicle getting
*REALLY* close.

That's when I give 'em the `turn round and Paddington stare' and maybe
slow down even more. Nope, never needed to speed up to stop 'em
passing, always done that with good road positioning and selecting the
right bit of road/traffic/etc to use the process.

Anyway, they get the message eventually. Then I accelerate to open up
the gap to what *I* want - using hard acceleration just to make a
different point (i.e., don't try to follow me, you can't possibly keep
up).

I believe it may have been his load that
was shed a bit further on.

<sigh> Well, if no-one but the lorry driver was involved, that'll do.

Alternatively, if the conditions allow it, I might stand up and have a
stretch (something else I had police training to do - honest). You
should see how quickly the buggers fall back when I start doing that
sort of thing...

Rowland.

I can imagine. You're so unkind to the poor motorist ... <G>

<glowers> Unkind? Unkind?!?!?!???? You think that's unkind? Nah,
nah, nah - what I *WANT* to do with those drivers who stick too close to
my tail is blow them away with an anti-tank rocket. Make the roads
safer for all, that's my thinking - and if that means killing and
eating[1] dangerous drivers, who could possibly object?

Rowland.

[1] I hate waste.

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