Re: Victory for green lanes

Roger wrote:

So the multiple fatalities in major pile-ups in fog on the unrestricted
new motorway network weren't such an opportunity thrown away?

When there is next to no visibility what use would a 70 mph limit have
been? IIRC the carnage was caused in the main by heavy goods vehicles
which wouldn't have been doing 70 in any event.

It's beside the point. The *point* is showing you can drive
responsibly, and those incidents showed that responsibility tends to
come second (at best).

When I drove down town last week for my weekly shopping I saw 2 cyclists
(or possibly the same one twice). That's 2 (or possibly one) more than I
usually see. If I drive a few hundred miles on a day out I might not see
a single cyclist. Out of sight can all too easily become out of mind at
that sort of density but you would need to go back to the days of the
Red Flag Act before cars were that scarce.

Yes, but that's not the same as being used to a default high traffic
density.

Walking home from infants school on my own my mother used to insist that
I waited on the far side of the road so she could see me safely across
what was only a relatively minor through road with a 30 limit. Now would
she have done that had there only been one or 2 cars a day along the
road?

No, but how many more school crossing patrols are there now compared to
then? How many more kids are kept in altogether because there's too
much traffic about? Compared to either of our youths, vastly more now.

OK you to on believing it is more cars on the road that is the only
factor in the long term decline in road casualties and I will go on
believing you are totally wrong.

But I haven't said any such thing. The /only/ factor? Where did I say
it was the only thing? At least /one/ other thing for sure is the
culture change concerning drink driving, which used to revolve around it
being Perfectly Acceptable because drivers were responsible and knew
their limits and not wanting to crash would stick well inside sensible
ones. Of course, these days where it's far more universally frowned
upon, limits are lower and enforcement much tougher, drink driving is,
errrr, actually rather less of a problem than it used to be.

Having national limits means that for the carefully legal driver the one
thing he or she can't do for most of their driving experience is judge
how fast is safe in normal weather conditions.

If you can't find a road where it's unsafe to do the national limit in
/any/ conditions, including with guaranteed no other traffic and a well
handling sports car, then you must be entirely bereft of imagination or
driving experience, although I know that neither is the case. In rural
areas it's quite easy to find roads where "60 mph" is the limit where
the sensible top speed is about 20 at the most, so your argument just
doesn't stack up.

They are passed their sell-by date. Their faculties have long since
deteriorated to such an extent that their judgement is effected. If they
can't see properly and their reaction times are measured in seconds
rather than tenths they may well get by if they are lucky but they are
really a disaster waiting for the next emergency to happen.

But your idea is that they're responsible enough to look after
themselves and set their own limits... which is just what they're doing.

But they are slow drivers and have been assured for at least the last 40
years that slow drivers are safe drivers. :-)

You say they're slow, I say they'll occupy a wide distribution of
habits. Gaussian distribution of normal populations sides with me, not you.

May be different in Scotland. Traffic densities are generally lower.

We still get jams, and we still have far more traffic here now than you
saw when you were learning.

Cost of petrol? I haven't been on a motorway since the last price hike
but in free flowing traffic as late as this spring I have estimated that
at least half the cars have been exceeding the 70 limit and that in
traffic far too dense to drive on cruise control. I use cruise control
to slow myself down when traffic is light but I don't htink it makes me
aa safer driver, rather the reverse in fact.

CC is, I suspect, roughly safety neutral but it is a good way of
avoiding fines. Cost of fuel is a compromise point: 70 is bad for
economy, 80 is worse, 80+ /much/ worse. I think it reins in some of the
more excessive behaviour.

But you are supposing that all those bunches of flowers (is the death
rate in Scotland really that high) flow from accidents involving
speeding.

I certainly think that young male drivers thinking speed limits aren't
for them are the primary victims, but that's not quite the same thing.

Drivers need to drive at a speed that engages their full attention.
Speed limits by and large encourage drivers to concentrate on something
else, even just their speedometer.

So you say, but as I've already pointed out there are drivers who find
that extra attention requirements induce more stress which decreases
their driving quality, but you seem to be assuming everyone is the same.
Not everyone has their attention improved by driving fast: anyone
paying the remotest attention in a dense fog would immediately realise
that high speed is maniacally dumb, yet you see (in blurry outline...)
people at speed in dense fog, "taking responsibility".

So you think you are just as alert as you would have been had you been
matching the speed of your car to the road conditions. I don't think you
can be so I suggest we just agree to differ.

I am very often on roads where the National Limit is ridiculously fast:
you wouldn't even get around the bends with nothing coming the other way
assuming you had clear sightlines the whole time, so I am well used to
matching my speed to the road conditions. But even if I am less alert
(I cannot objectively say, and nor can you), I'll have more time at
lower speeds in order to react, so your higher speeds for sharper
judgement is just risk homeostasis all over again, and you've traded off
one reduced risk against an increase elsewhere. It's remarkably common,
as is thinking you're actually safer while you do it. I don't think I'm
particularly safer, but I do know I'm very unlikely to get a speeding
fine and I doubt I'm particularly more dangerous.

Perhaps do some reading up with John Adams, Isles Report and Risk
Homeostasis and/or Compensation as the initial google entries. It
certainly changed a few of my ideas about how folk go about "safety".

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.clinch@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
.

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