Road safety - J'Accuse.

[TimD]

On British television this week, a new road safety campaign was unveiled. The point of the ad is that if you travel at 35mph, your stopping distance is substantially more than if you stick to the legal 30mph.

Okay. This is how they put the message across.

A busy street scene, and we are panning to follow a Toyota hatchback as it drives along the road. Suddenly, the brakes are jammed on, the front wheels lock up, and the car starts to slide.

The voice-over tells you that if the car were doing 30, the stopping point would be "now!".

But the car continues to slide on, and slams, shockingly, into a child on a pedestrian crossing.

Moral: Drive at thirty and be okay.



Now, I have a problem with this. No, actually I have several problems with this. The car locks up its front wheels in a skid. The driver does not attempt cadence braking, nor indeed any attempt to release the wheels or to steer. Presumably fixated with fright at the sight of the child in front of them.

Only the front wheels? Presumably then either the brakes or the shock absorbers on the car are defective.

Finally, anyone who drives at the legal urban maximum of 30mph when there are children about needs at the least a damn good talking to. It may be legal, but it is also irredeemably stupid.

So the road safety ad says it's okay to drive at the legal max - whatever the urban road conditions. At least, it makes no suggestion as to reasons why that might not be a good idea.

The road safety ad makes no mention of the responsibility of keeping your car in a roadworthy condition, thus optimising its dynamic capabilities.

The road safety ad gives a clear demonstration that the most effective way of stopping is to keep your foot hard on the brake in a straight-line skid.

J'accuse.

This is nothing to do with road safety training. This is a sop. And it obviously assumes that the people who carry a driving licence are imbeciles, and unresponsive to anything but the most banal of messages.

Brought to you by the same people who brought you the lie that "Speed Kills".

Or am I expecting too much?

[Bluebottle]

I saw the ad tonight and had the same thoughts.
Perhaps we should teach people how to drive instead of just how to pass a test. Before my test I was only given one 'emergency stop' lesson- when I did the teat (back in 1985) I locked the wheels in the emergency stop but very quickly released and reapplied the brake. The examiner was suitably impressed (and I passed the test) but that was not something I had been taught.
Why is the standard of driving so low?

[Vitesse]

My initial reaction to the ad was "what a load of b*ll*cks". You cannot teach people road safety through TV ads, it needs to be taught as part of learning to drive, and like Bluebottle I feel that the learning process is too skewed towards passing the test, not learning to drive: the two processes are mutually exclusive.

Statistically you're most likely to have your first accident within your first year of fully licenced driving, for the simple reason that you have not yet developed enough defensive driving skills or gained enough experience to anticipate what will develop in any given situation.

I have a number of teenagers who work with me and most are learning to drive. I give them only two pieces of driving advice: first of all, when they start to learn:

"Assume everyone else on the road is a bloody idiot and act accordingly, because if someone can do something stupid in front of you, they probably will."

Secondly, once they pass their test:

"Congratulations on passing your test - this is when you start to learn how to drive."

My other bugbear is that in this country you can just drive straight on to a motorway without any formal training whatsoever - that is something that needs to be addressed urgently ...

[elephino]

Finally, you lot get a taste of what Australia has had for many many years now.

We have/had a nice little ad, one of the more recent ones, where a Ford Laser is doing 72km/h in a 60km/h zone. There is traffic in the opposite direction and a Mitsubishi Magna pokes its nose out from a side street, through the traffic and the Laser hits it and slams into a pole, killing one or both (not sure) of the passengers.

Where to begin on the problems....
1. They should have swerved, because even if there was a car in the other lane, they would have been better off hitting the car going in the same direction.
2. Similar to the UK ad, they locked the brakes. If the driver had braked without locking, he would have stopped with room to spare.
3. The angle at which the car hit the Magna, the car wouldn't have done much at that speed and yet it managed to go in a very strange angle, again considering how it hit the car, into the pole.
4. Once more considering the speed of the Laser, it wouldn't have hit the pole very hard after having slowed a bit by locking the brakes for as long as it did, then lost more speed by hitting the car and then having to skid across the road into the pole. Small dent at best if physics had been working properly.
5. The pole didn't look like it was in a position to be hit when you see the Laser hit the Magna.
6. The traffic magically reduces too
7. Even at the speed the Laser supposedly hit the pole, death was not likely unless there were other circumstances involved.

That should do for now

[massifheed]

Vitesse, with the current test, the pupil has to drive on a dual carriageway which is, at least, a start.

Did anyone hear Quentin Wilson on Johnny Walker's radio 2 show a few weekds ago? It was very intersting, and if anyone knows what most of the problems are with drivers and roads he does for sure.

The most important point that he made was that the vast majority of people do not respect the act of driving. Once they have passed their test everything they have learned goes out of the window and they drive like morons. I fully egree with this, and being in the kind of job that means I am on the road for the most part of the day, I see hundreds of examples on a daily basis. Even the most basic things like looking and signalling when changing lanes on a motorway, I would say that at least 60% of drivers dont bother to signal at all.

Just one example I know, but I could spend all day talking about the things that I see which truly shock me. Now I am in no way saying that I am perfect, but, for instance, I wouldn't dream of pulling out at a roundabout if someone was aproaching from the right, but how many times have you people on here had to take avoiding action just because some idiot forgot how to drive 20 years ago and doesn't really give a toss anyway? The whole subject makes me mad.

I don't know what the solution is, whether the test needs to be made harder or what, or maybe there could be some way of new drivers being on some type of probation for a year and have to drive with an examiner more than once. I don't know. I think the Government needs to address this problem better than just punting out "shock" ads every few months, which people forget inside of a week.

[marcus]

Elephino is right ..we have had ads like that for quite a few years..from driving while tires (Kombi van plows head on into a truck) to a guy running a stop sign and being completely flattened by a semi..they are shocking but i feel the public need to see them to be reminded that little things they do could cost them or someone else's life.

I am big on an advanced driving course as a requirment for a lisense..the average joe will just stand on the brake pedal until the car stops..i have also done this and it is very hard to tell your brain to let of the pedal and get some sterring back but with some training it becomes the natural thing to do..advanced courses are the way to go and think they should be compulsary.

[Chris Y]

Originally posted by massifheed
Once they have passed their test everything they have learned goes out of the window and they drive like morons.

I think this is the biggest single problem. A lot of kids, (and I guess back then I was one of them) think that when you get that little piece of paper that says you've passed - you're suddenly an expert driver.. Very wrong..

I echo the other sentiments on this thread, either the test needs to be harder, or there needs to be an advanced course - people need more practice..

Vitesse's quote is the best: "Congratulations on passing your test - this is when you start to learn how to drive."

[Chris Y]

Also - shocking adverts don't always work, because people think "that wouldn't happen to me", or "I'm a better driver than that". It often takes an accident for people to realise their ability..

[elephino]

I'm with marcus that advanced driver training, or more accurately, defensive driver training should be mandatory as it already is for motorcyclists here.

Basically a course that teaches you about braking, swerving and most importantly, accident avoidance, as in to do as much as possible to make sure you don't get into a possible accident situation.

I've been on a driver training course, and even though I knew a fair bit about what was being said, I still learnt a lot and you can experience emergency braking and swerving situations in safety without any other cars around. And it's lots of fun if it is done right too.

[Warwick]

One advert about speed kills in NZ shows a couple of ladies out for a run,as they say ther goodbyes one runs out in front of a car (doing 70kph in a 50 zone),and gets bounced down the road,it then shows the same car doing 50kph stopping in time to avoid her.

Speed Kills,i dont think so running in front of a car without looking is what did it,it could also be argued that if the driver was doing 100kph she would have run out behind it.

All the adverts i have seen of this type seem to assume the people watching them are complete idiots,where most of the people i know pick them to peices then ignore them.

Vitesse,i have always assumed everyone else on the road is out to get me,and it has saved me on more occasions than i could count!

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Chris Y
I think this is the biggest single problem. A lot of kids, (and I guess back then I was one of them) think that when you get that little piece of paper that says you've passed - you're suddenly an expert driver.. Very wrong..

My great concern is the lack of knowledge of the dynamics of cars and driving them. The kids don't look forward to driving with any enthusiasm towards the car, they tend to think that they know all that already and thus their thoughts focus on doing burnouts, driving at a speed they don't understand and so forth.

They therefore think that learning to operate the controls is the major issue... whereas it's more a case of learning what the car's reactions to those controls might be and how to use those to stay in control.

The usual case of too much TV and not enough thinking...

[Dan Friel]

Strange advert, doesn't come across very well..

I look back just a few years and think about the stuff I did with my minis, and it's the big near misses that I learnt from - hence all a bit pot luck whether I learnt or had a 'biggy'.. which is shocking.

Not sure I learnt enough about reading the road and driving to the conditions when I was 17, then your average driver doesn't need to know what oversteer is...

[yorkie]

The biggest problem with all of these campaigns is that they focus on one single issue. The slogan "Speed Kills" is misleading. Speed on its own does not kill. Let's face it we all drive on motorways at 70mph+ perfectly safely and we don't get killed. In fact motorways have the best safety records of all roads in the UK.

The slogan should read "Inappropriate Speed Kills" which is far more accurate.

The other thing that annoys me about these types of campaigns is the fact that it is only drivers who seem to be targeted for education. Drivers seem to be almost automatically held responsible for any accident involving a pedestrian, and while it's true a driver should be aware of potential hazards, so should all other road users including pedestrians, cyclists (who can be the worst offenders), horse riders etc.

Remember that speed is the major or sole cause of accidents in only 4% of cases (source Association of British Drivers www.abd.org.uk).

I believe that education for all road users is the key. Do the police still go round the schools and teach kids the "Green Cross Code"? I think not. That road safety campaign probably saved more lives than the "Speed Kills" campaigns of late.

[marcus]

all this reminds me of something I heard Allan Moffat (not our member the real one )

"The biggest problem on the roads is that most people dont think of where the car is eventually going to end up"

and i agree with that totally...not sure what its called but speed and steering input and braking input all contribute to what a car is going to do and most people dont realise before they get into a problem where the car will eventually end up..if they take a little time (and this can only take a second if you know what your doing) and think about the way the car will go it may just slow them down enough before they get into trouble.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by marcus
"The biggest problem on the roads is that most people dont think of where the car is eventually going to end up"

Hmmm... mine have usually finished up in the backyard with too much rust to carry on...

But seriously, it's lack of control that causes the accidents, emphasised by the 84% figure that's quoted for drink involvement in fatal accidents. Control also comes into discipline, the will to keep within reasonable bounds.

Of course, today's children are a long way from accepting any form of discipline!

Good thing they have safer cars than we used to have....

[Dan Friel]

We're not all bad though.. consider this fact.

Between 1918 and the mid 30's, 200,000 people were killed on British roads... how many cars were about then??

Today, 3,500 are killed every year with millions of cars.

Something to do with the Highway Code perhaps!!!

[Ray Bell]

New South Wales and Thicktoria were both nudging regular figures in the 1100-1200 deaths a year range by the end of the sixties... now the national figure is more like 1500, so there has been a huge drop.

The reasons, the things that have actually worked:

1969/70 - compulsory belt wearing. Progressively acceptance and buckling up has been greater, starting at about 50% when the law came in, but at 50% the death reduction was an immediate 20 - 25%

1979/80 - Random Breath Testing. Another 20% drop overnight...

1970 - 2001 - a slow one, but I feel it's another 20% has come from the introduction of safety features in cars (beyond the belts... crushable structures, better tyres and brakes etc).

Over this period, and leading up to it, all manner of campaigns have been used and have usually targetted speeding. None have done anything.... in fact:

'Blitzes' and the introduction of outright speed limits on open roads have incurred higher death penalties. Anyone want to argue about that? I can tell you, you will lose!

[elephino]

One very important thing we were taught on the driver training is to look where you want to go, not where the car is pointing. This is why so many people drive into trees and poles, because they see it coming and keep watching it instead of trying to avoid it.

Actually Ray, I would like to sort of argue that. The first time (only) NSW introduced the double demerit points during long weekends, it reduced the road toll. Just it hasn't made any difference since, especially last Christmas when the road toll was abnormally high and no one in the police or government would admit that their campaigns weren't working afterall.

[yorkie]

The ABD has proposed better public information films for road safety. Check this link and see what you think.See it miss it campagn