UKH

Campaign to cut driver fatigue accidents.
https://trafficscotland.org/news/story.aspx?id=12842
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-33313446
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport/tired-drivers-told-to-take-res...

This is one of the big killers left to tackle on British roads. We have amongst the safest roads in the world and our road death numbers are only beaten by a small number of other north European countries.

Exactly why our numbers are already good by world standards is a bit of a mystery since we have some high population densities, poor road furniture, poor sightline management, and narrow roads. On top of that we have a police service that doesn't seem care whether you are looking where you are going but only what speed you are doing.

Even in the over-regulated large vehicle sector there are tens of thousands of drivers cheating the tacho by setting rest period while loading/unloading. Then there is white van man who can do what he likes and ordinary car drivers who are not regulated in any meaningful way.

The UK's 2000 annual road deaths is a low figure and possibly the hard core of road death numbers. The drop in deaths from the 6000+ of the 1970s is driven largely by the technology of the car (including the seat belt) and the work against drink driving. Years of Police/DfT stats tell us that breaking the speed limit is NOT a significant primary cause and barely significant as a secondary cause. The stats tell us to pay more attention to the road ahead.

If we get a good night's sleep and take proper breaks then that is certainly going to make attentive driving easier.

Where are the laybys?

In reply to Jim Fraser:

Whilst we are at it can we please deploy a camera network that enables the nationwide fining and then disqualification of persistent tailgaters.

Quantifying the seperation of cars in time, as pertinent to tailgating, requires much less complex hardware and calibration/certification than a speed camera.

Edit: Back on-topic. I find the interstate rest areas in the U.S. a great way to rest on long journeys, far more relaxing than the UK equivalent. Yes, they have more space - and better average weather - but even so the franchised service stations here are grim, they don't exactly encourage stopping longer than needed for many.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

I'd like more road traffic safety campaigns in England.

Last Saturday we went to Windgather for some gentle climbing. On the A50 we (my wife was driving) were in the middle lane, overtaking a lorry. Half way along, the lorry started indicating right and moving towards us. My wife veered right, straddling the line between lanes 2 and 3, as the SUV that was overtaking in the right hand lane veered right too and somehow got past us. We didn't have full control of the vehicle by this point as it swerved left and right. There was only time to think "This is the day that we're going to die." Then we were past it, back in control, not even scratched.

I don't know if the lorry driver was tired or just a *&$!ing idiot, most likely both. He probably never knew what happened, because I don't think he was looking.

Then we went and did some very easy climbing at Windgather, having had our mortality brought home to us.

In reply to wintertree:

Even more than that, you fall asleep for more than 2 hours by accident you get a parking fine.

In reply to Jim Fraser:


Are you serious? Have you seen the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges or the numerous design amendments that get sent out several times a year? Sure, our roads are not perfect and many were built many years before the newer strict design criteria came into force, but still - some credit where credit is due. And the punishment for driving offences is pretty high. I think you underestimate the personal impact a driving ban has on most people. We like to whine about middle lane hoggers and people who annoy us on the road, but these are not the killers on our roads.

To put our road safety into perspective, I remember reviewing the accident reports for the section of the M62 between the M6 and M60. There were literally hundreds of slight incidents, where the police attended but there were no injuries. There were a handful of serious incidents (requiring medical attention) and no fatalities. Pretty impressive for one of the busiest stretches of motorway in the country.

In reply to wintertree:




Many in the UK now charge massive fines if you stay more than 2 hours (or pay £10 parking charge!) This needs to be outlawed now as it actively discourages people from resting properly

In reply to wintertree:

Tailgaiting is easily solved... pull in and let faster traffic pass.

In reply to Jim Fraser

Well said for all the stuff above. More laybys and service stations where you dont get fined for sleeping for 2 hours would be great. Exhaustion isnt something you can plan perfectly for.

Speeding is significant in some cases but its usually drunks or idiots on urban roads, or failing to adjust to poor road comditioms. On a motroway in good conditions I have few issues with those speeding: bad lane discipline, lane blockers, mobile use etc are more important risk issues.

In reply to balmybaldwin & marsbar:


This really is stupid isn't it, I hadn't realised it was now so bad. The problem is they're seen as yet another chance to screw money out of a captive audience. Probably as part of some high ROI for some faceless megacorp &c. &c.

In reply to Offwidth:


In the last couple of months I've been tailgated for minutes at a time in the slow lane!

In reply to climbwhenready:


This. I do get annoyed at the comments that tailgating is solved by pulling over - many times on many roads one must endure the pratt whilst awaiting a safe place to pull over, or regain your safety by slowing down, which just seems to make them worse.

Further, beyond a certain - often seen - traffic density, letting a tailgater passed on the motorway just makes if someone else's problem and so on and on... The hazard of a bad driver is still out there... Which would be fixed by a camera system.

In reply to Jim Fraser:
What a joke? Where exactly are we meant to stop on the A9? The stops don't even provide privacy for a piss!!

Typical British response to a problem....tell people what they have to do. Why not provide better stopping places with nice facilities then i might be tempted. Until then it's the almost weekly non-stop 3 1/2 hour drive for me.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

One thing they could do is to ban motorway service stations from charging for parking over 2hrs as all now do. This is an active disincentive to a driver stopping for a kip.

In reply to wintertree:

I'm not sure it's as simple as you make out to do as you suggest.

Apart from accurately measuring the time between the cars, you need to assign the offence so you need to match a number plate recognition camera to whatever other hardware you use. Then you need to apportion blame as it's quite possible to argue the car in front pulled out in to your lane and you hadn't yet had time to adjust your speed.

The biggest reason for tailgating is cretins driving like cretins and other cretins getting frustrated. I can honestly say I have never been tailgated outside of a 30. I respectfully suggest therefore that people who suffer this a lot need to get get a bloody move on.

In reply to Neil Williams:


The trouble is that they're private businesses and have to cover all the costs of operating the site (including maintaining a large car park and motorway sliproads, lighting 24hrs, providing toilets for people who mostly don't buy anything at all) by selling overpriced rubbish in the cafe / shops so it's not entirely surprising that they're not too keen on providing free parking for people who just want to sleep in their cars for a few hours.

I would prefer the French model where the basic site (with toilets etc) is provided as a public service maintained by the motorway company and any shops / filling station is a separate franchise.

In reply to XXXX:



Which is so piss-simple my iPhone can do that to 10x the required precision


As the hardware is a camera looking at when each car pass a fixed point, it's not going to be hard to bolt on number plate recognition. Look at APNR for example. Indeed, as only a subset of cars need to be identified - those violating separation - images can be sent for human inspection if really required.


No you don't - there's a simple solution to all such examples as that - or at least that I have thought off. You'll notice I said "persistent tailgating" - you have 4 cameras over a mile stretch of road, and car A has to be within the 2- or 4- second (weather dependant) separation zone of the same car B to trigger an offence.


Or perhaps you don't notice... Or never travel on the motorways... Or constantly speed...


Nonsense. I've been tailgated at 60 more than once, and on the motorway when doing the speed of the lane whilst passing traffic to the left. Further, you do not know the circumstances of someone going below the speed limit - perhaps there are different value judgements about the safe speed (which is widely recognised to be below the limit on many parts of roads, the speed limit is not a goal), or their load, or, well, really it doesn't actually matter now does it.

Edit: Whilst I don't think everyone being tailgated should slow down, this does remind me of another difference with the southwest USA. When on smaller roads, especially in the mountains and farm areas, I was consistently and pleasantly amazed that as we approached a car from behind, in no way tailgating, they would pull over into a lay by to let us overtake. We rapidly adopted the same courteous behaviour. A jaunt along some highland single track road - with copious passing places - shows just how far behind this the mentality is in the UK, and that's despite signs form the police telling people to pull over to be overtaken.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

I found this sentence interesting:

Young men are the most likely to fall asleep behind the wheel. Figures reveal that 85 per cent of car drivers caught dozing off are male, and a third are 30 or under.

Why so many more men than women? Do women tend to cope better with fatigue (possible evolutionary response to dealing with sleepless nights after childbirth?), or is it that women are less likely to take the risk and pull in sooner when they are tired?

In reply to wintertree:

Maybe you should patent the system. I can't see how it is at all trivial to read a number plate and judge car separation and speed all at the same time, using a visual sensor.

I maintain that people who are tailgated persistently, are going too slowly. Occasionally, Ok you always get morons, but if it happens whenever you drive anywhere, maybe the problem is closer to home.

Obviously tailgating is dangerous and I'm not excusing it.

In reply to girlymonkey:


Or that men are more likely to be driving longer distances. Quick look at the gov statistics indicate whilst women now make more trips the distance is still a lot lower.
You would then also need to look at the times of the trips eg are young men more likely to be driving at night and so on and whether its other social pressures which lead men to be driving later at night.

In reply to wintertree:


I agree tailgating is a major problem, not just on motorways but on ordinary roads too. It's not that they particularly want to pass you, it's just that too many people don't leave a big enough gap even in a stream of traffic.

You never hear of people being pulled over and cautioned for it, let alone fined.

As the OP says the police are too obsessed with catching speeders, often on stretches of quiet road where it's not really dangerous to be 10 mph or even more over the speed limit.

On the other hand they do nothing about bumblies pottering along at 40mph on an open A Class road collecting a huge queue behind them. The A21 is notorious for that. Surely driving too slow is classified as driving without due care and attention if it's seriously holding up following drivers?

With regard to the OP, maybe tachographs in private cars would reduce driver fatigue? If it applies to commercial vehicles, why not private ones? It's illogical.

In reply to XXXX:


It's tempting but I can't afford the time off from my day job. It really is trivial though. Basically you just look at a line across the road and ask "is there a car there?" repeatedly. The answer, with timestamps, goes "yes yes yes no no no non yes yes yes yes". How long does the "no" period last? To short? Get the best image of the following car and read its numberplate. Repeat again 1/4 mile down the road. Same pair of cars? 3 points and half an hour in the public stocks.

The beauty of this is that you don't need to judge speed - the safe separation time is independent of speed... Although you could put fiducial markers on the road to make a coarse measurement of speed (say ±5mph) to put the seriousness of the violation of separation time into context. Clearly a rear-ender at 10mph is less likely to cause harm than one at 70mph.

As machine vision tasks go it's pretty simple - cars are well defined shapes and sized, numberplates in the UK are very highly standardised, automatic numberplate recognition has been standard practice for 20+ years, and we are talking about measuring times of 2 seconds to within say 10% when mobile phone cameras routinely have the fidelity to measure it to within 0.2% (240fps on a £10 camera module. Its a world gone mad.)

I'm pretty sure the barriers to implementation are political and not technical. I've a hunch this system would penalise a lot of voters.

It's been on my mind to video some motorway traffic with a dSLR for a while and do a pilot study. Perhaps I should...

In reply to wintertree:

Well, to judge time accurately you need to be looking directly downwards, an angle from which it's impossible to read number plates.

If I'm really good at tailgating, I'll also be too close to the car in front for you to read my number plate.

In reply to XXXX:

>. I can honestly say I have never been tailgated outside of a 30.

Well you obviously don't drive much!

Have you never been in a moving line of traffic and found the car behind you is following far too close? It happens all the time.

In reply to wintertree:


I'm not sure, actually.

Whereas people who speed (in an 80-on-the-motorway way, not a 70-through-town way) generally know they're doing it but feel that they've thought it through and that they're not doing anything really wrong or dangerous and hence get huffy if the government try to catch them at it, I just can't imagine people who sit on your bumper at 70 having the same thought process. They're (mercifully) fewer and further between, too, and probably annoy everyone else a lot more.

In reply to XXXX:


No, no you don't. You can also get such a line of sight by looking sideways. Edit: In either case, a wide angle lens can look directly across the traffic sideways or down ways in the centre of the field, and up and down the road at the edges. The numberplate will pass through the edge before passing the central "penalty line". If that's to hard you just add a 2nd camera on the same timebase pointing up the road... Really, compared to Bullet Time (which was done how long ago?) this is trivial stuff...

Beyond that, you can judge time sufficiently accurately at any angle. Consider 70mph traffic, thats 31.3 meters per second. A two second separation is therefore 62.6 meters. With a typical car length of 4.8 meters you are talking about a gap of 13 car lengths. Say you want to measure the separation in time to ±10% you are talking about measuring to an accuracy of 1.3 car lengths. I'm pretty sure I could do that - with a bit of practice - from any vantage point (given a fixed visual reference a camera does not need) - to that accuracy.


True, but I'll have a bunch of pictures of both the front and the *back* of the car as it goes past a stationary camera. Further, there will be instant disqualification for any driver persistently tailgating that close, with a mandatory jail term if they repeat it during or after disqualification. It's the motoring equivalent of walking into a crowded room and waiving a gun about.

In reply to Jim Fraser:


Well engineered roads. In particular, British highways engineers have historically recognised the importance of skid resistance, and we're miles ahead of most other countries in that respect.

I think driver behavior is generally pretty good too, particularly motorway lane discipline. It might seem frustrating or bad at the time, but it's exceptional compared to The Middle East or some other places in Europe, for example.

In reply to wintertree:

I think this would be pretty easy to implement, especially if there were safe distance chevrons where the cameras are shooting, in the same way that speed cameras have the measurements painted on the carriageway.

In reply to robhorton:


I expect very few (other than lorries) pay to park. So it'd only be a few pence on the overpriced coffee/fuel.


...thereby costing the taxpayer more?

Neil

In reply to Jim Fraser:

Oddly these are maybe some of the factors that keep people attentive in the countries that built much of their road systems way before the car and modern cities. Having driven a lot in the US ,both on roadtrips and commuting, I honestly think the usually automatic rather than manual car, the grid system/cookie cutter blocks of some areas/almost zero chance of pedestrians or cyclists in many area and so on is a recipe for many to mentally switch off and leads to far more bad driving than is gained through open visibility etc.

In reply to Neil Williams:

depends, how many urinal cakes is an ICU bed equivalent to?

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Many in the UK now charge massive fines if you stay more than 2 hours (or pay £10 parking charge!) This needs to be outlawed now as it actively discourages people from resting properly

Do you really need to stop for more than two hours to enable you to wake up and start driving again safely when undergoing anything but a really long journey?
If you know you are going to be doing a big journey that might require a longer rest, then pre-plan and look at places you can pull off the motorway and get some decent sleep in a quiet lay by, etc.
Just make sure you don't inadvertently park up in a dogging spot though...

In reply to wintertree:
The problem with tailgating is obviously that people have differing views of what is a safe distance.

The other day I had a girl driving practically on my bumper. Once I passed the car I was overtaking I pulled in to let her pass and she just followed me across.

Trying to write a time based law that says you must leave a gap of 3 seconds in the dry or 6 seconds in the wet is fraught with impossibilities. Not least an ability for a driver to know how long 3seconds actually is.

It's a rough guide anyway. There's too many other factors to take into consideration with stopping distance.

In reply to ultrabumbly:

Good point. There is something to be said for removing all safety features from a highway network (as has been done recently in London with pedestrian guardrail) to encourage people to think and look more.

Bit risky though, and a political disaster if it goes wrong!

In reply to FactorXXX:


Possibly not, but it is a significant psychological barrier.

Neil

In reply to RyanOsborne:


The big problem with this is that it is terrible for the disabled, particularly blind people.

Neil

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

Agree entirely especially as regards the A9. Nice of them though to have installed all those averaging cameras at the cost of several million. Presumably plod will book you if you stop in a layby and water the verge. So a P bottle isn't just for a tent!

Sorry if that's a bit off the topic of falling asleep at the wheel.

In reply to XXXX:

Sorry Irk, I disagree with you on another thing! Tailgating on the motorway at a traffic density that renders all lanes fairly full is a real problem in my view and is the cause of jams clockwise on the M25 past A3/M3/M4/M40 junctions every Friday.

People follow too closely, someone brakes, person behind brakes harder, person behind them harder still. Next thing you know. A jam forms.

People don't allow enough room to absorb small changes in velocity of the car in front without large mechanical inputs (brakes)- this in my opinion is tailgating and very common. A result is the following: youtube.com/watch?v=7wm-pZp_mi0&

In reply to wintertree:


So slow down more until they get the message and pass you, stop if you have to and can safely. It costs you seconds on your journey time to deal with something that is very annoying and fairly hazardous.

I can't remember a single instance where I've failed to quickly, easily and safely rid myself of a tailgater in nearly 20 years.


Fine. What other option do you have?
jk

In reply to jkarran:

The last time I did this the car overtook me, cut me up, the driver got out and became rather aggressive. I know someone else who had a similar experience and the tailgater then punched them - through the glass of the closed driver's window. The car doing this to me was being hyper-agressive - the most I'd seen - on a steep windy descent that went on for about a mile where I was neither happy to be tailgated or stopped for fear of someone ploughing in to the back of me. I let them through at the earliest safe opportunity. The driver clearly had massive issues generally and is in a minority, but sometimes these things come up. I suspect he'd have been as likely to kick off in the street as in a car.

Edit: It's enough to make you wonder. Normally thought people do just get the message and overtake me when I slow down enough. Sometimes they'll fully stop behind me for a moment or two despite a clear road, which does make me think most tailgating isn't aggressive driving, it's just that they are literally looking and thinking no further than the rear bumper in front.


You haven't got rid of them though, you've just made them not your problem. This is what I do - but I'd rather see them taken of the road until they can observe some of the most basic aspects of safe driving.


None - so I let them past. I've never been arguing otherwise and am not sure where the negativity is coming from here. What is wrong with an individual letting them past, and the state coming down on them for dangerous driving? Simples.

In reply to DancingOnRock:


Nonsense. The problem is not with the law, it is with a person so lazy or ill informed that they are not willing to, or capable of, estimating their separation to the car in front. Frankly if someone can't do that, they shouldn't be on the road. Watch the back of their in front pass a fixed point (e.g. lamppost, tree) and count "one one thousand two one thousand" until you pass that point. It's accurate enough to tell you if you're tailgating like a massive pratt or not. As pointed out elsewhere there are chevron markers on some motorway stretches to help with exactly this sort of thing.

It doesn't take long of consciously observing separation times to get a feel for the distance to the car in front at typical speeds. Clearly expecting personal responsibility for basic safety from motorists is far to much.


Yes, and almost all of them make things "worse", which is why a fixed time separation is not a "rough guide", it is a "minimum guide".

In reply to all talking about a law to maintain a set distance:
This isn't the solution. As others have stated it's impossible hard to police and is unnecessarily complicated.

In my opinion it's all about awareness. I personally think a lot of these issues (including round-a-bout discipline which is typically awful) could be ironed out with regularly mandatory driver refreshment courses. Once every five years you must take a minimum number of lessons with a driving instructor. If he/she is in doubt at your ability then you must retake your test.

I really don't think this is too much to ask. We forget we are driving 1-2 ton blocks of metal at 60mph directly towards each other separated only by a white line. How on earth by taking a test aged 17 you are deemed still fit to drive at 80 (if you can still see) is beyond me.

The solution comes in education, not punishment.

EDIT: While we're at it I'd like also to see a law brought in that if you crash in a town (30mph) or on a motorway you are banned from driving until the accident can be analysed. In my opinion (beyond mechanical failure or being hit) there is no reason to crash in either of these two environments. One involves strong vigilance and low speed, the other an ability to look ahead and maintain a good distance. Both scenarios are particularly dangerous to other road users (or pedestrians and cyclists in the former) and if you can't do these four things well then you shouldn't be driving. Not only that, but a secondary consequence of motorway accidents in particular is huge delays for everyone else ... likely because the crash pair were driving an inch away from each other at 70mph while pondering what they'll have for their dinner.

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:


I haven't seen a compelling argument that it is either unnecessarily complicated or hard to police. I do not see why an anti-tailgating camera system would be more expensive or complicated to run than an anti-speeding camera system.

I also think the tailgating system would have a much bigger impact on road safety. The occasional 40+ car pileup does not happen because of speeding, but because of 39+ cars being to close to the car in front, and I suspect the same is true for many 2+ car incidents.


I agree whole-heartedly on the education front. However I think this would benefit from a carrot and stick. Or are you going to call every single driver in for re-eductation and re-testing? If not you need some way to identify those who need targeting. What is your concrete proposal for re-education of existing drivers?

I suspect other technologies will catch up before hand though. More people are having in-car camera+GPS units and these will eventually recognise tailgating (size of numberplate gives distance, GPS gives speed, voila - instant identification and uploading of tailgaters details), computer based distance maintenance and breaking is becoming standard on high end cars and will trickle down, and one distant day the squishy meat bags will be out of the equation all together.

In reply to wintertree:

I agree with you re carrot and stick, but I just don't think it's doable. I can't speak for the tech but I think it likely that rolling out equipment over the country that can monitor this kind of thing would be unbelievably expensive. Just look at the cost of average speed cameras. Not only that but it's a waste of money as new cars increasingly warn of forward hazards and we move towards the driverless era.


Sorry, maybe I didn't explain clearly enough. Mandatory lessons with an instructor every five years. Re test at instructors discretion (obviously important to license instructors in such a way so that they can't push people to retests to line their own pockets). I think it'll be pretty clear to an instructor who is heavy on the brakes and drives a bit too close...


I am uncomfortable with constant monitoring frankly. Though I suppose I shouldn't worry since my phone tells the authoritative world where I am automatically!

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:

You're already constantly monitored by the nationwide police ANPR system. So the only difference would be bad drivers getting warnings, then fines and points, then disqualifications. I suspect the ANPR is "just" a software upgrade away from being able to do this, but the police seem keen to resist any use of ANPR that could jeopardise its public support (or public disinterest.)


This would be great and would catch the majority of unintentional tailgaters. However, I think the sh1t storm mandatory re-testing would generate would far eclipse concerns over one more camera network monitoring our roads.


I don't know if it's a waste of money. If I understand [1] correctly, accident costs amount to £1.5Bn a year. A tailgating system shouldn't cost that much, although if it became a government IT project... (!). I do agree that new technology will draw a close to these problems one day.

[1] - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras60-average-value-of-...

Edit: You mention average speed cameras. There's a reasonably chance that the analysis could be included in an upgrade to their data processing, with the big infrastructure costs (data transport, power, gantries, power, control centres) already in place. Food for thought.

In reply to ByEek:


No, I haven't. But either

i) it's heap of festering shit, or
ii) it is completely disregarded at local level.


My turn. Are you serious? The punishments for causing death by dangerous during (even if a conviction can be achieved) are risible; often a few hours community service and a brief ban.


Tough f*cking shit. I think you underestimate the personal impact being killed has on people.

This attitude of an inviolable right to a driving licence is a big part of the problem. Need to drive? Damned well pay attention, and don't drive like an arrogant, impatient, inconsiderate, aggressive cock. Drive like a cock and kill or seriously injure someone and expect to lose your licence forever. Same goes for simply being caught driving like a cock, although I might give you another chance after you've had five years to mature.

In reply to wintertree:

It's unnecessarily complicated.

Minimum distance of 3 seconds? If everything else makes the stopping worse then a minimum distance makes absolutely no sense.

Someone can argue they're leaving three seconds in icy conditions and they're still abiding to the law.

It's nonsense and a red herring.

Three seconds is a guide to use on free flowing motorways. It's not your stopping distance. If the car in front hits something you'll hit it too. No question about that.

In reply to Jim Fraser:
A big part of it is our culture of rushing around like what we're doing is more important than anything else. OK, maybe if you've got a blue light on top of your car you have a point, but otherwise there is an absence of perspective.

Interesting that tailgating is a widely held peeve. Offwidth is spot on: don't hog the overtaking lane. This doesn't take care of those who tailgate you in the inside lane of course. Lane discipline in the UK is shockingly bad. I've been commuting between Edinburgh and Glasgow for the past couple of weeks and it is common to have a queue of vehicles in the overtaking lane so long that you can't actually see what the ones at the front are overtaking, the inside lane being empty.

Re resting places on the A9 with facilities: lots of villages/towns which are easily accessible and a couple of roadside aires.

One thing I come across a lot is employers pressurising their staff into saving time/resources on driving time, so you get lots of drivers leaving home at daft o'clock in the morning, driving too many miles before putting in a full shift then driving back again. A few days of that and you get quite noddy headed at the wheel. There are rules, but they are easily broken.

BTW, a new 20mph speed limit is being introduced in Edinburgh shortly. So far I am the only person I know who is in favour of it, in fact I'd lower it further in residential streets. Any other cities doing this?

In reply to Removed User:

Nottingham has widespread 20 zones. Signage isnt all properly sorted yet (some old 30 signs need removing) a few designations are not ideal but traffic has slowed and I strongly support it. We also have too mamy suspension destroying over-aggressive speed bumps which I dont support (standard bumps are fine); then various systems with chicanes and narrow lane priority bottlenecks but I'd lkke to see some experiments with dutch style no road marking areas.

In reply to DancingOnRock:


It's the highway code actually...


That could be why it doubles in the wet? You do know that, right? Further punishing violation of a minimum distance makes sense - would you say it makes no sense to punish someone for doings 60 in a 30 zone because 30 is a maximum safe speed and it would be less in some adverse conditions?

FWIW I'd like the matrix signs on motorways to post increased seperation times in adverse conditions as to many people don't adopt them.


In the mean time we would be creating a culture of not tailgating under good conditions which might spread to the rare occasion with ice.


Really? One of the most basic aspects of safe driving is nonsense?


Do they seriously let you onto the road? If you hit the car in front because they stop, it is your fault.

I've had the car in front of me do a full on emergency stop from 60mph. A dog ran out from a roadside caravan. I did not rear end them and the car behind me stopped practically bumper to bumper with me. Given that most of what cars hit are other cars, and not static objects, I fundamentally disagree.

In reply to captain paranoia:


Neither I am afraid. If you wanted to build a junction into the field you happen to own, you would be amazed at the sh1t you have to jump through.


I agree that death by dangerous driving is a tricky one. But these type of cases are pretty rare. The majority of serious cases carry pretty severe punishments. I think for most people on this forum, the loss of a driving license would seriously impact on your life including potentially losing your job.

No point in responding to the rest of your post. It is a typical "I am an angel on the roads - it is everyone else that needs to change" rant.

Cheerio.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

no time to read all the posts, but my part of the rant would be that the services on motorways are hideously expensive and it puts people off. Usually there's no where to sit if you're not buying too, so it's not like you can rock up and get some air and have brew from your flask (sitting in the car is hardly the same rest, and neither is sitting in the car park). I'd like to see some sort of laws to acknowledge that motorways and their service stations are part of the countries infrastructure and as such needs to be a SERVICE as well as just a money making pit. Lower prices or at least have a general rest area rather than just 4 seats around the gregs and another 5 outside costa.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

Yes the UK's annual road deaths is a figure on which the Government, Dft, Police and others should be proud off. Especially when compared with other countrys in Europe. I am often told that even the Germans learn from us.

It has been a long campaign to get the figures down. The introduction of the 20 mph limit in urban area is another step forward.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

A couple of years back, I saw the light. I now very rarely visit lane 3, spend most of my time in Lane 1 doing 60.
Road rage has became a thing of the past, fuel consumption is excellent, stress is non existent.
Driving on motorways is now back to being....dare I say it, a pleasure.

In reply to Removed User:


York did a couple of years back. There's been a correlation with an increase in average speed reported recently. Perhaps it's the cause, likely not but it's been utterly ineffective at reducing speed, isn't enforced and the signing is ridiculous. All in all it's a bit of a blunt tool which hasn't been used sensibly and cost a lot for no measurable gain.

jk

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:


I agree with regrading retesting, but isn't the danger simply that drivers will curb their bad habits for the instructor, then get straight on with it again when the instructor's gone? I'm under the impression that a lot of bad drivers are aware that they're bad drivers, but simply don't give a toss, and could easily reel it in once every 5 years.

I'm still frankly amazed that driving courses don't include a mandatory motorway driving segment. Most people aren't going to bother with doing a pass plus course. Same goes for training drivers how to behave around cyclists, but that's a topic that's been covered to death on these forums I'm not a perfect driver but I'm definitely a much better driver for being a cyclist too.

An issue that is never even raised is how car use affects people psychologically. It seems for many people that driving a car increases their sense of entitlement (including a god-given right to not be delayed) and reduces their ability to empathise with everyone else. Coupled with the fact that it's very easy to forget that cars are deadly weapons when mishandled, that's a dangerous mixture and some people, put simply, can't be trusted. Unfortunately car usage also seems to be seen as a right, not a privilege.

In reply to aultguish:


You might be on to something here. I've been trying the same sort of thing, and it does seem to make me a bit less stressed. And doesn't make too much time difference if the trip's relatively short.

I'm not sure how successfully the philosophy could be mushed into the collective consciousness of the driving public, though

In reply to Trevers:
I think it is a mixture. On a speed awareness course recently (was done following a lorry.... they rarely speed .... in a long straight coned off roadworks section at a quiet time without paying enough attention to the speedo), the majority of folk seemed completely clueless on some important basic highway code points and some in flat denial on some safety issues. I think the tailgating yobs wintertree describes (they are not common in my experience) usually do know and don't care. Sure I may be passing them on to the next car when I pull in but maybe the next car will annoy them on purpose and deserve the resulting fracas (two wrongs can sometimes make a right To me the blockers and outside lane huggers are more dangerous....... and frustrating in the extreme on single track roads in the highlands when the road signs tell them to pull in to allow overtaking.

In reply to jkarran:
Link for that info on York?.... I've never heard of a 20 introduction before that proved to increase speed (they obviously often increase speeding).

In reply to wintertree:
Your position is flawed. In a line of traffic if the first person doesn't leave a gap but the cars behind do. It's no help to the cars behind.

The second car will stop dead when it hits the car in front. The following cars will hit them as they can't outbrake the sudden stop. It's all well and good imagining a perfect world where the cars in front stop under controlled breaking.

In an accident scenario they don't. If they did; there wouldn't be the accident.

In reply to DancingOnRock:

Your reasoning is floored.

Unless an elephant suddenly appears or you have a head on (rare) a car does not suddenly stop.

Further, if the following cars are looking and thinking ahead as they should, not just following the car in front, everyone has time to break.

If you can't avoid the car in front doing an emergency stop, you are to close. It is that simple.

If you had an actual dead stop things would be different for the first few cars, but you'd not expect a 40 car pileup as each car-car seperation gives the remaining cars more space to react.

Edit: if I understand your line correctly, that is why I always double the gap when following a tailgater - I maintain the seperation from the car 2 in front that I would have if the middle car was be if safe.

In reply to Offwidth:

It ran in the York Press about 2-3 months back IIRC. Can't find it on their website but a bit more patience with their awful search tool might get you somewhere. yorkpress.co.uk

edit: I didn't say they caused the increase, just that there was a correlation. The cause is more likely improved traffic flow due to coincidental ring road improvements and or reduced policing of a few key sites.

jk

In reply to wintertree:

Indeed. Which demonstrates perfectly why trying to introduce a law with a specific time based interval between cars would be impossible. You just can't measure it unless you put a sensor in every car.

Saying a 3second gap is just nonsense as you can't measure it. Ask 10people to count 3seconds while travelling at 70moh they'd all give different answers.

Chevrons are only going to be 3seconds apart at a certain speed.

That's why we have speedometers. We don't have to guess what speed we're doing.

Motorway crashes, in my understanding, happen when someone changes lane suddenly. I think the safe distance idea is good in theory but in practice would need more technology than you're proposing.

In reply to DancingOnRock:


Then paint chevrons on the roads by the cameras so they've got no excuses. Have you seen the separation chevrons? We have some near here, many people ignore them.

Meantime, frankly, I'd be surprised if more than 5% of drivers - when given basic instruction on estimating a 3 second gap (it's really not difficult, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi...) - hold a gap of <2 seconds when counting it as 3 seconds. so set the requirement at 3 seconds, and set the fine at 2 seconds. frankly, anyone that lazy/incapable should not be on the road as they are driving without due care and attention.

To me your argument comes down to "we should not enforce minimum safe standards of driving because too many people drive without due care and attention and it is unfair to expect them to change"

Balderdash and piffle.

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:

How on earth by taking a test aged 17 you are deemed still fit to drive at 80 (if you can still see) is beyond me.


You don't even need to be able to see at 80 to still be deemed fit to drive!! My Grandpa is 83, it totally blind in one eye and half blind in the other. He still drives. He has taken the door off the car while reversing out of the garage, taken is front gates off their hinges by driving into them. He has an automatic, and in a public car park he ran into a bush (fortunately!) because he confused the brake and accelerator.
We have tried everything to get him to give up driving, but he won't. I'd be completely for refreshers and possible re-tests every 5 years, because then THEY become the bullies trying to steal his freedom, not us. (Not that he would loose his freedom at all, he still walks to a good deal of places, and has plenty of money stashed away that he could easily afford taxis to anywhere he wants to go. The family all give him lifts regularly too!)

In reply to aultguish:




I've done something similar, in that I'm no longer in such a rush to get places, and I'm happy at 70 - I used to be absolutely hell-for-leather, and get so wired I'd be buzzing and useless for a while, whereas if I take a bit longer, the stress levels are much lower, and as you say, fuel consumption is much better.
However, I do find that on the rare occasions I drive south of the M62, the motorways are much busier than anywhere in Scotland, and it's hard not to get dragged back into bad habits. I do absolutely hate driving in the south-east and along the M4 corridor. The M5 last summer was pretty grim.

In reply to girlymonkey:

That is easy to sort out. Go and visit the police, let them sort it out. Do this before he kills /injures somebody.

There have been court cases recently to back this up saying that as family members you owe a duty of care to other people to do this.

With my dad, one day we simply removed the car. We had little choice, as he was going to either hurt himself or somebody else. i could not live with the consequences if that had of happened.

In reply to wintertree:
You're looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and as a rusult coming up with a badly thought out solution.

Do you know how motoring law works?

Eg. Why can't cyclists be prosecuted for speeding?

In reply to girlymonkey:

Don't think my Dad was quite that bad when we persuaded him to stop driving although his eye sight was getting bad & his reflexes pretty poor. He was about 80 & was driving very little (maybe 25 km a week), mix of to the local supermarket & to visit family in the next village. The convincing argument was economic - he had a free bus pass & even travelling everywhere by taxi was less expensive that keeping the car on the road

In reply to DancingOnRock:

Two fundamental problems with that statement.

1) I am not looking for a solution, I am proposing one.
2) Tailgaiting is a problem and does exists. 4 car pileups are sufficient evidence of this, as are most rear endings.



A problem I would suggest is that my solution is not badly thought out. The only coherent argument you have presented is that people can't judge seperation and are therefore driving without due care and attention. My counterpoint is 1) they could but don't and 2) it's a fundamentally dumb argument - we shouldn't improve things because people are bad drivers.

We are going round in circles so I'll bow out and leave you the last word...

Re: your hints about motoring law, the police can and do go after people for tailgating...

In reply to ByEek:



You might think it's a rant, but the point I'm trying to make is that too many people fail to think about the consequences of their driving, both for others, and for themselves. This failure/refusal to think seems to allow them to drive like cocks.

If they thought about the potential consequences of their bad driving (killing someone, losing their job), maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't drive like such a cock, and we'd all be safer.

I don't know how to make people think about the consequences of their actions, but proper punishment for bad driving, whether it causes death or serious injury or not, would probably be a good start. I'd also like to see a proper campaign of public safety, along the lines of the "don't drink and drive" campaigns, which did eventually change attitudes and behaviour. It's an attitudinal problem we have to address.

In reply to captain paranoia:


I disagree and the road accident statistics bear this out. On the typical busy motorway, you are looking at seeing between 150k and 300k vehicles a day passing any particular point. Of those, a handful of drivers will drive like cocks. And of those driving like cocks, only a tiny minority will cause an accident, and of those, only another tiny minority will cause an accident severe enough to cause injury either to themselves or others.

To sweepingly accuse a majority of the driving population of having total disregard for the law or other road users is just not justified. Of the 3000 or so road deaths each year, even if all were caused by idiots disregarding the law, that is still a tiny minority.

In reply to captain paranoia:

There are a small number who might respond to a much bigger stick. However, I suspect you would end jailing/banning large numbers who were briefly inattentive or simply unlucky. Being humans, rather than robots, we all do this sometimes. Normally we get away with it, occasionally we don't. Would you be happy jailing someone (perhaps yourself) for a momentary lapse in concentration?

In reply to wintertree:

What happens after a string of 40 cars has used up their spacing to cope with an unexpected stop in front (perhaps an elephant as you suggest)?

Is there a maximum length of time before spacing is required to be resumed? What if the car in front accelerates in a really uneven way so that the car behind is caught off guard and eats into the buffer he has been allowing to build, and what if this happens just as his 'rebuffering' allowance runs out?

Does the spacing differ at different speeds? If so, then it is applied in smooth increments as a car accelerates and decelerates, or is the driver allowed some leeway during a period of changing speed? Or perhaps drivers should hold speed constant until they can obtain a minimum spacing from the car in front and only then change speed? This last might be easiest, but then what would actually constitute a change of speed? If the gradient changes and I take moment to react does that qualify for a change of speed? If so and I have not maintained the required minimum 'accelerating' gap then am I in trouble?

What about in situations of heavy traffic where cars might have to get very close to one another to allow people to enter/exit/change lanes? At what point do the cars officially go from being in 'just driving along' mode to 'allowing manoeuvre' mode? Is it below a certain speed or is it based on the specific events unfolding around the driver?

What if the car has dynamic cruise control fitted and is capable of maintaining safety even with very close distances, including in emergency stop situations? Do such cars get an exemption? If not will this create a disincentive for people to invest in safer technology?

I like your idea, but I'm not sure the legislative or court system is ready.

In reply to ByEek:

Let us get the stats right, it is about 1700 deaths a year in the UK at the moment see below

Number of fatalities resulting from road accidents in Great Britain, by road user group: 2000 to 2013

Number/percentage
Year Pedestrian Pedal Cyclist Motorcyclist rider/passenger Car Occupant Other road user All Road User Groups Percentage change from previous year
2000 857 127 605 1,665 155 3,409 -0.4
2001 826 138 583 1,749 154 3,450 1.2
2002 775 130 609 1,747 170 3,431 -0.6
2003 774 114 693 1,769 158 3,508 2.2
2004 671 134 585 1,671 160 3,221 -8.2
2005 671 148 569 1,675 138 3,201 -0.6
2006 675 146 599 1,612 140 3,172 -0.9
2007 646 136 588 1,432 144 2,946 -7.1
2008 572 115 493 1,257 101 2,538 -13.8
2009 500 104 472 1,059 87 2,222 -12.5
2010 405 111 403 835 96 1,850 -16.7
2011 453 107 362 883 96 1,901 2.8
2012 420 118 328 801 87 1,754 -7.7
2013 398 109 331 785 90 1,713 -2.3

Telephone: 020 7944 6595 Source: Stats19(DfT)
Email: roadacc.stats@dft.gsi.gov.uk
Last updated: September 2014
Next update: July 2015

In reply to neilh:

Fine - that adds even more strength to my argument. I do apologise though for my error.

Sadly, the statistics don't record which accidents were caused by knobs.

In reply to hamsforlegs:

Note that he suggested linked pairs of cameras spaced over a distance, with people only being busted if they're up someone's backside at both cameras, and not if they just happen to have had the person in front of them slow down suddenly right before the camera or something.

The point of this sort of thing isn't that you can set a definitive line between safe and dangerous and prosecute anyone who's just on the dangerous side without getting anyone who's on the safe side. It's that even if you just removed the what-the-hell-are-you-even-thinking contingent it'd make everyone's lives a lot safer and less stressful.

For what it's worth, this sort of system does seem to be under development and occasionally gets trialled, which suggests that the powers-that-be don't consider it to be as much of a non-starter as some of you lot do. Given that this sort of technology tends to get more effective and less expensive over time this suggests that it'll be with us at some point in the future.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Yes, the 'two counts' thing would make it marginally more feasible.

I wasn't being glib when I said that I like the idea.

The thing is, I don't reckon it's the technology that's the problem. It's conceptual - I suspect the idea of dangerous tailgating is quite soft around the edges.

I can see that there could be scope to have a sort of 'variable distance enforcement' where it is turned on for sections of free flowing motorway, but any individual case would have to be very clear cut, as drivers could challenge for all the weird reasons I sketched off the top of my head in my last post (even if they were caught two or three times in a row).

I'm sure that as the density of data about traffic behaviour over time (and our ability to process it) continues to grow all of this will be more and more feasible - ie easier to have a set of algorithms that shows that someone had so many opportunities to drive differently that they are in a 'strict liability' situation.

Ironically, by the time we have that data we'll probably have used it to build affordable driverless cars and the whole debate will become moot.

In reply to ByEek:

It is stunningly low even with the " knob" factor.

Just shows how much has improved.

In reply to ByEek:


I was talking about driving generally. Motorways are relatively safe.


I said 'too many'. 'Too many' is not 'a majority'.


I guess we'll have to disagree that the number of road deaths is acceptable, be it 3000 or 1700.

I guess we'll also have to disagree that people should drive with care and consideration for others, and not drive recklessly. My experience on the roads is that it's not a tiny minority who drive aggressively or recklessly.

In reply to captain paranoia:

I agree, peoples' personal frustrations and quirks come out when they're driving, which might be subsumed in everyday life through the social norms of generally being nice to one another, I think there's a few unsafe drivers out there.

In reply to captain paranoia:



I think the question is less about how many people are driving recklessly and aggressively - and I'd agree that it's probably less than we think, given that the one arsehole is more memorable than the hundred considerate drivers - but how many accidents they're causing, and how many lives would be saved by penalizing them. Given tens of millions of drivers, it doesn't take a huge proportion of them driving badly to account for a lot of accidents. For an actual evidence-based policy, we'd need to know a) how many serious accidents are caused by people tailgating and b) what proportion of people who currently tailgate would be put off by the risk of getting caught out by a camera.

In reply to Ramblin dave:
I guess there could be another element which might be less easy to measure, which is what effect do the aggressive or reckless drivers have on the other drivers around them at the time, does aggression from one driver lead to short term aggression from a proportion of others drivers?

We're probably not so different to other branches of the primate family in when it comes to aggression breeding aggression.

In reply to Timmd:

True, lane blockers are passive aggresive sometimes ready to be mass murderers. I've seen folk risk all the lives in several vehicles rather than let the speeding overtaking knob back in. You need to be a big knob to overtake dangerously but a huge knob to risk lives by not letting them back in.

In reply to hamsforlegs:

Exactly what I was trying to point out to Wintertree but he doesn't want to hear that. He's already got a solution he wants to shoehorn into a non existent problem.

There is no tailgate law. It's a driving without consideration offence. Recently they've altered it to be a roadside fine offence because previously it was too complex to provide evidence in court.

It's just not possible to be simplified and automated.

What are you going to do? Fit detecting cameras everywhere or maybe at places where there have been lots of rear end shunts.

Remember 70% of accidents happen at junctions and 70% of accidents happen on rural roads where people are simply travelling too fast.

Nice idea but totally unnecessary.

In reply to DancingOnRock:
Where do you get the 70 % on rural roads from?

In 2013 71% of all accidents were in built up areas.as per the RAC foundation.

In reply to neilh:

Fatal accidents.

In reply to ByEek:



Yes. Not recently however as I have been working in other engineering sectors for some time.

Older roads, as you say, continue to be a problem. Locally, the north end of the A82 continues to be a serious problem. Sight lines are dreadful, regulations about overhanging trees are routinely ignored, the road is not sufficiently wide for 2.5m vehicles to pass safely - far less 2.6m, and the edges of the road are crumbling. The same problems exist in many parts of the UK although few Trunk roads have problems on the same scale as the A82.

We could do with more attention being paid to wall and plant life degrading sight lines. Some work doone on the A82 a few years ago made an almost miraculous difference but was never repeated. Regulations about overhanging trees on footpaths and highways need to be enforced and we need a new approach for dealing with properties in locations like on the inside of corners on older roads: something that helps road safety without alienating too many people.

I was pleasantly surprised by some of the roads in North Wales recently.