Parents encouraged to use large 4x4's by the government

[BoredBloke]

From Dang in the road pricing thing.............

"On the other hand, we only have a car at all because it's so much more convenient for her to transport our four children to all their different schools and activities. "

and then here....

"I think the school run mum is a myth. Not a complete myth - they do exist - but not to the extent that the press and other drivers make out."

Yes you know they exist as you live with one.

[angusglover]

Who said I was a tree hugger? Since when has road safety had anything to do with hugging trees? I was careful to leave the environmental impact out of this argument as I like big engines and fast cars which doesn't sit well with the tree hugging community on here, I'm more concerned with stability at speed and stopping distances than how much Co2 they chuck out.

To be honest, why would you ever drive a 4x4 at speed? I have a 3.0TD and I sit at 70-80 and it handles perfectly. By speed, I assume you mean well above that? As for stopping, the stopping distances used in the highway code were from 1967 I think.....

[Ardesco]

As for stopping, the stopping distances used in the highway code were from 1967 I think.....

I belive they are also stopping distances using drum brakes that are not servo assisted. I did a "Speed Awareness" course a few years ago and the woman running it was trying to tell us that stopping distances had not changed since 1967 and that a new car with ABS would not stop quicker, it can just be controlled while braking....

I did think about going into the specifics of servo assisted disk brakes and the fact that ABS ensures there is no loss of traction while braking and tell her that she was full of tulipe, but then I thought naa i'll just sit here and make sure I don't get 3 points, we all know it's rubbish....

most fun in the course was her showing us how a 30MPH collision doesn't kill and a 40 MPH does. The showed a car breaking from 30 - 0 stopping 1cm away from a wooden cut out. they then showed the same car braking from 40 - 0 in the same distance and this time it hitting the wooden cut out at ~10MPH at which point she said, see this person would definetly die from that impact. See what happens if you hit somebody at 40MPH!!! I really had to hold my tongue for that one

[Troll]

I did think about going into the specifics of servo assisted disk brakes and the fact that ABS ensures there is no loss of traction while braking and tell her that she was full of tulipe, but then I thought naa i'll just sit here and make sure I don't get 3 points, we all know it's rubbish....
:

Agreed, pure tosh! I learnt to drive in a '67 LWB LandRover, no servo & drum brakes all round. I vividly recall furiously pumping the brakes to overcome fade on the M6, to avoid ploughing into the back of a lorry due to not realising the traffic ahead was stationary.
My modern 4x4 - discs all around & servo- can stop in at least half the distance

[Numptycorner]

The problem with the 80% die at 40 statement is...it's BS

From Safespeed

If someone is hit by a car at 40 mph they are 90% likely to be killed.
If someone is hit by a car at 30 mph they are 50% likely to be killed.
If someone is hit by a car at 20 mph they are 10% likely to be killed.

These claims are constantly repeated and are used to suggest that drivers moving faster are "obviously" risking the lives of anyone they happen to be in collision with. Advertising slogans like "Kill your speed or kill a child" are regularly trotted out. These figures are based on the report "New directions in speed management". Using official government figures we find the following information:


2001 figures number killed number injured percentage killed
Pedestrians 823 39,740 2.03%
Child pedestrians 107 15,704 0.677%

The truth
Taken at face value it appears from the government claims that reducing speeds by a few miles per hour might save half the dead pedestrians.

We do not doubt the claim of the proportions of deaths at various impact speeds. We do not doubt the casualty figures.

What do have to take issue with is the implied relationship between vehicle speeds and pedestrian impact speeds.

Relatively few collisions between vehicles and pedestrians take place. When there are collisions, in most cases excellent avoiding actions will have been taken by most drivers and this has an enormous effect on the speed of impact. Average traffic speeds in 30 mph zones are still something over 30 mph. The Government would have us expect to see more than half the pedestrians in accidents killed. But the truth is that around 2% are killed, and only 0.7% of children. This is simply because in most cases drivers are able to brake to much lower speeds before impact.

And that's not the only problem with the figures. We simply don't know what proportion of the pedestrian casualties took place in 30 mph speed limit zones. While we know that the vast majority of accidents involving pedestrians take place in town, it is very likely that out of town pedestrian impacts have a higher proportion of fatalities. It's only reasonable to conclude that significantly less than 2% of all pedestrians and significantly less than 0.7% of child pedestrians are killed in 30 mph zone accidents.

And what about unreported minor collisions without any injury? And what about near misses? We might guess that unreported minor collisions could double the injuries figure. If avoidance is the issue, which it clearly should be, then the near miss count is very likely to be five times greater still. So if we factor in sensible guessed figures for unreported minor collisions and near misses we could reasonably guess that 0.07% of child pedestrians in "incidents" with cars are killed.

Pedestrian deaths will also be disproportionately represented in cases where drunks, joyriders and escaping criminals crash in pursuit of their activities. Obviously restrictions of or advice to normal responsible motorists will have no effect on these dangerous behaviours. So that's yet another reason to downgrade the effective percentage killed figures when considering changing driver behaviour.

So we start from 0.7% child pedestrians killed and if we wish to plan to change driver behaviour we must downgrade the percentage figure for all these reasons:



We calculate that rather less than 0.02% of child pedestrians involved in incidents with vehicles are killed in circumstances where speed enforcement might possibly have been able to make a difference.

So the government chooses to imply 50%, and the truth is somewhere well below 0.1%. I think we can safely conclude that the government's implied claim is out by a factor of more than 500. To say that the government's claim is deliberately misleading is something of an understatement.

So next we take our very pessimistic 0.1% figure and attempt to apply it to the graph above to derive an average impact speed. Obviously the graph lacks resolution for this purpose. In fact we can't read a speed from it at all. But it's very low indeed: 1 or 2 mph perhaps. And don't forget the average free flowing speed of traffic in 30 mph zones is still over 30 mph.

Or look at it another way: We estimate a total of about 160,000 incidents and as a result only 107 child pedestrians were killed. We suggest (as a minimum estimate) that in 30% of those incidents the vehicle was exceeding the speed limit when the incident began. Where's the evidence for "speed kills" in these circumstances? Don't bother to look too hard: There isn't any. The whole idea is rubbish.

[Bluebird]

Numpty, thats all very good - but if everyone drove according to the speed limits and one childs life was saved isn't that enough ?

[King Cnvt]

If we banned all transport, think how many lives would be saved.

Is it not right then to ban all forms of transport?

Infact ban everything.

[Numptycorner]

Numpty, thats all very good - but if everyone drove according to the speed limits and one childs life was saved isn't that enough ?

The problem isn't the speed limit it's driving without due care and attention. No-one should speed in built up areas, but due care and attention is more important, the government seems to ignore that. Middle lane drivers on motorways, people who don't indicate, tailgaters, speed cameras haven't sorted those muppets out.

[Bluebird]

The problem isn't the speed limit it's driving without due care and attention. No-one should speed in built up areas, but due care and attention is more important, the government seems to ignore that. Middle lane drivers on motorways, people who don't indicate, tailgaters, speed cameras haven't sorted those muppets out.

It's both, if you ignore speed limits then your more likely to kill sombody if you hit them - no all accidents are avoidable - however the impact of accidents decreases as the impact speed decreases.

[angusglover]

It was actually proven however, in Cumbria I think, that the introduction of speed cameras has actually meant an increase in accidents and road deaths....despite what the government figures say!!!