Gov't/Police crappy road safety strategies

[KraftyPg]

KraftyPg, seeing you are in Vic. would I be wrong in guessing you did the L and P plate course with DECA?

I have done some training with them over the years going back before I was even an L plater. The last of which was a 4WD course run for my work at the time.

I didn't do my L's through Deca but I got my car licence through them, then made the mistake of doing my MR through a mob in Thornbury, because although I passed first go their course was nothing more than "here's the truck, drive it, park it obey the rules, you pass." After that there was no thought as to how I'd get my other licences and I went back to Deca for my HC and then my MC.

The flaw in the braking theory isn't so much with those that agree or those that disagree it's with the fact that in a 30 second advert they just don't have the time to explain the technicalities that are introduced with different vehicles so they make a generalisation that the majority of the people should be able to comprehend.

While any number of different mathematics and physics examples can be quoted a hundred different ways to try and prove that the message is flawed the bottom line of the whole ad campaign was that if you drive slower you will stop quicker and any logical thinking person should be able to understand that.

 

[SOLID D22]

That was my whole point. And as you pointed out, the government caters for the masses, not for people with better brakes fitted. Absolutely right.

I also support the idea of mandatory better brakes installed by manufacturers. It's a great idea. Too much time is spend polishing the gear lever and not enough working on the single most important feature on the whole thing: the brakes.

I posted somewhere that the greater majority of the population don't have the skills that a select few have. That's the norm. The government caters for the norm. There are people with even more skill and there are people with even less.

Those with more skill get racing cars or off-road prowess or do big adventures in perfect safety. Those with less keep buying cornflakes packets in the hope of getting their license in one.

But the majority just go with the flow. They don't do extreme stuff, they don't have extreme cars, because they're usually not interested and mostly not capable.

Reaction time is the bees' knees. Good brakes stop the vehicle, but there's little point in those if your head is over your shoulder checking out the chicky babe on the footpath.

Well said tony, unfortunately it always going to be like that.

 

[SOLID D22]

I really want to point out a hole in braking theory that bugs me every time I hear it.

It is bandied about, supported by much the same notion of exponential braking as you mentioned Aido that you drop around a quarter of your speed in the last five meters. That just does not stand up to any thought.

Scenario A, panic stop from 60KMH, in the last 5 meters you are carrying and stopping from around 15kmh.

Scenario B, same car, panic stop from 100KMH, now using the logic bounced around about the last 5 meters you will apparently be able to stop from 25kmh. Why can't the car stop that hard from 60?

It just does not stand up to any scrutiny at all. I also do not agree that braking is exponential, it is nearly linear. That is backed up by data logging from my own race car. The longditudinal G force produced in hard braking is pretty consistant from start to end, that means your retardation is prety consistant from start to end, in my case it fell off slightly towards the end of the stop as the car actually does produce some downforce at speed so some grip is lost as you slow down and if you get it perfectly right you will actually loose LESS speed in the last 5M than the first 5M of effective braking. It is as simple as time multiplied by braking effort. I also loath the reaction times they quote when producing stopping distances. I think the typical time they quote from seeing an obstacle to applying the brakes is 2 seconds! Anyone who takes that long to brake needs to concentrate more, and if that really is a typical reaction time then they need to be doing something about it.

While I do agree that for any given scenario, a lower starting speed means a shorter stopping distance and more chance of not hitting any obstacle, the advertising is also pretty misleading and selective. Yes in the TAC scenario from 50KMH you will bump the girl who walked out in front of you and bruise her knee rather than cleaning her up at 55kmh. You can carry that on ad infinitum justifying a lower and lower speed until the dopey bugger bruises her knee when she walks without looking into the side of your stationary car!

I think that is just another aspect of what has been mentioned above and I have drawn this out of people I know in discussion. After 20 years of TAC ads all some folks I know think you need to be safe is to drive within the speed limit, not drink and drive, wear a seatbelt and at a stretch they might admit that not driving while fatigued could be a good idea.

I am ex Air Force and a safety poster aimed at pilots (I was not one, I was a techo) said it all about the current TAC and govenrment thinking, they could really learn from this.

"Spread your attention, dont focus on detail"

Applies to driving a car and my thoughts on the current Government approach to road safety equally well and is equally poorly adhered to in both cases.

I want to believe your theory but i cant when iv put it into practice, eg: I was coming into a corner at 150km/h between the 150m and 100m marker hit the brakes to slow down for the corner and continued through with my speed, then in the race car (same car different brakes) coming to this same corner doing way over 150km/h hit the brakes at the same time and was carrying the same speed as me through the corner.
And as i stated earlier iv already proven this theory at the deca skidpan that the car stops quicker (takes less distance) than others.

 

[Old.Tony]

I also thought that braking is fairly linear in its speed reduction. If you keep your foot plastered on the brake, the jerking sensation as you whiplash the occupants of the vehicle might make it feel like it's braking faster at the end, but I think that's all suspension reaction rather than braking force.

(I am having trouble saving my post again)

Let's put ourselves into a particular position for a moment.

Imagine that you're responsible for coming up with the laws and regulations governing vehicle safety and in particular, just for the moment, your focus is on vehicle speed in certain areas.

Bear in mind the following points:

(see next post, this inability to post all of it in one post is rather annoying)

1) Average people drive average cars. You can legislate that they need to be improved but if you dictate $40,000 worth of braking systems and tyres that need changing after every trip you will have a revolt on your hands. You can, however, dictate improvements in the ADR for newer vehicles. Know this, and that the average car is not the new car. Not everyone can afford a new car, either.

(continued, thanks to a glitch that stops me posting all in one)

2) Average people react on average at about the same rate. The 2 seconds quoted in the_bluester's post is probably dead accurate. Think: when you're expecting something to go happen, your reaction time is about 0.2 to 0.3 seconds. If you're not expecting it, it wanders out to about 0.8 to 0.9 seconds. Add that you then have to make a decision about how to handle that, and then move your legs - and you're at the very least looking at over a second, and really heading towards the 2 second mark. For the average person.

3) A car travelling at 50kmh is covering 13.8 metres every second. So even in the best circumstance, by the time the average person has reacted and started to apply the brakes, you've travelled 27 metres and haven't slowed one bit. That's two entire suburban block widths, almost.

Now, armed with that, knowing that you have to produce a law for the AVERAGE motorist, go away and think about it. Come back with the speed you'd like to see done in a built-up area, where children kick balls onto the road and in a desperate hurry to not see it go down a drain, dash out to collect it, focusing only on the ball they don't want to lose. Or the puppy that is already on the other side and getting away from them.

Just thinking about the distanced travelled, let's do the calculations with a full-blown race car and a competent driver at the wheel.

With a fully alert driver who can react within 0.2 of a second and make their decision to brake very quickly and begin to apply the brakes very quickly (let's say just 0.2 seconds for each of these steps) a mere 0.6 seconds has elapsed from the time they see the child run out onto the road to the time they start to apply the brakes. At 50km/h, they've travelled 8.3 metres, over half of the residential block, and the vehicle is ONLY JUST starting to slow down.

I think allowing 50km/h in a residential area is a big win for the speedsters, to be honest. It's a compromise on safety that our children are paying for as they lie in their hospital beds while you're booking them a child-sized wheelchair that they'll need to be replacing and repairing for the rest of their lives.

 

[SOLID D22]

Im all for doing 50 in built up streets, but being a parent of young girls myself its not the drivers fault if a child runs out onto the street, Firstly and most importantly if you are the parent look after your kids, dont just stand at the front door talking to your neighbour, stand at the driveway looking at your kids. Dont expect them to not run on the road.
Also isnt the government phasing in that esc i think because it reduces accidents, my point exactly if we do the same with brakes.

 

[KraftyPg]

2) you've travelled 27 metres and haven't slowed one bit. That's two entire suburban block widths, almost.

Couldn't find anything else to disagree with Tony on so in the interest of debating I'd just like to say the frontage on my block is 25.6 meters so it's only just one of my block.

 

[the_bluester]

Solid D22, I should clarify that I was making the example above of the same car with the same driver stopping from two different speeds to illustrate that the TAC happily produce inaccurate advertising to support the campaigns that run.

The innacuracy is what gets up my nose the most. Granted the ads need to be taken down to the lowest common denominator, but unfortunately they do it in such as way that the target audience and quite a bit that is smarter than that have misconceptions about the message. As per my post above, if in a panic stop from 60KMH the car is capable of pulling up the last 15KMH in the last 5M, from 120 it is not going to be able to stop from 30 in the last five. Follow that logic though only a little and you have to argue that any give car can stop from any given speed in the same distance.

I will also put my hand up and say that I have no problem with travelling at 50KMH in residential areas, in some places it probably does not go far enough. Feeder roads are probably fine at 50KMH but in the little rat runs that modern developers are so fond of laying down you could really justify a 40KMH limit, most of the time on roads like that I am at 40 or below anyway.

To touch on the reaction time point. If I ever get to the stage that 2 seconds or more is actually a realistic AVERAGE reaction time for me to see an obstacle and get on the brakes I want someone to take my license off me. Combine a 2 second reaction time with most peoples tentative and fearful application of the brakes and it is simply a disaster in the making. I suppose a difference Old.Tony between myself and the typical person you paint a picture of is that I go through my motoring life expecting something to happen, not assuming that it will not. Occasionally I catch myself going into zonk mode like every other bugger in a line of traffic and you just have to watch for it and reset yourself so to speak.

 

[Old.Tony]

To touch on the reaction time point. If I ever get to the stage that 2 seconds or more is actually a realistic AVERAGE reaction time for me to see an obstacle and get on the brakes I want someone to take my license off me. Combine a 2 second reaction time with most peoples tentative and fearful application of the brakes and it is simply a disaster in the making. I suppose a difference Old.Tony between myself and the typical person you paint a picture of is that I go through my motoring life expecting something to happen, not assuming that it will not. Occasionally I catch myself going into zonk mode like every other bugger in a line of traffic and you just have to watch for it and reset yourself so to speak.

I've written elsewhere about the difference between the skilled few and Fred Normal.

You illustrate my point perfectly. A disaster it would be, and generally is.

 

[KraftyPg]

While I can see the point you are trying to make Bluester it's not as simple in practice.

Having made tv commercials and short video productions over the years there is so little room for being technical and explaining everything beyond a doubt when you have 30 seconds to play with. Trying to get the basic message, in this case drive slower and stop quicker and applying it too all situations is far more effective and achievable, especially since its true.

 

[the_bluester]

A far more honest ad in my view would be along the lines of "Stopping from "XX" KMH you wil take "XX" meters to stop and you will hit this pedestrian still travelling at "X"kmh, she is likely to be seriously injured or killed, if you were travelling at 60 then you would stop safely and miss her by "X" meters. How fast will you be going today?"

Obviously it would have to be refined and worded differently, but it tells no lies to simplify the message and it squarely says that the person responsibe for wiping her out if you were travelling 10 over the limit and could have missed her if you were not is YOU.

After 20 years the TAC ads are wasted money on me as they irritate me with careful use of statstics and large inaccuracies, I don't watch them any more. They did not even really cause me to modify my behaviour 20 years ago, I am pretty conservative on the road and apart from the initial burst of "Young male driver" syndrome have always been that way. . I have never been pinged for anything and have been on the road for over 20 years. I have also never crashed a car or caused another to crash and while I am not stupid or arrogant enough to even think that I will never do so, I am aiming to get to the end of my driving career with that intact.

 

[Old.Tony]

A far more honest ad in my view would be along the lines of "Stopping from "XX" KMH you wil take "XX" meters to stop and you will hit this pedestrian still travelling at "X"kmh, she is likely to be seriously injured or killed, if you were travelling at 60 then you would stop safely and miss her by "X" meters. How fast will you be going today?"

Some people come up with exactly what is needed, like this.

I'm 100% behind the statement, but I am also aware that Fred Normal is spacially disadvantaged - it's hard for them to comprehend what the numbers actually mean.

I agree with Krafty on the advertising score: the simpler the better. Fred Normal is no Einstein and no Brabham either. At best, Fred Normal knows that a metre is about as long as your arm but has no comprehension that sixty thousand of those go past every hour when you're driving around the suburbs.

The KISS principle is dead on the mark, because the average person, sadly, is quite well embedded in the category for which the acronym was made.

 

[KraftyPg]

I guess the other way to look at it is that even bad advertising works. You might think the ads are bad but despite you claiming to not watch them anymore you talking about them and discussing them. Sure you might be discussing their validity but your discussing them and that is the point of the ad. Other's who don't look at the ads as deeply as yourself may just have looked at it and got the basic message but atleast they too got the message that the faster you go the longer it takes to stop.

 

[the_bluester]

Actually you could simplify the ads even more than I wrote up and still be honest.

"If you were travelling ten kmh over the limit and this person stepped in front of you, (Take this to be the average "you" and average "Car" as they like to use in the ads) you would hit them travelling at least at X kmh (Stil a valid thing to mention the speed, they do it now) If you were travelling at the speed limit you would stop safely with room to spare"

It is the creative half truths that get up my nose. The above would be able to be made just as hard hitting as baffling you will bull, and not very accurate bull at that. How honest is doctoring the car for the sake of the ad? For example the "Speeding" car almost invariably slides to a halt, all locked up and tyres smoking while the "Safe" car smoothly ABS's its way to a standstill. Half truths and worse. As I have posted before in this thread, a side effect of these ads is drivers who are frightened of the brake pedal and the steering wheel, and that can only be a bad thing.

Also, to touch back on an earlier theme about driver training, how much of it sticks is certainly open to debate. I have just started teaching my sisters other half to drive a manual as he wants to join the coppers and you have to have a full manual license. While we were talking between stints we got on to driver training. One of the first things My sister did when he got his license was to take him (And herself) to an advanced driving course. One of the cornerstones in the theory part of the course was sort of an analog to another thread on the forums at the moment (As slow as possible, as fast as nessesary) and that was "Look up, sit back" taken to mean look up the road and sit back from the car in front. The first thing one of the participants did as they left Sandown raceway where the course was held was to closely tailgate my sisters car for about 15km. Not drink driving, not exceeding the speed limit, not fatigued, but not safe and a perfect example of what goes wrong on our roads, how do you combat that with incessant ads about low level speeding? In recent years it would appear in Vic at least is that the anser is not to worry about it as long as the big headline message is out there.

Lets not even start on the "Face" of the Christmas road blitz getting pinged for exceeding the speed limit. Nor on how poorly road design is often carried out, some of the new bits of road I have recently seen have such incessantly basic flaws that you wonder if the engineering bodies who are responsible for it own a car or drive.

 

[Old.Tony]

I think in the end, either the people are going to have to listen to the warnings, or suffer the consequences - namely being even lower speed limits and more rules designed to safeguard everyone.

 

[KraftyPg]

Actually you could simplify the ads even more than I wrote up and still be honest.

"If you were travelling ten kmh over the limit and this person stepped in front of you, (Take this to be the average "you" and average "Car" as they like to use in the ads) you would hit them travelling at least at X kmh (Stil a valid thing to mention the speed, they do it now) If you were travelling at the speed limit you would stop safely with room to spare"

That only works if you are trying to portray that speeds over the speed limit are the ones that kill. The TAC campaign for years hasn't been just about going over the speed limit it's about the fact that you can still afford to drop 5ks lower than the speed limit because the speed limit isn't a target it's a maximum. The simplified message if it needs to be simplified any more is "Slow Down" not slow down to the speed limit.

It is the creative half truths that get up my nose.

Name one industry advertising on tv that isn;t using half truths and crap to advertise their product. Either way it's still getting it's point across.

In recent years it would appear in Vic at least is that the anser is not to worry about it as long as the big headline message is out there.

It's still the headlines that people remember before remembering any other message so providing the headline isn't sensationalistic then is there really a problem with headline messages like "Slow Down", "Wear Seatbelts", "Don't Drink and Drive"?

 

[the_bluester]

I do not have a problem with the headline messages as such. The problem I have is that so many other factors that are equally vital are largely ignored. When was the last time you heard Concentrate or kill?, how many people do you see each week doing really stupid things on the road? I do not advocate annual roadworthy inspections, even the NSW police bod who was responsible for road safety at the time admitted a few years back that it made very little measureable difference to road safety. But I do believe that the condition of many cars can give you a general idea about the drivers attitude to it and to driving. How many times a week do you see someone tailgating at a rediculous distance that would not allow them to avoid hitting the car in front if they slowed suddenly even if they did have race driver reflexes?

All I all I am pretty jaded and I hold a pretty cynical view of the TAC and others who set policy in Victoria. My cynical view is that we are abot as low as it is easy to get with heavy policing of drink driving (Which I agree with 100%) and ever more rigid enforcement of speed limits, from here on in, real money and real education are needed to get any better so it is simpler for those in the positions of authority here to suck up the accolades when the toll goes down and browbeat us for "Not heeding the message" when it does not than it is to do something really innovative and new.

 

[Old.Tony]

In another post somewhere in this forum we discussed police presence and how only in increased presence would actually be valuable in deterring idiots, because the installation of new speed cameras wouldn't.

I think the themes are now becoming common, between that thread and this one.

 

[KraftyPg]

It's the old saying, make something idiot proof and they'll make a better idiot. Doesn't matter what safety strategies they make there is always going to be some idiot who has to prove it wrong. Increase the speed limits on highways to 130ks and some idiot will want to do 135 because they are the same person who thinks its ok to do 105 in a 100 zone.

It really doesn't matter what the strategy is someone is always going to disagree or dispute it just like any other government policy. The bottom line should always be that safety starts and ends with each and every driver then all the strategies in the world wouldn't make any difference.

I also agree that a visible police presence is the most effective strategy in road safety and unless governments are willing to put more coppers out on the road no strategy is every going to work as well in theory as it works in practise.

 

[the_bluester]

I agree 100% with you there KraftyPg. A VISIBLE and regular presence reduces traveling speeds on average and reduces idiocy. Now that people have had 20 years or so to get used to them, mobile speed cameras reduce speeds immediately in the vicinity of the camera, as do fixed ones.

I just about got to watch an idiot kill himself and others on the way home from work tonight. Just sheer damn impatience behind a slow moving truck and he/she had to go and blare past it into oncoming traffic, the first of which ended up all four wheels out in the thankfully shallow table drain and nearly rear ended by the car behind that was, as usual, traveling too close behind them. It would have been curtains for the occupants of at least three cars if the first oncoming one did not have their wits about them.

200M later someone else did it again with very little more space.

Funny, it is mentioned further up in this thread but a hell of a lot of ads get on my goat like the TAC ones as they are so blatantly built on half truth or plain BS and or use some degree of subtle insinuation to advertise something that they are not generally accepted to. Like the current large chain store currently advertising a young girl buying clothing with her birthday money because "We do not market junk food to kids" Apart of course from the long, lingering shot of her being shown to the beautiful and colourful lolly isle by the smiling shop attendant when she asked for it.

Lol, I am an advertisers worst nightmare, cynical and picky.

 

[WIR35]

Tony, I rarely find anything you post that I disagree with, and this topis is no exception. Your collective theory on Fred Normal is spot on. However, I am of the opinion that we shouldn't just be catering for Fred Normal. The whole mindset behind issuing driving licences needs a drastic change - it is not a right to have a licence, it is a privilege - and it should be a privlege that is only issued to those who can prove they are thoroughly competent, and can continue to prove it throughout their driving careers. Tradesmen, many businesses, restaurants etc all have to continually prove that they are worthy of their licences - why should driving be any different? It shouldn't, in fact it should be even more stringent.

Build more public transport so Fred Normal can do us all a big favour and catch a train