Road Safety Proposals
21st April 2009
So the Government today has announced that they’re looking at a new set of ‘Road Safety Proposals’ in a bid to reduce the number of deaths on British roads every year. That sounds all well and good. I’m all for it, as long as it reduces road deaths. Good work.
Except they’re making a bloody hash of it already by starting in the wrong direction. Their main focus is a complete review of speed limits on the roads. 30mph limits could become 20mph, rural roads would be capped to 50mph, and so on.
To understand this, we need to clarify one thing: only a minority of road accidents (let alone road deaths) are caused by excessive speed. The majority of british drivers know that you cannot drive fast everywhere; there is a time and a place, and so the majority of us only drive fast when the risks are low, and only to speeds that are manageable should something unexpected occur.
So if it’s not speed that are causing these accidents, what is it? Well there’s a few. Those driving under the influence of drink or drugs (or both) is a serious factor. Other than that, it’s nothing more than good ol’ fashioned carelessness.
I’m a classic case in point. I’ll admit that i’m no angel. I’ll drive fast when and where the mood takes me, providing the conditions are right. I’ve done this since the day I got my licence. And yet i’ve only been in one accident. How fast was I going? I’d guess about 3mph maximum. It was at a roundabout, I saw a car in front move forward. I was checking right for traffic using the roundabout and had assumed that the driver in front moved forward to join the roundabout. So i let the car creep forward more and more until bang - right into the back of the Vectra in front.
I’ll put my hands up and admit I was a careless, blithering idiot. And I feel bad about it to this day. But it was ironic that out of all the times i’ve driven fast over the years, the time I actually have an accident was at a time when i’m concentrating the least.
And that’s a key point: When you drive at excessive speeds, you’re aware of the dangers and you concentrate more than you would at fairly low speeds. You look for hazards earlier. You’re focused entirely on the road ahead as well as the surrounding area. If you’re dithering about at, say, 40mph in a 60 zone (and there’s quite a few of you who do this), you’re almost bored. The risks are low, the journey is long, and your concentration begins to wander. And then one day a car pulls out from a junction in front of you and you ram into the side of it at 40mph, all because you just weren’t paying enough attention. And a side impact at 40mph is a lethal force; especially if the car that got hit was a small french hatchback that’s not really built for strength.
Of course, the government rarely speak officially of what causes accidents because they might upset the angry mothers and environmentalists who would have us believe that 90% of accidents are caused by excessive and dangerous speed. All the while traffic statistics are quietly released each year showing fewer and fewer accidents are caused by excessive speed.
I wouldn’t be very good at debating if I didn’t offer up an alternative solution for the government to use, would I? Then here goes:
Since we’ve already established that the main factors are carelessness and those unfit to drive, I have considered a few options that would directly tackle these issues. There’s no real way of tackling carelessness because nobody can be 100% focused 100% of the time. It’s just not realistic. However, you can test and retest things such as reaction speeds and general ability to drive. In countries such as Malaysia, drivers have to apply for a re-test in order to renew their driving licences periodically (in Malaysia’s case, it’s every five years). This makes sense, because your reaction speed and concentration levels when you’re 18 years old are going to be much better than when you’re 50 years old. it’s important that your ability to drive is still up to the legal standard, and yet those who are unfit to drive are never discovered until they either complain to a GP of a severe ailment (such as very poor eyesight) or when it’s too late and they cause a bad accident.
It’s also a good way of making sure drivers drive properly and don’t let bad habits get worse. ‘Coasting’ to junctions instead of actually driving to them, incorrect use of brakes, poor use of engine, poor use of signals and mirrors etc. If I had a penny for every time i’ve had a scare from a blithering idiot who couldn’t be bothered to use his indicators or mirrors, i’d make Donald Trump look like Donald Tramp.
Also despite being no angel myself, i’d be very much in favour of the government halving the number of points you’re allowed on your licence before you have to retake your test, providing they reduce the number of years the points stay on your licence from five years to three years. This not only punishes those who shows scant disregard for the law, but it also acts as a deterrant. The Police has already said many times that many drivers who acquire their first 3 points on their licence tend to receive a bit of a wake-up call and behave after that (myself included, I must admit), for fear of eventually losing their licence. If the point limit is reduced to six, that wake-up call will theoretically have twice the punch and more drivers will smarten up a bit.
As for those driving under influence: drugs is a difficult one because most drug-related issues are of the less-than-legal kind which no official authority has any apparent control over whatsoever. However, we can easily get many drink-drivers off the roads by having all pubs and other similar drinking venues operate a system that some nightclubs use - that is, you hand your car keys over to the cloakroom/front desk, and in return you get a voucher card of some kind, entitling you to hefty discounts on non-alcoholic beverages (which serves as the incentive to hand your keys over in the first place). Then when you go to collect your keys at the end of the night, the person in charge will assess if you’re fit to drive. Currently this assessment is based on appearance only, but they should really just breathalise everybody. If you’re unfit to drive, the venue keeps your keys for 24 hours until you’re in a fit enough state to drive, and in the meantime you’ll have to walk home. This means you’ll get fewer deaths by drink-driving because there’ll be fewer of them on the roads to begin with.
If this came into effect in every pub and club in Britain, the only drink-drivers left will be those who get drunk in their own home. It won’t remove the issue completely, but it’ll reduce the numbers significantly.
So let’s keep our speed limits at reasonable limits and focus more on actually dealing with the issues rather than using road deaths as a scapegoat to build more speed cameras to generate more revenue, thank you very much.
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