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Dont know the full details as yet, only that 5 people were killed today on the North Circular rd and 1 person seriously ill, i wonder how it happened and i bet again speed came into it.A lot of heart broken families out there today, i lost my 23 year old brother in 1971 to a road accident, he was a pedestrian.
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Yes Sombrueil, very tragic. I haven't heard anything yet so will reserve judgement but I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about the speed factor. We all feel safe in our nice, quiet, warm cars and tend to lose sight of the fact that we are actually travelling very fast sometimes, even if it doesn't feel like it. It's ironical that the safer cars get the more they might incline us to take risks we perhaps wouldn't have done if we felt more vulnerable. Not sure what can be done about all this however.
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I wouldn't be suprised that speed may well have been secondary to mind altering substances. 5 people in the car at 2.15 seems a bit like they were returning from a party. We'll probably never find out though.
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Definitely agree that increasing safety gives a false sense of security, together with quieter cars. Still a fact that airbags, abs, side impact bars will not save you if you drive too fast. Often thought though that it is telling that cars are sold on their 0-60 times but not their 60-0 times/distances...
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There were 2 cars involved, an Omega and a Calibra, one of the drivers more or less walked away.
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60-0 in about 0.2s I'd have thought in this case
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Is it my imagination or does it seem that car passengers are more likely to be killed in serious road accidents than drivers ?
If so, why is this and why aren't the reasons better publicised ?
Are passengers less likely to wear seat belts or is the driving position simply a safer place to be inherently ?
Other than when drink driving and speeding are involved we never seem to hear about any aggravating factors (e.g. seat belts not used, vehicle overloaded, missing or defective airbags, tyre blow out, mechanical failure etc. etc.).
Surely this data must be available so wouldn't making it more public act as some form of deterrent ?
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Volvoman. Those sort of statistics are available. A quick search in google got me;
www.lincs.police.uk/stats/annualreport1999/acciden...l
www.psni.police.uk/stats/Bulletin.
I know there are better out there. In fact there is one page that lists all major causes but I can\'t find it. Driver error is the cause of about 80-90% of accidents e.g. pulling out of a junction into oncoming traffic, changing lane and colliding with another car.
Hopefully the internet will lead to greater openness on the part of the gov and police forces. I don\'t think they have anything to hide but it is important to publish the data that drives decision.
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Sorry about the first page. There is something wrong with this site that prevents me doing a link. Here is the URL:
www.lincs.police.uk/stats/annualreport1999/acciden...l
There is nothing wrong with this site. If you read the notice in \"Announcements\" you should be able to learn how to use it quite easily. I have corrected your links for you.
M.
p.s. just out of interest; Instruments in which town ?
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Another 4 lives lost today, in one 3 were killed, no other traffic was involved, seems they may have skidded and then they hit a tree, then not far from me a young boy of 12 in care was killed the other passengers critically ill, i stay now in the first lane, dont care if i have to go the same spped as the lorries, but i am really very very careful now.
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There is nothing wrong with this site.
LOL. How dare I suggest such a thing. :) Actually I was trying to use the HMTL anchor tag rather than paste a URL. It failed in one case as your engine inserted a break tag. It seems that the site accepts some HTML tags but there are a few things to be aware of. Errm, is anyone awake, out there .... damn ... sent the audience to sleep ...
Instruments in which town ?
Are you referring to my work email address? If so, Slough. Only Slough and Bournemouth in the UK remain.
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A couple of weeks ago I was turning onto the N circular from the M1 when the 'chap' in front of me suddenly decided that he did not want to go West after all, and slammed into reverse and reversed up the dual carriageway to where he could turn to go East. Luckily I spotted this in good time and there was nobody in the outside lane so I could avoid him.
The government's own research (there's a link on the Speedtrap Bible web page) a couple of years ago clearly showed that speed was only the main causative factor of accidents in a small proportion of cases.
I do get annoyed when people who speed are branded 'child killers' and on at least one recent TV interview, some campaigner cited a supposed number of child deaths caused by speeding that was actually higher that the entire average UK total of all road deaths.
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I sense a long speed kills, oh no it doesn't, oh yes it does 'discussion' coming on ...
To state the really obvious speed is rarely the direct causative agent: excessive speed just means that once you get intro trouble you are going too fast to react in time. And of course it depends how you classify a crash. Did (s)he crash into a car coming out of a side road because a) the person emerging did not see oncoming traffic or b) (s)he was going well over the speed (or safe) limit but could have stopped in time if not going so fast. And would a crash caused by a skid be classified as due to excessive speed?
Time to duck out of site until the fur has stopped flying.
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No Leif, I am of your opinion, but the first email which said words to the affect of 'I bet speed was involved' rattled my cage a bit. Not much. I am quite mellow actually! Sorry if it drags up that old argument. :-)
By the way, I personally don't speed. I like to get up to the speed limit (conditions allowing) and *make progress* but don't speed and especially not through towns.
My other half and I set out from Guildford to travel home at the same time. On the M25 he took off like a bat out of hell and I stuck to the limits. He got back 10 minutes before me.
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