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The xx% who hog middle lanes are responsible for, but not involved in, for many outside lanes "events". Yes, that old chestnut again, but it's true!
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89.7% of statistics are made up.
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89.7% of statistics are made up.
I have been reliably informed that the correct figure is 84.278%
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The sort who take 10 or 12 attempts to pass their driving test. Monkeys, typewriters & Shakespeare spring to mind.
Hmm, I wonder about that.
I have a friend, just turned 80, who has hardly any control over his car -- he got his licence before there was a test, and has never had driving lessons. If he had been made to do a test, he'd probably have failed a few dozen times.
However, he has never crashed or - as far as I know - caused a crash, because he goes so slowly. He has plenty of time to stop before hitting anyone else, and other drivers have time to see him, even when he stops in the middle of a roundabout or somewhere else equally daft. Lots of (justifiable) cursing at him, but no accidents.
Apart from low-speed urban bumps, the accidents that I see tend to involve or be caused by people who insist on mainatining a high speed, and get frustrated or reckless at any obstacle -- yet insist that that they are such skilled drivers that they can display bad manners towards anyone who they reckon has less skill.
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I've guessed this for a while - I think the majority of incidents are caused by incompetent drivers... I mean, you only had to watch "Britian's Worst Driver" to see the idiots (many of them young) who have been handed a driving license.
We are too relaxed when it comes to failing the tests - someone to fails 10/12/15/20 times is a bad driver. If they do eventually pass it's more likely to be good luck than decent driving. Why not force a two year "break" to be taken after failing, say, 5 times? They might get a little more control and common sense in that time.
I think that nearly all the remainder of the accidents are caused by people driving too fast, though these also fit into the incompetent group. This can be the person who overtakes in a stupid place, hurtles onto a roundabout without looking, or believes stopping distances can be measured in millimetres. Someone impatient caused £500 worth of bodywork damage to my car on Friday trying to squeeze through a gap too small - his boss has agreed to pay the bill but it would never have happened had he just waiting a few seconds longer.
And, of course, there are the few remaining incidents that are true accidents and happen to the best of people.
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I know it is absolutely non-PC now to suggest in UK and Eurotopia that someone is actually responsible for their actions these days and that it is probably upbringing or gender confusion or something....but in the good old days when we had martial law in the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos they got pulled out of their cars and were made to do 100 pushups in front of everybody.
My driver got pulled for an illegal U-turn circa 1983 and had to spend the afternoon clipping the grass at the police HQ with a pair of nail scisssors.
Drivers where I live were a bit more orderly then I can tell you.
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Just because someone has never *had* an accident doesn't mean that they haven't been the cause of one, wittingly or un-!
I think lack of awareness and/or consideration is a far bigger factor in accidents than speed. I don't believe speed itself is dangerous. Drivers who appear to be oblivious to what's going on around them are the worst. And yet, if someone is speeding (legally or otherwise) to get past them and has a smash, the registered cause would be speed rather then other driver's incompetence.
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smokie - please don't trigger the 'speed isn't dangerous' topic again, it's a cop-out. The consequences of speed are more dangerous as the speed rises, and I think you might agree that drivers' competence decreases as speed rises. I know I would be competent at 45mph, but incompetent at 145. And when there is an incident (whoever causes it) damage probably rises with the square of the speed.
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However, if you had never exceeded 45mph then you would most likely be unsafe at 60 mph.
A declining proportion of today's drivers have exceeded 70mph and therefore are at the top of their learning curve when driving at that speed.
Someone who has experience of driving at 90 or 100mph will be more relaxed and in better control at a lower speed.
It's called experience and people aren't getting it.
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NW - if your friend has just turned 80, I calculate that (s)he would have been ~13 when the obligatory test was introduced (that is assuming it was in 1936 - there has been some discussion here recently). How was it avoided?
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No tests during WWII?
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I feel I must inform you that all statistics are made up. Everyone knows that 12.83% of people know that!
--
"Ah...beer - my only weakness - my achilles heel if you will"
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The logical conclusion must be 7% of drivers cause 75% of crashes.
Now, if it were possible to identify the 7% and keep them off the road, think how much safer our roads would be.....but, what about those who cause the other 25%? If we got rid of those the roads would be accident free.
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NW - if your friend has just turned 80, I calculate that (s)he would have been ~13 when the obligatory test was introduced (that is assuming it was in 1936 - there has been some discussion here recently). How was it avoided?
I never asked him ... probably because when I'm in his car I'm too busy trying to ignore my surroundings, and once I've got out of the car I don't want to think too much about the experience.
(mind you, I'd far prefer to take a lift from him than from the young lad down the road who drives a souped-Nova, or from the bullyboy middle-aged men who think they are exempt from the motorway speed limits)
Maybe the reason he never did the test is WWII, as someone suggested? Were tests really suspended then?
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See the thread from January 2004 on old timers driving tests,
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=19587&...e
regards
Ian L.
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I observed a very dangerous driver on the motorway the other morning. A Fiat 126 was tootling along in lane 2 (out of two lanes at this point) at about 50mph, causing a tailback of cars behind him. The motorway then widened to 3 lanes, and he carried on into lane 3 at this slow pace. The cars behind finally decided it was time to undertake, obviously feeling by going to lane 1, they would have at least lane 2 between them and the Fiat. As the cars started to blast past this dodderer, he then suddenly veered towards lane 1 without indicating, and then settled on a wobbly path between lane 1 and 2 along the dotted line!! Needless to say there were cars swerving all over the place trying to avoid this fool, but fortunately no collisions resulted. As everyone was concentrating hard on avoiding this Fiat, he was less likely to be involved in a crash than the others who were more likely to crash into each other as a result.
When we finally passed the driver we noticed he was a very elderly man, squinting away like Mr McGoo trying to read a microfiche.
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