I think we've said many times in this thread driving too close to the vehicle in front is a habit which most people on the road seem to have, not just HGV's. I know its a pressure filled business with time constraints, economic problems and the sheer price of fuel crippling the industry but none of that is a good enough excuse for driving dangerously in terrible conditions, if that is what happened. It'll be months before a report is published on this.

A roundabout near me was the scene of a horrible crash a few years ago where a lorry went round it too fast, fell over and crushed a car on its left. The passenger was fine but the drivers head literally turned into mush.

I agree with most of what you're saying Gordon but i hope you're not trying to say that 'older unsafe cars teach better road safety' as thats a line often trotted out by old people (im speaking generally, i dont know how old you are, hehe). How many times have we heard old folks say 'back in my day when cars had no airbags or ABS it taught you to drive properly and safely!' Statistics from the 60s and 70s show around 6,000 people died on our roads every year, more than 3 times the 2010 figure and less than half the traffic. So its fair to say when our fathers and grandfathers drove unsafe cars to 'learn better road safety' they werent very good at it.

Ive never personally thought about safety ratings on cars but i have looked up some of my previous cars to find they were 2 star cars etc, a relative of mine recently said they'd never thought about safety ratings until 2 years ago when they had children and it changes their views and mindset on such matters almost overnight.

I dont know whats caused this problem, i spoke to a driving instructor recently and he told me he's never met an instructor in 26 years of doing the job who has ever taught learners that speed limits are the only thing you need to worry about. He'd never encourage a learner to do 60mph on a country backroad even if it is legal, they teach to judge the road ahead and act accordingly. So our instructors arent telling people to be brainless, we know that much. In fact when passing learners on the dual carraigeway i often observe they are the only motorists keeping a proper 2 second gap from the vehicle in front.

Instructors do worry when people do all their lessons and pass their test in summer without any experience of even using headlights so they do like to incorperate as many conditions as possible, i did all sorts with my instructor, night time, rain, fog, even some sleet thrown in one day i remember.

I can only assume its a culture that the second you've passed, you have the god given right to forget everything and do whatever you want. This isnt just the 18 year olds its the 20 somethings, the young mums in MPV's, the middle aged blokes who think driving using the phone is legal if you've been driving for 30 years, the old people who feel the entire world should change to suit them etcits indicative of a culture where nobody even gives 1% of their thoughts or considerations to other people around them. Like with the tailgating thing, everybody feels their journey is more important than everybody elses.

Edited by jamie745 on 05/11/2011 at 23:35

I dont particularly agree that safe cars are responsible for bad driving. The car doesnt do the driving, the squishy bit behind the wheel does. Cars today may be able to handle conditions better where 30 years ago they'd struggle but peoples reaction times are still the same and the fact you cant see whats coming round a blind country bend is still just as true now as it was then.

I know for instance that i drive a big RWD car and if i go round a roundabout in the wet too fast the back end will go (it wont actually as its got very good premium tyres which cost a limb per set but you know what i mean). I think people forget what they've learned too quickly which can result in poor driving standards but we do still need to keep perspective and realise this sort of crash is a once in 20 year occurence and our roads are the 2nd safest in the entire World despite being very dense and extremely congested.

However i would like us to look at a few reforms and changes to the system. For instance i feel the Pass Plus should be compulsory as part of a graduated licence. Instead of two steps to your licence (theory and practical) its three step by including the pass plus. I also feel if you have 12 points you should be banned, no ifs and no buts. If losing your licence will put you out of work then dont drive like a knob. The theory test pass rate should raise from 43/50 to 48/50. Drivers who have been disqualified should have to sit 20 hours compulsory tuition and an extended re-test but also have to drive with a black box (akin to the Co-Op insurance thing) for 24 months after re-passing their test. In addition to this with an estimated 1.4million uninsured vehicles on the road more resources should be put into removing them and severely prosecuting those who drive without a licence.

What is one supposed to do? You are bowling down the M-whatevever in your family buggy, with 'er and the kids. Suddenly you start to encounter patchy fog ... whet do you do?

You slow down ... slow ... you're under 60 ... BLART, HGV man is up your tail, lights flashing, all you can see is OVLOV in the rear view mirror. He's under a car length from your bumper and doesn't give a FFIAT. Do you speed up again? Or at least until the next exit when you can get off the Motorway and collde with a combine harvester.

You speed up to a modest 65, but you are still being buzzed by Audiman, Beemerman, and VolvoXC90man, who, as is well documented, are all entitled to exceed the speed limit in all weather conditions ....

I despair

'What is one supposed to do? You are bowling down the M-whatevever in your family buggy, with 'er and the kids. Suddenly you start to encounter patchy fog ... whet do you do?'

Get off the motorway and find an alternative route. I realise this isn't always easy. Motorways are generally very safer than any other road, but to my mind best avoided in bad weather.

'Reports today suggest that this horrific crash was directly caused by a cloud of black smoke emanating from a huge firework party held ad a rugby club adjacent to the notorway. One driver reported entering a cloud of smoke "as thick as emulsion". Suddenly, no one could see anything. So it wasn't a matter of drivers going too fast in fog. They were driving normally and ran into a completely unexpected clould of thick smoke.

HJ'

If that's true, it's terrible.

I think the difference is rail passengers dont drive the train and their safety is 100% the responsibility of the Train operators and the company, much like with an Airline. The commuter has zero control over their journey, with a car theres so many more factors and variables. In other words with a rail crash (Potters Bar for instance) it has to be somebodies fault and someone somewhere must be held 100% accountable, thats not entirely the case with mass road accidents like these.

I hate to be pedantic but you're statistics are slightly out of date. There hasnt been a road death toll over 3000 for 5 years and the 2010 figures show only around 1,800 died on the roads last year and only 6% of those were on the motorway. Its a far cry from the 60s and 70s where the death toll was more around the 6,000 mark despite there only being 7 cars on Britains roads.

There is more to it than that. Somehow the horror of a rail crash or air crash is emmbedded in our psyche, it creates an unreasonable instinctive abhorence whereas road accidents are par to the course in contrast. Unreasonable because death on the rail is miniscule compared to the road. There a disproportionats amount of concern to any rail accident no matter how small compared to the national concern of the annual death toll on our roads. The dead on the road are forgotten quickly, only remembered by a few but when it's a rail disaster we even get reminded decades later.

Yes I am behind with the death toll on modern roads, it's bad enough without my mistake.

Edited by pullgees on 06/11/2011 at 16:27

Im not going to say its good that 1,800 people died on Britains roads last year but i do still ask that people keep a sense of perspective. Road deaths accounted for only 0.5% of deaths in the UK last year. Heart disease was the primary cause of 33%. Cancer was responsible for 28% and respiratory diseases weighed in with 16%.

Over 3,000 people died from intentional self harm. You're almost twice as likely to kill yourself on purpose than die in a road accident. Almost 3,600 people died as a result of falling.

Hmm... In other words, that the total number of deaths by any other means is greater than by road accidents. I don't go along with that method of putting things in perspective. To get a useful perspective you have to compare like with like.

Edited by pullgees on 07/11/2011 at 08:45

Hmm... In other words, that the total number of deaths by any other means is greater than by road accidents. I don't go along with that method of putting things in perspective. To get a useful perspective you have to compare like with like.

Thats not what i said at all, i was saying our roads are statistically very safe. You're more likely to die from an infection contracted in a hospital than die on our roads. You're more likely to kill yourself on purpose than die on our roads. You're more likely to die from falling down stairs than die on our roads.

If you want a like for like comparison then read the other stats already put forward in this thread. If you take out tiny islands like San Marino and the Marshall Islands (too small to draw anything from) the UK has the World's second safest road network despite being one of (if not the) most congested and dense at the same time.

Per year around 3.4 people for every 100,000 of the population die in a road accident in the UK. Compared with 1.7 for Sweden who have been top of the tree for decades. Compare that to 4.1 for Holland, 4.5 for Germany, 4.7 for Ireland and Switzerland, 5.2 for Australia, 6.9 for France and Spain.

It gets more interesting further down the table as nations like Austria post a figure of 8.2, Canada 9.2, Belgium a whopping 10.1 (and Brussels is trying to harmonise traffic law across the EU when their roads are 3 times more dangerous than ours).

This means in the UK for every 1 billion km's driven there are only 5.7 fatalities or 7 deaths for every 100,000 vehicles on the road.

The biggest shock in the list is the United States with a huge 12.3. Statistically Bahrain, Ecuador and Columbia has safer roads than the US. Of course these stats dont say everything, America has 312million people in it, driving on 13million roads with 765 out of every 1,000 Americans owning a car with nearly 4million miles of road to drive on. Their billion km's-to-fatalities rate is actually quite impressive with only 8.5 deaths per 1 billion vehicle km's driven, not much worse than us when you think about it. There are 15 deaths per 100k vehicles on the road in the US nearly 3 times higher than us but vehicle ownership rates are also higher in America.

In case anybodies wondering the Worlds most unsafe roads are in the African nation of Eritrea which has an average of 48.4 deaths per 100,000 people.

Statistically the most unsafe roads to drive long distances on are in Brazil as they record 56 deaths for every billion km driven and over 37,000 people died on Brazilian roads last year alone. That is more than the total UK road death toll for the last decade.

Getting our death rate lost in a mire of world statistics, is just b***** ridiculous. So we are much better behaved on our roads , so that's okay then. I don't why your pointing this out at all it doesn't solve anything here. What is important to a society is what happens in their country, (if you are part of it) and how it effects us. It's called national interest, concern. I'm concerned as I mentioned at the beginning that our road victims are soon forgotten, whereas a rail accident is never forgotten, although I might be wrong re this accident because there is an of investigation in hand and we will hear the findings. This particular accident has raised a lot of debate and heart felt concern across the country. Minimize it if you wish.

A few years ago we had one of the lowest fatalities for the population. Only Sweden was better. Maybe that's still the case.

That is indeed still the case with the UK second only to Sweden. If you take tiny islands out of the statistics we are the second safest in the World despite having some of the most congested roads at the same time. Holland, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland arent far behind us.

Interestingly the stats show you're four times more likely to die on American roads than British roads.

To put it another way theres 7 deaths for each 100,000 motor vehicles and 5.7 deaths for every billion km's driven by car in the UK.

Edited by jamie745 on 06/11/2011 at 17:28