Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

What you fail to realise is that actually you couldn't..

 

I don't think you appreciate just how quickly a modern bike can stop.
Especially Lozzo's Thunderace.

 

So indicated speed drops relative to actual.

Thus indicated speed would rise again. You improved your margin of error.

 

This is a rather tired argument. The human body is every bit as soft and
squidgy now as it was then, the human eye has not improved, neither has the
human brain. There are more older drivers on the roads than ever before, so
arguably the average reaction time is worse.

You are also apparently assuming that the car occupants are the only ones
whose safety matters.

Also, although there have been improvements in occupant safety, these have
generally led to increased risk-taking behaviour by drivers. Compulsory
seat belts saved drivers' lives at the expense of the largest recorded rise
in pedestrian, cyclist and rear passenger deaths - no net gain, but a
shifting of the balance of risk. There are studies which show similar
effects for ABS.

The government can't "extract money" in this way from people who don't break
the law. And the revenue from speed cameras is, at a Government level,
utterly insignificant.

The logical way to approach it is to obey the limits, secure in the
knowledge that if the cameras don't catch people they will become uneconomic
to run.

Guy
--
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88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

I don't see there's any way to get police cars out on the motorways to
pull people over for tailgating or inappropriate speed as there's
simply no way to get a police car out into the traffic stream and able
to pull over. Lane discipline may be possible in some circumstances.

Of course, developing a tailgating camera wouldn't be particularly
difficult, so maybe it should be done.

A

 

But do they? Do you notice better driving from the 80+ tailgating brigade
than from the middle lane owners club? Or are they both equally clueless?

My view is that the real cause of dnager is impatience. Inmy case the speed
limit is an external constraint on my speed; the speed imperitive is reduced
because I know that. So I drive more calmly. I also notice a lot more when
I'm travelling slower, and have longer to react, which means I rarely need
to brake or take avoiding action. Which would probably offset the
concentration effect, which is of course incremental anyway (as is the
danger caused by speed).

All the more reason for them to slow down, so they have time to react when
that truck they've been catching up for the last five minutes finally
impinges on their consciousness ;-)

No, it comes from a report on methods of accident reporting. It has been
misrepresented by the ABD as "proving" that speed doesn't kill, but TRL have
described this as mischievous, since in the view of the authors many of the
other headings also imply excessive speed. The authors have repeated their
view that speed is a primary causative factor in about 1/3 of crashes and a
necessary subsidiary cause in about another 1/3, and state that this is not
in any way contradicted by their findings.

Why? Speeding is illegal and increases risk. When I got my license I
signed up to obey the traffic laws, not just the ones which were personally
convenient at the time. The alternative is anarchy, which works fine in
India but I don't really fancy it for the UK.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
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88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

Indeed, but I imagine it's better PR if they confirm they're on duty
by putting on the blue lights.

I can't see that an investigation unit would often be prevented from
doing its duty by driving at the speed limit anyhow.

A

 

Faster than you can manoeuvre a bike with a child trailer containing a
four-year-old.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

Like Guy, I find more than enough traffic related things to look out
for when driving on motorways at 70mph.

Possible exceptions in my recent experience include parts of the M74
and very short stretches of the northernmost M6

A

 

Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?

 

You spotted the operative word - 'limit'.

When the locations are more dangerous, wet, crowded, or have limited
lines of site you may go /slower/ than the limit.

The limit is not a minimum speed to be traveled at only in the worst
of circumstances.

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Try finding out the actual facts. They may surprise you.

There are still /brand new/ cars on the roads to day that cannot meet
the Highway Code stopping distances (which were based on a Morris
Minor)

Braking performance is governed principally by tyre technology and
vehicle geometry (this last can be mitigated by suspension design).

Brakes only allow you to make full use of these other two things.
(i.e. if you brake beyond the limits of the tyres or the vehicle
geometry, you skid. Or worse.)

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I would be interested if you could point me to any road tests that
include braking distance from 150mph for modern bikes. (Preferably on
the web, but if you'd post quotes from paper mags, I trust your
honesty.)

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Euan
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On 18 Aug 2004 22:37:41 GMT, Gunga Dan <>
wrote (more or less):
....

While it might be true for some people, it's also true that some
people do not concentrate more when going faster - they just become
/fast/ and inattentive.

Other people concentrate as much even when going slower. They're
attentive all the time.

IMO, only this last group should be allowed to have driving licences.


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On 18 Aug 2004 22:37:41 GMT, Gunga Dan wrote (more or less):
....

Caused /solely/ by excessive speed. (and other TRL reports put this
number much higher)

The number in which excessive speed was a necessary contributing
factor is also much higher.

(i.e. if the driver had not been going so fast, the accident woudn't
have happened)

Taken together, they come to 60-70%

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The toddler was belted in, remember.


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When you say 'certain nutters', you mean peoiple causing almost 4,000
deaths a year, and many times that in serious injuries. (e.g. a
previous boss of my wife who is wheelchair bound for life, paralysed
from the waist down).

As long as these 'certain nutters' are causing such death and injury
on a scale /much/ worse than hooligans with guns, then yes, I propose
we enforce the laws against their misuse of cars at least as heavily
as we enforce laws against misuse of guns. Or knives. Or base ball
bats.



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Couldn't find 150MPH, but here's 100MPH, taken from two wheels only
magazine.

100mph - 0mph

Suzuki Hayabusa @ 359.9ft = 109.7 m
GSX-R1000 @ 320ft = 97.5 m
BMW R1100S @ 332.8ft = 101.4m
Ducati Multistrada @ 362.8ft = 110.6m
Yamaha Fazer 1000 @ 327.5 = 99.8m
Kawasaki ZRX1200S @ 383.2ft = 116.5m
Honda VFR ABS @ 347.4 ft = 105m
Triumph Sprint ST @ 320.5ft = 97.7m
Ducati ST4S ABS @ 318.4ft = 97m
Aprilia RST Futura @ 338.6ft = 103m

 

Every longer than the 70-0 distance in the Highway Code, based on that
Morris Minor of blessed memory.

So the claim that anyone could brake a motorbike from 150 to 0 in less time
than a Phord Zefyr could brake from 70 is Clearly Bollocks.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

 

The disputed claim was about distance, not time.
Time is within the realms of possibility....