Penalty points, speeding and risks

Silent Bob

It's well known among psychologists that human beings operate at a certain level of risk. It has been found that people who drive cars that are considered to be safer would compensate for that perceived increase in safety by adjusting their driving over time until they were back at the risk level they were at before they bought the safer car.

It would seem that we are getting the same thing with the introduction of penalty points. People have to drive more slowly or risk having even more insurance money extorted from them. So it would make sense that they compensate by altering their driving style to up the risk without breaking 30mph.

This would seem to be evidenced by the fact that there were more road deaths in May this year than last.

It would make sense to adjust speed limits to allow people to drive closer to their 'acceptable risk' level on roads that are safe to do so (e.g. the Green Route in Ballinteer, big grass verges between footpath and road, big central reservation between lanes, very few houses on it, 30mph)

Discuss.

Seth Brundle

Originally posted by Silent Bob
It's well known among psychologists that human beings operate at a certain level of risk. It has been found that people who drive cars that are considered to be safer would compensate for that perceived increase in safety by adjusting their driving over time until they were back at the risk level they were at before they bought the safer car.

I remember watching a program about car crashes, etc. and a psycologist made a wise statement , that the best device possible to reduce accidents would be to have a big spike coming out of the steering wheel - no driver will **** around just in case!

It would seem that we are getting the same thing with the introduction of penalty points. People have to drive more slowly or risk having even more insurance money extorted from them. So it would make sense that they compensate by altering their driving style to up the risk without breaking 30mph.

This would seem to be evidenced by the fact that there were more road deaths in May this year than last.

The stats for May last year were lower than normal though.
I believe that the reduction in speeding claimed by the authorities is not as great as in reality (IMO judged from the routes I drive (e.g. just drive the southern section of the M50 anytime)

It would make sense to adjust speed limits to allow people to drive closer to their 'acceptable risk' level on roads that are safe to do so (e.g. the Green Route in Ballinteer, big grass verges between footpath and road, big central reservation between lanes, very few houses on it, 30mph)

If you allow people a certain limit they will always try to take more - however I agree that speed limits are a farce here (60 mph on a back road but 30 on dual carriageway (the safest roads)

Discuss.

Is this a Leaving Cert exam?

Silent Bob

Originally posted by kbannon
The stats for May last year were lower than normal though.
I believe that the reduction in speeding claimed by the authorities is not as great as in reality (IMO judged from the routes I drive (e.g. just drive the southern section of the M50 anytime)

If they are on the increase since January though, then it would seem that all penalty points have achieved is hitting our wallets without having a sustainable impact on deaths which is why they were introduced (ostensibly).

An interesting thing to do is to compare deaths versus numbers of cars on the road and other factors. MCN did this with the British governments stats on how speed cameras supposedly save lives (as well as an analysis on revenue earned by the hypothecation scheme). What they found was that the graph of road deaths compared with miles driven (I think) was pretty much a straight line from years before cameras were introduced to the time that they did the analysis. Meanwhile convictions and revenue had increased well out of proportion.

I'll see if I can find an online version of this report.

Originally posted by kbannon
If you allow people a certain limit they will always try to take more

I think this is only true up to a certain point. If a housing estate was signposted at 60, I would still drive through it at 20-30mph because the 'risk' is that much higher (it's narrow, cars parked everywhere, kids running around etc).

Originally posted by kbannon
Is this a Leaving Cert exam?

Well I thought that members who have to sit the walk in the park this year would be more likely to respond to a familiarly phrased post...

Victor

Originally posted by Silent Bob
It would seem that we are getting the same thing with the introduction of penalty points. People have to drive more slowly or risk having even more insurance money extorted from them. So it would make sense that they compensate by altering their driving style to up the risk without breaking 30mph.

It is a possibility, however the number of increased injuries in low speed accidents, would be more than offset by reduced (high speed) deaths.

Originally posted by Silent Bob
If they are on the increase since January though, then it would seem that all penalty points have achieved is hitting our wallets without having a sustainable impact on deaths which is why they were introduced (ostensibly).

How do penalty points hit your pocket (other than a possible, but justifiable weighting on you insurance).

STaN

€80 for speeding

Silent Bob

good point STaN.

Also the road fatalities for both March and May this year were up on the average of the last 5 years (1998-2002).

Victor, a car can still kill someone by hitting them at 30mph, probably just as easily as hitting them at 35mph.

I imagine the only benefit of travelling at 30mph as opposed to 35mph is the decreased stopping distance. If you 'increase your risk' by decreasing the distance you allow to stop then there probably ain't much difference at all (this is just my supposition, I don't have any proof either way)

Victor

Originally posted by Silent Bob
good point STaN.

You always had to pay the fine, penalty points makes no difference.

Originally posted by Silent Bob
Also the road fatalities for both March and May this year were up on the average of the last 5 years (1998-2002).

I know (I track and post the information up here).

Originally posted by Silent Bob
Victor, a car can still kill someone by hitting them at 30mph, probably just as easily as hitting them at 35mph.

No, deaths increase disproportionately with speed. I'll find the figures for you.

Silent Bob

Originally posted by Victor
No, deaths increase disproportionately with speed. I'll find the figures for you.

Surely if a car hits you at 30mph it's going to do much the same damage as it would at 35?

momentum is proportional to velocity. There's a difference of 14% between 35mph and 30mph. This means a difference in momentum of 14%. Given that pretty much all cars weigh over a 1000kg I'd be surprised if it makes that much difference when you hit a relatively stationary person.

I'd say the difference between accidents where people start at 35mph and 30mph and get a fair bit of braking done before impact is significant though. (Again I have no figures on any of this)

Victor

From "Review of Road Accident Trends in Dublin City 1990 to 2001". By the way, June is also at the 5 year average (below last year).

Section 4 -Dublin City Council’s Traffic Calming Policy

In November 2001 the Traffic & Transportation SPC considered a Report on the City Council’s traffic calming policy. The Report noted that the key objective of traffic calming is to achieve reductions in vehicle speeds. The Report quoted UK data on the relationship between vehicle speed and the severity of pedestrian injury where there is an accident involving a pedestrian and a vehicle. This data is reproduced in Table 7:

Table 7 : Vehicle Impact Speed and Pedestrian Injury Severity

Impact 	Proportion of Pedestrians 	
Speed	Killed 	Injured	Uninjured
MPH	%	%	%
20	5	65	30
30	45	50	5
40	85	15	0

UK Department of Transport Traffic Advisory Leaflet 7/93 (TAU, 1993)

The Transport Research Laboratory in the UK (TRL, 2000) has summarised the evidence from national and international sources about the effects of speed on accidents, casualties and wider aspects of the quality of life. The following are some of the key findings of this research:

• Each 1mph reduction in mean traffic speed is associated with a 5% reduction in accidents; the exact reduction depends on the type of road: Thus a 1mph reduction in average speed would reduce accident frequency :
  . . . . . . by 6% on urban main roads and on residential roads with low average speeds
  . . . . . . by 4% on medium speed urban roads and lower speed rural main roads and
  . . . . . . by 3% on higher speed urban roads and rural single carriageway main roads.
• Where vehicle speed is 25% above the average speed, the risk of accident involvement rises by more than 500%.
• The higher the average speed on a given type of road, the more accidents there are; and the bigger the spread of speeds, the more accidents.
• Studies of cars involved in accidents show that they were travelling faster than the average speed of other cars on the same road.

It is clear that controlling speeds can have significant benefits in terms of accident reduction. Reducing speeds to more appropriate levels for the type of road can produce substantial reductions in both the number and severity of road accidents.

Silent Bob

Can't argue with them thar figures.

I still think that there are roads which would be better suited signposted at 40mph rather than 30mph though

Victor

Originally posted by Silent Bob
I still think that there are roads which would be better suited signposted at 40mph rather than 30mph though

Fair enough and the Green Route would be a possible option although it would need to drop to 30 at the lights at Ballinteer Avenue (?). Not sure about the estate at the top near the M50 (I haven't been on that part). They probably didn't do it to avoid dropping and then raising the limit.