Road Safety Ambulance Chasers
There’s been a road accident, in case no one heard.
A huge, ‘ginormous, road accident.
On the M5, on Saturday 5th.
As the BBC put it yesterday afternoon:
Police probing the M5 crash which killed seven people have said a firework display next to the road is the “major line of inquiry”.
Avon and Somerset Police Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham said his focus was the Friday night event.
He said “a bank of smoke” had been across the M5 at the time of the crash.
Initial indications are that the cause was a sudden bank of fog or cloud of smoke severaly affecting visibility on the M5.
Do we know how fast they were going? Nope. Not yet.
Do we know what the traffic conditions were? Nope. Not yet.
Has there been an investigation which has lead to a firm conclusion? Nope. Not yet.
But do we have any indications? Yep, that it was caused by a sudden loss of visibility from a cause not yet firmly identified.
Meanwhile, from ROSPA:
Jo Bullock, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: ‘We have said from the beginning that we would not support an increase in the speed limit.
‘Higher speed means less time for drivers to react to what’s going on around them. Our concern is that there will be more serious accidents.’
And Ellen Booth, from BRAKE:
“Government policy should not be doing anything to increase the number of man-made, unnatural deaths occurring,” says Ms Booth.
She continues: “It’s relevant to today’s story [the M5 incident] because if you raise the motorway speed limit it sends out the message that it’s ok to go faster on our motorways.”
Nice one, ladies.
Why let any of this prevent you from jumping on the charnel-wagon, when a few dead bodies in the mortuary provide good ammunition for a campaign which well may have nothing whatsoever to do with the causes of this accident?
In a more sensible world we’ll probably be looking at bonfires, firework displays and wind direction, and thinking about families and behaving thoughtfully before we launch our media Exocets.
And then we’d have a sensible debate about an 80mph motorway speed limit.
But this is not a sensible world, and least for so-called ‘road safety campaigners’.
Ho-hum.
[Update: Jo Bullock, of ROSPA, has responded to LongRider making the same point as I have, here.]
Photo credit: Daily Mirror.
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1
November 7, 2011 at 15:37 -
So, what you’re saying is it wasn’t the fault of idiot drivers who took no notice of variable driving conditions and failed to adjust their driving to suit?
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November 7, 2011 at 16:02 -
I agree.
How can fog/smoke be the ’cause’ anyway. It may well be a contributing factor but certainly not a cause. If you knew for a fact the road was clear and straight you could drive through a dense fog/smoke bank at 120mph and not have an accident.
There is a conflation between speed and conditions and causation here that does not add up.-
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November 7, 2011 at 17:18
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November 7, 2011 at 15:41 -
There is another item here which nobody seems to notice. When our motorways were built one way of controlling costs was to have relatively short joining slip roads. Also, these slip roads were laid out in such a way tht very often they left oncomers without any sight of the lane they were to join until they were almost on it. Moreover, vehicles on the motorway in the nearside lane could not see what was coming until it was about to join. This creates a risk which is made worse in adverse conditions and in fog much worse. If from a slip road you have a vehicles coming on fast and too close to each other into a crowded nearside lane when visibility is bad this is creates a dangerous situation.
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November 7, 2011 at 22:32 -
UK slip roads short? Have you ever driven on the Continent? Ours are about twice as long.
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November 8, 2011 at 09:04 -
when you see a slip road coming up then you should move across from the nearside lane anyway to allow cars to join for safety reasons and, frankly, common courtesy….
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November 8, 2011 at 09:36 -
Absolute rubbish,the days when a vehicle signalled (as it is supposed to) or the driver actually checked it was safe to join(as they are supposed to) have long gone .
Itis now “assumed ” that any vehicle on the motorway will make way for the vehicle joining from a slipway regardless of wether it safe to do so,there is nothing safe in moving out of the inside lane to accomodate a joining vehicle when all the lanes are full as frequently happens,anyone who uses a major M-way sees this behaviour all to often and the consequences.-
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November 8, 2011 at 10:00 -
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November 8, 2011 at 12:56 -
If you read the road ahead, you should be anticipating vehicles joining form the left and move out in sufficient time. I appreciate that sometimes this is difficult, but it is standard good driving to do so and junctions are not exactly unexpected hazards and it is what I do as standard with very, very dew exceptions as a consequence of crowding.
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November 8, 2011 at 12:57 -
“from” and “few”.
An edit facility would be nice.
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11
November 7, 2011 at 16:37 -
Quite right Matt.
It is nauseating that these paid for mouthpieces from ROSPA and BRAKE have no compunction about using a tragic accident to justify their meddling.
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12
November 7, 2011 at 17:00 -
Jo Bullock has written to me, claiming that she has been misrepresented in the press – here.. She says that she was approached for background comment only. As a press officer, I might think that she was being naive an assuming that the gentlemen of the press would be anything other than selective about the quotes the published. Or, of course, she knew full well that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
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November 7, 2011 at 17:19
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November 7, 2011 at 17:06 -
No-one has yet suggested whether the drivers were distracted by the pretty fireworks near the road, only whether they couldn’t see anything because of an amount of smoke whose density has yet to be specified.
If some of the drivers were looking at the fireworks beside the motorway instead of the car(s) ahead of them then that would have been far more dangerous than any reduced visibility due to smoke.
I’m not sure whether they were trying to find someone to blame other than some distracted drivers
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November 7, 2011 at 17:27 -
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November 8, 2011 at 20:32 -
It will almost certainly be the case that, at most, only one driver MAY have been distracted enough to have caused the accident – the consequential carnage would all then have flowed from that single ‘transgression’. Many other drivers may have been observing the fireworks but still maintaining effective control.
Of course, the chances are that the one ‘seriously distracted’ driver (if that was the case) may be amongst the 7 fatalities, hence unavailable for questioning. And if it was caused by a surviving driver, then how likely is he or she to confess to concentrating on the fireworks more than the road ? I wouldn’t.
Therefore any conjecture about ‘driver distraction’ is likely to remain just that, conjecture, with no realistic opportunity to prove or disprove it. But that won’t stop the press or the do-gooders or the ambulance-chasers or the speed-restrictors et al.
Motorways remain an excellent value equation in the travel qualities they deliver for the total lives they cost. It was an accident, shit happens, get over it.
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17
November 7, 2011 at 20:26 -
I bludgeoned at the same point – in my customary tabloid fashion – here.
Nothing like a disaster to send single interest righteous into paroxysms of self-promotion, is there?
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November 7, 2011 at 21:09
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November 7, 2011 at 20:51 -
Clock change week may have contributed. I’d be interested to see a statistical analysis of accidents against clock changes.
People drive with undue aggression nowadays. I don’t recall there being so much down right ignorance and aggression on the roads 30 years ago when I passed my test. That gap between me and the car in front is so I can take evasive action when the guy in front does something unexpected. If you want in there f@cking signal and wait til I flash you in. And those numbers in the red circles are maximum speeds, not just decorations.
The wonder is not that so many are killed on the roads, but so few. Its no fun driving at all any more, except sometimes on a sunday morning before 11am.
The speed limit change might make accidents more deadly when they do happen( I think that is the case in Germany), but I doubt that on large swathes of the motorway network for much of the day you would be likely to ever get near to 80 mph before someone with a pedal car hogs the lane in front of you. Still, those safety types gotta justify their salaries….
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November 8, 2011 at 09:07 -
you so not know how nice it is to drive on UK motorways relatively. I drive daily on the motorways of France, Switzerland and Italy and I find it a joy when I come back to the UK how relatively civilised it is.
You do not have anything like the levels of aggression and dangerous tailgating.
if you overtake someone here it is as if you have questioned their sexuality and they will risk life and limb just to get past you again….
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22
November 7, 2011 at 21:07 -
We have about 3,000 fatalities on Britain’s roads every year. This accident is pretty horrific, but is it any more tragic than all the others resulting in loss of life?
As davidb says above, driving really isn’t much fun anymore, especially on motorways. The levels of concentration required and proximity of so many potentially lethal idiots make it a very wearing experience. There’s still pleasure to be had off the beaten track on the country by-ways, but rarely so on the main roads.
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November 7, 2011 at 21:51 -
We don’t know the facts, but sadly bad things happen.
I’ve occasionally pondered a world without cars.
It’s 2011 and Gottlieb Daimler, or whoever introduces to the public his new idea for personal transport, a prototype motorcar. He does demostrations of it’s freedom from rails or overhead wires, shows off his marvellous and speedy invention.
Health & Safety have look- require a bit padding on the corners, brakes and lights, 10mph speed limit. Then one of the officers says: how does it work? What drives it?
Petrol, says the inventor. It’s in that tank under the seat.
Inspector: but there must be 60 litres of highly explosive and poisonous hydrocarbon there! And it’s under the seat! You’re mad.
So the car was impounded and destroyed.
Gottlieb went back to trying to make it work with coaldust.-
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November 7, 2011 at 22:16
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November 7, 2011 at 22:19 -
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November 7, 2011 at 22:34 -
At one time there were no speed limits on the German autobahns (sp).
I don’t know if that’s still true?
If it is, how do accident statistics on their ‘motorways’ compare with those on ours?
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November 8, 2011 at 09:56
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November 8, 2011 at 09:18 -
I was on the M11 and M25 on the same day in good conditions, busy but no holdups, and the very large lorries inching past each other in the outer lanes absolutely terrified me: some taking five minutes to pass separated by the tiniest of gaps – any change in conditions or slight deviation from straight ahead would have closed that gap.
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29
November 8, 2011 at 20:22 -
SadButMadLad and Longrider have it exactly right : on the approach to an intersection extend your following distance in anticipation of the reasonably foreseeable joining traffic.
The object of the police investigation – it being government policy (which ever be the party in power) that ‘speed’ is the sole cause of all crashes – is to prove that the crash was due to speed ; in particular not to the failure of an indolent police force and incompetent Crown Prosecution Service properly to enforce s.2 of the Road Traffic Act (which pertains to reckless driving) or even the much easier s.3 (careless driving).
To-day’s traffic enforcement is based entirely upon the enforcement of arbitrary rules, most obviously speed limits. No-one ever was and no-one ever will be involved in a crash by virtue of exceeding a speed limit. Certainly excessive speed is likely to contribute to the cause of a crash and to the gravity of its consequences ; that excess however is in relation to the road and traffic conditions – not an excess over some arbitrary speed limit. Speed limits serve two purposes only : the first to garner revenue ; the second to enable politicians to say that they’re ‘doing something’ about deaths on the roads.
Even before the conclusion of Avon & Somerset’s investigation we know that some were able to stop clear of the mêlée : they were obviously paying attention and – in the words of Roadcraft – able to pull up comfortably within the distance they could see to be clear. (Some of those interviewed by the broadcast media spoke of vehicles that charged past them and could be heard colliding with the mess ahead.)
The problem – above all – is proximity : for some reason the lower orders have not evolved properly from their simian forebears and harbour an irresistible desire to be at all times within mutual-grooming distance. The only thing that surprises me is that, no action ever taken against tailgaters, crashes such as that on Friday on the M5 are so rare.
I disagree strongly with boulay’s assessment of Swiss driving ; one of the reasons for (relatively) good manners on Swiss roads is that any-one can obtain from Bern the name and address of the holder of a Swiss licence plate. Bad manners on Swiss roads are almost uniquely the province of visitors.
Engineer finds pleasure in driving English country by-ways but clearly never drives in the South-East of England, where plebeian manners are almost a statutory requirement.
The problem mentioned by LJH – the time it takes for one truck to pass another and their proximity during the manoeuvre – relates to another arbitrary speed limit, this time enforced mechanically. All those large goods vehicles (HGVs as we used to call them) are governed to a maximum speed of 90 k.p.h. (56 m.p.h.) under E.U. rules. The trouble with all arbitrary rules is that they have the effect of relieving those subject to them of the need to exercise judgment ; yet judgment is just what is needed – in every aspect of life.
(En passant: none of the above is the official view of the H.P.C.)
ΠΞ
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30
November 8, 2011 at 21:10 -
Sir – you are quite right. I have only once, many years ago, driven in the South-East of England. I regret to report that it was not an entirely pleasurable experience.
Thank you for the warning.
Should you have cause to visit more northerly or westerly parts of our fair isle, you will undoubtedly rediscover the pleasure to be had in motoring, along with the joys of old-fashioned courtesies between motorists.
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November 8, 2011 at 21:57
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November 8, 2011 at 20:23 -
News report Monday about the rugby club fireworks.Whole place festooned in Police KeepOut tape. Reporter says with a straight face “Police have just finished a finger tip search of the pitch”
In God’s name what for ??? Oh I know –it’s that vital stage in any media interest case called ” getting the overtime in”
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November 9, 2011 at 13:22 -
As said above, it often takes just one driver to be driving badly or dangerously to cause such a pile up. It happened immediately infront of me a few months ago when a small, old style Golf lost control after cutting in too sharply and losing control; that small car took out an artic, causing it to jack knife and take the car with him. I am still trying to work out how I missed being hit or involved!
With reference to truck speeds – yes trucks are limited and the limiters can vary from 50mph to 56mph. Many of the vehicles we overtake on motorways are cars! It is very frustrating to find cars driving that slow, especially when the driver wakes up to find a truck overtaking him and promptly accelerates; truck then pulls back in behind car and car driver slows down!
It is not just a case of getting to a loading bay 5 minutes sooner, it is a case of driving hours regulations as well as book in times, which, when missed can result in a large penalty fine to the transport company. Obviously if you are stuck in more or less stationary traffic due to break downs, roadworks or accidents it is possible to notify the traffic office and the receiving end can be notified in advance. Each 5 minute delay adds up on a long journey. This also coupled with the 40mph speed limit for trucks on single carriageway A roads all adds to the need for the truck to make as much progress as is possible on motorways.
The arbitrary use of cameras is a huge problem too. When proper policing was in place trucks would rarely, if ever, be stopped for exceeding the 40mph limit as the police did not want a rolling road block or to have to clear up the ensuing carnage that arises due to long tailbacks and impatient drivers who end up taking stupid risks.
Most car drivers are not aware that there are 3 different limits on single carriageway roads; NSL for cars 60mph (although I am sure many drivers are not aware of this either!); 50mph for commercial vehicles up to 7.5 tons and 40mph for anything over 7.5 tons. This does not help the concentration of the truck driver either as on a long stretch of A road concentration fades and the soporific effect takes over at a constantly low speed.
Some A roads are only safe to drive at lower speeds in a truck, even lower than 40 at times, however many others are quite safe to be driven at 50mph and this would be much safer for other road users too. -
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November 9, 2011 at 13:24 -
One more point – it would be amazingly helpful if the pen pushers who decide these limits for trucks and the driving and break times would come out in trucks for at least a week with different drivers and see just how it all works in REAL LIFE before making these decisions!
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