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| Bonneville Salt Flats |
with friends about the causes of injuries and deaths on our roads, the vast majority of my friends say it’s all down to “speeding”. However, when pushed, it soon becomes clear that “speeding” to my friends’ minds does not just involve driving above official speed limits / driving fast – somehow, “speeding” seems to have become inextricably
linked to, and be a catch-all descriptor for, a wide range of other crazy road behaviours that I, as a ‘speeder’, find repugnant:
- Driving requires 100% focus – any activities (texting, i-poding, fiddling with radio volume controls, changing channels, telephoning, watching TV, turning round to look at the kids in the back seat, making eye contact with your better half in the passenger seat, sight-seeing etc) – that cause you to take your eyes off the road for even a second;
- Tailgating
- Overtaking on blind corners
- Russian-roulette overtaking attempts in the face of oncoming traffic
- Poor/non-existent car handling skills – mistimed and aggressive braking and accelerating inputs; wrong entry positioning on bends – so many people have the nerve and the recklessness to barrel into a tight corner but sadly no clue as to how they should proceed through the bend – driving is for them about aggression and destructive behaviour; it’s no longer viewed as a skill that you should daily attempt to improve
- Cutting in on motorways
- Dithering
- Fluctuating speeds
- White line wandering
- Aggression and road rage / lack of courtesy
Speeding is now a lazy shorthand descriptor for a range of idiotically-incompetent behaviours. I could tell you that I speed but that I don’t do any of the other crap listed above; but you’d not believe me – somehow, in the popular mind, if you speed, you must inevitably also be some sort of selfish, homicidal nut-case. Shades of grey are verboten in this so-called debate.
My take is this – our drivers are not trained how to drive in any meaningful sense. Our driving tests don’t test driving skills.
Effectively, our governments have made a policy decision to allow as many people as possible onto the roads. They’re not interested in curtailing access to driving licences for the simple reason that they make too much money from drivers.
The upshot of this revenue-led overcrowding of our roads with poorly-trained drivers is lowest common denominator policing, via speed limits.
Our drivers are mostly so inept, so nervous (or conversely so full of ignorant bravado), so uninterested in what
they’re doing, so incapable of taking responsibility for their actions, that it’s pointless trying to improve their road awareness and road skills. In this flawed context, the safest thing to do is to have speed limits so low that not even a typical British or Irish driver could do much damage. For instance, I used regularly to exceed the new Dublin car speed limit of 18mph – on my pushbike. Of course, this was set by Dublin’s mayor who doesn’t even have a driving licence, yet felt able to dictate to the rest of us. On the big new 3 lane motorway North out of Dublin, for the first 5 miles, the speed limit is 35mph – 5mph faster than that deemed safe on a village street. The road is wider
and safer than most unrestricted autobahns I’ve been on, but 35mph is your lot. In my little car, I can’t get out of 3rd gear.
The situation is even worse in Ireland – I forget the exact figures (and the Irish government doesn’t exactly trumpet them), but a couple of hundred thousand Irish drivers are careering about on provisional licences. You see them every day on Irish roads – terrified of filtering onto motorways / meandering over while lines / switching lanes without warning / jumping red lights / driving in cycle lanes / suicidal overtaking deriving from an inability to read roads or gauge speed of oncoming traffic etc. The state turns a blind eye to these morons. In fact, legally, you until recently drive unaccompanied – above 45mph – on a second provisional! The Irish govt makes a great to-do about its drink driving and speeding campaigns – to me, they’d have a lot more credibility of they did something about the large amount of de facto tolerated unlicensed and untrained drivers on our roads. Further, when accidents are reported, you will see speculation about speeding / drink etc as a causal factor, but, crucially, no statistics are kept
in Ireland about whether or not drivers involved in accidents have licences or not. No Irish government has the balls to grasp this issue as all those unlicensed drivers are a lot of voters in a small country. It does however make a complete mockery of their claims that they’re interested in road safety. It’s a joke.
It’s a cynical policy, driven by revenue considerations, and deeply frustrating for those of us who care about driving well.
In Britain, Department of Transport figures show that speed above the limit is a factor in 6% of accidents, 9% of serious accidents and 13% of fatal accidents. By contrast, a basic "failure to look properly" causes around 33% of accidents. Our fixation with arbitrary speed limits means that, provided you keep below them, you have a de facto licence otherwise to drive like a "maniac" – aggressive and "comfort" tailgating, driving while exhausted, driving
on motorways without a licence, texting, failing to look or indicate, cutting in, slowing down unexpectedly for no reason, dithering, failure to anticipate, driving while angry, general inability to keep to the left of a white line, cruising in the overtaking lane and then “cutting in” at the last minute to make your exit – all are everyday
occurrences on Irish and British motorways.
In Germany, where they treat motorists with respect, many motorway speed limits are "recommended". As a qualified driver, if you feel that it's safe to exceed them, you may do so. The German authorities acknowledge that adjusting your driving to suit road conditions can mean driving above the limit.
Unfortunately, now that governments are in perennial need of more money, road safety will not improve. The government doesn't want to have our facile driving tests reflect real driving conditions. They don't want
to get serious about the hundreds of thousands of un-licensed so-called drivers on the roads. Do the maths - road tax, VRT, toll tax, speeding fines - some ongoing carnage is a fair price to pay to ensure the mad motoring cash cow keeps delivering.
