Posted by sien 6 days ago
The theory test you must pass before taking your practical also now includes a hazard perception test - you are shown multiple videos and must click when you first perceive a hazard - the earlier you click after the hazard presents the higher your score - but if you just click randomly you get a zero.
Some of them are tricky - for instance, one I remember is a van coming from a side road at too fast a speed, but you can only first see this hazard forming in a reflection of a shop window.
It's one of those places there will only be 2 other cars in sight, but they're driving side by side and 10 under the speed limit. And for some reason, everyone seems to just hold down their brake pedal at all times so you can never tell when they're actually slowing. I presume they're driving an automatic with two feet and keep just enough pressure to trigger the brakelights. And everyone, even the Kia Rios, drives in the opposite lane before turning so they can swing wide like a semi. I could go on and on but I digress.
Anyways, it had been an enigma to me for the last few years since I moved here, until one day I was asked to take a lady to her driving test. Sure, why not.
The entirety of the 5 minute road test was turning out right onto a sparsely populated 2 lane highway, driving anxiously at 35 in a 55 for a mile or so, then turning around and coming back. Passed. Suddenly, everything made more sense to me.
And I'm sure this isn't probably even the easiest test nationally, just one I became familiar with recently.
So yeah, we have absolutely no driving standards.
I left the DMV office significantly more scared of my fellow drivers than I had arrived…
I took my test nearly 25 years ago, and this was present then -- for the avoidance of doubt, the UK test has always been very thorough, though not quite as thorough as those in places like Finland where apparently they have skid pans and similar!
Though this year we did good in our capital: "Helsinki has not recorded a single traffic fatality in the past 12 months, city and police officials confirmed this week."
> an increase in reckless driving among young men but the opposite in young women
Whereas in the UK, black ice isn’t as common so days when it’s icy, the best advice is just to take it slow and stick to salted routes.
You know, it does vary but relative to any other developed country it's pitiful in every state. The reality is we just hand out driver's licenses to whomever.
The official statistics have a rate of about 40-60% for these tests:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/driving-...
Though it definitely varies by area:
https://www.gocompare.com/motoring/reports-statistics/drivin...
It's closer to a school exam in terms of difficulty, rather than the quick drive around a parking lot that it seems a lot of places have.
So people seem a lot more prepared than in many other places, since they actually have to be able to spot hazards and do driving maneuvers to get their license in the first place.
A few decades ago, 125cc bikes were mostly for learners practising before taking their test. But successive governments have made it harder and harder to get a full license - so loads of riders just stay on learner bikes forever.
So the status quo is, in a sense, the result of very strict regulation.
so you have to pay a school, and itll cost in total probably £1k or a bit more. when i did it, the guys also told me, there's basically only one company now that provides insurance for instructors/riding schools.
motorbiking i think is becoming less of a guy thing and more like skiing - an expensive, occasional thrill, but very much an upmarket upper-middle-class type of activity. there were more girls than guys at my lessons too, which was pretty surprising at first, but not really once you consider the prior.
which was very much at odds with the instructors, who were all guys' guys - when they got into it at 16, motorbiking was much cheaper than a car, and had a real economic argument to make (it was much cheaper all-round) - today, if you add up the insurance, protective gear, bike, and school money, you will be on-par with a car, which is far more practical.
I kind of assumed every state does this.
It has done for nearly 25 years at this point ;)
And you should certainly drive in other countries, namely much worse and much better than yours (presumably US), they are both out there.
Why are they 60mph? Well, the symbol they display doesn't say 60mph, it's basically just a slash symbol - it should be read "National Limit Applies" or perhaps "Derestricted" and it so happens that the law in the UK says that if there's no other rule in place that limit is 60mph and on these tiny roads nobody has put in place a more specific limit so that's the law.
[If there is carriageway separation, e.g. a larger road on which traffic flowing in the opposite direction isn't sharing the same tarmac, this global rule says 70mph, but no tiny roads have multiple carriageways, actually sometimes it feels like there's barely room for one let alone two]
However, just because there isn't a lower limit doesn't mean it's appropriate to drive at 60mph and people who do are generally maniacs. Where I grew up there are lots of these roads, steep, winding, narrow tracks paved in the 19th or 20th centuries for access to a farm here or a cottage there, and maintained by the public. You absolutely might turn a corner and find an entire flock of sheep in the road going "Baa!". If you're doing 60mph after you've killed a bunch of sheep and the bodies start smashing through your windscreen you're probably dead. Sheep don't have lights, don't know about jaywalking laws (which Britain doesn't have anyway) and aren't smart enough to have considered this risk, they're just there and now you're dead. So you drive at maybe 30-40mph on the straight parts, slower on curves and always pay a lot of attention 'cos things can go very bad, very quickly.
Roundabouts are a bit different. The UK has a lot of what are called "mini roundabouts". As a pedestrian, or perhaps on a bicycle these do just look like they're small roundabouts, too small for the island in the middle to have any purpose so it's just paint. But in a vehicle it's apparent that the island can't exist because you'd crash into it, perhaps not in a Mini but certainly in a bin truck or a bus. The mini roundabout isn't a roundabout except in the sense that the same rules apply as if it was, which means if I can see you can't enter before I do then I know you mustn't enter, I have right of way, which means I needn't slow down - you won't be in my way, you're not entering.
You are supposed to drive 60mph where appropriate, e.g. on straight stretches with good visibility and no junctions. It's very possible to fail your driving test for not going fast enough on a single carriageway.
What you’re supposed to do is drive at a speed that gives you chance to react to dangers given your visibility and road surface conditions.
For country roads, they’re typically winding rather than straight. So more often than not, that means you shouldn’t be travelling much past 30mph.
But you are right that straight stretches do exist. They’re just not as common on such roads.
Indeed, I always think of my instructor's words "can you stop within the distance you can see". As that distance decreases, you should be slowing down; potentially there's a cyclist or horse right around the corner.
I’m constantly amazed that some idiot hasn’t hit him.
Instead of having a speed limit sign after each and every intersection, they're placed periodically. If you enter a road and there's no sign, that's the speed limit. If there's a different speed limit than the default, and you cross through an intersection and there's not another sign after it, that means the speed limit reverted to the default.
It can be a bit confusing (MN has 35 in city roads, WI 25) but also handy (wide open plains states often have much much higher freeway speeds).
But the tiny roads are usually where there is no housing - hardly anybody lives there so even the single lane of tarmac is a great expense considering average traffic. The "No housing => faster" is part of why there aren't signs limiting them. It's still a terrible idea to do 60mph though, just not necessarily illegal.
What matters more is the far stricter driver licensing and “Scarlet L” (my words) that the learners have to display.
That and the fact that it is bloody impossible to conduct 2 way traffic down country roads thanks to all the hedgerows and so everyone is extra careful and courteous (usually).
Triangular signs with a red outline are warning signs.
Just because legally you can drive at 60 doesn't mean you're legally allowed to drive recklessly. National speed limit is basically, "you're permitted to drive as fast as you like so long as you do so in a safe manner".
In practice there seems to be a ton of correlation between people who say things like that and people who think their Fiat 500 stops like a garbage truck.
D: "Dad why does everyone honk at mom when she drive's us to school?"
F: "Because she drives too slow sometimes."
D: "Why doesn't she speed up?"
F: "I don't know. She's always been like that."
D: "I tried saying people are waiting for us to go [referring to a pretty benign yield right-on-red near their house]."
F: "How'd that go?"
D: "She didn't listen!"
I don't know why but it was absolutely hysterical to me. Kids are precious.
Visibility is poor and you cannot safely go through a bend at 50+ mph when you cannot see what's beyond it. There might be a stationary vehicle, a horse, a cyclists, even a pedestrian and you wouldn't know or be able to stop in time. This is how lethal collisions happen in those roads.
Yeah you know THE ROAD not what might be in it this morning.
I've heard before about setting speed limits using percentile studies of people driving on the road, which in the absence of some specific safety concern (which then needs engineering like narrowing the road or adding turns) makes the most sense.
I also wish there was more of a culture of pulling over if you don't want to drive at the flow speed. If I want a leisurely drive and see someone rapidly coming up behind me, I'll happily pull over and let them pass. There seem to be these sociopaths or self-righteous jerks who will happily drive 5km/h under the speed limit with 20 cars behind them. This is way more dangerous than speeding and should be treated as such. If you just want to drive slowly, why would you want the stress or a bunch of angry drivers behind you.
However some back roads aren't even B roads, the classification keeps going through C and D but it's local numbering, the numbers are just for local maintenance crews - so a C-1234 could be duplicated a few miles away in another local government territory and that would be confusing for drivers so they won't write C-1234 on a sign, they'll just say what's in that direction or maybe a local name for the road.
When I started driving I preferred the dark for these roads because the lights let you 'see' hazard around a corner.
Headlights were worse then - and I hadn't seen a crash into a deer.
The best case scenario then, is that you write off your car with a deer shaped hole in the front. The worst case scenario is you have a death on your conscience for the rest of your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Browsing through this I found:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Accident...
What is up with poisoning in the early 40s?
As I suspected, poisoning most likely includes drug overdose. They have this comment about the 2023 data:
> #1: Poisoning: 100,304 deaths
> Largely due to the opioid epidemic affecting millions of people in the United States
You can see more recent data than 2004 in their interactive charts. It is interesting to see that deaths from road accidents has much reduced for teenagers and young adults, compared to the rest of the population.
One thing that is not being discussed is that cars have become a lot wafer - for both people in the car and for pedestrians they might hit.
Combine that with an obsession to make cars available to anyone, even if they are known dangerous. Look up videos on YouTube of police pursuits in Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Michigan. Those aren't exceptions, they are glimpses into a mass pathology. I believe Madison, Wisconsin was tracking multiple police pursuits per day in recent years. The subjects there frequently and deliberately drive on the wrong side of roads to compel the police to terminate the pursuits.
Seems to me the latter would be a much better metric for the safety of the physical roads.
Fortunately, good old Wikipedia has what we are both looking for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
For me the upshot is that UK still comes out quite good amongst its European peers, but the difference appears to be smaller.
> If we look at the number of deaths per billion miles driven, we see that motorways are roughly four times safer than urban roads, and more than five times safer than rural roads. This is not specific to the UK: among 24 OECD countries, approximately 5% of road deaths occurred on motorways.5 In almost all countries, it was less than 10%.
Both measures have bias, the "per people" metric doesn't take into account when people are actually driving while the "per kilometer" metric puts too much emphasis on long distance driving, which is usually done on motorways where it is the safest. Maybe the best metric would be "per time spent on the road, including as a pedestrian on the sidewalk", but I guess it is harder to estimate.
Anyways the UK is doing well on both metrics.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...
> Massachusetts is one of the safest
The Karen Read trial was illustrative about how seriously Massachusetts law enforcement takes DUI.
The conduct of the law enforcement professionals and people they associate with leading up to the events relevant to the trail is relevant to a discussion of how seriously they take DUI.
Read did drive under the influence and police and prosecutors laid harsh charges against her, but they could've laid those harsh charges (first- and second-degree murder IIRC) against her even if she had been stone sober that night, so it seems to me that the Read case says nothing about how harshly police and prosecutors treat ordinary DUIs.
More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.
[1] It's not really a cabover, the engine is in the rear. but the front seats are slightly in front of the front axle, and the windshield is at the front of the vehicle. Some contemporaries were really cab-over, like the Toyota Van (aka TownAce) although that has a sloped front which reduces drag and visibility.
The IIHS didn’t even start side impact ratings until 2003, which is a lot more recent than I would have ever guessed.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
Not to mention how much bigger the blind spot is now:
Like every other safety regulation, it's a stupid game of stupid optimization. You "score best" by keeping the dummy's head off the windshield so you make a big giant flop/crunch zone full of engineered plastics and empty void spaces that is (ideally) at least as tall as the dummy's center of mass (belly button). This is why every car, suv, crossover, whatever that's expected to be sold in europe (including most of the small SUVs and crossovers that people complain about in North America) has a tall(er than it would have been 20yr ago) hood line these days.
I don’t think people are buying these because they’re safer for pedestrians, they’re buying them because they like the way they look, and/or because they (the drivers) feel safer when they’re in a huge box sitting high up, looming over the surrounding cars.
All together it results in all cars kind of looking the same. Shame in a way because my favourite looking car of all time is the Golf Mk2, very angular and boxy but it wouldn't have been made now.
I think in an alternative universe where none of that happened we likely would have invested the R&D elsewhere and found creative ways to get the same results (you can see inklings of this like the airbag style hood lift thing) with much lower more aerodynamics and visibility friendly hood lines.
But that's just my opinion from being on the fringes of the industry.
Meanwhile, there's a group (mostly in Britain) that sometimes lets the air out of the tyres of inappropriate vehicles [1] and sometimes drills holes in them [2].
From [3], "My mother is in palliative care and I came to the car to go to her, but because of your vicious act, I am stuck trying to reinflate my tyres!" — I have no sympathy whatsoever. She bought the 'car', she can call a taxi if the journey is urgent.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/who-are-the-tyre-extinguishe... / https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/tyre-ext...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/activist...
One small bit of good news is the Netherlands FINALLY closed the tax exception for these things. Until this year you’d pay no import tax if it was for “business” (NL has a huge number of self employed people who just lie about what the truck is for). It made a dodge ram ridiculously cheap. Notice they all have V plates signifying a business vehicle.
Fuck me
Big cars make drivers feel safer. But the stats are quite clear, they kill more pedestrians, and, ironically, are more likely to kill their drivers due their roll over risk.
The safety features might help, but they’re just compensating for all the additional risk bigger vehicles bring. You simply can’t beat physics.
The question of IF a collision occurs, will the larger car do more damage, obviously it will. Well maybe not obviously, if the sensors are throwing on my breaks earlier than I can react there can be substantially less energy on that front too.
But in terms of frequency I feel like they have taken extreme measures to substantially reduce the risk of the collision occurring in the first place.
Regardless, all of these “extreme measures” could be applied to a smaller car (or even just one with a smaller wall at the front) for the best of both worlds. And collisions will happen regardless, sensors and cameras are not a magic solution.
>A camera is no substitute for actual visibility
I dont even know what point you are trying to make here. Seeing things a different way is not seeing things? Make it make sense.
Obviously, in an UK town pedestrians and cars should never come in contact, there are pavements, pedestrian crossings, etc.
It's pretty hard to kill people if you're driving under 30, and anywhere people are driving in excess of 30 it's not that populated and cars these days are pretty safe unless you have a head on collision at significant speed.
- Lots more speed cameras
- Average speed cameras especially make a huge difference vs spot enforcement
- Tolerance for enforcement is normally 10% rather than 10 mph (i.e. 30 limit means no more than 33mph rather than no more than 40mph)
This is because the rules are more complex, but actually get a license is, too. There are plenty of bad drivers, there are still idiots who drink/take drugs/use their mobile phones while driving, but it's way, way less than in some other parts of the World. And the rules of the road are broadly followed in terms of lane discipline and right of way in a way that they aren't in much of Europe or elsewhere.
I sometimes wish that we had clearer lane signage in some parts of the road network, like that seen in the US, but overall, once you get it, it's all very straightforward.
Getting my license in the US (CA and NJ) required... showing up with my own car.
And in New Jersey, they even forgot to make me take the actual driving test.
Now, in practice this means you probably need more than 20 hours with an instructor plus practicing with family to pass the test.
Minors must:
- Complete a 30 hour driver's education course and 6 hours of driver's training
- Pass a knowledge test with 80% or more questions answered correctly
- Apply for and receive an instruction permit
- Maintain the permit for 6+ months
- Drive with an 25+ year old adult supervising for at least 50 hours (including 10 night hours)
- Pass a behind-the-wheel test
Adults must:
- Pass a knowledge test with 80% or more questions answered correctly
- Apply for and receive an instruction permit
- Maintain the permit for 6+ months
- Drive with an adult supervising for at least 50 hours (including 10 night hours)
- Pass a behind-the-wheel test
Minors have additional restrictions on recently issued licenses.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification...
In South Kensington, they spent a fortune trying to use this non-delineated road setup where its not clear quite where the pavements (sidewalks for the USians), and road borders are, and in theory it means everybody just becomes very hyper aware of each other.
The theory goes something like how cycle lanes - just the a white line down the side of the road - can cause drivers to pass much closer to cyclists than they otherwise would without that border there, where a driver might slow and move a few feet out to the side on a single carriageway.
In reality, it's actually kind of anxiety inducing, particularly if you're in a larger crowd (common at this time of year, as Royal Albert Hall where proms season is coming to a close is at one end of this area), because drivers don't really seem to know what is going on.
I suspect it means cars are, on average, slowing down, but I can't find stats on whether its reduced accidents or not. I know it makes me nervous though.
All of that is a long way of saying that any road infrastructure South Kensington designed is going to be a long way behind best practice for pedestrian safety, even when they’re trying.
Not sure what you mean about disabled?
If nothing else a confusing road will get drivers to put the goddamn phone down.
This shouldn't be subjective at all. It's very easy to calculate out minutes lost to traffic from minor accidents vs death causing accidents and compare the two and see where the crossover points are depending upon their relative rates and impacts.
To use an extreme hypothetical example, I don't even know how old you are but it's probably perfectly justifiable 10x over to just shoot you (or me or anyone short of the pope) and throw you in the Hudson if the alternative is "the George Washington is closed for 6hr" or something.
And on the other end of the spectrum roads get closed for months on whims for maintenance reasons in rural areas all the time and probably have less cumulative life lost than, idk, some mundane waste of time.
I'm not privy to the numbers for all the real world situations that exist in the middle ground but I'm sure they're out there and once you've got them it's simple math to decide what configuration results in less life lost. Obviously you can pro-rate the years, account for disability and injury, add money to the equation, etc. But that's all easy if you've got the numbers (which we generally do for auto accidents).
[Edit: I should note that he's stopped driving over the last couple of years.]
But yes, other than this people do generally drive really safely. I especially like how people mostly keep to the 30mph limit in towns(but then again, people get literally offended when you say you keep to the 20mph limit, like you're some kind of idiot for doing so).
Sometimes it can be helpful to do so when pulling in too but it's not a legal requirement since undertaking (except in slow moving traffic) is also ilegal.
I've heard multiple people say this in the past, including driving instructors(!!!!!) and it's just not true.
Highway Code article 133 clearly says:
"Lane discipline 133 If you need to change lane, first use your mirrors and if necessary take a quick sideways glance to make sure you will not force another road user to change course or speed. When it is safe to do so, signal to indicate your intentions to other road users and when clear, move over".
You always have to indicate when changing lanes. There is no distinction made between pulling in or out by the highway code, I honestly think people made it up in their heads and they keep to it - maybe because you don't need to indicate back when overtaking on a single lane road, but that doesn't apply on multi-lane carriageways. However the point seems to be mostly academic as in my experience most people don't bother indicating at all on a motorway, whether pulling in or out.
"since undertaking (except in slow moving traffic) is also ilegal."
Highway code doesn't mention anything about slow moving traffic, just "similar speeds" - so it's perfectly legal to undertake a vehicle going 68mph when you're going 70mph, if the traffic is heavy:
"Rule 268 Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake. In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right. Do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake."
Urban area limits are now being raised back to 30 mph.
I lived in a mountainous area of Italy (very narrow roads, full of ups and downs) so I am a fairly confident driver (probably why I was not too stressed driving in Italy) and drove in countries like India and Iran in the past (so very familiar and happy with slow, but very crowded and unpredictable traffic).
To clarify, the anxiety we had on Autobahn and Swiss' highways was not a reflection on the quality of the roads, and more a reflection on the driving 'style' combined with the speed that those roads allow. The style was quite aggressive, very fast in every lane, loads of overtakes (car constantly zig-zagging), people coming from the back _FAST_ and staying there, people switching lanes immediately after signalling rather than giving some time for people to notice. Overall, that combination made for a very stressful experience which we have agreed (as family) not to repeat in the future.
But then again we have 0.1% of information to make a good picture of your situation, driving skills and habits, vehicle you moved around and so on. But there is for sure a good reason for such discrepancy, ie driving caravan super slow or similar tiny little detail.
Also you magically skipped few (pretty horrible to drive) countries if you had a road trip that covered Greece.
The German situation seems vastly superior on the basis that whoever is the "odd one out" or violating the norms should be the one having a bad time. Basically incentivizing homogenous and/or predictable traffic flow, which is safer.