"Ste" wrote in message
...
On Feb 1, 12:39 pm, "dennis@home" wrote:
"Ste" wrote in message

...

8

How does the driver know what he can ignore it if he doesn't see it?

Because he can ignore the object based on its position in the visual
field - and also whether the object is moving.

Like I said how can he know if he hasn't seen it.
It isn't even above and to the left when he is a few cars length away and
he
should be looking that far ahead to be safe.

I repeat, he does not have to see and recognise the object. He can
completely discount the object, because it is stationary and falls in
an area of vision that is outside the usual area of relevance.

You can repeat it as often as you like, it doesn't make it true.

There
could well be a gunman at the side of the road taking aim at the
driver, but the reality is that most drivers are not going to see him,

I almost killed a copper because of that.
I saw him aiming a gun at me and I ducked.
It turns out it was a test of speed guns.
They never did adopt those, something to do with being a hazard.

because experience suggests that no such thing generally needs to be
guarded against, and that limited resources of attention should be
properly focussed elsewhere to managing scenarios that do more
commonly occur.

You aren't very observant are you?




Interesting things don't normally happen off to the left above head-
height, even less so when those things are not moving into the path of
the vehicle, and so where there is excessive demand for visual
processing, that capacity will be allocated to certain areas that
have, by experience, been found to be the places where interesting
things happen.

Like in the road in front of you where all gatso cameras have white lines
painted?

8

Indeed, I do often see the white lines on the road before I see the
camera itself, both because I'm looking at the road ahead as a matter
of course, and because the white lines are a relatively high contrast.



I would not have come to that verdict and the coroner should be
re-educated
as it was obviously poor driving.

No, it was intentional on the part of the agency that installed the
speed camera, that the driver should have reacted in that way - that
he should have devoted more attention to his speed, and therefore
necessarily less attention to anything else.

The driver should always be aware of his speed and the limit.

He should be aware of the pedestrian stepping out, above virtually all
other concerns. As I've said, you have simply enforced a reallocation
of concentration away from scanning for pedestrians, to additional
checks of vehicle speed (including visual checks of the speedometer).

I haven't.
If you can judge your speed without referring to your speedo you lack
experience.
For example you don't need to look at your tacho to know when to change
gears, you use other indicators.
The same is true for speed.
This is why you need to be aware that you may speed after leaving a
motorway.


All drivers are aware of their speed and the limit, to a certain
degree of accuracy - you don't do 70mph in the town centre without
realising it, but it is quite easy to do 35mph in a 30 limit without
realising it,

Its also easy not to, you just aren't very good at it and need more
practice.

which these days is enough to attract automatic
sanction. So too, most drivers do not place a great deal of emphasis
on recalling posted limits, because posted limits are redundant to the
judgments about correct speed that drivers must make constantly (if
they did not, they would soon find themselves involved in collisions,
even below the speed limit).

Additional accuracy in regulating speed therefore requires additional
mental resources. Most drivers cannot judge their speed within 1 or
2mph based simply on routine observation of the surroundings - it
requires active checking of instrumentation.

At the worst it is a minor "distraction".


By experience of being stung by speed cameras, most drivers have
learned that their existing allocation of mental resources to speed
control has been insufficient, so they have started checking their
speedometers more often - particularly in the presence of the speed
camera, the guarding against which is the sole reason for making such
checks, and where such checks are of paramount importance if you are
to avoid certain criminal penalty.

You are now claiming most drivers are poor drivers, at least we agree on
that.




If he can not do so while still paying attention to other things he is
not
capable of driving safely and will have an accident.

But you are starting from the implicit assumption that it is necessary
that drivers be able to monitor their compliance with posted limits
within a margin of +0 mph, whilst also carrying out all the other
mental tasks associated wtih driving and to the same standard as they
do when not required to monitor their compliance with posted limits so
carefully.

No, I am stating that drivers are *required* not to speed.
How they achieve that without being unsafe is up to them.


The fact is, the mental resources required to monitor and maintain
one's compliance with speed limits, has to met from a necessarily
limited supply of those resources. There will *always* be situations
where circumstances are such that the full extent of potentially
relevant sensory information overwhelms your ability to process it
all,

If that is the case you are driving at an unsafe speed.
Why do you have a problem realising that it is not good driving to ignore
information just so you can drive faster?


and you have to start processing what is most relevant and
discarding information that is least relevant. Most people discard the
speed camera, and concentrate on the pedestrian - until, that is, they
have paid several £60 fines and attracted several penalty points. Then
they start to treat the speed camera as more important, in relative
terms, than they did before, and other important things start to be
treated as less relevant.

Many people don't discard either bit of information, they slow down so there
is time to process it.
It is called being a good driver.





The case you quote proves this to be true.

What is true, is that the driver in that case, was not capable of
driving as safely in the presence of speed cameras, as he would have
without the presence of the speed camera. Since the sole purpose of
the speed camera was (supposedly) to improve safety, it failed in that
regard.

What failed was the driver.
He was guilty of dangerous driving whatever was said.
If he couldn't handle the situation at the speed he was going he should have
slowed down to a *safe* speed.




If you can't take in all the information that you need to drive safely
then
you are driving too fast for your abilities!

This is where people like yourself wander off into fantasy land. No
driver can take in all the information at all times that they need to
drive "safely" in all possible circumstances.

Then they shouldn't drive in those circumstances.

But logically, one of the solutions to this conundrum is to remove the
speed cameras themselves, since that will achieve a change in the
prevailing circumstances, in a way that reduces the mental demands of
driving and improves safety.

All that does it make people drive faster, they then have to disregard even
more information and become even less safe.
What should be done is to hide the cameras and get people that drive too
fast off the road.

Even people on foot,
moving by definition at walking pace, manage to fall off kerbs into
traffic, or even simply walk straight into traffic, or even fall down
uncovered manholes.

They don't have to pass a test to show they are competent.

That's really neither here nor there. The point is that even people
moving very slowly, manage to make mistakes that will reasonably lead
to fatality. And most people must in fact demonstrate their
competence, before being allowed out on their own to walk - children
are not simply left to wander the streets, and certainly not near busy
roads, and adults who cannot walk the streets safely are locked up for
their own protection.

More evidence that you lack observational skills (or you live somewhere
without kids).




You also missed out falling through manhole covers which is what happened
to
me.

I can see why you are somewhat disgruntled about road safety!



In the end, people like yourself hold drivers to impossibly high
standards simply because you don't like cars and want to drive them
off the roads, not because you have any legitimate safety (or
otherwise humanistic) agenda. When drivers react adversely to your
ploys, as the driver clearly did in this case, you use that to try to
argue for further restrictions, when in fact it was the restriction
that worsened road safety in the first place.

It was poor driving, plain and simple.
If it were the case that the camera did cause the crash then how come
nearly
every other driver can manage to drive past it without problems.

Because it might cause a statistical increase in danger without
causing every single driver to crash on every occasion, and above all
the particular scenario required a pedestrian to step out into the
path of traffic (itself an relatively uncommon occurrence) right in
front of the speed camera.

Ah one of those unlikely events that you stated drivers don't lookout for.
Maybe that was the cause and not the camera.

IME the biggest problem with cameras is that the speeders see them and
then
jump on the brakes to about 5-10 mph below the limit. They don't spend
lots
of time looking at their speedo so that they run into an object in the
road.
The problem is easily solved by hiding the cameras.

But then you cause even more of what I've described, in terms of
reallocating mental resources away from other important tasks, to the
sole task of identifying hard-to-see speed cameras - in which,
generally, braking reactions will be even more last-minute and
extreme, instead of planned somewhat in advance.

You can get done by hidden cameras now, does that make you concentrate on
looking for them?


Or perhaps I'll just do what you want, and accelerate to 25mph in a
30mph zone, and then turn Radio 4 on and concentrate on that instead!

How is that what I want?
You can drive as fast as is safe up to the speed limit.
If you are only safe at 25 mph then I am quite happy for you to drive at 25
mph.
I wouldn't be happy if it was because you were composing text messages that
was making you erratic.


Whatever your lectures about unsafe driving, I (along with most other
drivers) am satisfied that my driving is of a reasonably safe
standard,

Why am I not surprised

even though I (and most others) exceed posted limits as a
matter of routine, and that it is not necessary to drive any safer. I
accept intellectually that my driving is not perfectly safe, but
emotionally my standard of driving causes me no particular concern -
if it did, I would change it so as to alleviate my concerns.

By menacing me with the criminal law, you do not make me more
concerned with safety - you simply make me more concerned with
avoiding the sanctions of the criminal law. And if, for example, you
successfully force me to reduce my speed so as to avoid criminal law
penalties, then the surfeit of driving safety that I would then be
enjoying, would simply allow me to bankroll more dangerous styles of
driving (in particular, those styles that require less skill and less
concentration), because there would be no point me engaging in the
various safety-improving behaviours that I do presently, that I do
only to alleviate what would otherwise be an unacceptable level of
danger given the speeds that I currently drive at.

Such self confidence, if only self confidence were matched by skill and
understanding the world would be a much better place and we wouldn't have
several people a day killed on our roads.


I've pointed out myself before now that the prevalence of red-light
cameras in particular (and combined speed/red-light cameras), simply
means that I have now reallocated attention away from checking the
junction and road ahead (including the behaviour of pedestrians at any
associated crossings), to carefully scanning the side of the road for
the presence of a camera whilst actively inhibiting my desire to
accelerate, and being braced for an emergency stop on a much more
cautionary basis than usual.

Why, if you are driving legally there is no need to worry about the
cameras.

I am not sure that I will be driving legally. If there is no red-light
camera, then I fully intend to proceed in circumstances where, if
there is a camera, I would not proceed - not necessarily because I am
sure that I am about to run a red light, but because I know it is on
the margin and I am not willing to risk being on the wrong side of the
margin, whereas without the camera I would be willing to take that
risk. So too, if there is no speed camera, then I will usually be
driving faster than if there is a speed camera, at a speed that I have
determined to be appropriate.

Incorrectly determined to be appropriate.




There are millions of drivers who don't have a problem with cameras
because
they don't speed and don't try to jump amber lights.

Quite. The fact is, I do speed and I do jump amber lights, so I do
have that problem.

That is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Maybe you should look for instruction.

Hidden cameras would remove the drivers that do have a problem with
speeding
and jumping lights.

Not unless the cameras were completely undetectable, and even then, as
I've said, I might well actually overtly comply with the law, but in a
way that nevertheless subverts its underlying aim. For example, I
might simply start slamming on at amber at every junction - causing
the very accidents the camera was supposed to prevent, in which no
doubt the driver behind will occasionally swerve to avoid rear-ending
me, and straight into the bus stop full of children.



If a pedestrian then steps out and gets run down, then that is the
choice that people like yourself have made - you can't have my
attention allocated to both tasks, because I do not have enough of it
to allocate to all possible factors,

You are driving beyond you abilities then.

I would certainly be driving beyond the abilities that you are
demanding.

You are not a safe driver whatever your self confidence may say.
I suggest you seek instruction before you do something you regret.
Try the IAM.




You need to slow down and stop being an idiot.

I have no intention of doing so, unless I am forced, and if I am
forced then I fully intend to offset my enforced cooperation with an
increase in risky behaviours elsewhere, of the kind that you will not
be able to detect as reliably as my speed or red-light jumping.

Are you claiming to be insane now?

and you've made it clear by
installing a camera and imposing draconian penalties, that you want my
attention to be focussed first and foremost on maintaining a lower
speed, and stopping earlier at the amber, than I would otherwise
choose to do without the presence of the camera.

I haven't, I would hide them.
However I can't see why they are a problem to anyone who knows how to
drive
properly.

"Proper driving", according to the vast majority of drivers, does not
include a strict adherence to the posted limit. Your commitment to the
idea that such adherence is essential to proper driving, seems to be
based on the idea that the posted limit is a better reflection of a
reasonably safe speed than the majority of drivers' own judgments, but
not all of us are so respectful to authority or blindly trusting of
supposed experts.

The speed limits are not there just for safety.
There are other valid reasons for them.




According to what you have stated however, a driver who had spotted
the pedestrian and given full attention to avoiding hitting that
pedestrian, but who had not spotted the bright yellow camera would
be
a worse driver.

Yes, he would have been a worse driver than one that didn't need to
worry
about the speed camera because he knew how fast he was going and what
the
speed limit was. You would be amazed at how easy that is.

Drivers like yourself (I assume you are a driver in the first place)
are simply dickheads.

The fact is, most of us do not spend all our time on the roads
monitoring speed limits and our compliance with them - even by your
own logic, it is easier to observe the speed camera and make a
temporary adjustment of speed, than to observe every change of posted
limit and keep one's speed constantly in accordance with that limit.

I don't have a problem with knowing how fats I am going or what the limit
is.

I can only imagine you either put a lot more mental effort than I do
into monitoring speed, or you drive appreciably slower than I do in
general (so that, even with the inaccuracy, you are almost invariably
driving under the limit), or (a remote but real possibility) you are
simply not telling the truth.

Where am I not telling the truth?

BTW I am usually overtaking most of the cars on the M6 as they don't have a
calibrated speedo and are driving at what they think is 70 mph.
I have also exceeded the speed limit on the M6, but only when there is a
police car behind me.

I don't see why another driver should either.
If they do then they have a problem with their ability and need to
address
it by either getting better or by changing how they drive.
If that means they have to drive at 20 mph then so be it.

Unfortunately, few of us are going to do that unless we are forced -
and like I say, if we are forced to drive so slowly, we'll just react
by driving otherwise more dangerously, so that we are returned to the
situation in which the vast majority of drivers, are driving in a
manner that they themselves consider to be reasonably safe (and no
more safe than that).



The general observed nature of the road at any time, is enough for
most drivers to infer what is an acceptable speed, with a much greater
degree of accuracy and appropriateness than any crude posted speed
limit can achieve. It is the hallmark of a good driver to be able to
do this.

A good driver obeys the rules. that way nobody gets caught by him doing
something he should not.

On the contrary, I think a good driver should break the rules. I think
this comes down to more fundamental differences in our general
approach to authority. I do not respect any rules, unless I accept
their underlying reason for being, and I often go out of my way to
break those rules whose underlying reason I do not accept. I think
perhaps you just take them on blind trust.

Ah we agree there, you shouldn't assume the posted limit is safe.

I wonder, do you ever have any trouble on unrestricted rural roads,
given that the posted limit will be of little guidance in choosing an
appropriate speed? If you have no trouble inferring an appropriate
speed from general observation, then why do you feel the need to
rigidly follow posted limits at all?

I don't. The limit is a maximum not a required minimum.

But how do you choose the minimum? If your judgment of the minimum
exceeds the legal limit, do you say to yourself "I must be wrong", or
do you say "the person who put up the sign must be wrong"?

The minimum can't exceed the maximum.
Maybe that's your problem you don't understand maximums and minimums.