What Happened?

Topics relating to Advanced Driving in cars
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jont-
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Re: What Happened?

Postby jont- » Fri Feb 05, 2016 7:13 am

superplum wrote:
jont- wrote: No, but I do think anyone involved in a collision should be required to take further training. Of course the practical upshot of that would probably be a reduction in the number of accidents reported :roll:


???? So if someone gets "rear-ended" for whatever reason, they need further training (I know that's extreme)? IMO that's nonsense. No amount of training gives competency. Education is another example - no amount of qualifications (degrees etc) gives competence, only a level of education.

there will be /some/ situations where you could genuinely do nothing to avoid a shunt. However I suspect there will also be quite a lot of situations where with better observation/situational awareness, you might have been able to avoid things, even if not your fault.

Now maybe the problem there is the car who would have caused the accident doesn't learn anything, because from their perspective nothing bad happened.

I'm still bemused by this idea that training is some sort of punishment. Maybe that societal attitude is a small indicator of why education in this country is in such a bad state.

fungus
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Re: What Happened?

Postby fungus » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:19 pm

jont- wrote:I'm still bemused by this idea that training is some sort of punishment. Maybe that societal attitude is a small indicator of why education in this country is in such a bad state.


It is if they don't want to learn.

michael769
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Re: What Happened?

Postby michael769 » Mon Feb 08, 2016 9:39 pm

martine wrote:So do people here think there should be a nationwide Road Accident Investigation Branch (like the Aviation: AAIB and Marine: MAIB) that would formally investigate all serious collisions, apportion blame and hand the details to the CPS as well as suggesting improvements in car design, road engineering, driver training etc?


I am not sure what it would achieve.

Commercial air and rail transport are closed systems, in that the people who operate the vehicles are employees, whose employers can compel them to behave in a certain way, and where regulators can compel the employers to cooperate.

Which such a thing might be possible for occupational drivers, the vast majority of road users are members of the public exercising their freedom to go about their daily business. It's not clear to me that an RAIB could get it's message out to drivers let alone get them to take heed.

True they could influence car design, but if you look at the strides that euroNCAP and Thatcham have made I'm not convinced it's necessary to spend public money when the private sector is, at least in this narrow field doing a perfectly good job without state interference.

As for driver education, countless coroners and public inquiries have called for improvements to no avail. I cannot see another bureaucratic body being any more successful. At the end of the day as long as the majority of the public see it as a personal affront to their humanity to suggest their driving is less than perfect compelling (and it would take compulsion) drivers to undergo training and testing would be political suicide.

One must also consider that Rail, Air and Marine crashes are (at least in developed nations like the UK) rather rare. I would suggest that a (most likely underfunded) body of this nature would be rapids overwhelmed by sheer numbers of serious road crashes that occur. You just need to look at the likes of Trading Standards or Environmental Health to see where it would end up. It would either have to concentrate on doing a barely adequate job of a handful of incidents while ignoring the rest, or an absolutely half assed job of them all.

Astraist
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Re: What Happened?

Postby Astraist » Tue Feb 09, 2016 8:17 am

michael769 wrote:Which such a thing might be possible for occupational drivers, the vast majority of road users are members of the public exercising their freedom to go about their daily business. It's not clear to me that an RAIB could get it's message out to drivers let alone get them to take heed.


With commercial drivers, it does work. We have the experience of investigating collisions for the fleets that we coach, and the insights are quite meaningful to the coaching process. This differs from a forensic investigation, though, in two main respects:

1. The investigation also includes minor collisions and we also like to hear about near misses, the assumption being that minor and major collisions are both caused by the same fundemental problems in the driving ethos.

2. The question to be answered isn't: "What offence has the road user done en route to the point of impact" or "what indictments can be issued forth", but rather: "What is it that everyone involved could have realistically done to prevent or at least mitigate the collision?"

In order to investigate a collision in a manner that would be beneficial to drivers (rather than magistrates) the AI involved should be of this mindset, but preferably with a background in engineering, too.

With the general public, I think it's more of a matter of how the popular media presents major traffic collisions. In my whereabouts at least, the coverage tends to revolve around the aspect of human tragedy and the indictments - rather than the exact manner in which the collision occured and how each party would have been capable of avoiding it.

It's particulalry evident in collision where more than one party is involved and where each had something to do in order to avoid the crash. In the eyes of the general public, to suggest that a person that had died have had a hand in their own demise, rather than focus entirely on the other party, is inconsiderate.

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jont-
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Re: What Happened?

Postby jont- » Tue Feb 09, 2016 8:21 am

Astraist wrote:With the general public, I think it's more of a matter of how the popular media presents major traffic collisions. In my whereabouts at least, the coverage tends to revolve around the aspect of human tragedy and the indictments - rather than the exact manner in which the collision occured and how each party would have been capable of avoiding it.

And don't forget the stereotyping. The assumptions of blame, particularly by the media, when the involved are (say) single mum vs young male driver in a sportscar don't help any sort of learning opportunity.

Astraist
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Re: What Happened?

Postby Astraist » Tue Feb 09, 2016 8:40 am

Oh yes. And it's actually even deeper than that.

Think, for instance, about a collision involving a lorry and a car. The lorry is very likely to inflict a deadly blow onto the smaller car, so it's very likely to be tomorrow's headline.

Regrettably, most people aren't lorry drivers and do not realise that a much more agile car driver can put a lorry into situations that are very hard to escape in a thirty ton towering vehicle...

What follows tends to be a slandering media campign, citing a preposterously high number of traffic offences in the lorry driver's record, while failing to mention that most of these are probably parking tickets or minor speed offences, that tend to occumulate over a long period of high-milleage driving.

Now what reputation do you think lorry drivers earn collectivelly due to that? Not a good one, to say the least.

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akirk
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Re: What Happened?

Postby akirk » Tue Feb 09, 2016 9:15 am

that is a fair point about lorry drivers - however we have to balance that view with a reasonable expectation that a lorry driver will be driving at a higher level than the average driver on the basis of:
- being a professional driver
- the miles they drive and the experience that brings
- the skills needed to drive a 30+ ton vehicle...

as supporters of AD, one element is a belief that as a driver you should be anticipating the possible consequences of the actions of other drivers - surely this is also a fair expectation for lorry drivers and while that wouldn't solve every issue, it would certainly reduce issues... I don't drive a huge mileage (below 20,000 miles p/a) but I see a high % of very professional and clearly good lorry drivers - but equally too high a % of lorry drivers driving badly - and while it won't be popular, the majority are not on UK plates...

Alasdair

Astraist
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Re: What Happened?

Postby Astraist » Tue Feb 09, 2016 9:32 am

I am impartial. My duty is to find how each driver could avoid or mitigate the impact. And the downfalls of both car and lorry drivers are the same and again - are repeated in the entire range of on-road "moments" - from near misses, through minor impacts and up to the most severe.

ancient
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Re: What Happened?

Postby ancient » Thu Feb 11, 2016 5:37 pm

A dedicated Road Traffic Investigation branch might just (if it were properly funded) mean that knowledgeable investigators were assigned and remitted to take RTIs seriously, instead of treating them as a 'bit or paperwork': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/recreati ... ed-murder/

Astraist
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Re: What Happened?

Postby Astraist » Thu Feb 11, 2016 8:12 pm

It's not necessarily about taking it seriously.

As long as it is a branch of the legal system, it will forever be investigating collisions with the question to be answered being: "What legal offences were made en route to hitting the tree/wall/rock/car/truck/pedestrian?".

What is needed is an RTI that is set to answer the question "what would each road user involved could realistically do to avoid or mitigate the collision?"


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