Mike G
But if you take the statistical probability of having an accident on a given piece of road and then provide addition penalties like sheer drops with no defensive crash barriers then the road becomes more dangerous.
Danger = probability of having a crash * probability of KSI
Human error is impossible to eliminate. The whole sorry saga of the "NIP arrived" thread started because an AIM approved driver sleepwalked through a Gatso trap and then decided to whinge interminably about it.
You can make a road more dangerous by gratuitously increasing the penalty for making a mistake. And although it is the aim of road planners to do exactly the opposite they do not always succeed.
Like it or lump it the probability of having an accident on a given type of road (various TRL research papers) is very well predicted by
(local mean speed)^2.5
{I would love to know where the extra 0.5 comes from} Damage in a collision scales with kinetic energy
(local mean speed)^2
So overall cost of RTAs to UK PLC scales with
Dangerous Roads" 1064Following up to Mark Foster LOL A few other people don't know what inanimate means so that changes everything, does it? A fair number of people don't understand the difference...
(local mean speed)^4.5
It should be no surprise then that they go for the blunt instrument of forcing down mean speed on all roads everywhere. We need to be identifying the bad junctions where average drivers are likely to die horribly rather than arguing about the perverse semantics of dictionary definitions of animate vs inanimate dangers.
It is pretty clear to me that places where the penalty for a relatively minor but all too common driver error is rest consbreastute a much more dangerous road by any reasonable definition. It is rather sad that coroners reports tend to blame "dangerous roads" or "dangerous junctions", but they do have a point - the road layout played an important part. Driver error was the last straw.
Regards, Martin Brown
