Mark Foster
OK. So we actually have a lot of common ground. The difficulty here seems to be in quantifying the danger buttociated with a given hazard.
Not true. It may be about the same level of technical difficulty as some other hazard but if the penalty for failure is an order of magnitude worse then it is a dangerous junction. I choose junctions as the hazard because they are known to be a specific risk factor.
A badly laid out junction in a carpark may have a much higher risk of collision per conflicting movement but at 5-10mph very little damage is done. Whereas on fast road juntions at 70+mph the risk per movement may be very much lower but when there is a collision the result is total annihilation of one or both vehicles involved and closure of the road.
Driver error is the cause of almost every accident, but the additional danger comes from the consequences of that error. There is no doubt at all that common driver errors can be mitigated by better road design. And some visibility faults all but eliminated.
My interest in this is to try and get a so-called "dangerous junction" re-opened when it comes up for review in Feb 2006. I am specifically looking for arguments that will stand up in a public enquiry.
NIP arrived. 955Mark Foster In many cases on the dangerous roads they are already dead after making a serious mistake. How exactly do you propose to resurrect them? The dangerous road observation is usually made...
But we are stuck with the population of drivers on the road.
And we both know that the people who most need educating about how to negociate tricky hazards are the ones least likely to go on advanced skills training.
I don't doubt yor claim that bad drivers always want to blame the road, weather, vehicle - everything but their own driving. And that the press panders to this tendency to blame the road rather than the driver.
Regards, Martin Brown
