safety devices 5184

Brimstone

Your "point" (supported, it seems, by one other poster) seems to be that "many" drivers drive faster because they feel protected by safety-enhancing devices.

On the face of it, it seems an unlikely proposition. The reason for that is that your thesis is based on a belief that it is only personal safety that informs how drivers drive and that once sufficiently coccooned from likely harm , they feel free to drive in an objectively more dangerou manner, taking risks they would not otherwise take.

The first thing that would be required from you would be some evidence for your proposition. But, on the certainty that you will not be able to provide it, let's examine some other factors.

A poster above has butterted that he has all the safety equipment you mention and that it does not make him drive faster. That is undoubtedly correct. And the reason for that is that there is far more than personal safety at stake if an accident occurs. Who - apart from an out-and-out law-breaking driver who never bothers with lessons, a licence, insurance, MOT or road tax (if you like, the car-driving equivalent of the typical pavement bike-rider) - dismisses the possible non-injury-related fallout from a crash? After all, there is the effect of being without a car to consider, even if only while waiting for repairs. There is the cost of those repairs to consider. There is the cost of renewal of insurance to consider, there is the possibility of prosecution for DWDCAA or DD to consider and there is one's own innate wish to succeed in the task (driving) as opposed to failing in it (crashing).

Another good question is whether there are circumstances where a driver simply will not drive because of risk. There certainly are for me - if it is icy and-or snowing, that in itself puts me in a position where the journey would have to be unfeasibly-essential before I will even set off from home (the other one is if I have drunk more then the legal limit). I prefer to wait until conditions have improved. But is this because I fear injury, or because I fear damage to my car? It is undoubtedly far more of the latter than of the former. Whilst one can never discount the risk of injury entirely, it is not uppermost in anyone's mind when they drive (otherwise, they wouldn't do it, more especially perhaps, if the danger is to a cherished pbuttenger).

So, do "safety devices" make drivers drive more "dangerously"?

Of course they don't.