Witnessed a motorist lose control this evening

[lejogger]

The police may have tried to find out the true cause, not decided he's an incompetent, drugged up, mobile using, not paying attention numpty in need of further training

Of course... but if there's no mechanical fault, no medical condition affecting the driver and no adverse weather conditions, the only reason motorists tend to lose control is if they're not concentrating properly - for whatever reason. Very few of those reasons would be excusable.

 

[CopperCyclist]

Far too many drivers are rubbish. Simple as.

Probably 3 out of 5 cars that we pull over on a night shift, after following them as they can't stick to a line, brake unnecessarily, don't brake when they should, go too slow and exhibit other driving that make us say to each other 'Hes pissed' turn out to be not drunk driver, but just a bad driver.

There's little we can do. To prosecute it has to be blatantly careless for the CPS to run it. To give a driver improvement course we have to be able to prosecute.

I was always (and tbh still am) a massive advocate for compulsory retesting every five years - but it was this site where someone once broke down the effect of this logistically, given the number of drivers on the road, and it appears virtually impossible to be able to put in place as we just don't have the infrastructure there to do it.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I was always (and tbh still am) a massive advocate for compulsory retesting every five years - but it was this site where someone once broke down the effect of this logistically, given the number of drivers on the road, and it appears virtually impossible to be able to put in place as we just don't have the infrastructure there to do it.

Privatise the process. Charge £1000 for the retest fee. (£200 a year, fiver a week for the right to drive. well cheap) Collect the fee via license stamps, dd or VED. Introduce it for those who first passed their tests two or three years ago and then roll it backwards.

The infrastructure to process it would spring up almost overnight.

 

[mattobrien]

I have always put any moments I have had in cars down to 'lack of talent'

Fortunately most of those have been on the safer environment of a track rather than the public roads. That said, a friends wife once said to me, if you don't spin, you aren't trying. This was in reference to driving on track while she was a passenger.

 

[CopperCyclist]

Privatise the process. Charge £1000 for the retest fee. (£200 a year, fiver a week for the right to drive. well cheap) Collect the fee via license stamps, dd or VED. Introduce it for those who first passed their tests two or three years ago and then roll it backwards.

The infrastructure to process it would spring up almost overnight.

It's not too much of an issue about the money, as indeed, you could (and would) be charged. It's about the numbers. The numbers that follow regarding drivers and cities are taken from a quick Google, so I give no guarantee on their accuracy!

There are 30 million drivers in the UK, approximately. For the sake of simplicity, let's pretend they are evenly spread out in the year they passed their test, which means there are 6 million drivers that need to re sit their five yearly test this year.

There are 50 cities in the UK. Let's assume one testing centre per city. I don't think this is unreasonable - certainly there wasn't a testing centre in the town I grew up in and I had to go to the nearest city instead. Again, assuming that the drivers are spread out evenly across the UK, this means each centre has to process 120,000 drivers each year.

That's 328 drivers every day. That ignores any retests (if allowed!).

Assuming the test would take roughly an hour (call it 40 mins on the road and 20 mins admin), and that's eating centre work a twelve hour day, that means you still have to give 27 tests every hour - so you'd need about 27 trained examiners working twelve hour days, seven days a week!

Even if you up the number of test centres to 300 in the UK (three per city, and an equal number around the rest of the uk), and have examiners working twelve hour nonstop days, seven days a week, you still need five examiners doing these hours at every single centre to process the numbers!

It's just too much to process.

However, if you make it a necessity to resist the driving test if you are involved in an accident and the insurance companies (or police) deem you to be at fault, I suspect that would make the numbers a bit more realistic... This would include damage only, no one else involved accidents like the one the OP saw - as long as he had to claim on his insurance ofc.

 

[Maz]

I saw a really bad accident on a dual carriageway...
Guy in a sports car went straight on at a roundabout, then he left the roundabout at high speed, lost control, went though the hedgerows in the middle of the dual-carriageway, through to the other side (thankfully, no oncoming car) and wrapped the car around a lamp-post along the opposite carriageway.

 

[Boris Bajic]

I am reminded of a wonderful moment of comedy and terror when I was a student.

Cycling south on Southampton Row between Senate House and the LSE, I was nearly hit by an Isuzu Piazza which came enthusiastically from a standing start out of a side road on the left.

I think (I guess) the driver was unused to RWD and turbos, as the pretty little car fishtailed across the carriageway and blammed snakily and noisily into the fenced central reservation. I came within a whisker of being toppled from my bicycle, but my lasting fascination was at seeing one of these cars, which were very rare and remained so. It wasn't over until the car had been from kerb to fence to kerb a few times. Nobody was hurt, but the damage to car and street furniture must have bent a bank balance.

I would not prosecute for momentary lapses where there is no other damage. I have a friend who was prosecuted for missing a Motorway exit and taking out quite a lot of Armco. She hit the pointy bit between M1 and sliproad, so the damage was extensive. She broke just about every bone and her jaw was wired for quite a while. I think the charge was Without Due Care, which makes sense.

In most cases, I would not prosecute. We are all human. I think the balance is about right at the moment.

 

[DRHysted]

Strangely yesterday my Mother informed me she lost traction here http://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=50.904...=9-Lhgp1ueBFj5LdLE5a0UQ&cbp=12,260.11,,0,4.76
She was going slowly, so all she did was steer into the skid (as she was taught back in 1971) until she had control to continue. Coming back from walking the dogs last night in my car and it was obvious someone else didn't have the same car control as a 67 year old, as the grass and mud on the inside was spread across the road.
My opinion is that modern car safety features allow bad drivers, we don't have to drive nowadays the car does most of the thinking for us.

 

[al78]

Scary. What kind of car was it? High-performance car?

I didn't note the make and model, but it looked very ordinary, certainly not a high performance car.

This isn't the first accident I have seen on this stretch of the A281. Earlier this winter someone managed to write off their car and destroy a lamp post in the process at the roundabout with the A29 Ockley/Dorking road. Didn't see that happening, just saw the wrecked car and flattened lamp post.

I wonder what lies in store next week when the next winter blast from the east arrives with accompanying snow.

 

[GrasB]

Scary. What kind of car was it? High-performance car?

On a notorious black spot bend near me, a fairly innocuous looking open sweeping corner, that barring 1 accident* in the last 10 years everyone sliding off the road has been in an eco box or family hatchback. The point when drivers lose the car is where the road surface switches from positive to negative camber. My thought is that the low quality suspension & cheap as you can by budget tyres simply can't cope with the conditions. Believe me people really put there foot down around there, there are lots of rubber marks after the camber change which indicates cars are often losing grip of the surface & sliding, certainly it unsettles the Exige & Alfa even at 20mph

The really annoying thing about that corner is that all it would take is that one corner being plained down & re-layed with positive camber all the way round & 2-3 incidents a year.

* The driver managed to get the car through the line of young trees/saplings which normally stop the cars, a thick hedge, which has stopped everything else & a 2' thick stone wall... I'd hazard a guess he wasn't obeying the 40 mph speed limit as he also managed this on a nice hot, dry summers day everyone else has come off the road in cold or damp conditions.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

On a notorious black spot bend near me, a fairly innocuous looking open sweeping corner, that barring 1 accident* in the last 10 years everyone sliding off the road has been in an eco box or family hatchback. The point when drivers lose the car is where the road surface switches from positive to negative camber. My thought is that the low quality suspension & cheap as you can by budget tyres simply can't cope with the conditions. Believe me people really put there foot down around there, there are lots of rubber marks after the camber change which indicates cars are often losing grip of the surface & sliding, certainly it unsettles the Exige & Alfa even at 20mph

The really annoying thing about that corner is that all it would take is that one corner being plained down & re-layed with positive camber all the way round & 2-3 incidents a year.

* The driver managed to get the car through the line of young trees/saplings which normally stop the cars, a thick hedge, which has stopped everything else & a 2' thick stone wall... I'd hazard a guess he wasn't obeying the 40 mph speed limit as he also managed this on a nice hot, dry summers day everyone else has come off the road in cold or damp conditions.

I remember some years ago there was a series of single vehicle accidents on Coventry's ring road that were put down to a problem with the road surface, they resurfaced and the accidents stopped, I also remember the roundabout under the ring road at the top of the Butts being resurfaced and there being something wrong with the tarmac used, the new surface was very slick, they had to resurface shortly afterwards as there were problems with vehicles unexpectedly leaving the roundabout, I used it regularly and found the bike sliding around at times.

 

[Lancj1]

Far too many drivers are rubbish. Simple as.

Probably 3 out of 5 cars that we pull over on a night shift, after following them as they can't stick to a line, brake unnecessarily, don't brake when they should, go too slow and exhibit other driving that make us say to each other 'Hes ****ed' turn out to be not drunk driver, but just a

It's ok you saying this, but I cycle as a hobby and also drive a nice Black BM5 series courtesy of my job.

Now in the day I wear a suit, and all is fine, but I have found that at night, when I frequently wear jeans, trainers, tshirt etc, many of your colleagues automatically assume I am on my way to meet someone with a few Kg of cocaine in the boot. Regardless of that, any driver with a police car behind them automatically starts to drive stupidly ( ie at 30 miles an hour - impossible in a modern car in top gear) and starts to behave in a paranoid manner. This is because the average motorist has the view that the police would rather stop motorists that arrest "real criminals". So they behave unnaturally and drive badly.

Just my tuppence worth

 

[middleagecyclist]

...ie at 30 miles an hour - impossible in a modern car in top gear...

Use the appropriate gear then?

 

[Lancj1]

Not a debate I want to enter into. As a lifelong motorist and a keen cyclist I find the argument between the two groups pointless. Do you drive a car ? Do you spend the day in third ? It's all a bit daft

 

[dellzeqq]

It's ok you saying this, but I cycle as a hobby and also drive a nice Black BM5 series courtesy of my job.

Now in the day I wear a suit, and all is fine, but I have found that at night, when I frequently wear jeans, trainers, tshirt etc, many of your colleagues automatically assume I am on my way to meet someone with a few Kg of cocaine in the boot. Regardless of that, any driver with a police car behind them automatically starts to drive stupidly ( ie at 30 miles an hour - impossible in a modern car in top gear) and starts to behave in a paranoid manner. This is because the average motorist has the view that the police would rather stop motorists that arrest "real criminals". So they behave unnaturally and drive badly.

Just my tuppence worth

so..........let me get this right. The mere presence of a policeman provokes people to break the law? So much for Bobbies on the Beat!