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How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

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Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#111

Post by kypro »

louthy wrote: post #65
rich_sasha wrote: post #62

UK is extremely risk-averse. In the case of road safety, it shows: a lot of time and cash goes into minimising deaths. This is not only road users: roadworks have restrictive speed limits, which are not taken down when there is no workforce out, to minimise risk to workers setting and unsetting limits, traffic cones etc. Things that in other countries would close a lane often close the whole road, again because of ri…

Seems a rather tenuous link to the state of the NHS. The UK has a lower tax regime than most equivalent nations. If we wanted a better NHS we could just collect similar tax rates to that of Germany or other western nations. One of the issues is we’re trapped with a media ecosystem that won’t even allow progressive parties to say “we’ll take a bit more in tax and in return you’ll get a functioning health service”, ins…

> The UK has a lower tax regime than most equivalent nations. If we wanted a better NHS we could just collect similar tax rates to that of Germany or other western nations.

This is largely untrue today since the Conservatives have significantly increased taxes over the last decade. As it stands I think Germany only taxes around 1-2% more of GDP than us.

The primary difference between Germany and the UK in terms of public service funding is that the UK funds most of it's healthcare via taxation where as Germany operates a duel model which means healthcare isn't funded so much from taxation, meaning they have more money for other things.

Additionally, Germany has a much higher per-capita GDP which means they can afford significantly better public services even if they tax an equivalent share of GDP.

Finally what Germany funds with additional taxation the UK more than makes up for by running much larger deficits. The issue isn't that the UK government isn't spending enough as a share of GDP.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#112

Post by potato3732842 »

iainmerrick wrote: post #105
potato3732842 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not partly, pretty much wholly. Like every other safety regulation, it's a stupid game of stupid optimization. You "score best" by keeping the dummy's head off the windshield so you make a big giant flop/crunch zone full of engineered plastics and empty void spaces that is (ideally) at least as tall as the dummy's center of mass (belly button). This is why every car, suv, crossover, whatever that's expected to be sol…

It can’t be just that, surely? Or the more traditional sloped fronts would be gone completely. I don’t think people are buying these because they’re safer for pedestrians, they’re buying them because they like the way they look, and/or because they (the drivers) feel safer when they’re in a huge box sitting high up, looming over the surrounding cars.

When they started it was mostly a styling thing, think like Toyota copycatting the Dodge Charger front profile. The big tradeoff was "but muh fuel economy" and those people got over-ruled. And now 10-20yr later the industry has adapted and optimized for them in the form of utilizing them for crash purposes (and big cooling systems). The safety people consider them integral and so they can't be gotten rid of and the aerodynamics people are no longer whining so hard because they've spent the years figuring out how to somewhat mitigate them.

I think in an alternative universe where none of that happened we likely would have invested the R&D elsewhere and found creative ways to get the same results (you can see inklings of this like the airbag style hood lift thing) with much lower more aerodynamics and visibility friendly hood lines.

But that's just my opinion from being on the fringes of the industry.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#113

Post by prof-dr-ir »

cjensen wrote: post #83

The article says "safest roads," but the statistic used to demonstrate that is deaths per 100K people rather than deaths per kilometer driven. Seems to me the latter would be a much better metric for the safety of the physical roads.

Yes, and the footnote also says that "this metric is age-standardized". I did not easily find an explanation of what that means, which made me distrustful of the data.

Fortunately, good old Wikipedia has what we are both looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

For me the upshot is that UK still comes out quite good amongst its European peers, but the difference appears to be smaller.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#114

Post by jansper39 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #62

UK is extremely risk-averse. In the case of road safety, it shows: a lot of time and cash goes into minimising deaths. This is not only road users: roadworks have restrictive speed limits, which are not taken down when there is no workforce out, to minimise risk to workers setting and unsetting limits, traffic cones etc. Things that in other countries would close a lane often close the whole road, again because of ri…

I'll guess you've probably not done a huge amount of project management for infrastructure projects then. I can wager most road projects wouldn't be completed quicker if safety barriers had to be removed/reconstructed on a daily basis.

Equally, nobody in the construction trade gets into it to get killed in an accident, especially ones avoided by just having traffic move at slightly lower speeds.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#115

Post by Marazan »

Peanuts99 wrote: post #86
iainmerrick wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I really have a hard time understanding that trend. More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.

Perversely they're higher partially because of pedestrian safety. More space between the engine and the bonnet and hinges that extend that space when a force is applied to the front of the car to cushion the impact. Euro NCAP has a whole category for pedestrian safety to test exactly these features.

Except the NCAP test is flawed and everyone knows it. They are testing a SUV-pedestrian collision that doesn't actually happen and then rating the SUV's as super safe based on it when based on empirical evidence SUVs are vastly more dangerous to pedestrians in a collision as pedestrians (especially children) and vastly more likely to be dragged under than thrown onto the bonnet.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#116

Post by owlbite »

kypro wrote: post #107

In my opinion some of this is simply due to how congested built up areas are today. It's genuinely hard to get up to 30 in a city or any populated area in the UK today, and most cities in the UK now have 20mph speed limits when there's likely to be pedestrians around. It's pretty hard to kill people if you're driving under 30, and anywhere people are driving in excess of 30 it's not that populated and cars these days…

That and the speed limits are actually enforced, at least significantly more so than they seem to be here in California:

- Lots more speed cameras

- Average speed cameras especially make a huge difference vs spot enforcement

- Tolerance for enforcement is normally 10% rather than 10 mph (i.e. 30 limit means no more than 33mph rather than no more than 40mph)

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#117

Post by Symbiote »

CalRobert wrote: post #34
hazzamanic wrote: post #17

I wonder if there will be a reversal in pedestrian deaths with the rise in larger cars. I live in a large UK city and it is mad the number of SUVs you see driving around.

Do you have Individual Vehicle Approval? It’s shocking how many gigantic Dodge Rams (which do not meet EU safety rules) are driving around the Netherlands. One killed a 23 year old cyclist a few weeks ago.

I hope there's progress being made to close the import loophole: https://www.ecf.com/en/news/eu-commission-acknowledges-regul...

Meanwhile, there's a group (mostly in Britain) that sometimes lets the air out of the tyres of inappropriate vehicles [1] and sometimes drills holes in them [2].

From [3], "My mother is in palliative care and I came to the car to go to her, but because of your vicious act, I am stuck trying to reinflate my tyres!" — I have no sympathy whatsoever. She bought the 'car', she can call a taxi if the journey is urgent.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/who-are-the-tyre-extinguishe... / https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/tyre-ext...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/activist...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg67xeqp296o

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#118

Post by protocolture »

hazzamanic wrote: post #17

I wonder if there will be a reversal in pedestrian deaths with the rise in larger cars. I live in a large UK city and it is mad the number of SUVs you see driving around.

I dont see why. Like outside of specifically seppo produced coal wagons, the bigger cars\trucks\suvs are shipping with all safety features by default. I have 360 degree cameras at slow speed, sensors that go off if theres a loose branch within a meter of the car. I have more faith in my big car than I did with my older hatchback which only had a reversing cam.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#119

Post by tupac_speedrap »

CalRobert wrote: post #34
hazzamanic wrote: post #17

I wonder if there will be a reversal in pedestrian deaths with the rise in larger cars. I live in a large UK city and it is mad the number of SUVs you see driving around.

Do you have Individual Vehicle Approval? It’s shocking how many gigantic Dodge Rams (which do not meet EU safety rules) are driving around the Netherlands. One killed a 23 year old cyclist a few weeks ago.

We have IVA in the UK but it is mostly used to import Japanese cars at the moment because you only need a few modifications to most cars (fog lights, indicators) and the Yen is weak at the moment so a lot of people are importing cars like the Suzuki Jimny which meet our standards but aren't sold due to Europe wide emissions regulations. You would have to do a lot more to an American car because the safety standards are different so it isn't an attractive option unless you really want a specific vehicle at any cost.

Re: How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

#120

Post by Dylan16807 »

michaelt wrote: post #101
PaulRobinson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had an experience in any house or office where anything has ever been unplugged other than to put it away (a kitchen appliance that doesn't need to live on a counter, or a hair dryer, for example). Buy a fused extension cord with more plugs, you have now turned one socket into 4, 6, or 8 sockets. You can even get some that have USB built-in, so you don't use a socket up for a phone or tablet charger. They'…

I've never stepped on a plug myself, so I agree it's not a major problem. However, some older houses in the UK have far fewer sockets than more modern properties - sometimes only one or two per room. And sure, if you need to use a hairdryer and a hair straightener a person with an orderly lifestyle might return them both to a cupboard afterwards - but some people don't mind clutter and just leave them wherever. When…

Hair dryer and straightener would both be on a counter, right? No stepping issue there. And the same for appliance switching.

The only thing I plug in at ground level that isn't semi-permanent is a vacuum. No plugs are left lying around all day.

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