Thoughts on Excessive Speed

[sigma]

Yes, it's so bad round here, it really is shocking having driven quite extensively throughout a lot of the country, the only place I've found that comes close is London.



I don't understand the mentality behind it, but some people just have to be in front. It's something I've noticed a lot more driving an EV with rapid but silent acceleration - maybe people just assume I'm going slowly because there isn't a huge cloud of black smoke and a loud *broom broom* noise when I put my foot down?

Coming out of Coventry yesterday along the A45 - dual carriageway which starts off at 40, then goes to 60 - me sticking to the 40mph speed limit with your stereotypical BMW 1 series practically sitting on my back seat, put my foot down where it changes to 60 mph, and now there's a gap in the right lane he pulls out to overtake and rattles past at ~80mph in a cloud of diesel smoke. 1/4 mile down the road I catch up again as he's sitting at 55

Probably slowed to 55 so the he could browse tiktok

 

[AWPC]

you should write into the sun, that is just the sort of anti EV nonsense they lap up!. plenty of Berks in cars long before EVs were popular!.
one good thing I guess about most EVs (a few.teslas etc excepted) whilst they have decent 0-60 pickup and instant acceleration (which if driven sensibly means safer overtaking) they tend to be limited at a much lower top speed.

out of all the performance cars I have owned, my current one, (my 1st EV) has by a country mile the lowest top speed at 124mph

.... you should educate your fellow EV drivers just because you have massive acceleration does not mean its actually safe to use it & tail gate others for miles until you lose patience hit full throttle & put everyone else in danger

 

[bigmike20vt]

.... you should educate your fellow EV drivers just because you have massive acceleration does not mean its actually safe to use it & tail gate others for miles until you lose patience hit full throttle & put everyone else in danger

I didn't say it was. I called you out on your comment that EV drivers are worse than ICE ones, and tailgating is just as easy in any car.

 

[ICDP]

I disagree I think a bad crash at any speed can sadly be fatal

Yes it can, but the chances of a crash being fatal increases with speed. Simple physics, the faster an object the more kinetic energy it has and this means the harder the crash. At some point luck won’t come into it because your speed is just too high to survive.

You go crash in to a wall at 10 mph, now do it at 110. This may seem like I am being melodramatic but I’m demonstrating the point. Every 10 mph on your speed substantially increases the kinetic energy your car will convert into damage in a crash. There is a cut off obviously but your chances of surviving a crash at 70 are a lot higher than surviving one at 90, let alone 120.

Basically had the two unfortunate people who this thread was about been doing 70mph instead of 120. This thread may not exist as they may have survived.

 

[Haggisman]

Yep sadly does not surprise me a lot of these EV drivers come across as entitled they are not very safe drivers from what I have seen!

Yeah, before EVs were invented, everyone's driving was exemplary. Just ban the damn things, they're a menace!



Meanwhile, back in reality, the only problem I see with EVs is when people who have never driven a "fast" car suddenly find themselves in a bog standard family hatchback with 200+ bhp that can do 0-60 in 6-7 seconds

I disagree I think a bad crash at any speed can sadly be fatal its mainly down to luck as many modern cars are designed to crumble & protect you...many do this really well actually. 40..50 or whatever its usually down to the angle of the hit & sheer fluke good or bad luck plus how much your vehicle weighs vs how much the other vehicle weighs plays a big part in survival rates.

That makes no sense.

A bad crash is obviously a bad crash, but the chances of having one (vs a low speed bump) increases with speed

If you hit a tree at 20mph you'll almost certainly walk away from it with a few bruises at worst. Hit it at 120 and you'll be lucky to be pulled out in one piece.

Yes of course at 20 you might be really unlucky and get impaled on a branch at exactly the wrong place, and yes at 120 you might be really lucky and "bounce" off mostly thin springy branches, but I know which speed I would rather be travelling when I hit!

 

[ICDP]

Yeah, before EVs were invented, everyone's driving was exemplary. Just ban the damn things, they're a menace!



Meanwhile, back in reality, the only problem I see with EVs is when people who have never driven a "fast" car suddenly find themselves in a bog standard family hatchback with 200+ bhp that can do 0-60 in 6-7 seconds



That makes no sense.

A bad crash is obviously a bad crash, but the chances of having one (vs a low speed bump) increases with speed

If you hit a tree at 20mph you'll almost certainly walk away from it with a few bruises at worst. Hit it at 120 and you'll be lucky to be pulled out in one piece.

Yes of course at 20 you might be really unlucky and get impaled on a branch at exactly the wrong place, and yes at 120 you might be really lucky and "bounce" off mostly thin springy branches, but I know which speed I would rather be travelling when I hit!

Exactly, it's standard deviation. It would be like reading about the sky diver who's chute failed to open but survived because he hit a load of thin pine branches and landed on a big pile of dry leaves at the bottom. It doesn't mean jumping out of a plane with no parachute has the same chance of surviving falling out of a first floor window. Conversely you could take the outlier who fell when out walking and died because they hit their head off the corner of a kerb. If you have to use extreme outliers to make your point "valid" you have already lost IMHO.

 

[TheVoice]

as for DUI idiots. that must be where you live i think drink driving is FAR less of a think now than it has ever been. back when I was a teenager I knew many people who thought nothing of 5 and drive, and bar staff would knowingly serve people who would later get into a car. staff now are less likely to do that.
it's possible the number of people pulled now has not dropped much but the types of people pulled now is far more likely to be morning after drivers. over the limit sure and I am not excusing them... but they are not rolling around drunk right out of the pub like back in the day.

and back in the day the morning after drivers.were still there as well but they were just never pulled where as now (esp around Xmas) I have known the police to blanket close a section of road in Cambridge in the morning and random breathalise every car on the road.

Drink driving convictions have steadily decreased however prosecutions for failing to provide a specimen have increased, as have prosecutions for drug-driving (largely due to better detection methods e.g. drugwipes).

 

[taB]

Meanwhile, back in reality, the only problem I see with EVs is when people who have never driven a "fast" car suddenly find themselves in a bog standard family hatchback with 200+ bhp that can do 0-60 in 6-7 seconds

Cupra EV is certainly the fastest car I've driven. Nice and nippy. Like to think I drive it sensibly (and legally) though.

 

[jpaul]

for some anyway - it's the balance of the car, and setting it up to go around a corner/roundabout/curve that is the fun part of driving not straight line heroics #metoo

 

[SexyGreyFox]

My band is now in jeopardy because the guy who drives most of the gear around in a trailer is already on 9 points and just got caught speeding again
This is 4 times on his meat delivering job he has been caught speeding but you would think on his first time he would have slowed down.
I do know people who have had 12 points and still kept their license for one more chance, what is the likelihood of that happening for 4 speeding tickets and if he gets a ban what ban could he get?

I thought I'd update again.

He had his court appearance yesterday and in the morning he was that scared he could hardly talk.
He rings me up late afternoon saying adjourned until April 12th because they've got that many cases
He just wanted it over and done with and now he's being punished more.

 

[bigmike20vt]

I thought I'd update again.

He had his court appearance yesterday and in the morning he was that scared he could hardly talk.
He rings me up late afternoon saying adjourned until April 12th because they've got that many cases
He just wanted it over and done with and now he's being punished more.

sadly that is the case with a lot of cases at the moment...... broken Britain innit?

I mean it can take 18months + for rape cases and what not to go to trial.

 

[Richie]

It makes me wonder if crashes will increase with the adoption of EVs

On the one hand you have tech and AI increasing to try and minimise accidents as much as possible however, on the other hand, you have vehicles now capable of silly acceleration affordable to a much larger percentage of the population compared to ICE cars and said population not really that used to it.

The issue is - people think they are much better drivers than they really are and the car tech is partly to blame for it. If it wasn't for modern cars with stability control, ABS, collision avoidance systems and all the rest of the tech potentially making thousands of calculations and adjustments every second, I'd reckon more people would spin off the road.... Because of this tech, they all think they are Tiff Needell.