What makes a car safe?

[Spaces]

Really, is that the best you can manage? Tyres make a big difference to how vehicles handle near the limit. Thought you may have more knowledge of your pursuit vehicles than that. Or am I missing your sense of humour?

[DickieG]

I do think that riding a motorcycle for a year or so before taking a car test improves awareness almost infinitely.

For those who survive, that is.

I'm alive! Do I get a gold star?

Have a medal a damage only in a car is generally a 'PI' on a bike, a PI in a car is often a fatal on a bike, not good

I can honestly say that riding a motorcycle gives me very little pleasure whatsoever.

[DickieG]

Really, is that the best you can manage? Tyres make a big difference to how vehicles handle near the limit. Thought you may have more knowledge of your pursuit vehicles than that. Or am I missing your sense of humour?

A sense of humour, two of mine personal cars Michelins, another Continental and the fourth Dunlop.

As for work cars well that depends upon each particular vehicle and as 24 hour cover has to be maintained all year round no one brand of tyre or car manufacturer is specified because should a fault be discovered with the one brand you are using = no service

[Spaces]

Good answer, thanks.

[Rhothgar]

Deanxm.

I agree with some of the points you make but I would suggest you do an IAM Skills for Life course. For £139, it will open your eyes and, more importantly your awareness.

Without reading DickieG's response as yet, there is not always a need to indicate your intention. In the Information phase of IPSGA, you take in information as well as considering giving information. This includes use of indicators.

Class 1's are way over and above IAM standard. IAM is basic level training compared though we follow the same 'system'. The DSA test in my opinion is unbelievably basic and most people forget what they've learnt on that a month after passing.

We need an Austrian system over here. My god! The roads would be quiet.

[Rhothgar]

Tyres make a big difference to how vehicles handle near the limit.

When you mention how a vehicle handles when driving near the limit you are referring to its cornering abilities clearly.

If you are 'near the limit', the throttle position and how your tyres are stressed through a number of factors relating to this and steering input has a far greater influence.

Next time you're on private land and that doesn't mean Sainsbury car park for the purposes of the Road Traffic Act where there is a risk to the public, try driving near the limit and stamping on the brakes with good tyres on and then try it with set of tyres with legal minimum on.

Let me know your findings! They'll be little or no difference. Try it in a straight line and there will be a vast difference in the stopping ability.

If you are in a corner and near the limit, backing off the throttle can caused skidding under certain circumstances let alone braking.

[Deanxm]

I would suggest you do an IAM Skills for Life course. For £139, it will open your eyes and, more importantly your awareness.

Do you know, its always something i fancied doing as you dont know what you dont know untill your told but kept putting it off, not sure why really but i have to get my operators lisence and my HGV and trailer one for work since i only have what amounts to a rod lisence at the moment, since im on the mainland for them......................

my experience of traffic cops has been at both ends of scale im affraid, no middle ground, the guy that used to be in Ryde town over the weekends was the best, he was an older bloke with a relaxed attitude who cought me doing silly speeds along the seafront early one sunday morning, basicaly he straightened me out right there and then with some common sense talk and i kept all my inevitable high speed activity to quiet open straight roads from then on and i believe is the reason i have never had an accident of any kind.

The other was a pair of traffic cops laying in ambush at a known drifting site who refused to drive 1/2 mile down the road to my work to stop 3 blokes who i had seen were in the process of robbing the place, they did call a real police officer though(thanks guys if your out there by the way)

My most recent encounter was after a colegue was involved in a fatal collision which was not his fault at all, every witness on the scene said so at the time, im not going into it but the way he was treated was disgusting, i doubt he could of recieved worse treatment if he had used a gun.

I have no doubt you are one of the Good ones Richard, if you teach the teachers you must be unbelievably good at what you do, explains why you keep getting to drive all those nice cars too, git

D

[Xaccers]

Regarding police drivers, I think MK gets the dregs of Thames Valley
I've seen cars have to dive for cover because the police van has nearly taken them out wandering all over the place on a roundabout, the driver wasn't using his mirrors.
Then there was the sword incident on the M1 where a police driver (complete with camera crew to capture it) just "forgot" to slow down and stop in time when pulling over onto the hard shoulder to help his colleagues and smacked into the back of a stationary police car *oops*
Not forgetting the bright spark who pulled me over on one of the grid roads where I duly pulled into a safe layby while he chose to stop out in the road rather than pull in behind me, and didn't want to believe that in the time it took him to walk to my car I could undo my seatbelt to get my wallet out of my pocket knowing he'd want to see my license inside. I had crossed a roundabout before he reached it which meant he had to slow down and obviously falsly triggered his crim-dar. To bad there wasn't the usual camera crew with him. I should have asked him for his autograph

Of course we do have some good ones. Danielle and I got pulled over in a random safety check on Friday, and she got her wrist slapped as unnoticed by me, she'd put the shoulder strap of her seatbelt under her arm as she was finding it uncomfortable (there you go Richard, ammunition should she have a go at you for being nasty about Cassy ).
Although the other copper walking towards the car pulled over beind us didn't look so jolly, and the driver was trying to nonchalantly put his seatbelt on! Danielle's behaviour was bad enough (naughty girl) but how anyone can drive without a seatbelt on is beyond me, it just doesn't feel comfortable to me.

In Salisbury I witnessed a police car speeding around a roundabout and ignoring red lights, with no blues or siren going, and the fasted time I made it back from Grimsby in the early hours of the morning was when I followed a police van that was doing well over 100mph and (worryingly) regularly wandered over the rumble strips onto the hard shoulder.

It just shows that some people, no matter what, when "just driving" get complacent, especially if they don't believe there are any consiquences in doing so.
Of course I'm sure if any of the above were involved in a chase they'd have their game face on and would be driving to their training.

Dean, your mentioning of how your colleague was treated has reminded me of when my 205 ended up in a ditch, and I ended up in the back of an ambulance with two broken ribs and on oxygen.
The police turned up, decided I must have been driving dangerously, and came into the ambulance to have a go about how I was lucky to be alive driving like that. I didn't have the strength or pain control to put them straight.
I was doing 40mph in a 60 zone and actually slowing down which may have been what caused the accident, with the 205's reputation for lift off oversteer, something I had no idea about at the time.

[handyman]

Toby, the CAA is an independently funded industry body that does have the ear of the DOT, who are the AAIB bosses, so really it is all a bit nepotistic. Do not get me wrong, the CAA provides an important function in aviation in this country, but like most large organisations, it has its fair share of jobsworths and can be frustrating to deal with sometimes.

I have yet to have any dealing directly with the AAIB. Presumably, if and when they are investiagting me, I wont know or care much about it.

Dickie, all novice drivers have to start on bicycles, and then on to under-powered motorcycles, that will definitely increase their road sense and spatial awareness!

It was not you that took me on a one day training course on the skid pan at Hendon, followed by a high speed driving pursuit through the Thames Valley back in the eighties? That one day of advanced driver training has always stood me in good stead and gave me a different mindset in my approach to driving.

I can still drive at speed, but less like an idiot.

Handyman

[DickieG]

Dickie, all novice drivers have to start on bicycles, and then on to under-powered motorcycles, that will definitely increase their road sense and spatial awareness!

I quite agree, especially as up until very recently when I suffered a slipped disc, I cycled to work every day to Hendon through London suburbs. I've found it quite easy to recognise drivers who cut up cyclist's due to a complete lack of awareness, most of them have one of those green stickers you find in the back of London minicab's. Strange that

It was not you that took me on a one day training course on the skid pan at Hendon, followed by a high speed driving pursuit through the Thames Valley back in the eighties? That one day of advanced driver training has always stood me in good stead and gave me a different mindset in my approach to driving.

I can still drive at speed, but less like an idiot.

Handyman

No not me as I didn't start at the Driving School until 1999, I'm glad you were left with a good impression of what we do and that you found it useful

[CitroJim]

I do think that riding a motorcycle for a year or so before taking a car test improves awareness almost infinitely.

Agreed. I started off on motorbikes and then moved on to cars. For a long while I drove/rode both. My last steed was a big Jap not noted for it's handling. We used to joke the frame was made out of old Access Cards (the old name for MasterCards) as they had the strapline 'Your Flexible Friend'..

Those badly handling bikes certainly made you learn your and the bike's limits, especially in the rain with their stainless steel disc brakes and Jap tyres that had all the friction coefficient of PTFE in the wet

All of that learning followed on to my car driving.

I've been on the road now for 36 years and touch wood, never had a bad accident on either two or four wheels. The very few I have been in have been minor shunts when followers have failed to stop in time due to their own misobservation of a developing situation. I have had one accident in Cyprus where I spun the car into a cliff face following a slide on spilt grape juice. A real hazard in Cyprus at grape harvest time as it's just like black ice...

I put my reasonable record down to a defensive attitude, learned on bikes, good concentration, observation and knowing my own limits. I know I'm not a skilled driver, have no illusions over this and drive always within my capabilities and limits.

This means for instance that because I don't feel safe in excess of 70 odd MPH in any car I don't exceed this speed....

[DickieG]

explains why you keep getting to drive all those nice cars too, git

[Peter.N.]

I passed my motorcycle test in 1955 on a 125 Vespa, that was a steep learning curve including several doses of gravel rash, but it taught you a lot about road surfaces that you don't feel in a car - until its to late

I passed my car test in '56 during the Suez crises when petrol rationing was on and driving tests were suspended, if you had a provisional license you were allowed to drive by yourself - brilliant. There were no speed limits in those days except in towns and we used to 'compare' our latest cars by driving flat out on Court Road in Orpington.

There were no tyre laws in those days either, which was just as well as a new tyre was about a weeks wages for me, so you wore them down to the canvas.

There were a few lunatic drivers about even then but nothing like as many as now and of course the cars were much slower, 70 mph was fast and 100 almost unatainable, it was much nicer on the roads then but if you did have a high speed crash you were much less likely to survive than now, modern cars are without doubt much safer.

Peter

[Rhothgar]

Do you know, its always something i fancied doing as you dont know what you dont know untill your told

True. Just reading some of the comments on this thread surprises me but, of course, I was not there at the time that some of these 'incidents' took place so couldn't comment on the skills of the 'cops' concerned.

As for the Skills for Life, I was the same but I got forced into it really early last year when I was at a motorcycle show. A friend had just passed his DSA bike test and thought it would be a good idea to take the advanced so we mutually booked.

I did an IAM initial assessment back in around 1990 with a Class 1 police driver and he criticised for not accelerating fast enough. Funny thing was I was in my 1980 RS2000 Custom. Under normal circumstances, I would never have been afraid of 'caning it' but I thought IAM was all about driving sedately. It's not!

It's about driving to the speed limit where it is safe to do so and not being afraid to get there quickly. It's about developing excellent observational skills, forward planning and total understanding of changing conditions and replanning.

The thing is you never stop learning even when you have the skills set. No two journeys are ever the same even if it's your commute to work!

I remember what a senior observer told me last year when I was spouting on about previous driving experiences and knowing a road 'like the back of my hand'.

He said to me. You know your house 'like the back of your hand, don't you?'. "Yes, of course", I replied. To which he replied, "which room is your wife in at the moment?". Point taken!

my experience of traffic cops has been at both ends of scale

I hear what you are saying in all this and what others are saying too.

We've all had experiences with the Police of one kind or another.

The most irritating aspect I find is that more often than not some tend to be very condescending in the way that they talk to you. They seem to forget that they are public servants and we, as drivers, constitute members of the public. I could understand it if I was unpolite but I also accept that sometimes they are operating under stressful conditions and will respond accordingly.

[Rhothgar]

two broken ribs and on oxygen.

OUCH!

I was doing 40mph in a 60 zone and actually slowing down which may have been what caused the accident, with the 205's reputation for lift off oversteer, something I had no idea about at the time.

You should have been doing 60!

I can't say for sure because I don't know the details of the road/bend. Either you should have had your speed down way before the bend if you felt it was too fast to be going into the corner or you should have had a very light throttle to keep drive to the wheels.

I used to have a 205 D Turbo. Awesome car. Wouldn't mind another. I never experienced any problems in it but perhaps the engine is heavy enough in this to keep it down. Were you in a 205 GTi?