The Last Drive as a Free Man

Invited up to Fort William, Scotland I decided that it had been a long time since I’d done an epic drive for the pleasure of it, so I accepted. In the far North, there are roads that we can only dream of down south, roads where you can see clear to the horizon, and be the only vehicle on them, or have a mile of visibility to pass the one vehicle ahead of you. They are roads where you can relax and cruise and bask in the magnificent beauty of this island.

Except that traffic planners have other ideas. I forget the number, but I encountered the road that has been in the news for having mile after mile of average speed cameras, to unsurprisingly little effect. On that day however, I was stunned and saddened that their determination to pursue dogma rather than fact had seen the cameras installed, though not yet activated according to a sign.

I decided to take the sign at its word, and enjoyed as far as that road is concerned a last drive as a free man, experienced, informed by conditions, which were unparalleled compared to what we experience down south, except at night. It was a drive as the car manufacturers intended, as all their enticing adverts suggest, to sell cars to people who will sit on the M25, almost inevitably delayed these days by an incident, and always during the day in a crowd. It was a drive where the earliest and still most effective road safety tools were employed, the brain and the eye.

Nowadays, two thirds of British drivers can’t be trusted, because they still insist on making informed decisions as to speed. In a democracy of course, that would be an overwhelming vote to say that making an informed decision as to speed was normal and appropriate. We do not live in a democracy, or rather modern democracy is a vote once every four years or so as to which controllers we wish to elect.

 Controllers, as with any religion, operate on faith, on dogma, on creed. That creed appeals to their personality. Positions of control appeal to their personality, just as they do not appeal to those who like to think that thinking for themselves, taking responsibility for their own lives, is at the core of who we are.

It is why Brexit is infuriating the Camerons of this world. The elite know better, and if ordinary people, don’t comply, they will be brow-beaten, derided, ‘informed’ of the madness of their position, the risks they’re taking, the danger they represent to others. Sound familiar?

It doesn’t matter that there are those who trust in humans, who are as smart or smarter than the controllers. It doesn’t matter if the statistics show that we are as safe or safer out of the EU, or making our own decisions as to speed. It doesn’t matter that the creed derides two thirds of British drivers. Religion, dogma, does not rely upon respect for others, it relies on respect for the creed.

Just as Brexit does not need economic ‘facts’ to justify it, but simply an answer to one question: do we wish to be in charge of our own lives, so likewise road safety has that same question, and two thirds of drivers vote with their feet, literally, and say that we do.

And that is why the average speed cameras are proliferating. Because they are inescapable, by the laws of physics. From being the only one of 71 factors that is easily measured, so that it has become the overwhelming focus of road safety, speed has been further leveraged because an entire stretch of road can be controlled by two points: a beginning and an end. The mid cameras simply reinforce the message and cope with junctions, but the point is simple: you can’t escape.

We decide your fate, not you. We decide your behaviour, not you. ‘It is for your own good, for public safety, for the lives of others’.

I would have more time for that if it was backed by statistics that showed overwhelmingly or clearly that normal everyday drivers on those roads are indeed the prime threat to road safety. It is hypocrisy in service to the creed when they show the exact opposite.

The non-speeding driver and the pedestrian have seventy factors to dilute their errors and involvement in accidents, yet failing to look properly and loss of control (non-speeding), careless etc., are still the top three causes of fatalities.

Speeding looks like fourth, but which speeding, whose speeding? Speeding has only one factor, and to make it more effective still, controllers lump together non-speeding speed (too fast for conditions) to nearly double the incidence from speeding.

Now try something uncomfortable: do you believe that a young man, drunk, racing his mates, on the wrong side of the road, at over 30mph over the limit, is what you are witnessing every day on motorways?

No? Then why do you combine the incidence of those fatalities with those of normal, everyday, experienced drivers and hold the everyday drivers accountable, which is what happens when the figures are cited as ‘evidence’ that speed kills, so we need average speed cameras?

Are you going to accuse 50% of British drivers, driving normally on motorways and roads, of being one of: young (under 30), drunk, using a phone, careless etc., aggressive, losing control? After nearly four decades of cruising at the same speeds our continental cousins take for granted, bringing the same skills to bear I use as a pilot, I experience the same sort of relaxed attentiveness at cruise speed as I do in the air. Why would I not? Does that sound at all like a driver with any of those impediments?

Yet online articles of ‘speeding driver kills’ show 60% of them with drivers that I describe as Class 3 Lethal, drink-fuelled boy-racers, and they are indeed lethal because the probability that they kill someone without 3rd party error is 90%. Yet they are not particularly dangerous as a class, as I distinguish lethality (killing without 3rd party error) from danger (numbers killed by a class). There are fortunately not many such drivers on the road.

There are far more ordinary, non-speeding drivers, and they are the overwhelming danger on the road. Pedestrians are more lethal to themselves, and impaired speeding drivers (Class II, one of drink, youth etc) are about as lethal, but neither are anywhere near as dangerous as non-speeding drivers in terms of numbers killed.

Class II comprise about 30% of online articles, with ‘speeding drunk driver kills’ being a typical incident, so that 90% of online articles describe drivers who are nothing like normal everyday drivers, yet these are the headlines that generate the emotion that justifies control.

That leaves 10% of speeding fatalities (1.5% overall) for normal everyday drivers over 30, by which time the ‘youth’ effect has disappeared with respect to fatalities. Experience continues to reduce overall accident involvement into the fifties and sixties, at which point it begins to rise again.

Online articles, news articles, are biased, so a critic will say, so I shouldn't be citing them: in which case a wise and sound mind would not use them as justification for control either. What do Stats 19 say? There are no factors ‘over 30mph over the limit’, ‘racing another vehicle’. Crossing a double white line is almost entirely absent in actual incidents.

Yet if we use stand-ins, making an exploratory and arbitrary assessment of say ‘loss of control or aggressive driving’ for Class III Lethal, ‘drink, drugs, careless etc., phone, youth’ for Class II Impaired, and the residual, with speeding but none of the above as Class I Mature (about 50% of UK drivers, exceeding the limit) we see a remarkable consistency with the base premise, at the same surprisingly elegant 60:30:10 split.

Has no one ever noticed that young drivers tend to get involved in fatal accidents?

Of course they have.

Has no one ever noticed that drunk drivers tend to get involved in fatal accidents?

Of course they have.

Has anyone ever bothered to separate these out from ‘sensible’ ‘normal’ ‘everyday’ drivers exceeding the limit and involved in accidents?

Of course not. That would reduce the impact of speeding on accidents and fatalities.

No, instead, here’s a whole bunch of ‘speed-related’ fatalities we can pin on the normal driver as well. ‘But it wasn’t me officer’, doesn’t count. Planting evidence in plain sight, saying ‘look, see how dangerous speeding is? These people weren’t speeding, but it was like they were speeding, so that’s how dangerous speed is so that’s speeding, that’s dangerous.’

It’s an absurd determination to pursue dogma over fact, over common sense.

Yet even if police officers are ‘flawed’ (not my position, but a ‘controller’s’ position) and Stats 19 can’t be trusted, then there’s something that does not rely on any judgement at all, beyond reading the time.

Biting the bullet, I once wondered just what the statistics did say. I plotted speeding versus accidents by time of day. If one goes up as the other goes up, there’s potential causality. Far from doing that, as one goes up, the other goes down. More speeding, fewer accidents. Go figure. Far from justifying the government position, the most basic graph of all entirely contradicts it.

Going further, I eventually tried something else: accidents by time of day versus traffic by time of day. I was astonishing, horrified, and indignant, after decades of the mantra, the dogma. It was a perfect fit. The accidents by time of day and traffic density by time of day are literally the same graph. They are so close in profile that they occlude one another to a great degree.

The correlation is so good, it is 99.1%, and the curves disappear behind one another, while speeding of course (speeding in rush hour?) goes completely the other way.

In fact, you can even determine the average delay in recording a time of accident. The curves are identical in profile but staggered in time, approximately 30 minutes apart. Nor is it coincidence. The traffic profile changes from two humps during the week (rush hour) to one hump at weekends (most traffic and accidents after midday). The accident profile changes to match.

The 'controller' might say: 'that's obvious, of course there are more accidents in traffic.' It is obvious yes, that's the point. Accidents are perfectly proportional to density. They cannot be proportional to any other factor without disrupting that association. Speeding is not merely disassociated, it is contra-indicated: precisely when accidents are occurring the most, speeding is occurring the least, and vice verse.

The intellectual disconnect is that the controller doesn't acknowledge the contradiction, because they need a cause, a target, and no one can possibly say that predicting 'failing to loop properly' or 'losing control' are easy. Measuring speed though, dead easy. It doesn't matter if it's a legitimate target. It's an easy target.

That it is not merely not legitimate, but actually illegitimate, is the deepest hypocrisy. The most experienced drivers in the safest conditions (low density) are the least risk? Go figure. How on earth could that be? Never mind. Target them anyway. God forbid that we policed our streets on that basis. Running? You're nicked. Next time you might be running from a crime.

Class I Mature speeding isn’t oddball dangerous drivers putting lives at risk (that’s Class III Lethall), or irresponsible drivers putting lives at risk (that’s Class II Impaired, drink, drugs, youth [inexperienced if you prefer]).

Class I Mature speeding is half of British drivers making an informed decision as to speed, and statistics show they're doing an excellent job relative to non-speeding drivers and pedestrians. And that's in a country in which road use is safer than world airline travel by two key measures.

In one of the best countries for road safety in the world, everyday citizens over 30 making an informed decision as to speed are the best of the best... gee, that would be an inconvenient truth if anyone dared acknowledge what the government's own statistics are saying. 

 Cameras won’t detect ‘drink fuelled boy racer’, nor will they detect drink, drugs, inexperience. They are designed to detect only one thing: speed, and that’s who they detect: normal, everyday drivers making informed decisions as to speed. And that’s who they prosecute, with 80% of serious (non-parking etc.) driving prosecutions being for speeding.

All the while ‘speeding’ is just what any experienced driver could tell you, if the dogma wasn’t so overwhelming: as road conditions open up, traffic diminishes, and vehicles space out, the reasonable and safe speeds available increase while risk decreases, and so normal everyday drivers, 50% of them experienced drivers, make a perfectly rational assessment as to speed and operate, as humans are supposed to, according to that.

It takes controllers deriding half of British drivers to make them ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible’.

Meanwhile, Class I Experienced/Mature/over 30, involved in 10% of speeding’s typically 13% to 15% involvement in fatalities, are involved in about 1.5% of fatalities.

While non-speeding drivers are involved in 85%.

And you think we’re the problem?

We do understand why controllers find speeding attractive: of the 71 factors, speed is the only one you can readily and automatically measure. It is a convenient demonstration that ‘we are doing something’. It is lucrative. It just isn’t based on an accurate, common sense, analysis of road safety.

It’s a convenient dogma.

And what happens when you tell people the problem is speeding drivers, drunk drivers, a defamatory association?

If you’re not speeding, not drunk, you’re safe.

No you’re not. You’re the most dangerous driver on the road, the non-speeding, non-drunk driver.

In terms of numbers, you’re involved in the overwhelming majority of fatalities. In terms of lethality, you’re far more lethal than the Class I Experienced driver. And now that you think you’re safe, does that false reassurance give you a false idea as to your actual risk, so that you’re paying less attention than you should?

‘Road Safety’ is putting lives at risk with its dogma, but don’t expect any recanting any time soon.

Am I ‘defending speeding’?

As I understand it, defending against injustice is a legitimate pursuit.

Dogma contradicted by the government’s own data is not only hypocritical, but in a democracy, when it targets a majority of the drivers on the roads, then it should be prosecutable, in reverse. It is defamatory, it is distracting from the real issues, and people are getting killed because pedestrians who think they’re safe and it’s the driver’s fault are walking in front of vehicles without looking.

People are getting killed because drivers think they’re safe, and they’re paying insufficient attention, or they’re complacent, or they’re making basic mistakes, pick your poison, go look at Stats 19.

Meanwhile, experienced drivers, half of UK drivers, make informed decisions as to speed and do what they always do, pay particular attention to everything around them. Being prey tends to focus one’s attention. And because we ‘escape’ the controllers too often, now our continuing intransigence as a free people is insulting and irritating to them.

You can’t ‘escape’ an average speed camera.

You are no longer making a choice, other than to preserve your license, by obedience.

That isn’t freedom. And the controller will be delighted, because they’re caught in the dogma.

None of which matters, because we’re all going to be driven around in mindless cars, with mind-numbed people browsing and online shopping, living in virtual worlds of distraction. Think how many hours we spend driving. Think how many hours could be spent online. It would transform driving from participation looking out at the world, to introspection looking at your device. Now you know why Google is so keen on the autonomous car.

Looking out has been a fundamental skill and necessary survival skill since before man was even an ape. Modern road safety has removed the consequences of failing to do that from the pedestrian, and put them onto the driver. It has removed the consequences of failing to do that from the non-speeding driver, who gets a blanket for causing the vast majority of fatalities, and puts it onto the experienced driver, who goes to jail in that rarest of incidents: a Class I Mature driver actually killing someone.

It happens about 25 times a year. Of the other 1700 incidents, the vast majority, the blanket accidents, are disregarded. No target available. Just one of those things.   

It is the saddest testament to what it means to be a free and responsible individual, that the controllers are determined to eliminate free and responsible. You are free to do anything we allow you to, is not freedom, and who set you up above other men? God certainly didn't. Nor did the two thirds of drivers you target, twenty million voters, more than enough to dominate the House of Commons, if only drivers were a political party.

And only in our Orwellian controller’s mind, can ‘responsible’ seem laughable when describing a ‘normal everyday driver making an informed decision as to speed’.

We cannot win, just as I thought we cannot win in Brexit, because controllers like control, and aspire to power. That doesn’t make it right that they win, only a reflection of the nature of power and the kind of people attracted to it.

We all want to save lives. Experienced drivers are doing an excellent job of it.

Controllers are not.

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Andrew is author of 'Experience Counts' on Amazon (or UK here) and the Facebook page of the same name.