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I just read about the awful carnage on the M5 last Friday, poor people ending up like that. Having worked in A&E when I was a youngster, I also feel for the emergency services who have to attend these awful incidents. Many of these will need counselling, not to mention the hundreds of onlookers and others not directly involved, but having witnessed the nightmare and who will now never forget the experience.

Apparently they are now looking into the fireworks display that was taking place nearby, it was probably a factor of different things like the weather conditions and maybe drivers were distracted by the fireworks, my thoughts go to the relatives of family and friends of people who died in this carnage.

In case any of the petrol-heads are worried, I doubt the suggested raising of the speed limit to 80 will be off the agenda for very long. What is a decent period of breast-beating, before it comes up again?

People reported a lorry disappearing into a "Black cloud", I presume that it could have been a freak result of the enormous bonfire that had been lit. If such a cloud was to blame then neither raising nor lowering the speed limit would have had much effect on the outcome.

I'm no fan of bullying, buffoon, Clarkson but he is correct in asserting that speed has little to do with most accidents. This false propoganda has been put about by, "Veggy eating cyclists" who want all cars off the road. In Richmond park in Surrey, lycra louts have managed to get the speed limit for cars down to 20mph, so it is in fact the cyclists who are now the hazard to men, women and children. They wear no ID so they can injure and maim others at will and simply limp off with no worry about further action.

An American report about speed, I believe a British report came to a similar conclusion.

"I'm no fan of bullying, buffoon, Clarkson but he is correct in asserting that speed has little to do with most accidents."

Clarkson as you rightly say is a buffoon. And his statement above begs the following questions.

1. Clearly the level of risk involved in speeding varies depending on the weather conditions that apply. For example, on a lovely summer's day with great visibility and few cars on the road, a speeding 80mph motorist is unlikely to cause an accident or worsen an accident. That is definitely not the case in the event of thick fog where to travel at that sort of speed is suicidal.

2. Secondly the speed at which you are going when involved in an accident is a key factor amongst others, in your survival or not as well as the others in the crash. This is why many towns are moving from 30mph to 20mph because for a pedestrian getting hit at the lower speed there is a considerably increased survival rate.

Cheers
D

It is too early to reach any conclusion about the cause of Friday's M5 crash, but I believe that the accident rate in the UK, notwithstanding it is good compared with many other countries, could be cut further if we actually taught people to drive. At present we teach people to perform a series of tricks to get through a driving test which bears little resemblance to the actual conditions they are likely to encounter when they have passed. This is especially true with regard to motorway driving.

You lucky lucky man, David, to live in a country with, on the whole, such
a high level of driving skills. I suggest you travel the globe a bit more
and see how, on the whole, British drivers are in the top 95% of good
motorists. Of course they could be better !.... But sit as a passenger
with a bus or lorry driver in South America or Asia, or watch the average
French driver (and compare him to his British counterpart), or an Italian.
For real fun, David, I invite you to Budapest. Just dare to step onto a
pedestrian zebra crossing here in the rush hour ! Or see if your parked
car is not biffed by another motorist in a week or two !! Then you can
really complain !

[quote]I'm no fan of bullying, buffoon, Clarkson but he is correct in asserting that speed has little to do with most accidents.[/quote]

Clarkson will not bite off the hand that's fed him all these years. That's the motor industry and people who are fans of motoring. The report you linked to came to the conclusion that speed isn't the 'major contributory factor' in accidents. I'd agree with this. The major contributory factor is human error and misjudgement. Though saying speed is 'little to do with causing accidents' is the sort of statement designed to misguide. One can only argue over semantics, which doesn't help the people killed every year on our roads.

A more sensible thing to say would be that 'while speed isn't the major contributor of accidents, it IS a, -if not THE- major contributor of deaths from accidents.' I'm pretty sure that if Mr. J. Clarkson was involved in an accident himself, with his 3 children on board, he'd rather that accident happened at 20mph than at 120mph, given the choice. And anyone who agrees with Clarkson may do well to ask themselves this to test their belief.

I think Mr. J. Clarkson ought to stick to what he knows best, and that's reviewing motor vehicles. If I was on the lookout for a new car I'd listen with serious interest at what Mr. J. Clarkson had to say. When it comes to road safety, or the environment, though, I'd prefer to listen to the experts in those particular fields. Mental philosophy, I know...

[quote]This false propoganda has been put about by, "Veggy eating cyclists" who want all cars off the road.[/quote]

As you see from my answer above, and the report you linked to, I doubt this is true. I must admit that 'veggy eating cyclists' do have much more to gain from slower and fewer motorists than the other way around. I can't remember the last time a motorist was killed by a veggy eating cyclist, after all. It was half attempt at humour, though, so know you weren't being wholly serious. Still, you could have spelt it right.

[quote]In Richmond park in Surrey, lycra louts have managed to get the speed limit for cars down to 20mph, so it is in fact the cyclists who are now the hazard to men, women and children. They wear no ID so they can injure and maim others at will and simply limp off with no worry about further action.[/quote]

I do hope you're not being serious, Jim........scratch that, I mean I hope you are! You see, if you were being serious your statement above would actually contradict your original belief that 'speed has little to do with accidents'. Your last paragraph gives the implication that you believe the danger of being in an accident with a motor vehicle has decreased since the speed limit was lowered.

So, we can conclude from all this that you are confused about what you really think and this is from watching and listening to too much Jeremy Clarkson. Logic would suggest, then, that Jeremy Clarkson is bad for your mental health, which means we've all learnt something useful and this thread ceases to be a waste of time!

RESULT: Jeremy Clarkson is bad for mental health.

The biggest problem I witness all the time driving on the motorways is tail gaiting.

I can see things going from bad to worse with vehicles with that. I just hope that wasnt the cause of this.

No matter how careful you drive it only takes a couple vehicles to career out of control to affect cars oncoming in adjacent lanes.

The M5 accident is very tragic

I think, Jim, you will find that the 20mph limit in Richmond Park was introduced to cut down on the deaths of deer, amongst other reasons. The press release from the Royal Parks makes no mention of "Veggy eating cyclists".