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| What part of Road Closed do you not understand? |
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I live on a private estate, alongside one of the access roads, which has just been re-surfaced. The road was closed during the re-surfacing work, creating a short cul-de-sac that terminated a few yards beyond my house. Two large road signs were prominently placed at the entrance to the road in order to warn people of its closure. The wording on each was clear enough: ‘ROAD AHEAD CLOSED – ACCESS ONLY’. Just past my house, and no more than fifty yards from the signs, was a bright orange barrier. It stretched the whole width of the road, and was clearly visible to anyone approaching the warning signs.
My office window overlooks the road, and time after time I saw inattentive motorists drive right past the warning signs and right up to the barrier before realising there was an obstruction. This happened three or four times an hour, every hour, throughout the week during which the road was closed.
These drivers were then faced with the problem of extricating themselves from a situation of their own making, at which point they revealed that their reversing skills were as inadequate as their observational skills.
But it is the latter that bothers me most. Even the most rudimentary driving skills demand rapid progression through five crucial steps: Look, See, Assimilate, Decide, Commit. How frequently these steps are repeated, and how quickly, determine the difference between a poor or average driver and a skilled one. What I find really disturbing is that the drivers in question didn’t even pass first base, yet they, and others like them, are at liberty to populate our roads, to drive on our motorways, and to place at risk anyone unfortunate enough to be driving in their vicinity.
Of the cars I observed, most were small, and the majority of those were silver, so some rule of thumb can be applied: the drivers of small, silver cars are a menace. Indeed, I now regard this as an immutable fact.
Graham,
Your statement regarding the five crucial steps: “Look, See, Assimilate, Decide, Commit” is absolutely spot-on.
Ignorance and/or disregard of these principles is responsible for 99.9% of the traffic accidents I have observed world-wide.
Martin.
AlfaMartini | 25 Sep 07 - 14:39Further to my last comment, I was driving home from my workplace at Abu Dhabi Airport a couple of days ago and formated at a safe distance behind a neatly & quickly driven Mercedes Saloon. However we were soon slowed down by an erratically driven BMW M5 which was:
a: Refusing to acknowledge faster traffic from behind, and
b: Aggressively tailgating slower traffic in front to within 1 or 2 meters, together with headlight flashing and dangerous undertaking maneuvers etc.
Prior to the Masafa Bridge approach the Mercedes driver indicated right and carefully maneuvered across lanes to enter the Masafa Bridge gas station, leaving me directly behind the M5, and I then witnessed yet again a classic example of an avoidable traffic accident which occurred at relatively slow speed due entirely to multiple failure to observe the basic observations as described in your “Look, See, Assimilate, Decide, Commit” statement….
1. The BMW aggressively bullied a Toyota Corolla which was un-necessarily traveling in the outside lane at very low speed to pull over.
2. The BMW then accelerated hard, but failed to observe the “Body-English” of a Toyota Camry which was quite obviously about to pull out into the outside lane without indicating in order to overtake a very slow moving vehicle which should have been traveling in the inside lane.
3. The Camry did in fact pull out in front of the BMW without indicating, and the Corolla immediately pulled out behind the BMW, again without indicating.
At this point I instinctively backed-off even further, and then witnessed a classic, un-necessary, and very messy 3 car pile-up which occurred at low speed, due entirely to multiple lack of driver education / awareness etc….
The sad thing is that this, as is the case with so many other traffic accidents, will be blamed on “speeding” motorists.
AlfaMartini | 11 Oct 07 - 19:03