Youth & drivrers licences

[NitroDann]

Road crashes correlate with very young drivers in shitty disrepaired cars. Outside of this almost nothing.

and I said crashes not deaths.

And no one said racing equals safe road use.

[project.r.racing]

I also don't think there is a not shred of evidence that driving on a race track has anything to do with being a safe driver on the road. The conditions and the functions could scarcely be more different.

Until you are in an emergency situation, which then the skills and abilities of the car and driver become very close to motorsports.

At 3:30 this morning I have a dear ran out in front of me while do 100kph. My ability to brake hard, turn the car while the chassis is unsettled and all while decreasing speed from 100 to 40kph is mostly motorkhana and trackday self teaching. Do that in a 17yo car with no ABS within 60m. The dear and my windscreen are lucky to be skill on this earth. haha

But then you can just be any stooge with a license and have a car with ABS and plant your foot hard on the brake pedal, close your eyes and turn the wheel and survive. No skill needed there.

There are skills and knowledge learnt in advanced driving that allow drivers to know vehicle behaviours. This knowledge allows these drivers to assess road and speed situations better than a regular driver. Not all aspect of advanced driving will make someone a better driver as a whole. But they have a leg up on the regulars when it comes to vehicle dynamics. These drivers are less likely to have a crash when it comes to corners or rainy conditions or checking mirrors or judging speeds.

[StanTheMan]

That skill is only temporary.
its like doing interval training for exercise. you get a serious edge on your fitness once you've done intervals for say a month. But its all gone after 10 days of not doing it.

I would be inclined to believe, a driver who part takes in racing on the regular basis will have a certain skill set another driver may not. Wether or not this skillset will do any good will depend on the situation.
However without practice, this skillset or edge, will dissapaer due to lack of practice just like the interval training in fitness.

[Rocky]

I wasn't suggesting that "liking" driving NECESSARILY results in someone being a "good" driver.
The "liking" MAY cause the individual to be highly motivated to be a 'good driver' but it may not.
Some people like driving recklessly/antisocially.
As I said previously, it's about caring about being a good driver, and most people don't.
In the normal course of events, I don't think you can MAKE someone care about something they don't care about.
The best you can hope for is to find a way to get them to comply, and that can include shaping their attitude from infancy - which is a bit tricky to achieve in a 'Free Society'.

[speed]

Physics and understanding how a given car will behave.

I don't believe that you forget all the skills but agree that keeping current helps.

[Mr Morlock]

I concur with Rocky that good driving has a lot to do with peoples attitudes towards others and it's somethng you absorb in ones cultural environment. The attitude to Maccers is an example- many people leave their rubbish strewn over the table, an appalling lack of manners, and others always leave the table cleared and the rubbish consigned to the rubbish tin.Some also say that someone is employed to clear it but most of us appreciate a helping hand. People frequently sneak through red lights because they can get away with it and others respect the red signal The former drivers are essentially on the road to not being "good" drivers and the latter make an effort to be "good". Who would you trust the "sneak" or the good citizen?

I agree with Stan ; that's absolutely correct. But also the other thing is that virtually all those "skills" have been superseded , thankfully, with modern cars that have ABS, skid control, multi airbags, and excellent lights to spot the old dears in the night.The idea behind safer cars is to produce a safer result and it does. Whatever way you look at it driving safely even in the most modern car takes a skill - being alert having good reflexes, not travelling too fast for conditions and the like. No one needs to know about feathering brakes in a modern car in fact doing so is not recommended.

[speed]

What Mr M just said.

Consideration!

[madjak]

I think driving skills are eroding over time as our cars and the roads themselves become safer. The skills required to negotiate 4 way busy intersections are no longer required as most complex intersections are now controlled. I think this trend will continue with time as the harder challenges to driving are removed.

Also driving a car is very impersonal. You can sms on your phone, honk people, cut off other cars, break through red lights without other drivers knowing who you are. I have an identifiable spare wheel cover on my car so there is no hiding and it does have an impact on my attitudes on the road. If all cars had something identifiable like the drivers name and photo on the back I think everyone would be more civil on the road and maybe take some pride in their driving style.

[Trackphotos]

If all cars had something identifiable like the drivers name and photo on the back I think everyone would be more civil on the road and maybe take some pride in their driving style.

If tradies in branded utes are anything to go by (or a handful of the guys I work with, in branded Mondeos), it wouldn't change a thing. Maybe more instances of people who feel slighted turning up at someone's house unexpectedly to beat the sh*t out of them.

[Vat]

Seems to be a bit of confusion between "good car control" and being a good driver on the road. Car control is one aspect of good road driving, but there is a lot more to it. Merging, leaving space, appropriate gaps to the car in front, spatial awareness of your position on the road compared to other vehicles, looking far enough down the road to anticipate problems, that sort of thing. You might be handy in the sprint format of a track day, but that's pretty one dimensional compared to day to day road driving.

A great test of your positional awareness and your forward vision is to think how often you get caught behind a car turning right on a two lane road. With good situational awareness and forward vision you should be in a position to merge left to avoid having to stop, and yet you will always see a queue of cars having had to stop.

There was a great example this morning heading south on the M1 - at Coomera, a truck had deposited two wheelie bins in the left lanes of the motorway. A Lexus badged Landcruiser had come to a complete stop on the 110 km/h section of the freeway because they weren't aware enough to confidently go around. Yeah, they'd stopped, but I sailed past (in the right hand lane, bang on the speed limit, having seen the incident develop quite some distance prior) looking at the resultant chaos wondering how many nose to tails were about to happen - massively dangerous situation.

Another example of the potential for foresight in collision avoidance in a video posted here where a guy was going straight through a roundabout, in the left lane, and had a Kluger pull out in front of him, resulting in a collision. Completely the Kluger's fault, no question, but watching the video, you see the Kluger has been there for some time, has had to give way to traffic, and cars went across the rounabout between the car with the camera and the Kluger. The Kluger has made a dumb assumption (fueled by impatience caused by waiting) that a car in the left lane might turn left, and this is a chance to go - and it wasn't.

A lot of the skill set is assuming bad driving by others. I try to evaluate other drivers when I'm driving - 'tidyness' is a good guide, if people cut across solid lines, bike lanes and the like, there's a fair chance you're dealing with an inattentive driver and you need to take that into account. The vast majority of people view driving as an inconvenience and treat it as such.

Of course, if you're dealing with someone like the P Plater in her late model Barina who insisted on tailgating my work 4WD Hilux, you can only focus on your own thing. I've seen the metal hardware hanging out the back of that Hilux (heavy trailer hitch and the like), and it would make short and ugly work of a Barina, I can tell you. I'd be picking something a bit softer and not with the potential to go over my car, personally, but I guess she was in a hurry.

[NitroDann]

I agree, and to add an interesting data point for you, myself and some other drivers who I consider to be very good actually do a lot of the stuff you blacklist as inattentive, such as ignoring road markings and soft road rules surrounding things like road marking and stop signs whenever they dont benefit anyone in that situation. This seems very common with particularly good drivers, professionals in particular.
Its easy to get on a high horse about this but rolling a stop sign or crossing double whites when you have clear vision (for example) is completely acceptable if its done because you are being particularly attentive as opposed to being done without even realising you are doing it.

Vilify that attitude all you want but anyone who objectively considers it will agree.

Dann

[Vat]

I think you've possibly overread a lot of detail into my comments and that you'd find we're more in agreement than anything. To go into full detail of what I was thinking would have required a book. I'm more thinking of, for example, people who turn into side streets and cross well into the oncoming lane in a wide arc rather than making the effort to actually enter the street on the correct side (that is a very Queensland thing). I'm thinking more of your lazy, selfish inattentive behaviours.

My daily drive a signed vehicle for a very prominent Govt owned business where people wll get on the phone and complain about driving standards, so being very attentive to my behaviours is a pretty prominent fact of my driving life.

[Vat]

Additionally, the comment was made in the context of evaluating other drivers when driving - it might be you or me on a bad day, or something else. If you're trying to get an idea what another driver might do (sudden lane change, sudden braking, lane incursions) seeing those behaviours is part of what I'd be using for evaluation purposes. You can't read other people's minds - you can only go on what's in front of you.

An example - it's wet, you're approaching traffic lights, they've just gone yellow (but you can squeak in before the red) and three car lengths behind is a tradie Hilux. Are you going to stop? I'm sure as hell not going to.

[NitroDann]

I agree completely.

[madjak]

Really driver attention and focus is the main attribute to being a good driver. Let's be honest with new cars the majority of roads don't test our driving skills. We don't have to worry about locking up the brakes anymore, electronic stability control is preventing roll overs from swerving, most dangerous corners are well signposted and hittable obstacles have crash barriers.

All that really matters is that drivers pay attention to what is happening around them and actually treat driving with some respect.