Monkey see, monkey do. It seems that Google’s self-driving car has spawned a whole raft of copycat projects, all claiming to be better than the rest.
Now, Oxford University is anxious to spend some sponsorship money and make ridiculous claims and predictions that are unlikely to come to fruition. It has developed a self-driving car which is apparently better than every other self-drive car ever conceived, because “it relies heavily on an on-board 3D street map, instead of many sensors”.
Actually, the Google car – you know, Google: the people who do Google Earth and all that stuff – does make use of the “cloud” a little. So a bit of an inflated claim here, I think.
But anyway, big deal. And let’s hope the “street map” can cope with sudden closures and temporary roadworks to stop the thing barging into situations it doesn’t know about (oh, I bet it has sensors to fall back on then).
The leader of the project claims that it could lead to an “arms race” amongst car manufacturers:
You can imagine one company advertising a model of car which, on average, drives itself for 10 minutes a day and then another manufacturer will come out with one that does 15 minutes.
I think he should stay off the caffeine or brightly coloured soft drinks for a while.
Although I’m not necessarily in agreement with it, there is evidence to suggest that over-reliance on technology and safety features leads to lack of caution on the roads – a recent story about blind-spot accidents and the new annual saga of being warned to fit winter tyres (with people believing that you can do anything you want once you have them fitted) being just two examples. Why anyone would want to sit in a vehicle you don’t have to touch (also known as “a bus” – and I’m joking) is beyond me.
A teenage dickhead – Michael Partington, 19 – was doing speeds of around 70mph in a 20mph zone. He lost control of the car, smashed into a tree, and killed a 14-year old girl in the process.
Before I continue, let’s just look at that again:
19 years old
had several passengers in the car
was driving at speeds up to 70mph in a 20mph zone
lost control
early hours of the morning
killed a 14-year old girl
she was his front-seat passenger
How long will it take for people to realise that this is a script that’s being followed, time and time again. At least 90% of young male drivers are genetically programmed to behave like prats when they pass their test and drive with their mates in the car (this rises to over 99% when you focus on certain areas of the country). It’s only by chance that more people like Annie Cochrane don’t end up on the casualty list – but in any case, even ONE such incident is more than enough.
There’s a lot to be said about the environments involved in these cases – this happened in Wigan, and you can’t help but also wonder what a 14-year old girl was doing out “in the early hours” with a moron like this. You might argue that this is irrelevant. Well, if you take the shortsighted view that the only issue here is what Partington was doing, you might be right. But if you look wider at the trend and predictability of this sort of thing, you really do have to start asking when society is going to realise it is really badly screwed up – and especially so in certain places.
Anyway, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years in prison. When you think of what Partington did, and how he was deliberately driving (no doubt, to show off and burn off some testosterone), you can’t really see anything which might result in anything less than the maximum sentence. But he pleaded guilty, so that could knock a good few years off it.
Society really is a mess.
Oh, and the Judge hasn’t decided “on the length of the [driving] ban” he has issued while Partington is out on bail. It should be lifetime.
This is an OLD article, from way before I got my dashcam. Nowadays, I am able to record these behaviours and send them to the police.
I was on my way to a lesson yesterday afternoon. I’d stopped at traffic lights in Ruddington with a blue-grey Audi behind me (one of the “look how big a tosser I am” Audis, reg. no. RV07 WVK),. The lights went green and I moved away.
However, as I moved off an ambulance appeared from one of the side roads. I gestured to him that I’d seen him, then indicated left and pulled over on the other side of the crossing. He turned my way and went past – but as I moved off, the dickhead driving the Audi also used the opportunity to overtake where there was no space to do so, and tailgate the ambulance along the A60. They just have to do it, don’t they? And I’m sorry, but nine times out of ten its just has to be someone in an Audi.
Anyway, Mr Dickhead in the Audi followed the A60 towards West Bridgford, and this meant negotiating the Nottingham Knight roundabout. Now, a black Mercedes (reg no. KR07 UAO) had pulled out in front of me and was between me and Mr Dickhead. It was going rather slowly, and considerably below the 60mph speed limit on that stretch. At the roundabout it went into the middle lane – that’s a left-only lane (the right-hand one of two). I went into the lane to the extreme right – they only one marked for straight-ahead. As I pulled on to the roundabout – which is busy at the best of times as it cuts the A52 – the moron in the Mercedes just indicated and cut across to go ahead!
A few years ago – when that roundabout was on the West Bridgford test centre test routes – it was the scene of many a fail for those who couldn’t handle it. What’s really frightening, though, is the sheer number of people who allegedly have licences and yet who cannot deal with this, or any other roundabout properly.
As if to illustrate the point further, I was on my way to a lesson this morning along the Ring Road. On the approach to the Crown Island (or Raleigh roundabout, as it is sometimes still known), one of those dirty white roll-up light goods vans (reg. no. VA04 NOH) was in the left-hand lane. Right at the last minute – literally, within about 30 metres of the traffic lights – he indicated right, forced everyone to slow down, and cut across three lanes of traffic to get into the right-hand lane (which goes right, towards the City). However, he then used the inside lanes of the roundabout to get ahead of a few cars, because once we got back on to the Ring Road, there he was in the right-hand lane. And he still pulled back over to the left, causing everyone to slow down again.
The traffic on the roundabout at that time was fairly light. so I can only assume his lane weaving was down to absolute incompetence rather than arrogance, because he’d have got over quicker by staying where he was (and inconvenienced dozens fewer people).
And finally, after having completed that lesson I was going to, I was heading along the A60 again towards Ruddington and there was Brown Suzuki Swift (reg. no. FN61 ZKD) in front of me. As we approached the Nottingham Knight roundabout, she just drove straight on to it and then stopped in the middle to wait for a space before carrying on! As I said earlier, this roundabout cuts the A52, and people come flying on to it at close to 70mph sometimes. She was playing Russian roulette – almost certainly without being aware of the fact.
Part of me wonders how the hell they get away with it. They obviously can’t driver properly, and yet there they are, driving like idiots amongst those of us who can. But then another part of me remembers that it is those of us who can who usually prevent accidents from happening. And the final part of me knows that they often don’t get away with it – albeit often with innocent drivers suffering as a result.
The driving test needs to be much harder. And as a Pass Plus pupil was asking me yesterday, why aren’t they re-tested every 10 years?
My answer to that was that no one would ever have the guts to do it, because unless you had very low standards (making the whole exercise pointless) you’d be taking licences away from a huge percentage of the population, most of whom would have weasely excuses about “needing to get around” or “driving for a living” – and the human rights activists would have a field day.
The article says that the number of crashes involving lane changing on motorways is increasing – up a half over the last two years. It calls this kind of incident (not just on motorways, I assume) a “blind-spot accident”.
The organisation which did the research says that most accidents occur when moving from the right to the left (e.g. cutting in after overtaking).
I suppose my immediate response has to be why this is such a surprise? The way people drive is hardly conducive to not having accidents. In fact, something which is increasingly getting on my nerves when I’m out on lessons is when the car just behind you on the dual carriageway is doing 2mph over the speed limit to get past you, and then cuts into the perfect gap your pupil has left between themselves and the car in front. It’s got to the point where I say to mine “just watch this. He’s going to cut in”. And they do.
Before I go any further, let me just offer some quotations from a forum frequented by learners. These are from a topic called “Stupid things taught for the test”, and all spelling is as it appears in the forum:
[the first reply]…you definitely do not need to check you main mirror as much as they tell you to…
…The ridiculous usage of the parking brake. I mean who the **** uses a parking brake when you are doing a 3-point turn….
… Also, parallel parking can be avoided in everyday life, and you don’t to mirror check every 3 seconds…
…Push/Pull steering….
…Overuse of the handbrake. Useful if you are in a manual car on a hill, but you don’t need to apply it as often as you are told…
…Stall routine. No need to go the long way about it like you do as a learner….
…dont indicate round parked cars, dont turn the wheel when stationary [i.e. you SHOULD do these things]…
…I didn’t use my handbrake once on my test apart from parking right at the end… is it usually necessary in a test..? My instructor said technically I should but never really enforced it…
…The hazard perception test…
…I never use my handbrake, even on a hill… I never put the car in neutral… I never do that stupid awkward steering thing where you pass the wheel from hand to hand… That’s downright dangerous… I rarely drive with two hands on the wheel… I frequently go 5th -> 2nd.
…slowing down for the corner about 4 years in advance…
…All you have to do is pass the test. After that you’re chilling…
…I never use any of my external mirrors in my car, but that’s because all three are useless except for one of the offside ones – which is brilliant for pulling out onto the road from a parallel park. Interior mirror is wonderfully useful, but that’s about it, so I tend to turn my head to look instead if it’s anything I can’t see out of my rear windscreen…
…My car cruises at at 50mph on the motorway, I won’t be overtaking anybody. For other lane changes like roundabouts and junctions, I get by perfectly well (and have done for a year with no near misses or anything like that) by turning my head… I can see perfectly well what’s going on behind me through my rear view mirror…
…Oh and as other people have said, checking your mirror, you don’t need to do it as much in ‘real life’ but it’s good to get into the habit for the test…
Is it any wonder that driving standards are so poor out there? These are mostly recently passed drivers (with a few know-it-all petrol heads with relatively vast experience covering a few months or years). It’s also worrying some of the crap some of them have apparently been taught, such as check the mirrors every 3 or 5 seconds – that’s bound to give the wrong message, isn’t it?
This is just one discussion thread, but there are many others. They just don’t think mirrors or other safety-related skills are important.
The Autoblog article mentions the usual mitigating circumstances designed to deflect blame from its obvious target – cars are safer, door pillars bigger, the EU, etc. That’s bollocks.
It’s down to one thing, and one thing only: crap driving.
As an aside (well, it is related), a few months ago one of my pupils failed her test. She’s since passed, but this failure was for one thing only. She’s come to a give way line on an angled road, with traffic coming only from the left. The problem was, she’s turned the steering wheel so much that her angle was even more acute than usual, and as a result she couldn’t see traffic coming from the right for the examiner, the passenger seat, the door pillar, and so on.
How did she deal with it? She decided to just go and hope for the best.
The examiner quite rightly didn’t share her opinion and used the duals (there was someone coming), and yet to this day she maintains that it was the only thing she could have done, and that the examiner was being an arse. We had some major arguments about it in her subsequent lessons – there was no way I was going to give her an inch on such a stupid outlook. She couldn’t (and still cannot) see how she shouldn’t have got herself in that position to start with, and having done so should have asked the examiner to move his head or something until she could see.
Most worryingly, her reason for learning to drive was to be able to drive her kids to and from school.
I see the same behaviour daily. Just today on a lesson, my pupil was going ahead at a roundabout in the left lane (near Morrissons in Netherfield) then to turn left at the lights 50m further on. A woman in a silver Mercedes A160 (reg. no. FG61 CCN) got in the right lane and cut in to the left one the roundabout in front of us. It was deliberate and calculated. Even worse, she had a Baby on Board sticker in the back, so presumably her brat was in there with her. She knew she’d done it, because after she’d successfully read my lips she then spent the next 30 seconds trying to avoid making eye contact. Mind you, the fact that she used this time to peel a banana, and then break the 40mph speed limit on the Colwick Loop Road may also have had something to do with it.
Nicola Bentley-Lovell made a claim of constructive dismissal against the DSA. She’d worked as an examiner for seven years up until October 2010 but resigned after she allegedly had to take a lot of “bullying and harassment” over her pass rate.
She said that over a six-year period she underwent 165 internal check tests (the normal check rate in that period would have been a maximum of around 50 per examiner).
She claims that her managers “urged her to increase her pass rate” as it was below “acceptable variance”.
You can read the full story in that link – it is bulked out with a variety of claims that are not directly connected with the issue of variance.
At this point, the forums lit up with the usual crowd of fossils and know-it-alls – idiotic claims about people always failing tests on a Friday, accusations that they get cash bonuses for meeting targets, and so on. Hard to believe many of these people can get away with calling themselves “professionals”.
What is clear is that a lot of people – examiners like these two, and plenty of ADIs who persist in their archaic careers solely to hate the DSA – do not have a clue what variances actually are.
If you toss a coin, it is 50:50 whether it will be heads or tails. In theory, if you toss it a hundred times, you should get 50 heads and 50 tails. In reality, you might get 45 heads and 55 tails – or the other way round… or anywhere in between. Or even a bit different.
What you won’t get is 80 heads and 20 tails. And even if you did, you wouldn’t get the same again, and you certainly wouldn’t get it if you upped the tosses to 1,000 or 10,000.
The same is true of examiners. No matter what happens, in theory only a certain percentage of test candidates will pass, and it is not 100% of them. So if you have on perfect examiner conducting all tests, you would end up with a pass rate somewhere around 40%. That’s just the way it is – that 40% is the equivalent of the 50:50 of coin tossing.
Arguably, if all ADIs were perfect and taught to a perfect standard, and this one perfect examiner took all the tests, then the pass rate would theoretically be 100%. But you don’t have perfect ADIs, you don’t have perfect pupils, and you don’t have perfect examiners.
What you do have are typical human beings who are affected by typical human defects. Variances, if you like. And that’s where the 40% comes from.
Now, if you tossed that coin a hundred times and it came down 80 heads, would you think there was something wrong with it? Well, I would. And if the same thing happened for the next hundred tosses, I’d be certain. And if it kept happening, I’d use a different coin next time.
But the problem appears to be that some people wouldn’t see this as an issue and would reject any attempt to fix the coin so that it came down 50:50 like it should do. And this is exactly what keeps happening with these examiners who keep going on about variances, and the ignorant ADIs anxious to believe the worst.
If an examiner has a pass rate which is not the equivalent of 50:50 for a coin toss test (or 40% in their case), or within reasonable limits (95-105% of that 40%), then they are not performing to the required standard – just like the coin that keeps giving 80 heads in every hundred tosses!
Both examiners in these publicised cases appeared too stupid to realise this simple fact.
If someone is on your case for six years – giving you every opportunity to examine what you do – you have to be a very special kind of person not to be able to realise something is up. And you need to be extra-special to conclude that you – out of hundreds and hundreds of other examiners – are not doing something wrong.
A lot of stories about morons driving dangerously coming through at the moment.
Self-certified lunatic, car thief, and banned driver – James Michael Ramsden, 25 (see if you can pick him out in the picture, opposite) – drove the wrong way on a busy ring road at speeds exceeding 100mph before crashing head-on with another motorist. The other driver was seriously injured.
He was already banned, and was in a stolen car when he was chased by police. Police were “shocked” at Ramsden’s “lack of remorse” over what had happened.
The Judge hit out at national guidelines, which meant he could only award a jail sentence of 2 years – reduced by four months for pleading guilty – plus additional sentences for other crimes. Ramsden was put away for 2 years 9 months!
The other driver spent 11 days in hospital (some in intensive care) and is still off work. Ramsden, as you can see (he’s on the left, I think), came out without a scratch.
Judge Ashurst told Ramsden: “Your driving was quite ludicrous. At every turn you demonstrated yourself to be arrogant, selfish and irresponsible.”
A very apt label – and one that can be applied to anyone who speeds or drives dangerously.
SPEED kills – it’s a message that is repeated again and again and again. And yet, tragically, it’s a message which some hugely-irresponsible individuals choose to ignore.
Alan Jackson, 48-year old father of two and grandfather of two, was mowed down by Sam Griffiths, 23. Griffiths had been racing through red lights, flashing others to get out of his way and undertaking them.
It’s worth looking at that recent post about idiot drivers in order to see that Griffiths’ kind is not a rarity. The Echo shoots itself in the foot in a small way, by adding the usual (though much less sincere) caveat:
While many men of the same age are sensible and mature enough to drive safely…
I am increasingly of the opinion that the “sensible and mature” young drivers are actually in a very small minority – and the group absolutely and definitely is not populated just by the male of the species.
I say this because no matter how good someone is at driving – and how much you can teach them during lessons – the one thing you cannot do is change their attitude. Some comedians out there market themselves as life coaches who reckon they can, but they can’t. The only people who can change attitudes are 1) those with the attitude in the first place, and 2) those who helped create the attitude (i.e. the parents).
And let’s face it, #1 isn’t likely to happen anytime soon to the modded Corsa-owning jackasses out there. So the blame lies squarely at the feet of the parents.
Griffiths could have gone to prison for 14 years. He actually got 4 years and 3 months – or in other words, he could be out in little over two years, and almost certainly within three! So that’s the value set on Alan Jackson’s life (and I’d have loved to have heard the glowing references from Griffiths’ mum and dad before the little scumbag was put away).
I’m not convinced the Echo has though this through properly, though. Its solution?
Schools could begin the education of the drivers of the future before they ever get behind the wheel, while there is certainly a case for adapting driving lessons – in both cases, perhaps, pictures of road accident scenes could be shown to future drivers.
And maybe they should be told about and invited to attend an annual RoadPeace service of remembrance, when families place roses on empty chairs signifying the number of lives lost on Merseyside roads the previous year.
It’s a life and death message – and more people have got to be made to listen.
It’s almost as bad as sending them on expenses-paid holidays.
The Peterborough Evening Telegraph reports that Ewa Petelska, 46, failed her Part 3 exam in November 2009, but she gave paid-for lessons to four Polish pupils over the subsequent five months. She was found guilty of giving paid instruction by an unregistered and unlicensed person.
You really need to read the story several times to convince yourself that she’s actually been punished. All that appears to have happened is that she must pay back part of the money she took from the learners she taught. Although she wasn’t charged with it, it is highly likely that she wasn’t insured – or her learners weren’t – when out on these lessons.
Petelska actually comes out of it looking better than the DSA. Her defence lawyer said:
…[she] had provided a vital service to Polish learners.
“She has not been convicted of any offences in the past and she is not likely to appear before the court again.
“She accepts she made an error, but there is no suggestion she posed a risk on the roads.
“She has four children, aged between seven and 25, who live in Poland and she sends money to them.
“She wants to work as a driving instructor in the future, but may not be able to because of this conviction.”
Well, at least we didn’t get the usual “she’s pregnant”, “her mother or father or brother or sister or friend recently died”, or that she was “seeking to come to terms with some personal crisis”. That’s the usual way to get off lightly.
Petelska was given an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay back £1,318 to her pupils. Plus she was ordered to pay court costs of £85.
It makes you wonder why the DSA’s Fraud & Integrity people even bother. They’ve not recovered any significant costs (you and me will have to pay for that one way or another), whereas Petelska has come out with a glowing reference.
And since she is a non-national she, I wouldn’t bet against her making it on to the Register of ADIs at some point in the future.
I’m not sure ‘incandescent’ is the right word. It means glowing with white or intense heat/light – but whatever it is the forums are incandescent with, it sure ain’t white or brilliant!
It’s worth just clearing up what the proposals actually say:
it would only apply to motorways
it would require a full public consultation before becoming law
it would be introduced in 2013 at the earliest
it goes hand in hand with proposals to limit many – if not all – urban roads to 20mph
Almost exclusively, those most in favour of increasing the speed limit in the main appear totally ignorant of the “on motorways” part. Many seem to think it means on all national speed limit (NSL) roads. Most are also ignorant of the 20mph proposals, or the fact that it isn’t going to happen next week.
Another obvious feature of those showing the most support for the proposed increase is the fact that almost all of them are car freaks – young or old – who think they know everything, and who are so wound up in themselves that they can’t recognise how other people might be different… and who might not be able to safely handle an increased limit.
Most frighteningly, some of those car freaks are ADIs. They are openly stating that motorways shouldn’t have a speed limit at all, that the limit should be higher than 80mph, and so on.
One of my pupils asked me for my thoughts on it today. I told him that I don’t have any issues with an increase in speed limits from my own perspective – but I have a major concern when it comes to trusting other drivers to handle it properly.
There were two good illustrations of the potential problems yesterday.
First of all, I was on a normal lesson with a pupil. We were on a dual carriageway and at one point we simply overtook cars which were going slower than us (I’d suggest we were doing around 65-70mph, whilst the other cars were doing 55-60mph). Since we were going 5-10mph faster, that’s the relative speed we passed them at. However, as we went a little further we came upon a large road maintenance truck, which was travelling at no more than 40mph – as we approached to overtake I advised the pupil to be careful. We passed safely – going about 30mph faster than the truck.
Once it was safe, I got the pupil to pull over and we talked about the difference between the first overtake and the second. The first involved us travelling at almost the same speed as the cars in the lane to our left, whereas the second involved us closing in on the truck at a relative speed of 30mph. I asked the pupil to consider the risks and dangers if a car pulls out in front of you when you’re only doing about 10mph, compared with those if one pulls out at 30mph. That was why I advised caution in that second situation.
The second example came while I was doing a Pass Plus session on the M1. We were in the middle lane overtaking lorries on the section of the road approaching Leicester, where there are warning signs about slow vehicles as the road climbs. I’d just mentioned to the lad driving that lorries can pull out at any time and without warning on this section, when that’s exactly what happened. What made it worse is that if the lorry had done it 10 seconds earlier it wouldn’t have mattered so much – but he waited right until we were literally five car lengths behind and then he pulled out. He rapidly pulled back in again, then tried to pull out once more as he saw us brake hard (the car we were in was an automatic and picked up very quickly). The last I saw was him waving his arms around as though we’d done something wrong.
But rather than go on about moronic lorry drivers, the point is that if a driver was inexperienced and approached such a situation at 80mph (or maybe 85mph – you know what will happen whatever limit is set), he could be closing on the vehicle wanting to pull out at a relative speed of 30-40mph. Sudden braking at an absolute speed of 80-85mph, though, is likely to cause a skid or roll, which in turn could cause others to swerve, brake, or skid – and before you know it you have a multi-vehicle pile-up.
I’m not saying they don’t happen with the limit set at 70mph (not with prats like that lorry driver on the road, that’s for sure). But you need to be an idiot to think that if it happened with the limit set at 80mph the outcome would be less serious.
The media needs to stop keep trotting out statistics like “49% of cars go faster than 70mph on the motorway” if it isn’t going to include other statistics like how many miles of motorway are shut every day of the week due to accidents caused by people going too fast.
And anorak societies like the IAM need to stop publishing misleading data like those in this story. The simple fact is that speed DOES kill. The silly semantics over “appropriate speed” and “speed limits” is fine when debated over a half a pint of Old Scrotum Best Bitter down the golf club, but it has bugger all to do with the real world. All accidents are down to speed one way or another – if you weren’t moving, and no one else was, then you’d never have a collision.
As soon as you start moving, you need to make judgements about your own speed and other people’s. The larger the speed range involved, the harder that is.
And one final point about this Mickey Mouse government’s so-called reasoning. It claims that raising the limit will increase productivity. Will it? Well, consider travelling from London to Liverpool – a distance of about 200 miles.
If you could do it at a steady 70mph, it would take you just over 2¾ hours. If you could do it at a steady 80mph, it would take 2½ hours. So under totally theoretical and impossible-to-achieve conditions, you’d save about 15 minutes of travel time.
In reality, assuming that congestion isn’t so bad that you’re at a standstill, you’ll be able to do 80mph from one hold-up to the next. As you approach each one, the risks of an accident will increase as you’ll be doing a much higher speed relative to the slower people around you (raising the limit to 80 doesn’t mean those who drive at 60 will go any faster). You’ll need more concentration and skill – and by definition, you’ll be a prat in a hurry, so all that’s right out of the window before we even start!
All this coalition shambles is after is votes from brain-dead petrol heads.
I’m not sure about these figures, but the RAC has estimated the total cost to the young male of their first year of driving. They – or rather, IAM – says that the average 17-year old would have to pay £12,300, and the average 18-21 year old £14,400.
I’m not sure why it goes up as you get older, but the breakdown of these figures also raises an eyebrow or two.
Apparently, the new driver typically pays £3,000 for a five-year-old Kia Picanto, and £7,900 for insurance.
I’m sorry, but those figures are nothing like anything I experience as "an average". I can’t think of any pupil who has paid more than £2,800 for insurance – that was on a Ford Ka. Other cars have included Fiestas, Puntos, Corsas, Saxos, Clios… but no Kia Picantos that I can recall. I think someone somewhere has forgotten that there is intelligent life outisde London. Those figures might be correct for mummy’s Beemer or daddy’s Ferrari in Chelsea, but up here – north of Watford – insurance on cars is still affordable, albeit still more expensive than it used to be.
In fact, one of mine who passed recently is buying a Renault Megane for just over £1,000, and his insurance is around £2,000 for him and his girlfriend (who also passed with me recently). Both are early or mid-20s.
